A Different Experience

Our last day in Vegas, so we head a couple of miles north to the Fremont Street Experience, much-promoted heart of downtown, birthplace of this gambling town. Above the street is a 7-block canopy of lights that illuminates the night, but unlit in the afternoon gloom it hangs like a giant shroud.

Beneath the gaudy facade lies the harsher side of the city of lights. Here the street people are not the young drifters with friendly little dogs and smart-arse signs who hang out on the elevated crosswalks of the Strip. They're harder, tougher, broken. Social misfits, amputees, drugged-up, worn down. Holding begging bowls for loose change. Security guards are everywhere, keeping the unfortunates away from the punters . . . "Are you having trouble, Sir," one asks, as I chat to these guys. "Are they causing you any trouble?"

Walk outside the canopied street and you're in a no-man's land. We ask directions to the Neon Museum, a few blocks away. "Wait for the bus, you have to pass through a bad area; it's not safe." So, we sit in a cafe at the far end of the street . . . a man picks a cigarette end from the gutter, lights it and pops it into his mouth as he walks by. Shabby people pass, gazing in. The working poor, the impoverished poor, the uncomprehending poor.

We catch the southbound bus, fleeing past the joyful wedding chapels, the foreboding bail bonders, back to our hotel, where we collect our bags and head to the airport. Homeward bound, where the lights are dimmer, but hopes are brighter . . .