hoddrofnir

Ok, first to clear the air. This was a work trip, and I have heard so many negative reviews from others who had taken the trip that I didn’t have the highest expectations. In fact I have put off taking this trip for along, long time.

Now that that’s out of the way…EVERYBODYWHOLIVES IN CALIFORNIANEEDS TO SPEND A WEEK IN A TOWNLIKETHIS. There is something about leaving the traffic, congestion, frustration, and visible air behind for a while and spend a little time away that is totally refreshing and may even be enough to re-instill a person’s belief that most people are nice, road-rage is abnormal and (this one may be 909 specific) not everybody has to fit into the Barbie-and-Ken-look-I-shop at-Victoria-Gardens mold.

I actually liked Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, it’s kind of like visiting all your favorite dead, cold, waxy celebrity friends.

Visit it one time, just so you can say that you’ve been there.

What can you say about Vegas, where decadence, glamor, heat, and poverty come together like a high-speed collision on the freeway. In just my lifetime Vegas has grown from a town for gamblers and miscreants, and transformed itself into a pseudo family-friendly oasis in the desert. Bring the family to Vegas, take the kids to see a show, museum, or shopping in one of the many, many shopping malls but beware after the sun goes down Vegas changes into its evening attire.

Walking along the strip in the evening you will be greeted by hundreds of people handing out flyers, pamphlets, cards, or some other information for the various sex shows, escort services, or other adult-friendly services available for anybody willing to pay. What struck me most about these handouts though were the people who where hired to force them onto the public. Not some sleazy porno-guy from a 70’s flick with gold chains around his neck and elevator shoes, but what appeared to be hard-working immigrant family’s people who have found work on the streets of Vegas plying the skin trade, only instead of giving up their own flesh they pedal the flesh of an elite few who have been deemed worthy of Americas collective ogling.

This is a true story, one hot August night I was walking down the strip trying to avoid making eye contact with the philanthropists, when I crossed a short overweight Hispanic women sweating through a wife-beater tank top in a most unbecoming way when I observed two small children cowering behind a garbage can. As the couple in front of me walked past her she turned to the children and began to sooth then in Spanish. I eventually realized that that here in the closing hours of this hot August night she had taken her children from their bed and dragged them out here onto this street to witness her handout sex-for-free cards to tourists. Welcome to the American Dream.