sunrise on Paradise _ Royal Hopper

Improv in the City if Sin or Theater of the absurd

By Royal Hopper

The man at the craps table looked intense as he adjusted the straps on his black and gold pajamas/housecoat and calculated his next bet. The more dignified gamblers at the table the ones with a beer in each hand and a blue hat the size of Montana look concerned as Pajama guy decides on a hard seven and throws his cash on the table.

the city at night _ Royal Hopper

The crowd of onlookers begins to cheer and shout and sing an English drinking song as their gambling hero lays his money on the table. Boldness it seems is appreciated in the City of Sin. The intensity of the crowd’s cheering reaches a fever pitch echoing through the dull moldy smoke filled air of the ancient Rat Pack era casino. The roar of the crowd peaks drawing the attention of the week end casino crowd as the pajama clad man perhaps urged on by the drunken cheers of the assembled crowd pulls out another bill and throws it in the table shouting hard seven again.

The roaring just as suddenly stops when Pit Boss announces there is no such thing as a hard seven bet and the man was actually standing at a black jack table.
Nearby a man wearing a dress is accosted by a drunken gambler who mistakes him for a working girl and is menaced again by the management of the working girl who is talking up a homely middle aged guy from Nebraska clothed in a made in a sweat shop in Malaysia poly cotton ensemble perhaps thinking that this he/she is competition for his stable of trick rolling beauties named April May Jones.

Point of Order: Naked Truth.. .

by
Royal Hopper

In Vegas we like to wear clothes. There are a lot of things that are done better naked sleeping, making babies, swimming in a mountain lake after an hour of hiking ( I don’t want talk about it). Dancing in a bathroom full of tourists isn’t one of them, nor is chasing door pushers (thieves who push on doors to see if one is open) down a hotel hallway and reciting free verse poetry to invisible aliens is right out.

Las Vegas is the worlds biggest free standing theater of the absurd improv. It is where the truly ordinary people of the world come to pretend they are interesting and where the freaks of the world come to let their Freak flags fly and where there is an operator around every corner waiting to steal something form you or sell you something you don’t need and that is against the law.
The better places in the City of Sin insist on a dress code and insist that their freaks take a bath and don’t panhandle from players but in the end it is just a better class of Freaks and wannabe freaks. A freak in Armani is still a freak and a wannabe . . . . Etc etc et al ad nausea

6.25 by Royal Hopper

Part of the not so delicate psyche of the City of Sin is still holding on the Romantic notion of the good old days ..when underneath the violence and exploitation of innocence that occurs everyday there is somehow a nugget of nobility in this marvelously dysfunctional city .. . . No there really isn’t. The City of Sin is what it is. We want to believe there is something noble under the patina of alcohol, sex, gambling and greed. We want to believe human flaws cease to exist when they occur in a building listed on the stock exchange gut it just aint true.
It rained in the City of Sin this week. The hookers got and bums came indoors, the gamblers gambled, the drinkers drunk .._ the hustlers hustled. People lived, people died and urban myth said Elvis was spotted on Paradise betting a three team parlay with his poodle and a guy named Biafra.

That’s life in the City of Sin.

morning on the Strip – Royal Hopper

Take Care fellow Sinners

Rock on

in the morning – By Royal Hopper

Point of Order

If you are under 21 you don’t belong in a casino or in a bar period.

NRS 463.350
http://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=6233 casino charged with allowing a minor to gamble

https://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-202.html
ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

vaporizing device; use of brand name of alcoholic beverage in advertisement or promotion of alcohol vaporizing device.

Boulder Highway 2 _ Royal Hopper

Boulder Highway baby _ Royal Hopper

Morning sunrise in the City of Sin by Royal Hopper

You got to Go

by Royal Hopper

A co worker of mine, a casino order keeper someone I liked a little and respected a good deal, a had a saying he was fond of quoting when people in his casino behaved like angry children and it was time for them to leave. It is one I remember all the rest of my life.

by Royal Hopper

“You got to go,” Bill would say in that deep southern Louisiana drawl squinting like a black southern version of Clint Eastwood and when all other avenues had been exhausted, “ I aint trying to hear it. You got to go.”

As the city has become more and more like a giant frat house _ a giant house of ill repute. It is a phrase we Sinners seem to be saying more and more often to the people who come here to drink gamble and pass out and then wake up and stand half naked on a bench singing “I got to be me.”

“You got to go,” sitting on the bench naked man.

To the man determined to sell time shares in the elevator lobby of a Strip hotel _ Time shares in Brazil mind you _ “You got to go,”

by Royal Hopper

Having an argument in the middle of the Youth Good Sportsman League Basketball Tourney while your kids watch from the court.

“You got to go.” I still remember Bill pointing at the door and uttering those words to three people who nearly started a fight at a child’s basketball Tourney taking place in the hotel convention center.

To the person who tried to reclaim a wallet filled with other people’s drivers licenses and credit cards from three other states from lost and found hours after he was kicked out for disorderly behavior. Those same words were uttered. ”You got to go.”

When the 80-year old tourists compliments you on your Kermit the Frog costume and you look them in the eye and say..”What costume???”

“You got to go.”

by Royal Hopper

When you ask for your money back from a casino in Las Vegas because casinos are known for that kind of thing.

“You got to go.”

Wild rowdy and drunk doesn’t always make for a good night out. They do make for lots of angry drunks having it out just feet from elderly gamblers weaving in and out of slot machines with their impressionable grand children tugging at their pant legs in bored frustration or staring wide eyed at the working girls called Sugar Witch working their magic on guys from Montana called Slim.

“You go to go,” both of you.

Vegas now more corporate than gangster peddles its Cowboy party town, gangster/family image harder than it ever did when gangsters and cowboys and “families” actually ran the town _ and surprise surprise guess who is coming to the city of Sin.

by Royal Hopper

Bill is gone now but the city of Sin rolls along in its confused eternally decadent way. So long Bill you will be missed every time someone crosses the line and someone is needed to say those infamous words.. “You go to go.”
That is life in the City of Sin fellow Sinners.
To all my Sin City brothers and sisters

Rock On

by Royal Hopper

Sin City sunrise commute – Royal Hopper

That tree offended me and the Super Bowl

By Royal Hopper 
A man clad in black stands near the cashier in a crowded gambling house a fake foam rubber finger pointed skyward in the universal sign of we are number 1, a black hat resting upon his head as he glances side to side to see if someone anyone is paying attention. It is Super Bowl Sunday and the man in Black in surrounded by Seattle Seahawks fans drowning their sorrows and patriot fans boasting of their victory. One Oakland Raiders fan looks hopeful for a minute before being reminded that it is not 1983 and the Raiders haven’t been to the Super Bowl since Van Halen was actually a band.

Sin City sunrise commute 2 _ Royal Hopper

Man in Black looks around _ side to side and behind him .. He spies one of the gambling house’s myriad order keepers eyeing him as he prepares for his actions. The order keeper much like the thousands that populate a city full of Sinners and their ill-gotten gains looks him squarely in the eye as he makes his move.

Raising the black No 1 finger in the air ..he quickly shuffles his feet in a dance of victory .. “Life” says the raised white letters on the solid black hat No 1 says the black foam finger. He looks around again .He has picked the wrong place to send a message or be a drama queen .. This is the City if Sin baby .No one even notices. .. .. As the Man in Black gives up drains the bottle of beer from a nearby counter and pours the remains of a $3 martini into a flask he stuffs in his shirt.

“Next time,” he is heard to say, “next time.”

by Royal Hopper

All week long football fans did the drunken dance of self expression in preparation for the big event.

The day before the Super Bowl a man stood on Sin City sidewalk his face red, his words slurred from the copious amounts of ethanol he had consumed shouting his rage at an uncaring and bemused world for all to hear.

The Sin City denizen in front of him had poked him in the eye and he was just not going to take it. He balled up a dirty, grime and oil covered fist and drew back his arm in the universal sign of an oncoming punch and lets the perpetrator of this unforgivable insult have it squarely _ squarely in the trunk.

That tree will never insult him again. After being asked to leave a gaming establishment for “non standard” crazy behavior this Sin City denizen decided to he was going to take out his rage on one the City’s arboreal citizen. He hit a tree _ right in the bark.

“Next time,” he said shaking his fists at the tree and cursing loudly, “next time.”

by Royal Hopper

The day after the big event grown men were seen running through the City of Sin ..several sitting shirtless on the sidewalk their team jerseys laying at their feet in the cold morning air. One sat on a bench between a man in a Dallas Cowboys jersey and another Miami Dolphins jersey. “I know man,” said one. “Been there.”

“Next time .. . . . . . .next time,” they said.

Despite the reputation of Sin City as Party central of the western world people here spend a lot of time venting their frustrations and making statements swearing they knew how to win it all and in the end muttering next time as the leave the City of Sin..

“Next Time.”

Life in the City of Sin Brothers and Sisters

Palm Tree sunrise – Royal Hopper

Rock On Fellow Sinners

Next Time

sunrise and birds _ Royal Hopper