Rainy Day in Vegas or The Ugliness of Beauty in Sin City
(A film Noir version of Sin)
By Royal Hopper
Does that tickle _ Las Vegas Boulevard on a rainy day last week _ Royal
Rain in the City of Sin is kind of an urban myth. We hear about it all the time but see it so rarely it always takes us by surprise.
It’s kind of like seeing Sasquatch and the Easter Bunny brawling with a Paparazzi at a café on Flamingo or the man who stopped his Porsche on the opposite side of a huge mud puddle, staring at the puddle like it was a communist plot to take away his right to drink and drive on a Saturday and get dirt on his $80, 000 ride to work.
“It does exist,” you say to yourself as the rain begins to cloud your windshield and Sasquatch lands a solid right hand on the photographer.
When I drove past him he was still standing in front of the puddle working up the courage to drive through the wet danger zone staring daggers at its greasy wet surface like he was looking for answers to the urban myth that was blocking his way to wherever he was going to spend his money.
As I eased my battered old mini pick up truck through the four inches of dirty asphalt colored run off and went on my way the wayward Porsche driver was still staring at the flood puddle.
Perhaps he was trying to enforce his will on the puddle of flood water the way he likely often did in his everyday life. Perhaps he was consulting his GPS and mapping ways to go around the four inch deep obstacle in the road or maybe the images that danced across the water, the reflected portraits of the neon dragons that populate Sin City were so hypnotic he simply couldn’t look away. ( There was a film noir marathon this weekend. I picked up a few turns of a phrase)
A Sin City Silhouette on a crosswalk at Dusk Monday _ Photo Royal
The Rain makes Sinners rue the winter
Us Sinners are a strange breed matter how many times we see Sasquatch throw the Paparazzi over a convenient fence and his friend the Easter Bunny clapping with delight we still don’t believe it when we see it. ( Well maybe it was two local characters posing as Chewbacca and Hello Kitty but hey its Vegas right)
Today the rain let up and it was just cold. Driving down the strip a homeless guy sat on a corner trying to get warm while oblivious to the dollar bills he was being handed in the effort to keep his legs from going numb. Still further down the road a Storm Trooper and Darth Vader talk shop between souvenir pics, showgirls line the corners of Las Vegas sidewalks, and men still dug sneakily dig into the new stands where the flyers of naked women are stored. the men hide from public sight greedily scooping up the naked flyers with an air of triumph at their good fortune perhaps unaware that the flyers are free and no one cares.
The Sin City dynamic. Plebeian and Patrician in the same box _ Photo Roya;
On the way home
Before you turn off the Strip and head home a couple from somewhere runs across the road in $4,000 shoes blissfully unaware of how close they came to meeting their maker and throngs of Japanese soccer moms pose for pictures beside a man who has no idea what the whack jobs putting their hands on his shoulder and asking him to smile were doing. Apparently he actually dresses like a Smurf because that is how he dresses.
Once again That’s life in Si City of Sin
So Long Fellow Sinners
See you
Royal's Sin City Journal 