| rev:text
| - Alright, alright!
Please do not berate me because I took a day & a night off away from hanging with my Mom and her birthday week celebrations in Las Vegas. I needed to snoop around and see how much the City of Las Vegas and Las Vegas Strip has changed since I last visited in the early 90's.
I just had to snoop from hotel to hotel, shop to shop, restaurant to restaurant, housing accommodations, colleges, etc. clerking locals working and living on the Strip, Las Vegas Locals living way far away from the Strip in the Burbs to see what was up with the Strip, Las Vegas' real estate market and Las Vegas' economic index!
Please take a peek at what I saw via taking pics via my Nokia 6260 camera phone. I discovered two ends of the living spectrum which I found to be quite stark in contrast:
A lot of the Strip and the City of Las Vegas went through major gentrification, especially this living center plaza being built between Bellagio and NY, NY. I discovered by talking to the building contruction manager in charge of the newly under-construction living center plaza that one studio apartment will run over $1 million! What??? Who in their right minds will be so crazy to buy a 500 sq. ft. heinously small piece of real estate for $1 million??
Must be the Fig Newton family can afford this real estate fortune! Sheesh! I can imagine that any property on the Strip is like $2,000 per square foot! Anyway, I walked away kinda miffed at the real estate prices on the Strip! The Las Vegas and surrounding housing market away from the Strip is anywhere from the $200's all the way up to astronomically, ridiculously high real estate prices!
Alas, the Strip proved to be a major tourist trap magnet. Each establishment I visited, it was like shoving yourself into a can of sardines! It was awfully crowded everywhere I went even after 2 AM, this includes the Tram ride from Mandalay to Luxor!
Way down on the other side of town on Tropicana Boulevard more than 5 miles away from the Strip is what I consider as the depressed, barrio area of Las Vegas . . . the un-touristy side of Las Vegas long forgotten. You'll find the 99 Cent Store, Big Lots, UNLV, The BURBS, ROSS, Local Shopping Centers, all sorts of weird bank names, including the big banks heading towards a non-descript golf course nearby, Nellis AFB and beyond.
You'll meander through Sierra and Maryland Parkway into Asian, Indian, Mexican shops and neighborhoods. You'll find pawn shops off the Strip and Tropicana for desperate souls who cannot control their gambling curse.
BTW-WARNING: Please do not eat at this terrible restaurant called Nana ____ on Maryland Parkway-the food SUCKED!!! Please look at the pic I took of this place and please make a mental note NOT to eat at this restaurant!
I guess so many of you are familiar having seen so many depressed neighborhoods in your lives, so Las Vegas is not immune to seeing a lot of depressing neighborhoods. There are a lot of strange places off the Strip where casinos are grappling for tourists to frequent their gambling digs with two for one coupons and entertainment come-on gimmicks.
I am referring to the old side of Las Vegas called, Fremont Street. On Fremont Street, more gentrification has been under way for some time. Sadly, Fremont Street seems to be attempting to compete with the Las Vegas Strip, vying desperately to entice the tourism trade to Fremont Street.
Consequently, Fremont Street has quite a lot of work and a massive connundrum cut out for this depressed area because this area of Las Vegas is rapidly trying to erase and diminish the surrounding depressed areas making Fremont Street area more tourist attractive.
A stark realization must be truly admitted that Fremont Street will never be able to compete with the Strip due to the drastic contrast economically, especially with the depressed neighborhoods which surrounds Fremont Street, especially when The Las Vegas Convention Center is nearby.
Conflicting scenery off Fremont Street are homes and old apartment complexes I saw that had an A/C unit on top of their roofs, unlike the A/C units you find installed next to a person's home. I rarely noted solar panels on people's homes and at all casinos. Why are these homes and businesses taking advantage of the Sun's solar rays?????
The heat in Las Vegas is unbearable at times, so it is safe to assume every person has their air conditioner on! What's worse, should their be a severe drought, the water supply is quite sketchy and unreliable at best.
Needless to say, I will never buy property in Las Vegas because as I see it, Las Vegas is merely a service-oriented town catering to the rich who visit the Strip spending their billions all the while the lower to middle-class are working the Strip to make ends meet servicing the rich.
This economic contrast is too stark of a continental divide I cannot tolerate seeing on a day-to-day basis.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)