File photo of Lady chillin’ at a Sin City bus stop _ Photo by Royal

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Keeping the faith in your nickname

Wintertime in the City of Sin

by Royal Hopper
It is said that Winter in the desert causes many people to loose their faith, their minds and sometimes their toes or even their lives. Yellow Jacket, Boom Box and Buck Naked never give in to the desert winter They keep their faith and their sense of humor even if their pants and their minds are sometimes absent from the scene.
After a while you get used to seeing people wrapped in blankets wandering the streets with decorated shopping carts. You get used to seeing people dressed in Gucci talking to themselves and complaining about the price of coffee and you get used to ordinary who had had enough and decide to stop pretending they are not damaged. You get so used to it you start to give nicknames to the ones that stand out. You don’t actually talk to them you just give them nicknames after all crazy people cooties might be contagious.    
 
Yellow Jacket and Boom Box, (nicknames genius) are hardened veterans of the Sin City Street scene.  Boom Box is a music lover, his state of the art  shopping cart/work truck comes standard with free air conditioning, a one manpower engine and generous storage for all his worldly possessions.
Boom box never goes anywhere without his cart, his rhythm or the battery powered music machine that caused one Sin City order keeper to dub him Boom Box.
A car battery ingeniously bound to his shopping cart powers the old 80s music machine.  he has the right  mood music belting from his “car radio.”

 He tunes the channel selector past the Bee Gees and Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain and assorted elevator Muzak before settling on some AM classic rock sonata by a band named after a firearm and then bebops down the boulevard cruising down Sin City’s main byway  in his man powered sports cart.
His fellow Sinner Yellow Jacket gets his nickname from the bright yellow jacket he dons when the weather gets nippy. Despite the fact the bright yellow apparel can be seen from hundreds of feet away his version of winter time security means learning the layout of the towns infamous gambling houses and hiding in their hidden toasty warm corners  

Buoyed by fashion and music these two veteran street urchins literally never miss a beat even with ice cycles hanging from their beards.  Lastly I would like to talk about Buck Naked. Buck got his nickname from casino employees because of his proclivity for doing deep knee bends sans trousers or underwear or jacket in freezing temperatures of Mid December. I guess some people just don’t like paying gym memberships or pants, or shoes or any other kind of clothing.

File photo of a Sin City shopping cart driver taking in the Sin City scenery _ Photo by Royal

In other places in Sin City..two men face off with knives inside a casino and surprise these two who we will call dumb ass knife guys were caught.  

Later in Sin City shoppers stumble through Wal_ Mart trying to pay for Christmas gifts with winning slot tickets, panhandling for Christmas Gift money in a store parking lot and one man in a red shirt with a big white beard gets told …”Merry Christmas Santa,” as he walks out the store. The pretend Santa looks at the person is surprise as a passerby overcome with the holiday spirit drops a dollar into the cookware he had apparently purchased at the store. Santa wasn’t collecting for charity he was shopping…

Such is Life in the City of Sin

Happy Holidays Fellow Sinners

Manny Blessings    
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