Las Vegas is where old acts go to …Dance

By Royal M. Hopper III

People love to talk hear to friends, to strangers to invisible bunnies named Fred..everybody _ Photo by Royal

This week I watched a man push his shopping cart full of possession like a champion. In fact lets call him that ……

Champion is proud of his profession and shows it smiling broadly and basking in the afternoon sun and the attention he received as he pushed his stainless steel chariot down the boulevard expertly weaving in and out of an obstacle course so well made no one else could see it.

A times he raced in from one Sin City fire plug to another clad in skin tight racing shorts dark running shoes with out socks of course and nothing else besides some athletic support hose of some kind wrapped around his thighs hitting the brightly colored hydrants with the front of the cart and then spinning on a dime turning 180 degrees and hurtling off to the next hydrant.
Perhaps his minimalist clothing was just the ragged remains of racers jump suit he couldn’t bring himself to take off for the past 15 or 20 years, perhaps but whatever.
Wherever Champion went he went shirtless as he raced against an unseen time clock looking around at his many likely imaginary admirers pumping his legs with the effort stopping only to pick the finest of leftovers from Sin City trash cans, a hat here, a sandwich there and an occasional left over beer.

There are always people behind the scenes cleaning and trimming and making this city pretty and wearing really big hats _ Photo by Royal

He is generous this Champion. At one Sin City trash can he fished a particularly attractive piece of trash out of the less attractive flotsam and jetsam and when he saw more conventionally dressed tourist staring at his trashy prize. This shirtless Champion generously offered the prize left over to the better dressed gentleman who of course politely refused.

This city is full of normal people believe it or not. We have thousands of boring suburbanites, millions of ordinary working stiffs and some of our rich people are even ..you know kind of not crazy. ..But we also have a lot of opportunist, drama queens and compulsive hedonist

I never will understand what it is in this city that inspires such confidence in the people who visit who come here.
I mean the express purpose of the City of Sin is to get you to spend all your money…everything is an angle or a failsafe to catch people working an angle.
Every casino in Vegas with cameras designed to catch people doing things and employees whose livelihood depends of their ability to catch you doing things.
According to one Sin City urban legend a decade or so ago authorities were chasing a man who darted into a local casino in an effort to escape by getting lost in the crowd. The man who may very well have gotten away if he had kept running and you know not been a moron, stopped to play slots near the front doors with some of the booty still on him.
Surrounded by cameras, security guards, and was captured (you think..)

The City at night in early May _ Photo by Royal

What do you call someone who comes to Vegas for a job interview as an “exotic dancer” with $20 in their pocket and a maxed out credit card. Brave ??? Confident??, silly ????
I call it Tuesday…almost every week.

That’s life in the City of Sin brother
Rock on
See ya’