Gimme Shelter

The City of Las Vegas’ Centennial Plaza sits adjacent to the scenic Lewis Avenue Corridor commemorating the centennial of the city’s incorporation in 1905 (there are some pictures in the “My World” group on the “photos” link). It is somehow fitting that this monument to Las Vegas’ century of progress has (quite unintentionally, I’m sure) become the showcase of the city’s homeless and disenfranchised. Cattycorner to the Mexican Embassy, the park’s benches have been staked out as places of refuge for those who obviously have nowhere else to go. Well-dressed professionals (many of them lawyers making their way between the county and federal courthouses) don’t seem much bothered by the wretched humanity that occasionally musters the courage to ask for spare change. If the city has ordinances prohibiting loitering and soliciting, they aren’t enforced here. Sometimes I think that I’m second only to Mayor Oscar Goodman when it comes to being pro-Las Vegas, but there’s something deeply unsettling about the way this affluent Mecca treats—or more accurately, ignores—these painfully obvious vagrants (it is reported that Las Vegas is second only to the United States Treasury in the generation of revenue). For a city so utterly dependent upon its public image, maybe it would be money well spent to buy out the next implosion and convert it into a shelter for the homeless. At least that way we wouldn’t have to step over their mangy bodies on the way to Starbucks.