Some people wanted to know what the residential areas near The Strip looked like.

Well, be careful what you ask for.

Most of The Strip (except for the Stratosphere) is in Paradise, NV and not in Las Vegas at all.   Las Vegas officially begins at Sahara Ave, and covers the area north of that street.  I live in Paradise, although it sure doesn’t feel that way.

As a non-resident, I cannot even vote for or against Oscar Goodman (he’s not my Mayor), and ironically, the only resort part of Las Vegas that Oscar officially represents is Downtown.

When he comes south of Sahara, he is no longer Mayor.  At least not of “our” Las Vegas.

Not that voting does any good whatsoever.  The notion is patently laughable.   In our primaries this month, we had a historically low turnout.  Most people were unaware that there was an election even taking place.  Here in Nevada, we always get to choose between Mr. Corrupt and Ms. Super-Corrupt (she’s a feminist so she hyphenated when she marred Mr. Super).

Anyway …

At 212,200 people, Paradise, NV is the most populous unincorporated place in the USA.

None of that takes into account the “residents” of the hotels, which adds 100K - 200K people to  our “city” every day.   If our hotels were considered residential buildings, the area within a 3 mile radius of Flamingo and Las Vegas Boulevard would probably be one of the most densely populated areas in the nation.

This place is a strange paradox.

After City Center is built, it’s just going to get more packed.

Every other place on earth with even half of our population density has a real mass transit system.  One that is not surface reliant.

We are desperately in need of exactly that.  The Monorail serves some of near-Strip Paradise, but it’s simply not enough.

Anyway, here is installment #1 of the “Real Las Vegas”.