For the past few weeks I have been investigating the ‘hustles’ that take place on the Las Vegas Strip. This all began when riding the bus and spending some time with a gentleman, who asked not to be identified. He spoke about the ‘bottled water hustle’ and gave me some interesting insights.
So began an odyssey into the legal and illegal daily and nightly ‘hustles’ that take place all along the Strip.
The ‘water bottle hustle’ is illegal because the City of Las Vegas will not issue a permit to sell water to tourist out of rolling ice chests, which were just a nuisance of few years ago, but have now exploded into a massive blue-wheeled-ice-chest hoard of the unemployed moving through the 10’s of 1,000’s of tourists who take to walking the Strip each day and night.
Speaking with the man who had his ice chest, he related to me how the evening before police had arrested his wife and about a dozen others on the illegal solicitation of bottled water.
He said, “There was a time a few years ago that I could make an easy $400 a night, now it is down to about $250, that’s why I go to the Strip Monday through Thursday, instead of the weekends, because there is less competition.”
He said he sells his bottled water for a buck and pays 20 cents to buy it in bulk with his unemployment check which he gets each week. He said that he can make around $4,000 a month and the government check funds it. Of course, he does not report the extra illegal income so he can continue to receive his unemployment checks.
On Friday, I counted 25 water bottle solicitors in front of the Bellagio's Dancing Waters alone.
One solicitor that really caught my attention was the man calling out “beer for sale,” which is illegal and you have to have a liquor re-sale license to do so.
Jay David Murphy
This solicitor of bottled water is an example of the explosion of people on the Strip selling water day and night. She has positioned herself on the overpass between the Excalibur and New York, New York.
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On every walkway-over-pass across the Strip and between hotels, there were water bottle solicitors on Friday night, which translates to hundreds of people engaged in this illegal activity.
One of the other new 'hustle' explosions on the Strip is the character-photo-solicitation.
Jay David Murphy
Spiderman, Batman, and the Joker solicit tourist for photo-ops in front of the Bellagio on the Las Vegas Strip.
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Jay David Murphy
Zorro plays with this kid who is wearing the spare hat he has to give the tourist who stop in front of Caesars Palace for a photo-op.
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On Friday night, on the west side of the Strip in front of the Bellagio and Caesars Palace I found, Batman, the Joker, Spiderman, the Blues Brothers, and Zorro. They work the crowds to get photos of themselves with the tourist who are walking by and focus on families with children.
Jay David Murphy
A man dressed as Zorro with a heavy accent poses for a paid photo-op in front of Caesars Palace.
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Jay David Murphy
A tourist digs in his wallet to pay Zorro to take a photo with his female companion.
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This is borderline solicitation but those who do it say that people are giving them donations. Recently, a woman who sings on the Strip was picked up by Metro police and arrested for solicitation, but it was thrown out of court.
For years, the famous ‘Silver Man’ has worked the Strip in front of Bally's, but I was not able to find him on Friday night. There are whole new wave of characters out there that are part of the unemployed who are trying to make ends meet.
There are also flower girls now dressed like the wandering sales women in casinos pushing their pedals, but I have only found them in front of the Bellagio. Again, without a solicitation license this is illegal in Las Vegas.
The main reason of the illegalities is no taxation. These people do not collect the 8% tax that is required by city and state laws.
There are some legal activities that take place on city owned sidewalks in front of some of the casino’s. Those are centered on escort services. Hispanic ‘card snappers’ line up mostly in front of the Imperial Palace, Harrah's, the Flamingo, Paris, and portions of Caesars Palace.
Jay David Murphy
The Stripper-to-you crowd the sidewalk in front of Harrah's Casino snapping their cards at tourist which have advertisements for escorts.
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Nightly, these purveyors of strippers-to-you snap at tourist with their cards (the size of business cards) with pictures of sexy women on the front, and ID numbers on the back, to identify who passes them out, so they can garner a commission.
These companies which use mostly Hispanic personnel have been a thorn-in-the-side of casinos and tourist alike. Making it very uncomfortable for both, especially with all the hucksters’ snapping cards at you, then creating a line forcing tourist through a gauntlet by shrinking the available walking space.
The reality of it is, and locals know it as fact, these cards lead to phone calls to escort services which are really covers for illegal prostitution. This is one of the ‘blind spots’ in Vegas and Nevada state laws.
These companies claim the women who go out on calls under their license are just escorting men, or men escorting women (very rare) or providing Strip teases in hotel rooms.
The reality is, that it is prostitution, covered in the cloak of legal loopholes that politicians refuse to clarify. At anytime they could change the laws and disavow the statutes that allow escort services, but they won’t.
So the annoying ‘card snappers’ continue their nightly gauntlets, and tourist continue to take the card handouts. Then once the tourist clears the line of solicitors, they toss them on the ground littering the streets.
The problems with this are many, but what is disturbing are the children who pick up these cards and get an eye-full each and every night.
The final hustle is the ‘strip club/limo hustle’ that takes place inside and outside the casinos’.
This is the biggest and most illusive of all the hustles in Vegas. Both women and men go out each night searching for groups of men, preferably bachelor party attendees, and work their hustle to get them into a limo, then drive them to a targeted strip club where the driver is paid anywhere from $40 to $100 a head to drop these groups of men at the strip club VIP back-doors.
This is big business, and technically illegal solicitation. But because the drivers enlist the help of hustlers, they are able to keep themselves and their license out of trouble.
This hustle works best when women do the work for driver who will split the money they make from the strip club drops.
It is illegal for cab drivers to direct strip club patrons to a particular strip club. They can only take them where their riders ask them to. But they routinely collect the same under-the-table spiff that is offered by the clubs.
The issue for city officials is that it is unreported income and not taxed, and of course no one offers up the spiff on their year-end taxes to the IRS.
This is allowed to go on, with the occasional catch by Metro police, but it is so pervasive that it’s like having an open wound and only putting half a band-aid on it.
So nightly, the ‘Vegas hustles’ continue and with the economy in tough shape more and more desperate people are hitting the Las Vegas Strip, selling bottles of water, beer, flowers, photos, and themselves.
The reality is that they routinely make more money they can make flipping burgers, working maid jobs, or any of the other low-paying jobs that are available. Some of these people even use their unemployment check supplied by the state to fund these illegal activities.
For officials it is a real pain-in-the-neck because they do not get to collect taxes. For tourists it is a nuisance at best and could be a dangerous health issue on the other end of the spectrum.
For now Las Vegas Metro Police are doing very little about it, politicians are not willing to change the laws, and sin city continues with a long tradition of the ‘Vegas Hustle.’
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