Just read this article:

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What are your feelings after reading something like this?

 

Well-written... and a fascinating read.
The dichotomy is very real... but one need not visit Vegas storm drain homeless areas to see it.
Such huge disparities of lifestyle & "class" exist at plain, old 'street level' in front of every casino in Vegas.

I think most of us are somewhere in the middle.

 

Yep, a good read.

None of this is news in the sense of "WTF, I had no idea," at either end of that w ... i .... d ... e divide. Whale tales are as old as post-sawdust Vegas and the drug/homeless/economically downtrodden story has been told as news -- and portrayed in popular culture -- over and over. Hell, Huntington Press (LVA) did a book on the storm drain culture about a decade ago.

Vegas is a metropolis with all the problems of any metropolis, amplified because of the faux fragility of the dominant economic activity and Glitter Gulch magnetism that has been floating around the town from the beginning. (Hell, how many make-it dreams have crashed into the reality of the LA entertainment/music industry over the decades?) I don't think there is an American city with remotely the same level of outmigration as Vegas. X thousands show up annually but a huge percentage of new or newly arrived don't last long, otherwise the population might be 4 million.

There is the Vegas of Summerlin and Henderson -- well-kept 'burbs with hundreds of thousands of folks just going through regular life of school and kids and work. We have the two-score million visitors annually, some whales, some desperate, but mostly folks just riding the PR patter of a weekend fun and different. And a huge population of marginalized, disenfranchised and just plain old fashion down-and-outers.

 

I'm sitting in my room at the Bellagio reading this article, waiting for my wife to come back from the spa so we can get ready for dinner. If the article describes the extremes, we must be 0.001 standard deviations off the mean on the Las Vegas life experience distribution.

And that's perfectly ok with me. If I had high roller money sure I'd gamble for a lot more and stay in a nicer room, but I have zero interest in a playboy lifestyle. And I hope I never have to live in a storm drain, although I don't look down on anyone who has to.

 

Agreed Ken. It always amazes me that people move to LV with no clear plan, think that the glitz equates to being a land of opportunity, and within a year, they're heading back to middle America. LV is a man-eater, pure and simple. Head there with opportunity, will power and a plan, and LV is perhaps the best city in the nation for a young person or couple with minimal education to excel. (I bring education up for two reasons.... cities on both coasts offer loads of opportunity for educated young people but are cost prohibitive for HS Grads. Likewise, many of the good jobs in LV don't require BA/BS/MA/MS etc)