The City of Sin the week before Christmas Vegas style _ Photo Royal Hopper

The Night before X-Mas

by Royal Hopper 

Twas the week before Christmas in the City of Sin

A billboard, a helicopter and a street light in the City if Sin _ Royal Hopper

All the Sinners were out stalking and so were their kin

The Pimp daddies dressed boldly topped off with pearls

There customers dressed gaily and so did their girls

Grandma huddled warmly by her favorite slot machine

Cursed like a sailor and ordered a drink

Grandpa got soused while watching the game

And cursed worse than grandma when his team turned out lame

For cursing Grandpa was asked to leave the sports book

His bet was made badly and his parley kaput

Santa rolled into the City on a decorated three wheeler

Bellied up to the bar and said give me $100 on the Steelers

Its Circle K dude _ Royal Hopper

Street shot City of Sin _ Royal Hopper

The bartenders said are you F**kin’ nuts

Santa said “I left the wife at home do you know any sluts”

Bartender said with a wry little grin

Here is a card for you welcome to the City of Sin

Ho Ho Santa said as he walked out the door

Good times for all and give me a Coors

Street musicians play by the light of the moon _ Royal Hopper

The neon, the tourists, the signs the girls and the glitz

Its Vegas baby get over it

Life in Sin City is always refined

Just ask the dude curled up in a ball stoned out of his mind

Merry Christmas fellow Sinners
Rock On

I love you guys

Sin City is for Grown Ups _ Royal Hopper

Sin City is for grown ups

By Royal Hopper

When does a man is so intoxicated he begins citing Gandhi as his reason for being drunk off his ass in a Sin City casino.
When this ethanol enhanced philosopher talks endlessly about the inevitable mortality of man and his desire to be with a tall young African American Woman before he leaves the City of Sin as he is escorted to his room in the upper reaches of a Sin City hotel.

On another sultry December day in the City of Sin a child hard of hearing and mentally challenged is found wandering the hallways of a Sin City gambling house alone having slipped out of his room while his parents were sleeping or absent.

In another a young woman is found lying in a hallway so intoxicated that the only name she can give to first responders dispatched to help her is the name of a third world dictator repeated over and over again.

The city of Sin is a place for adults. The legal activities of drinking and gambling and staring at scantily clad women is easy to come by and by law only for adults.
The illegal activities offered by the various criminal professionals in the city ie the paid company of an active sex worker or private dancer a dose of illegal intoxicants or the purchase of illegal and often stolen goods of various usefulness is equally an adult activity unless you have permission from the president written on a piece of scrap paper as one intoxicated gambler insisted he had obtained prior to attempting to secure the services of a lady of the evening.

The bottom line is simply this. Vegas is for grown ups and it doesn’t suffer fools lightly.

As the third week of December 2014 winds down and the Goat Roping denizens of the NFR began to leave the City of Sin the Sin City saga continues as it always has.

The question you are asking is central to understanding the holiday season in Sin City. What do you call days like this ? What do you call days with Gandhi quoting gamblers utter while intoxicated, babies are found wandering the hallways of a Sin City casino and young women with a life of promise ahead of them get so drunk they cant stand up and name third world dictators as their family patriarch ??

Christmas Time in Sin City _ Royal Hopper

There is only one thing we here in the City of Sin call such an event. There is one label us Sinners put on such happenings.

We call it Thursday. .

That’s life in the City of Sin Brothers and Sisters
Take care fellow Sinners

Rudolph in the City of Sin _ Royal Hopper

before dawn in the City if Sin _ Royal Hopper

Question of the week?? What do you call people who take a mentally challenged man to a casino in Las Vegas and leave him alone for hours until hotel security calls the police to help him.. I cant say, but I was hoping for suggestions.

The City of Sin at Night _ Photo by Royal Hopper

Men with Big Hats and bulges in their cheeks invaded the City of Sin.

by Royal Hopper 

Vegas was full of Goat ropers, bull riders and shit kickers this week. No it was not the 80s revival band you have heard of burning up the late night Vegas lounge circuit. No it wasn’t the guy spent in the pink hoodie who spent several days on the boulevard asking people for change for a $20 while holding a dirty candy wrapper in his hand.
The rodeo was in town. The Jack Daniels flowed like ice water at a Baptist Picnic, working girls with generous helpings of silicon attached to rented bodies were everywhere. People drank, gambled and stayed up all night . In other words it was exactly like any other week in Sin City except with 180,000 big hats and pairs of pointy toed boots.

Circus Circus ..hey the light was right so I took the shot _ Royal Hopper

“Good evening Maam” one said to me. Keep in mind I am 52-year old native Texan , with a receding hairline and a goatee and I wear a pair of laceless Doc Martin knock offs sometimes called Beetle boots to work. I could not pass for female with a team of costume experts and a free plane ticket to Denmark. Now that is to much Jack Daniels my friend _ way to much.

They also talked funny but fortunately as a native Texan I speak Goat Roper fluently and when a cocktail waitress asked me to translate

“Thank You Maam,” said the tall ten gallon hat wearing bull rider as he walked away. I think he was talking to the waitress. I think.

Now lets move on to fine dining nd collecting scrap metal in the City of Sin.
.
You have to admire a man who takes pride in his profession even if that profession is scavenger and his workplace is a seven mile stretch of trash cans filled with the remains of a night of Sin City style celebrations..

Blue Man group _ Royal Hopper

It was the week after Thanksgiving and Trash Can man was back at it patrolling the boulevard for aluminum leftovers and the occasional unfinished beer. He is unrepentant and uncaring of the stares he draws.

He picks out the prime aluminum prizes for resale from then trash receptacles he peruses occasionally taking a swing from a mostly intact beer and a bite from a mostly intact hamburger or burrito. He moved from can to can looking for all the world like a Rummage sale Santa Claus with two huge trash bags slung across his back as he men dressed like Elvis pass by him looking at their watches and keeping time to the disco blaring from the PA nearby.

A cowboy walking, perhaps from his weekly bout with 500 pounds of bovine hamburger takes the last sip from his beer and after three tries at taking one more sip finally realizes the beer is empty. He spies the can collecting man and extends his arm toward the can collecting man with the empty beer can in hand. Can collecting man takes the can weighing it in his expert can collecting hand then stuffs it in his bag of goodies.

Right on trash can man .stay proud and stay warm keep on carrying your bags of trash like they are choice entrees at a local café.

That is life in he City of Sin

Take Care fellow Sinners

Rock the World and work to be proud of who you are

Thanksgiving is for Sinners

by Royal Hopper 

The pregnant woman behind the counter smiles as she looks across the counter one hand on her sizable baby carrying midsection the other on the cash register she is manning..
All around her people are dropping quarters in slot machines winking at cocktail waitresses and arguing with their spouses
It is Sin City Steakhouse the week of Thanksgiving and this is one of the most normal places in this city.

Morning at the Caesars Palace fountain

In another Sin City locale and hotel patrons heaves a bottle full of beer threw an open window across a deck where people walk into a swimming pool. He is curious as to why people are angry at him. In yet another part of Sin City a man decides walking to restroom is simply to much effort and simply pulls his manhood out of the cheap sweat suit it rests in a pees on the slot machine in front of him. Class.to be sure.
Even in the City of Sin there are Island of sanity of banal, ordinary functionality. There are few out of the way places where the normalness of the rest of the world impinges on the unique weirdness of the City of Sin. All this week while some people paraded their kids past casino bars and working girls named Brandi Snow Bunny others did find the small normal spots of real life that exist in this ever so weird city..

In a wonderfully boring little House of Gambling called the Longhorn my wife and I and our teenaged daughter sat down for a long deserved steak dinner. To people who grew up in certain cultures red meat and potatoes is an addiction like whisky or cocaine _ you never really give it up .. . . . you are always an alcoholic, a coke head _ a meat eater.. . .

“Forget the wallet buddy give me that two for one steak dinner coupon now or its curtains.” Once a casino I worked at found the wallet of a very nice Indian man who looked very puzzled when casino security returned his wallet to him..
“I had $50.00 and some English pounds and credit cards ( I don’t remember how many but there were several) and all they took were my comps for the steakhouse and my Hamburger House coupons.”

Early to Rise early to Rock _ Royal

Last week at that restaurant was a wonderfully boring, banal experience. There were old people eating together and none of them wore thongs. Nobody tried to sell us anything and nobody I could see had received plastic surgery or dressed like cartoon characters or Elvis.

Thanksgiving Day I was back at work enjoying the hyperactive wierdness of the City of Sin at its best. Six foot tall transvestites strutted around a Sin City casino, cab drivers struggled with white bread simplified and unconscious from a night of drinking and likely chemical friendship. Parents park their toddlers in front slot machines and watch in amusement as their beloved rug rats attempt to shovel dollar bills into the one armed bandits. A pair of Aussie revelers were mugged on the Boulevard.

Thanksgiving tends to bring out the boring in even the most jaded of Sin City Sinners. It is a temporary escape from the City we love but sometimes don’t really understand. For a day we become like the man who sat down alone in a Sin City Steakhouse and spoke softly to himself for several minutes in a foreign language before asking if the establishment had any translators on staff.

Back at the Café a man eats alone. People say it is sad to drink alone. It means you are an alcoholic and have no one to drink with. So tell me what exactly does it mean when a gambler uses the points they earned doing it sit down to eat alone in a café and spends the entire time staring at people who are there with other people and complains when there are no translators on staff in perfect text book English. Hey _ its Vegas _ it is as normal as it gets.

That is life in the City of Sin

Happy belated Thanksgiving Fellow Sinners

Take care and watch your wallets