A funny thing about Vegas is that it is almost impossible for some people to leave. I have my excuses but really I am still here because of the great magnet hidden in the Bellagio vault. My pretend reasons are 1) I wanted to hang out, drink beer and watch the Masters and 2) Vegas is the oasis in the middle of a big desert, where the hell do you go from here? East - desert. From the desert you make your way here. When here, you stay here. What possible reason is there to leave? Actually I can answer that one because in the last week I have met a lot of interesting people and each one has convinced me further that staying or living in Vegas is not a good thing.
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Let’s be chronological about it. Writing my last blog I was staying with my friend Charlie in the Palace Station hotel and casino. Charlie is on the virgin flight crew and was out for a couple of days. I wrote the blog, Charlie left and I kind of hung around for a bit. No real reason other than lacking the motivation not to. With nowhere obvious to sleep I adapted my schedule and stayed up until sunrise, then went out to the pool and slept on a sun lounger under a towel. All this went swimmingly for 3 days. Then two security guards asked me to leave. They were unhappy about my bike and had come to find me having failed miserably to cut the lock – they only managed to get through the rubber coating and literally scratch the metal, I have no idea how long they kept at it. Then, finding me by the pool they realised I didn’t have a room. OK, it was a fair cop. But then they started being silly about it. One was accusing me of lying to him and of picking locks in the hotel while the other was suspicious that I was traveling on a fake passport – CSI fans no doubt. So I left Palace Station and the strip and found my way to a quieter part of Vegas and settled in a bar to watch the Masters.
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This bar is where I met some cool characters. Geoff was one of them, he had worked in the casinos for 35 years and knew lots about them. For example I didn’t get why they wasted space with the penny slots and he explained that it is a way to attract people, who then make the casino look lively and fun to the real gamblers. Whereas the Bellagio has a deliberately dull casino interior and this is to prevent all the non-gambling tourists from looking around. But most interesting about Geoff was that after all that time working in the business he still didn’t quite grasp the odds, and while he claimed never to gamble he was on video poker within 5 miutes of leaving my side.
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Another was Justin Whitehead. I am pretty good at pool, I’m saying this for perspective. In most bars I play left handed unless I meet another player and then I play right handed to make sure I win. I am also extremely competitive you see. But I am nothing on Justin Whitehead. He seeks out the best players in the country and challenges them for big money. He usually wins and makes a lot out of it. Then he gambles all of that money away in casinos. Presently he has only $45, which he hustled in the bar that night from an unsuspecting player. Another guy there was the best player in Vegas until Justin arrived. Justin recently beat him 7-2 in a match for $1000. There is some tension there still and it errupted, with ‘Trick’ refusing a re-match with a handicap given. Then throwing insults at Justin, who then told Trick he would have him killed for running his mouth, with Trick then telling Justin he had lived there for 35 years and would win the war, with random locals now taking their shirts off in the excitement. There was no fight, that night at least, and Trick left. Justin still telling us how his room-mates would now have to punish Trick for what he said.
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Another person was the policewoman this morning, waking me up by shouting “unzip and stand up” and I did, too tired to find the joke. Then she had me lean on the hood of her car while she ran my passport, “how long have you been homeless?” I tried to explain that I’m not really homeless but she didn’t see the distinction. Turns out it was a real passport after all and I was OK but couldn’t sleep there. Then she went over to another group of homeless people and gave them all a much harder time. There must be a memo somewhere: We have a new policy on reducing homelessness, we are spending millions of dollars on it. Basically our key strategy is to discourage it. We hope that by giving all the bums a hard time they will not be so hasty to choose the streets next time. It’s absurd. It is totally fucking absurd.
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More people? Well, all around the bar were people playing video poker, each one desperate for the $8,000 royal fluch jackpot. At the other end of the bar were two guys approaching the 23rd hour of their bender. Playing pool was a guy that had recently lost his job and his wife and then gambled away all his savings in a single night in a casino. Another guy playing pool was working out how to cheat his drug test the next day for his parole. Of all the residents I spoke to in Vegas not one of them recommended it as a place to live. “Vegas is fun for visitors with lots of money. If you have no money there is nothing here for you.” I still consider it to be the most interesting place I’ve been but I am ready to leave now, even if it means cycling through desert again.
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But before I go I have been ordered by my parents to spend a night in a motel. See, the bar I was in was also 24 hour and somehow I never seemed able to track the time, staying each night until it was day again. And in my tiredness I let slip to my folks on the phone that I reckon I’ve averaged about 3 hours a night for the last week. My tiredness is strange because for the most part I feel totally normal but once in a while it gets too much and I fall asleep wherever I happen to be. So a good night and a shower are really quite appealing and I will obey my parents. Not that I would ever not.