Don’t laugh Parking is a serious thing in this city _ Photo by Royal 

Monster Truck Rallies and God Knows everything in the City of Sin

By Royal Hopper 

“God knows everything,” ..shouted the man standing on a Vegas street corner late last week. “ The end is coming and God knows what you are doing,” the man shouted into his industrial sized megaphone. According to this apocalyptic predictor Monster truck rallies like the one he was protesting were one of the things that will be destroyed in the coming apocalypse.
The last thing you expect to hear when you are driving down a Sin City road past a monster truck rally s a man with a megaphone shouting his head off about Jesus and the end of the world.
In some cities a man holding a sign and a megaphone dressed in black shouting about God and Jesus might have caused a scene. In Vegas he was barely noticed accept by the lady who was walking her dog who had to step around him and the cop pulling traffic duty a few yards away, who yawned and appeared bored out of his mind.
In Vegas even in the suburbs he was juts another drama queen with an agenda and a sign.
“Jesus loves you and he is going to destroy this evil place.” ._ I mean who doesn’t want to burn down the suburbs now and then..

I guess he is the best value ???? Photo by Royal 

People holding signs and dressed in odd clothes are common sight here in Vegas.
We excel at being weird and trying to get your money. Born drama queens ..
Signs proclaiming the hunger of the holder or asking for help or proclaiming Ninjas have kidnapped their drug dealer and they needed money for Karate lessons to rescue them have become part of the landscape here. Locals for the most part barely notice them. I personally have been asked for my debt card, my shoes to buy food for someone’s kids who were either conspicuously absent or all looked to be in their 30s

One of Sin City’s ubiquitous sign holding panhandlers had set up shop just down the road from the Monster Truck rally. His sign asked not for money or food ..it asked for tickets.
The man held a sign that read “I need tickets.” seriously.

Woohoo _ Photo by Royal

He must have felt the megaphone guy was stealing his thunder because even the sign holding I need tickets guy rolled his eyes at the Tshirt clad megaphone guy.

Picture this you come to Vegas. You party and you fly back home. The only thing is you left your car in a parking garage somewhere and don’t remember which garage, which casino are not even sure you left it in Las Vegas..

Also if you left your wallet with a girl named November Rain two weeks ago and you are just realizing it._ dude the wallet is gone and if i

Dude seriously I am right here _ Photo by Royal 

you just now remembered it was missing ..write it off to a good time and move on _

This week pool players who like to drink, dog owners who don’t pick up poo, and lots of people from countries I cannot pronounce and a Boys to Men cover band from Australia visited the City of Sin. Darth Vader, Snow White and Hello Kitty were everywhere.
The crazy season has come to the City of Sin and it isn’t even May Yet and when us Sinners see such weirdness we yawn and wait for the light to change.

That is life in the City of Sin.

Rock On Sinners

The can made me angry

by Royal Hopper

Anger can be a useful tool. Anger can be useful tool in fighting injustice, raising morale in military units and sometimes, sometimes it can be a useful tool in venting the frustration on aluminum cans that are lying on the ground because you threw them there.
“Damn cans.”

Damn cans _ Photo by Royal

As I pulled onto Las Vegas Boulevard late last week I spied a Sin City denizen venting his frustration on those damn aluminum cans. I spied him stumbling down the boulevard aluminum can in one hand _ medium waxed paper drink cup in the other. Suddenly as if struck by a great epiphany he stopped and looked at the two items in his hands. He looked back and forth between to two beverages as if weighing their individual worth and then suddenly threw the can on the ground and attempted to step on it missing by a scant six inches or so. Growing angrier at the can perhaps because of his bad aim he stumbled back a few steps and threw his entire weight behind a mighty stomp crushing the empty beer can like the mighty sidewalk warrior he was.

Fashion Conscious storm troopers??? Photo by Royal

The can was crushed flat as a lumpy pancake but the sidewalk warrior was not satisfied. He stumbled back another three steps and threw all his ethanol enhanced strength behind another mighty stomp and stepped back to look at his handiwork.
Still not satisfied he stepped on the can and then stepped on it again and again and again. Finally satisfied he had punished the can enough he picked it up to examine it and then as if it had laughed at him somehow threw it to the ground and stepped on it again. As the light changed and I drove away he was carrying the can down the sidewalk as he stumbled his way down Las Vegas Boulevard suddenly stopping to look at the paper cup in his hand as I drove put of sight.

Vegas sidewalk late afternoon _ Photo by Royal

A little later I found out that apparently that what happens in Vegas doesn’t really stay in Vegas. God knows what goes on in Las Vegas and brother the end is coming . Or at least the stoplight. Those very words blared out of a brightly painted SUV as it cruised down Las Vegas Boulevard Sunday.. “The end is coming,” blared the loud speaker barely making itself heard over the plaintive, bipolar rhythms of the Grunge Metal classic playing on the overheard PA the screams of winning craps players shouting to the winds and their fellow gamblers about the $40 jackpot they just scored after only spending $35.

The end is coming..
Doesn’t that just make you angry..I mean seriously. “Nirvana on the PA..” I’m depressed.

Press for the Prize. It’s Vegas Baby you know it _ Photo by Royal

Such is life in the City of Sin
Rock on Sinners

The End

Your in Las Vegas and you see three Elvi marching down the street one old , one young one holding a woman’s hand  and one fat walking down the sidewalk side by side among a sea of safety vests, hardhat wearing working men marching down a Sin City roadway.

Is it ????
A. The beginning of a  really dirty joke
B. A Village People Reunion tour ….or
C. A new street gang the recruits only white men over 30-years-of-age

The answer is …No
No It’s just Vegas baby It was shift change as a local construction site and three street performers walking to lunch with their wives……It is an every day thing…Thats is how my week ended. here is how it started…. 

Well you get the idea. This part of the Neon Jungle lights up periodically through the day – Photo by Royal

Stepping back in time and the birth of Disgrungapunckle Rap

By Royal Hopper

When approached by a casino security guard patrolling the outside of that gambling house..a  bedraggled dumpster diving, sidewalk sleeping Sin City denizen  fished a business card out of his ragged much used brown leather wallet.
“This is my badge,” said the man confidently holding up a card likely plucked from the trash he had gotten his last drink from. The man wasn’t dirty …not a street person by any means just really lost in his own world.
Later when engaged in further conversation the man revealed that someone had taken his badge. His badge was a business card with a small portrait photograph hastily placed in the corner of the business card and held in place by the plastic pocket of the wallet it was kept in. The picture had been moved slightly in the process and so now was no longer an LA PD badge just an old business card and one inch tall ID photograph cut from school pictures perhaps……
“Someone stole my badge,” he explained peering over the counter his childlike 5 foot 3 inch frame straining with the effort of remaining calm his face beaming with the genuine belief he was an LA PD undercover on duty in Vegas and he had lost his badge.
“Right on,“ man . If it gets you through the day my man …right on. Just don’t arrest anybody. There is a lot of paperwork involved and you don’t want that messing up your UC operation do you? What does it mean. Not a damn thing…It was just a funny story….

You have to admire the work ethic of a man who carries a sign requesting money in one of Sin City few and far between rainy days – Photo by Royal

 The rain and stepping back in Fashion and Time

The wet weather that plagued the desert in the City of Sin this week didn’t stop the Sin City Denizens from coming out in force…Proving their work ethic is nothing to laugh at the desperate who go through the trash on LVBD were still out in force. One who had gotten ahold of a raincoat somehow ignored both the rain and passersby as he sorted through the days refuse.

What did I see this week among the rain,  the sea of vacationing tourists and crazies and people living in a world of their own creation? What did I see that has gotten me in such a tizzy? What did I see???? What did I see????

I saw a young man wearing a leisure suit for God’s sake….
I could hardly believe my eyes as I stepped out of the smoky processed air of a local casino to breath in the first truly warm air of the new spring. There it was like I was 12 again, It was 1974 and I was posing for a family picture clad in the bright green polyester glory of the lost decade.

Prate Girl looks over her fans – Photo by Royal

 This leisure suit guy was not alone. I and witnessed a sea of anachronism s floating across the neon landscape of the City of Sin that day.
Scattered among the pairs of pink running shoes, blue tooth bearing divas,   I saw another with a shaggy unkempt fro and another sporting a Mohawk wearing a Ramones live in concert shirt and another with a Bee Gees Live at Wimberley Stadium T-shirt  ….and yet another  aaaahhhhh…..I mean …aahhhhhhh
A little later and further down the strip I saw I saw a good looking woman with long straight hair and fake rabbit fur coat..over her Nirvana Live T-shirt….and huge puffy hair …..ahhhhh

Disgrungapunckle

For a second I truly believed they whoever they are had somehow brought the 70s 80s and 90s together and have brought them together in one huge fashion deprived musical and social movement we can call Disgrungapunkles.

There was a disgrungapunckler standing on a Sin City Street corner sporting a leisure suit jacket, a badly cut Mohawk under a faded Sound Garden CD case hung around his neck like a rap medallion and dirty scared cotton scrawled T-shirt portrait  of Johnny Ramone peering out from under this montage of the decades.

Guess_-Photo by Royal

Then I blinked and realized in a moment…It’s just Vegas man…It is just Vegas……

That’s life in the City of Sin
Rock on Sinners

A rainy Day drive –