Fremont Street!

Last night I ventured out to the old strip.  Owing to my Las Vegan ignorance, I didn't even know there was a new strip and an old strip, but lo, old Fremont Street exists to combine old Vegas gambling with 21st century tackiness.  I loved, loved, LOVED it.

Don't know how to get to Fremont Street?  Follow the scantily clad women!

You could also, for a time, follow the stench of urine from the parking garage to the arcade, but I prefer to focus on the physical smut.  The girl pictured above was actually a very nice young lady.  (During my quest for a fried Twinkie, I bumped into her in the bathroom of Mermaids Casino and held the door of the bathroom stall closed for her while she did her less lucrative business.)  Fremont Street is filled with acts of all sorts.  Human statues, women adorned in nothing save pasties, illusionists, break dancers, drum acts, midget Mr. Ts (I pity da short fool!), super heroes, and saxaphonists can all be seen along the old strip.  I took limited photographs of the performers because that is there business, and they expect to be paid for being photographed.  Hey, it may not be much of a living, but it's living freely. 

This nice young man's cowboy partner appeared later in the evening.  

Las Vegas' older casinos, like the El Cortez, Binion's, and The Golden Nugget are along Fremont Street, which was the strip before Las Vegas Blvd came to be what it is today.  Eventually Fremont Street became rundown and crime-ridden, so it was "revitalized" by enclosing the street within an arcade (complete with a wicked zip line sending tourists screaming overhead every couple minutes) and adding music stages for free concerts.  Thanks to the revitalization, instead of being rundown and crime-ridden, now it's just rundown!  

You don't see a lot of real deal strip joints along the new strip proper, but thankfully Fremont Street is there to fill the void. 

If you're too cheap for a peep show though, there is plenty of free skin to be seen.  The bartenders at the Golden Gate Casino dance around half-heartedly on the bar in between shots.

And don't let it be said that these young ladies don't work hard.  The gal below was running her DJ show AND doing a dance routine while the songs were playing.  Toward the end of each track she'd rush back to get the next tune on deck.  She's blurry because I was at a distance, and she moved about quickly.  A lively little thing!

As the sun went down, the crowds picked up more, but the lights were lovely.  I told you I'm a sucker for neon.

We sat at a bar directly on Fremont Street for a couple hours listening to the band and people watching.  Everyone is weird in his own way, be he native or tourist.  This was an older guy apparently hellbent on toning his calves.  Good luck to him.  You can't tell from the picture, but his calves were about the least of his worries.  Oh well, live free, baby.

It is, however, even better to live rich.  Binion's has a station set up where you can see just what a million dollars encased in bullet-proof glass looks like.  They even give you an 8" x 10" photo to commemorate the experience.  

The tackier and cheesier Vegas gets, the more I like it.

More lightning off in the distance now, but it better not do anything more dramatic than that since Dennis washed my truck *again* by hand.  Such service at Chez Pammy!  Look up into the sky yourself and you probably won't see the electrical activity here, but you should see the Bethlehem Star.  It looks like a "double star" but is actually the pairing of Jupiter and Venus in the night sky.  Theoretically it accounts for the biblical star of Bethlehem.  If you missed it tonight it should be visible for the next couple nights.  Pammy and I knew to be on the lookout for it, but it was a trick to spot at first--the Las Vegas night sky is a crowded one.  In addition to the constant arrival and departure of airplanes from the heart of the city, the number of helicopters in the sky at any one moment is staggering.

After picking up an apple pie for Dennis (the least I could do), Pammy and I went to a huge make-up store.  I had to give the girls there their due--they knew a heck of a lot about eye liner.  I'm always impressed by a bona fide expert, whatever the field.  As far as my own expertise goes, I couldn't help but note that 25% of the staff we talked to had breast implants.

For dinner tonight we headed out to the Steak'n'Shake at South Point Casino, which being off the strip apparently caters to the locals.  Rather than just slots and tables, South Point also has large areas for harness racing betting, bingo, baseball betting...so many ways to lose your money.  Drinks are free so long as you're betting (or I suppose if you just look like you're betting), and there was a small army of cocktail waitresses in prettily textured corsets and black stockings to serve the gamblers.  Fifty percent of those ladies I saw had breast implants.  Hey, it's my job to notice these things!

We had a big storm last night, though it didn't involve rain.  (How could it?! Sheesh...)  The winds blew with tremendous force, and Dennis wondered if we'd gotten engulfed in a huge dust devil.  Think of it as being caught in a dust tornado rather than a sandstorm.  If we were caught in one, it was huge because the winds blew for a very long time.  I woke up when the windows sounded like they were going to rattle out of their frames.  Come to find this morning that my newly cleaned truck (Dennis washed it by hand a couple days ago!) is pelted in dirt, and Pam's rose bush got ripped out of the ground and ended up in the pool.  They fished it out and stuffed it back in the ground before I got up, so there's no photographic evidence of that horticultural horror.  I think it took Dennis an hour to get the big bits out of the pool, and the filter pump has been working overtime clearing out the dust.

On the subject of my dirty truck, there are a lot of cars out here with out-of-state plates on them, mainly from California.  I've noticed you can usually identify the out-of-towners without looking at their plates in a very simple fashion--those of us from out-of-state have all different car colors whereas the natives all drive white or silver vehicles.  Black is not the way to go out here.

Just because I felt like I needed to do something normal, I went shopping at Sam's Club by myself while Pam was taking a nap yesterday afternoon.  When I got back Pam was shocked that I'd braved the Vegas traffic on my own after only a couple days, but really it wasn't so bad.  I took a number of wrong turns during my 3 mile trip to Sam's, but as you can tell, I made it home alive.

Pam and Dennis wanted to take another field trip today, so they started by taking me to the Hoover Dam.  On the way to the Dam is the unexpected sight of Lake Mead, a blue oasis in the middle of the desert.

The Hoover Dam, like the Grand Canyon, is just something you have to see in person to appreciate the size of the thing.  It's an impressive amount of concrete, tortuous power lines, and tourists.  Below is what is supposed to be the "high" side of the water.  It isn't all that high because there isn't all that much water these days.

Look below at the dark rock on higher ground and the lighter color rock closer to the water.  The line between the two is kind of like a "ring around the tub" that illustrates just where the water ought to be if only there were more of it.  It's a vaguely disturbing sight.

Also like a bathtub, the Dam as a giant overflow area, which is completely superfluous at present.  The hole you see to carry water away looked large enough to accommodate a carefully piloted helicopter down into it.  

Below is the the "low" side of the Dam.  I think it's roughly 600 feet down from where I was standing.

To get to Vegas from the south, you cross over the bridge pictured below.  I had no idea at the time that the bridge was spanning such a distance because the walls on the bridge are too high to see over when you're actually driving.  I would have been freaking out if I'd known, so ignorance was bliss in this case.  The slanted power lines surrounding the Dam give the place a surreal look.

We didn't spend too much time at the Dam owing to the heat.  The high today was 111 degrees, and the temperature on the pavement was supposedly around 135.  It's impossible to describe what that kind of heat feels like.  It didn't bother me, though I drank more water in 15 minutes than I'm accustomed to drinking on most full days in Indiana.  Pammy got nauseous in a matter of minutes.  She had to find shade while Dennis did the 5 minute walk back to the truck to come and get us.  Even Dennis, who calls himself The Camel, said he had a hard time making it back up the two flights of stairs to get where the truck was parked.  We're planning on coming back on another day to walk the length of the bridge.

After the Hoover Dam, we went down to a little pub on the marina at Lake Mead.  Pam and Dennis toasted the air conditioning with a beer.  More water for Lulu.

From there, a drive through the desert.  Along the side of the road you see all these signs warning you of wild burros, turtles crossing, or big horn sheep getting in the way.  On hot days like today though, the desert is absolutely still.  Nary a sheep nor a bug is to be seen.  I'm assuming that those creatures that can't find a pub by the water are all hiding in the shade.

In keeping with Fake Vegas, we also took a drive through Lake Las Vegas, which is an artificial oasis populated by mansions, luxury condos, a Hilton, a Westin, about three golf courses, and lots of real grass that is *constantly* being watered.  With all of that wasted water, it looked like a desert crime scene to me.  Really, who comes to Vegas to golf?  Save the water and forget the golf courses.  I took this picture from the road when we were well away from the area.  Not a great view of the area, but you get the idea that the greenery isn't consistent with the rest of the desert terrain like you see above.

To beat the heat, I broke out my old swimming costume after we got home and jumped in the pool.  Normally pools run 20 degrees colder than the air temperature, which put the water temperature today at 92 degrees.  I tell you, this place is a law unto itself.

By request, below is what the neighborhood (and practically every other neighborhood) looks like.  The older parts of Vegas look different, but for the most part everything built since the 2000s(?) looks like this. 

I ventured out of the neighborhood last night when Pammy took me for a spin in the convertible down the strip. We left the house as the sun was setting around 7:30 PM.  Even at that time, it was still 100 degrees.  With the wind from an open-top vehicle, it really is like you're being blasted with a hair dryer.  Add the heat of the surrounding cars when you're actually on the strip, and it's pretty intense.

That is THE sign you hit as you enter the strip on Las Vegas Blvd.  It's surrounded by a giant median with two rows of parking beside it so people can get out and take their pictures in front of the sign.  When we left the strip around 9PM last night, there was probably a crowd of 50 or so people surrounding the sign.

It's hard with my dinky camera and bad vantage point from a moving vehicle to capture the scope of the place.  For only being a few miles long, the famed strip packs a lot in.  Or maybe it doesn't.  Maybe it's just a big array of light bulbs and sweaty people wearing tank tops and ill-fitting daisy dukes.  Whatever it is, I was enchanted.  I like that everything is gaudy, tacky, and fake.  New York is fake.  Venice is fake.  Paris is fake.  Egypt.  You name it.  The tans are fake.  The smiles are fake.  The money probably isn't fake.  

Speaking of fake Egypt, I also like the fact that while astronauts can't see any lights illuminating North Korea from space, they can see the light coming off of the Luxor.  

                                       

And speaking of fake money, at the north end of the strip, just past the closed down Riviera, there is an abandoned casino project that never got completed.  It isn't falling down, but the i-beams are rusted, and it's a stark sight to see after all of the brilliant lights.  

But back to the pretty, glitzy, tacky parts!  As I said, I loved the look of the strip and loved it so much that I couldn't wait to go back and see it during the daytime.

Pam and Dennis took me for a walk through a few of the casinos.  Our first stop was Caesar's Palace.  Yes, there are tons of slot machines and gaming tables about, but a lot of the real estate is dedicated to the malls.

While there were a lot of people about and a lot of stores about, it isn't precisely clear to me who does any of the shopping.  It was $7.50 for a plain hot dog and $6.00 for a single scoop of ice cream.   What also confused me is that the three hotels all had the same high end stores.  Gucci, Armani, Harry Winston, Hermes, Guerlain, Prada.  All the same stores repeated throughout the casinos.  Seems excessive since no one seemed to be shopping in them.  Hell, you're lucky even to get in.  Several of the stores seemed to have bouncers positioned outside to ward off unemployed mammo techs like myself.  Check out the nice black man strategically positioned to bounce people out of the Fendi store below.

Meanwhile, the check-in desk at Caesar's Palace resembled crowds I've seen at the ticket counter at the Indy airport.  Blech.  Unacceptable! 

The Bellagio mall was nice and bright.  Same stores.  Same bouncers.  

 

Same crowds at check-in.  The flowers overhead are blown glass.  Fake Chihuly or real deal?

 I guess if you're a hipster The Cosmopolitan is the place for you.  Dark with a club-like interior, its gimmick is that it boasts the world's largest crystal chandelier.  Meh.  I'm not buying it.  In the spirit of the city, I'm banking that quite a few plastic pop beads made their way into this monstrosity.

Donny and Marie Osmond are currently playing to sold-out crowds.  Britney Spears spends her evenings lip-syncing to her own music across the street at some other casino.  Something is definitely wrong out here, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

I feel kind of creepy posting pictures of where I'm boarding, but nobody's reading this blog, right?  Right!  So here we have my crash site.  I'll make the pictures small, so I won't feel as creepy.  Don't tell Pam I took a picture of her cleaning the side of the pool.

Sadly (or not), I'm not much a photographer these days.  Below are just a few pictures though from the Route 66 adventure.

New Mexico is lovely throughout.  Even the view from the hotel in Albuquerque rocked.  But really, I'm in it for the diners.  Check out Nob Hill in Albuquerque below.

Next we come to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  The North Rim is only some 15 miles away, but it takes close to 5 hours to get to it.  After driving nearly 1600 miles to get to the Grand Canyon in the first place, adding another 5 hours of driving was not high on the list.  Anyway, below you seen the Grand Canyon.  It's a large ravine with lots of people staring down into it and a few idiots doing idiotic things.  Many people choose to watch the idiots to see if they fall in or not.

Meanwhile, back on Route 66, there's grilled cheese!

One of the things I liked about Route 66 is its complete faith in the fact that you can't have too many gift shops selling Route 66 key chains.

Meanwhile, there are those diners!

Like I said, I didn't take too many pictures.  You'll just have to follow me out here and see for you yourself.