Rack 'em

What do you see when you look at this rack?

Did you say "a pressing First Amendment issue"?

No? C'mon — wasn't that the first thought that came to mind?

Yeah, me neither.

But that's the attitude of the ACLU types now that Clark County (most of The Strip is in Clark County, not Las Vegas proper) has quadrupled the fee for news racks in the "resort corridor," to $100 from $25. There are about 2,700 of these things — who knew? — but I'm not sure if all of those are on The Strip.

The ones that are on The Strip are almost exclusively ads for escorts and strippers. (Ahem: "This is not an offer of prostitution. Any money exchanged is for time and companionship only" blah blah etc.)

There is a civil liberties point, though, in that it looks like Clark County is targeting these naughty advertisements by making distribution prohibitively expensive. That's what the law school types call a "content-based restriction," which is a big First Amendment no-no.

Ah, schizophrenic Vegas. We play up Sin City and the "what happens here, stays here" line, then get all in a tizzy when someone actually tries to lead a tourist to temptation. Or when our mayor says brothels should open downtown. Or when a strip club tries to get downtown redevelopment money. Amazingly, we were a little late to the lingerie-and-coffee business — no protests yet, as far as I know.

Anyway, Clark County has gotten itself dinged before on free speech issues. An effort to ban people from handing out escort fliers failed — sadly, I think, because those hawkers are annoying. And now I'm guessing we'll get another court fight over the right to distribute poorly produced smut.

God Bless America!

(Related stories here and here.)

Blind spot

People in Vegas don't watch where they're going. And it's contagious.

I've seen it in the casinos, the stores, the sidewalks, the roads — people moving one direction and looking somewhere else. I'm starting to do it, too. I catch myself cutting people off as I walk down the street or through the grocery store; twice now I've almost run red lights, straight into left-turn traffic, while my attention was elsewhere. One of those times I stopped with two-thirds of my car in the intersection, the contents of my back seat dumped on the floor. I can't even remember the last time I was close to running a red light.

True, all metro areas have their distractions, but this is something more. I think this particular aversion to watching where you're going is an essential part of Vegas — in fact, it's one of the cornerstones of what I'm calling the Vegas-American Dream.

Vegas is a sustained boomtown. Sustaining the boom requires a certain willful blindness about basic realities. Locals ignore that we're living in a desert, and visitors ignore the odds against them striking it rich on their vacation.

Boom.

Consider this: The theory goes that every hotel room requires 5 to 7 people to service that room — be it construction to build the room, hotel staff, casino dealers, and the doctors, lawyers, grocers, video store clerks, etc. to serve the servicers. And despite the real estate downturn, new construction continues. Three developments on the Strip alone will add about 11,000 new hotel rooms in the next couple of years, and there's also the Union Park plan for downtown, a host of high-rise condo projects, and plans for a new casino-hotel anchoring a subdivision out by Kyle Canyon.

This at a time when the water in Lake Mead, our main water source, has dropped so low that one of the pumping stations isn't expected to be underwater much longer.

But this makes sense when you're in the grips of the Vegas-American Dream. No matter what the odds, you can't win if you don't play, so throw your chips on the table!

Reminds me of our invasion of Iraq. (The dream is contagious.)

An ounce of prevention

Seen at the local Blockbuster Video — are they worried O.J.'s coming back to town and might rent a movie? (Maybe he'll be demanding commemorative copies of "The Klansman" or "Naked Gun: The Final Insult.")

I know if I was an armed robber, and I wanted to use Halloween as a cover to catch people off guard by dressing up as Rambo, complete with live ammunition, this sign would sure stop me. I'd say, "Oops. Can't bring my gun in. Ah, shucks! Guess I better rob the dollar store next door."

And is this just on Halloween? Can I wear a Nixon mask and carry my sword on, say, the Fourth of July?

Will be food for ...

Today makes two guys I've seen now on Sahara — one at Las Vegas Boulevard, one at Rancho — who were working their respective corners, all disheveled, carrying scrap-sized cardboard signs that simply said, "FOOD."

At first I was impressed with the declarative brevity of their pitches. But then I thought: What if it's not a request?

What if it's a ...... label?

As in: "Eat me"?

As in: "I'm tired, broke and homeless, and I'm tired of being tired, broke and homeless. But I'm free, and I'm a good source of protein!"

Maybe Sahara Avenue is some kind of weird cruising strip for cannibals! Just imagine — right there, on one of the most heavily traveled stretches of Vegas, a passage for millions of drivers and pedestrians and tourists every year — dark, unspeakable contracts are being signed in blood right out in the open!

Hello, Anthony Zuiker? Call me! I've got your next CSI episode all ready to go.

Vegas oddities

1. Cash is essential (and not just for gambling): Believe it or not, there are places — even in the central entertainment districts — that don't take credit or debit cards. That's kind of understandable in a place like Uncle Joe's Pizza (home of the $4 lunch for two!), but the deli counter of the Golden Gate Casino? The bartender at The Library even told me "cash only" a while back, although that sounded like their credit card machine was down. Still, how often in recorded history has a strip club not taken any form of currency offered?

On a related note, the Nevada Gaming Commission recently shut down an effort to allow slot players to get voucher tickets directly from an ATM-like machine, instead of having to start with cash. There are also those who would like gamblers to be able to insert their cards directly into a slot machine and make entire bank accounts available for play.

Both are bad ideas. Casinos would make more money than they do now off of ATM and credit card fees, but they don't need the bad publicity of people draining their bank accounts or maxing out credit cards in a weekend or an afternoon.

2. People here drive the speed limit: On major roads! Even on the freeway! And not just tourists!

I can't think of any reason this would be. Sure, we gamble, serve liquor all night, often for free, and have legalized prostitution in the state, but hey, let's drive the speed limit!

The only way it makes sense is if a lot of people have a reason to drive slowly — people with two felonies or DUIs, or no insurance, or otherwise just plain scared of getting pulled over. But why are they always in front of me?

All work and all the play

Arguing persuasively for a career change:


Because, as everyone knows. dental assistants get ALL the ass.

(Well, a healthy mouthful, anyway.)

Viva la action!

I, like, totally saw this.

Not the crash, but an earlier part of the chase. The driver careened around the corner of Ogden and Las Vegas Blvd. downtown, then tore around the corner down Fremont, right at the end of the Fremont Street Experience.

It's a busy intersection. Cars scattered, probably because of the sirens blaring on the half-dozen cop cars closing in, and he made it through — amazingly, I thought, because the cops were right on his ass.

You can't tell it from the photo, but the car was in bad shape before the crash. The windshield had a cantaloupe-sized hole in it in front of the driver, the rear bumper was hanging off and it wasn't running too smoothly. Still, he made it from North Las Vegas to the wrong side of the road on the Strip, about 10 miles in a straight line — and he wasn't going in a straight line.

The R-J called it a high-speed chase. When I saw it, though, they weren't going more than 15 mph. He passed slowly enough for me to get a good look at his face. He looked vacant, his mouth hanging open, eyes unblinking and dead. Police say he stole the car and charged him with two counts of battery with a deadly weapon, so I guess he wasn't a zombie. But he looked like he was running on autopilot. Maybe he just figured there was nothing else for him to do but push it as far as he could.