Category Archives: Lost Wages

Lost Wages, Observed

Reemergence Maybe

Perhaps this last weekend of May 2022 is the one that finally returns the visiting hordes who once flooded Las Vegas. After all, Memorial Day, or as it should’ve remained, Decoration Day, is seen as the unofficial start of summer.

According to hopeful leisure industry analysts, Americans are busting with all sorts of pent-up desire to getaway. Two years of Covid conditions have made us stir crazy. Where better to let everything hang out and fly the freakiest freak flags than Las Vegas? A city where even if strangers knew your name, they’d be too involved in their own personal deviances to notice others.

Anyone working directly in the hospitality industry or its adjuncts is counting on such participants who contribute to Las Vegas’ “What happens here, stays here” tall tales.

No matter what sort of happy faces the tourist bureau sketches, the numbers just haven’t been there. It’s fine that conventions and spectacles have returned to the city, yet post-Covid attendance has been generally woeful. Continue reading Reemergence Maybe →

Lost Wages

Let Us Broil

In the Mojave Desert, residents are on the cusp of our least wonderful time of year. Indeed, if Andy Williams had to sing about this season those lyrics would get stuck in his throat.

Summer. Already in mid-May Las Vegans can expect triple digit temperatures. As the month elides into June it becomes hotter with July and August turning everyday into a constant blow torch of torrid.

Throughout summer, I thank American breweries for 30 packs! Continue reading Let Us Broil →

Lost Wages, Observed

No Rainbow. No Pot of Gold.

California is not sending it best people across the Mojave Desert into Nevada. Not visitors, necessarily, but those hopefuls intending to relocate.

For the most part, Californians flocking from the Golden State to settle in the Mojave aren’t the most sterling. Once here a sad portion of them tarnish the Silver State. Continue reading No Rainbow. No Pot of Gold. →

Lost Wages, Pop Culture, Tales Out of School

The Spear Carriers

Chewing the fat with long-time Las Vegas residents never tires. By that I don’t mean retirees who’ve descended here from elsewhere. Those people invariably have nothing interesting or worthwhile conversationally to add. Just complaints about today and regrets regarding opportunities deferred then dismissed through lengthy delay.

There’s only so much wistfulness one should hear until it starts burdening the present. Besides, once here and once monotony sets in too many of them become pill-poppin’ day drunks. Continue reading The Spear Carriers →

Lost Wages

Gone Shadows

Autumn stretches a lighter hand across the Mojave than she does upon the Northeast.

Although the desert days shorten and the shadows lengthen as well deepen earlier, the chill which accompanies these shifts lack the same heralding of great changes which will occur in New York.

Except in the dispatch that follows. Continue reading Gone Shadows →

Lost Wages, Observed

Social Surveillance

The management company operating the co-op complex where I reside installed surveillance cameras inside what had been the residents’ private purviews. The courtyards. There, we have access to pools and barbecues.

While this address has always had cameras eyeballing our parking lot, whatever occurred on the patios remained unseen. Unseen, yes, though not unremarked upon. Continue reading Social Surveillance →

Lost Wages

A Broiling Pavement Tale

Met a woman who told me a Las Vegas story. It entwined her brother, a Big Mayberry resident. He once had a productive life here. During his living he got misled then completely lost himself. That happens in this city more frequently than autumn leaves falling off trees elsewhere. Continue reading A Broiling Pavement Tale →