Friday, May 30th, 2008
Did I mention the Fountains at the Bellagio? I was almost giggling when the water first started to dance. I couldn’t get rid of the silly little smile on my face. Even after the fountain performance was over I couldn’t shake the new happiness the show had caused. I immediately knew what my number two priority was for Day Twelve; smile at the magic fountain one more time. This was priority number two, because it was kind of hard to shake the retrieval of the truck from that number one spot.
I had a plan for Day Twelve, and the plan began at the pool. I wanted to grab some sun and test the waters (bahahaha, oh John) of the Tropicana’s outdoor pool before I packed up and left the hotel. It was a nice way to start my day.
I had a reservation at the Motel 6 (my new favourite hide out), a block away from the Tropicana, just off the strip. However, even at $75 a night, I wasn’t totally sure it was the most economically sound situation for me. Currently I am cheating on my new lodging companion with the girl-next-door, the America’s Best Value Inn (class, class, class…). It was under 60 bucks and was actually located within the same lot as the Motel 6. And it’s a motel, same as all the motels, the perfect fit for my luxury tramping needs.
It was eleven o’clock, the truck wasn’t suppose to be ready for anther few hours, so I grabbed the Nikon for the first time since I’d landed in Las Vegas, and I set out to freeze the strip with my shutter. I headed south and explored Mandalay Bay with its amazing beach-style resort. I took the Excalibur Express Tram passed the Luxor and got some shots of the medieval-themed casino before crossing the walkways and shooting the MGM and New York New York. Note to travelers hiding out in the Nevada Oasis, Manhattan themed streets of the NY NY’s interior décor is a must see attraction, so schedule your meandering accordingly. Going North down Las Vegas Boulevard I crossed paths with the Monte Carlo, Planet Hollywood, Paris, the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace and finally the Flamingo. I was happy with the work I had done. After two days of wandering down Casino Alley I felt like I was getting to know the big hotels and was ready to try and tell their story with my photos.
It was the perfect day for taking pictures, swimming in pools, and getting sunburns (because all your sunscreen is in your truck which is in the shop…). It was also the perfect day for me to look like a valuable commodity as the ‘weekend workers’ were on duty. I was wondering the Strip with my SLR, not my little spy-cam, but my big old hand-cannon of a camera. I was the prime target, I was the tourist from central casting, I was about to wish my Vegas trip had remained a two night affair. Welcome to the Oscar-worthy performance of the visitor-who-needs-your-help. He was good, his story was well planned out, and his character was strong. He wasn’t aggressive, he ‘didn’t want to impose’, and he wanted very little of me. The red flag went up from the moment he approached me, but after I had given him my ‘no thank yous’ and all those ‘I’m sorrys’, and he unwound his story, I felt there was no risk on my part. But it’s Vegas, there is always a risk, nothing is a sure thing. So the fact that he was going to give me money to donate to charity when I returned to Canada, because it was going to be confiscated from him by his corrupt government the moment he returned to his civil-war rot West African country, seemed odd and highly irregular, but with no clear resulting jeopardy for me to be worried about. His tall tale had details like a dead relative and a monetary settlement, he had signed papers confirming the situation, he had answers to all the hard questions. I wasn’t planning on getting anymore involved in this scene then to chat with the man as we both walked amongst the crowd along Vegas Blvd, but then he gave me the money. He said that after talking to me, that I seemed like a trust worthy individual and he felt good about leaving the money with me. At this point none of these lies matter, and the fact that I went along with it also doesn’t matter, because all my new friend wanted was the name of the hotel I was staying at. It came up during the conversation. I didn’t give out a room number, or say how long I was staying, but that also didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter that a few hours later, when I had returned to the motel with my new and improved travel-partner, that it was still the middle of the day, because part two of the scam was as well crafted as part one.
A new shady character, put together like a classic tourist, rushed by me as I walked from my truck to my room with some supplies I hopped to keep in the safety of the motel (just being extra careful of course, who knows, the truck could get broken into… yeah, sure). He frantically asked if I knew where the Luxor was, I told him it was up along the strip just a block or so south. He was out of breath, a bit of an overweight mess, and my reverse 20/20 tells me he was way too hurried. He asked if I could just point it out to him, that he needed to catch a shuttle to the airport that he had missed at his hotel that he was pretty sure it stopped at the Luxor and Blah Blah Blah. I was feeling good about life, what with my good deed for the day taken care of and the Dakota as spry as ever, so I though ‘Why not, this poor bastard has had a treacherous day, plus I love the strip, so yeah I’ll walk with ya’… Before I knew it I was a block down the street and just like that Mr.-I’m-such-a-mess turned into Jeckle’s Hyde and was suddenly the type of guy you’d need to steer clear of in a Max Security Prison. I was ‘guided’ around a corner into a sort of abandon-lot type of alleyway that provided a surprising amount of coverage from the busy streets that surrounded it. My old buddy with the tragic story and the need for a helping hand stood with three other rather intimidating fellow. A real who’s-who of the shady Vegas underground. He asked if I was still carrying his monopoly money (sooo, counterfeit bills do look a lot like the real deal), that he needed it back. They pushed me around a bit to remind me how real the whole thing was, and then asked me to hand over the bag. It wasn’t like the movies, there were no knives or guns, there didn’t need to be, they knew that I knew that they had control of the situation. They didn’t need to remind me after they took all the cash I had not to follow them. They didn’t want my passport, or my MP3 player, they wanted to keep it simple I guess and just nab the cash and leave me with nothing but my broken spirits and crushed humanity.
I had been expecting them to turn around and rough me up, make sure the message was loud and clear, but they just disappeared. I was so shocked at what had happened that I don’t even really remember walking back to the motel. I was lost. I was trapped in my head. I just kept replaying the whole complex scam, and realized how simple it was. I figured they could have been doing that to three or four people a day. Should I call the cops? And tell them what, ‘five guys took cash from me and then walked away’? They probably call it the Five-Card-Flush or the Foreign-Bank-Withdrawal. It probably happened everyday. These Characters were good. They were really good.
I needed to talk it out with the Command Centre back home. I needed some help getting over the situation, and I’m lucky (not only for a guy who was just mugged) because I have a killer family that is ready to drop everything to help out. In fact I had several people ready to fly down and get me. I felt like such a smuck. I like to see myself as pretty observant, as able to read people, as relatively caution, with a good foundation of common knowledge, and overall, smarter then your average bear, or in this case naïve-foreign-tourist-wielding-a-camera. It was tough to come to terms with the fact that I’d be had, taken advantage of, dooped. I was the sucker, and I was out a significant chunk of change because of it.
So the remedy; the Bellagio fountain of course. I watched the end of the Celtics big win over the Pistons at the MGM sports area, I stopped in at a Chinese food buffet for dinner, and then I returned to the fountains and tried to enjoy my last night in Sin City. I took it as a sign to move on when my fortune cookie told me that ‘Time heals all wounds, keep your chin up.’ Plus the fountain was singing and dancing for me, so I was ready to smile again. In the end, the reality of my Vegas Mugging was that I paid for an interactive Las Vegas Experience, a show, a performance. I traded money for a cold-shot of adrenaline. It was better then the tables, and the big hotel lights, it was Authentic and Real. It wasn’t a classic Sin City experience, it wasn’t even the usual Disaster Tales of the ‘Lost-Fortune’ or the old ‘Drunken-Hooker-Mistake’, it was something that reminded me I was alive and that life was not only unscripted, but absolutely unpredictable. Mind you with that said, it’s easier to categorize something as serious as a Mugging as a Life Experience, when you can walk away from it having only lost a stack of bills and a bucket of sweat. I was lucky today, and in Vegas that’s always a good story.
Day Twelve: I may have overstayed my welcome in Las Vegas… but check ‘Get Mugged’ off the Bucket List.
No comments:
Post a Comment