Staying Fit
A tanned and toned man follows through on his golf swing on a manicured course. A woman laughs with friends in a bingo parlor as the winning number is drawn. A couple holds hands on a park bench in Summerlin, the planned community in the foothills of the Spring Mountains.
When you think about retirees in Las Vegas — the jewel of the Mojave Desert and home of the $5.99 buffet — idyllic images like these may come to mind. But try to process these images:
A pale and flaccid man living in an underground flood channel washes his tattered clothes in the runoff. A sad-faced woman reads a romance novel on the bed of a $99-a-week motel — the only "home" she can afford. A couple stands stone-faced outside their crumbling double-wide after being told, in a form letter, that the trailer park they've lived in for 15 years is closing; a developer bought the land and is going to build a high-rise condo on it, and they have six months to "vacate the premises."
Those are some of the images I saw while researching my books.
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Notes from Vegas underground
For Beneath the Neon, I strapped on my boots, grabbed a flashlight and an expandable baton (the kind carried by cops) and explored the city's underground flood channels. I figured I'd find some ironic debris — playing cards, casino chips, handbills — and, if lucky, poignant graffiti. I did not expect to find hundreds of people — many of them older than 50 — living in the tunnels, which can fill a foot per minute in a flash flood. Since 1982, more than 20 people have died in floods in Las Vegas.
"Me and my wife own a Freightliner truck," said Mike, a Vietnam vet who lived in a drain with a view of the iconic Strip. "Well, I pissed her off just before I went into a casino to use the bathroom. We were getting ready to leave town, and she just drove away. I came out of the casino, and my blanket and pillow were lying on the ground.
"I had an apartment, but I ran out of money last month. Now I got to get my wife to love me again. Every time I call her, she hangs up on me. I moved into this tunnel, because I didn't have anywhere else to go."
The tunnel is 15 feet wide and 4 feet high. A couch, accompanied by a mismatched ottoman, sits against one wall, and a plastic cooler serves as a coffee table. A trail of ants weaves in and out of the camp, disappearing into the blinding light created by the sun and the glass-and-steel gambling cathedrals.
Reclining on the couch, Mike, balding and missing his front teeth, tells me he served three years in Vietnam.