People are Strange in the City of Sin

Zion National Park last week – photo by Royal

People are Strange in the City of Sin and in Utah

By Royal Hopper

This week I went on vacation. My wife and I and several dozen other nature freaks (tourists) hiked down a well traveled trail at Zion National Park. Most of my fellow hikers spoke foreign languages, took lots of pictures, wore strange clothing and looked lost and appeared to have consumed a great deal of alcohol.

hey there ..thank you very much – Photo by Sin City’s Royal Hopper

It was a lot like being on Las Vegas Boulevard  or in a Las Vegas casino except of course the mountains were real and there were no cocktail waitresses and the air conditioning didn‘t appear to work.

As I was walking down the trail at the Emerald Falls train  I had a Sin City flash back.
I responded to natures call just like any Sin City tourist ..I  tried to ask  what looked like a security guard directions to the bathroom and craps tables.
It turned out he was a tourist from Belgium who upon hearing my East Texas drawl looked like he had just walked into a real life remake of Deliverance despite the fact he didn’t seem to speak English.
“I no have money ..I no squeal like pig…”  (watch the movie)

….No not really I just asked him where the falls were and he looked at me muttered a few words of French and smiled  causing the young woman behind us to attempt to hide behind my and my wife as the strange looking gentleman approached the group of us walking up the trail.

Now I really felt at home. The frightened Frenchman was actually a drunken tourists making passes at women way out of his league in a foreign language and annoying said women to the point of pretending to be family members of strangers to avoid them.
( and no I wont tell you how I know about this technique)

My beloved (center) takes in waterfalls at Zion National Park trail last week with several
other tourists _ Photo by Royal

Overcome by a sense of Sin City serendipity ( I don’t actually know what that means I once got a pat on the back for using it in a feature I wrote for a local newspaper. I actually once had an argument about what it meant and won even though I was wrong.)

Waterfall on the rocks in a canyon _ Photo by Sin City’s Royal Hopper

Overcome by a sense of Sin City familiarity I immediately did a visual search of the surrounding vistas for the life sized cartoon characters who often pose for pictures on Las Vegas  Boulevard thiking they had them in Vegas why not here in nature’s glory.

As luck would have it I  saw what looked like Elmo and Big Bird. There by a large rustic looking bench near a fork in the trail ( it was a rock okay) was  a tall yellow clad man with a bird themed costume and a shorter figure dressed head to toe in fuzzy red fur. They were standing by a fork in the trail waiting to take pictures with eager tourists for a tip or beer.

Unfortunately it wasn’t Big Bird or Elmo standing by the fork in the road. It was a couple from the Ukraine with bad fashion sense and an even worse sense of direction than me. They didn’t seem to mind having their pictures taken and even started posing and flexing a little….They were ….odd….and kind of scary …Just like Vegas I thought as I hiked my past the couple for here on known in my mind as Big Bird and Elmo…

Later I swear I saw Elvis hiking down the Emerald Falls trail and chorus girl with a fur lined coat and a homeless guy sleeping on the sidewalk.

IT turned out it was just a guy with a bad hair cut and a button up shirt, a child who carrying a small dog on her shoulder and a German tourist taking a nap after a long climb. I assume he was German.  He was talking to himself in what sounded like German  as others hurried past him hoping he would not wake up and ask for money…

Just like the city……

I arrived back in the City on Sin just as the sun was setting and back where the Elmo’s and Spider men posing for pictures were actually posing for pictures and the people laying on the ground weren’t resting. Here life is not simple, the air is polluted , the lights never go out and there are miles of neon and anything you want to buy is sold somewhere…

Such is Life in the City of Sin
Rock on Fellow Sinners

See you soon

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Donning Grandpas Punk Gear and passing out in the bathroom

by Royal Hopper

 

Image and perception matter in Las Vegas and they matter a lot but they don’t protect you especially if you do it badly.

This week in the City of Sin a beautiful young woman approached the information desk at a local casino tears running down her cheeks inconsolable and sobbing as she spoke her chest heaving with the effort. Why was she upset ? There will be more on this in a moment.

Bally-who, a palm tree and the Eiffel Tower greet visitors to Las Vegas Boulevard Monday
afternoon – Photo by Royal

This week I saw a lot of people spending a lot of time polishing their image in the City of Sin and doing it badly.

Lets start with idiots trying to convince people they are bad ass rebels in a town whose bedrock was built on the efforts of bad ass rebel gangsters, bad ass rebel cowboys and self promoting bad ass freaks from all over the work.
This week’s cast of bad ass wannabes includes Dude wearing grandpa’s punk gear, Dude passed out in the bathroom because he’s a man and he can handle his booze, and one enterprising individual who started a fire in a trash can because hey no one is going to tell them they can’t smoke in the bathroom.

City of Sin Tourists wait patiently for the light to change perhaps thinking Wow that’s cool _ Photo by Royal

Now lets talk about Dude with grandpa’s punk gear and with a question…..

What do you call an idiot dressed in black with a lip ring who weighs a buck twenty sopping wet and who spits out the window of Las Vegas hotel room 14 floors in the air ???
You might call him Frank or Jim I for one just call him the idiot dressed in black with the pierced lip who is leaving the hotel but hey I’m traditional that way and this is the City of Sin. Here image is important.

Its not everything but it is important and I’m sure grandpa who was probably a genuine rebel who slam danced his way across the country will be glad to get his gear back in his closet where it belongs.

Now the guy laying down in the bathroom because he is a man and can handle his booze.

Consider the Sin City cliché that is the falling down drunk. This particular drunk, drank a lot or took a lot and apparently taking a leak was just too much strain for him to endure. He fell down and could not get up. No one was going to tell this manly man an alcoholic should not drink.
The person who decided they were going to smoke and were going to throw their smoldering cigarette in a trash can full of paper was in such a panic to leave when the flames started to emerge from the trash bin they left some of their clothes behind.
The person who suddenly discovered she was ill after drinking a lot decided she had alcohol poisoning. She had a drink for hours and couldn’t keep anything down and had a massive headache. She had a hangover

Now back to the engaging attractive young woman who was in tears, inconsolable begging casino employees for help. It turns out she was upset because she what ???lost all her money ????? Her boyfriend…No she lost her phone ..It was found by her boyfriend who told her on her other phone????

Lastly I would like to close with a cliché. One man, who like thousands before him and probably more to come, invited a woman he didn’t know to his room likely accepted a drink he didn’t make, woke up devoid of his wallet and his pride. If you live here you don’t get surprised when you hear someone got rolled by a working girl. It’s so cliché it’s almost boring.

You can’t be an idiot in Las Vegas for any length of time anyway. Like most modern cities this city, the City of Sin is unforgiving of idiots and naivety. It does not suffer fools lightly. It loves them. It woos them. It embraces them especially if they have money. Image is important in the City of Sin. It makes the city notice you. How you handle it is up to you…..

Such is life in the City of Sin

Til next time

Rock On Sinners Rock On

Jogger report:

I am recreating the Jogger report lets start with one simple observation. I saw a lot of couples jogging this week. One caught my eye. The woman of the couple looked lithe and sprightly easily running down the Las Vegas boulevard as her man a more regular guy type was clearly struggling. It was almost cliché

How people play at slots in the City of Sin and the story of Bob Brother

There is something about the way people play slot machines that will tell you a lot about them and about their life, not everything but a lot you know…..
When you see the older couple sitting together and they seem to know each other so well that even they argue they don’t pay much attention to each other it is what poker players call a tell.
One of them will start to become animated clearly upset about something and the other will simply turn their head as if counting then turn back right as the other finishes ranting not having listened to any of the other’s rant but knowing from long experience when they will be finished.
When you see this dynamic you know that they have been together a long time so long that they have no need to listen to know what their partner is saying.  Long enough to where they don’t really even listen to the other just turn toward them when they know the other is done talking.  When you see them playing slots together they will even punch buttons for each other and when the waitress ask them if they need a drink they order for each other and forget they did it by the time the drink gets there.
Others, mostly the older white guys and being a white guy on his way to being older  I am allowed to say that…white guy white guy, white guy… see no thunder bolts ..anyway these guys seem to be trying to force the slot machine to hit a jackpot,  to hit something by glaring at it like it was a poodle that had just peed  on the carpet.
Still others simply stare off into the distance not even looking at the slot machine as they press the buttons, like deer who know that running across the road in front of a large truck is stupid but just can’t help themselves and stare wide eyed into the headlights of the truck as it bears down on them.
“Stop me before I spin again,” they might say if they could stop long enough to speak.
The cowboy shooters and rodeo fans and Trace Adkins fans who crowded the City of Sin this week were fairly quiet except for the man in one local casino who got so drunk he fell over while trying to sit down on the floor because an inanimate object was in the way. He literally aimed at the ground and missed…wow…
A bar in the City if Sin is decorated with a cowboy motif for this week's cowboy invasion of the city of Sin...photo R.M. Hopper

Last week I promised I would tell you the story of Bob’s brother. Bob was a cowboy; the real kind who rode bulls and wore a big hat to cover the scars on his rodeo riding head. I was working at Treasure Island in the mid 90s when the National Finals Rodeo came to town. One night when the casino was full of hard drinking cowboys, many of whom had also likely swallowed several pain pills to ease the ache of the days riding, a tall goat roper as we used to call them in the part of Texas I grew up in walked up to me and slurred…”Have you seen my brother Bob...He’s tall and wears a hat …”
Since I knew Bob’s Brother was very drunk and would not be satisfied with a simple answer and since the casino was full of people who were tall and wore hats and since I was feeling a bit sarcastic I decided to point him in another random direction where he would hopefully fall down and forget about me. 
“He’s over there,” I said pointing in a totally random direction which in those days was simply an empty stretch of casino floor between a large bar that occupied a spot near the front of the casino and a bank of assorted slots hoping Bob’s brother would leave and allow me to finish the shift without having to call an ambulance for him or me.
As it happens who should be standing there in the exact spot I had pointed but Bob himself.  “Damn your good,” Bob’s brother said and stumbled off to where his brother stood no doubt bragging of my psychic powers to his brother Bob.
Man that guy from Texas  knows voodoo or something. Well I did once stop for gas near a bayou in Louisiana and was blessed by voodoo practitioner or else she spilled her drink and was apologizing in bad French with a southern accent I can never tell.
Anyway
In other business on the boulevard two intrepid residentially challenged souls braved this week’s chilly weather to impinge on the generosity of  passersby. They stopped their entrepreneurial borrowing to pet the service god of one pedestrian. A strip regular dressed in a stripped pajama suit carrying a sign strolled down as the two were collecting the odd dollar from those generous tourist and commuters ( as a rule locals don’t give handouts because it can mark them for future requests) …Was it an Armageddon warning, an ambitious member of occupy Las Vegas or advertising for a club with a really silly motif who knows.
Such is life in the City of Sin
Til Next Week
Take care