Las Vegas - Observations

Did anyone check out our little town in the last blog?
Boy don’t know what hit me yesterday. I got up at 7:00  - watched the Barcelona soccer game with Bill. Had some coffee and  toast and by 10:00 – just before the NASCAR race! I was back in bed. Slept until after 3:00. When I got up I felt like a truck has driven over me and someone had added a 200 pounds of weight to my arms and legs. Ugh.

After moping around for a while Bill talked me into going for a ride. We have talked to a realtor and she suggested an over 55 townhouse complex in Henderson. So we just drove over to see the area. Gated – good. So we just looked at the neighborhood. Realtor is going to arrange looking at them.

Weather is really beginning to warm up here. Up to 90 and only to mid 60s at night. And continuing to be very dry. 

After looking at the townhouses we headed up to Las Vegas Blvd just for the drive. These massive concrete pillars are still just standing here. Nothing going on with them. Was supposed to be another big ferris wheel. Two conjectures about why it never got finished. One - they ran out of money, two - the pillars weren’t deep enough into the bedrock and that couldn’t be fixed. Who knows – so there they stand. Hundreds of years from now people will be still wondering.

Of course it was a Saturday afternoon so the traffic was horrendous. Mostly stop – little go.

And lots and lots of people on foot. And even more “things – figures”? to take pictures with. Is this a snowman? Saw superman, transformers, Hello Kitty, an Elvis in a blue sparkly suit,  and of course show girls. And that was just driving by.

Stopped for a light outside of Planet Hollywood – this is pretty at night – weird during the day.

Reflected in the car next to us.

Passed the City Center complex. A crane working on dismantling the Harmon Hotel that turned out to be unsafe.

Some information about it.

 The planned 47-story tower, which was stopped at 26 floors, became the centerpiece of a massive legal dispute between MGM Resorts and CityCenter partner Dubai World with Tudor Perini Building Co., the general contractor on the complex, over responsibility for $400 million in damage claims associated with the Harmon.

Instead of blowing the building up in grand fashion, contractors hired by MGM Resorts are now removing scrap metal and other materials from the building, along with taking off the blue-tinged glass that has covered the structure for the last five years.

The process also includes installing pedestrian protection systems outside the structure above adjacent sidewalks and walkways.

A construction crane removing the building piece by piece.

“The pedestrian bridges will remain open to allow the free flow of traffic through the process,” said MGM Resorts spokesman Gordon Absher. “The street-level sidewalk in front of Harmon has been closed.”

Total cost of the demolition, being paid for by CityCenter, is expected to be $11.5 million.

Really crowded sidewalks.

Saw a lot of things with the pedestrians that I don’t think we’d have seen 10 years ago. A sign of the times I guess. This tourist is hanging off a fire truck getting her picture taken. As we passed an officer told her to get off.

Another thing I saw a lot of were girls in very small bikinis walking down the sidewalk. Bikinis? When did this become fashion? Or am I just old. Come on people lets show some respect – if not for ourselves for other people.

We headed home and stopped for dinner – with take home desert of course.

New thing here in Vegas – you have to be pre-qualified before they will even take you out to look at anything. So anyway we’ll be going out to look this afternoon. 

Diesel in stereo - rigs on both sides of us are getting ready to leave.