People I meet on the streets of Las Vegas
A cross-section.
It’s the middle of the day. I’m walking down Bridger near 4th, lost in thought and not really headed to anywhere in particular. The sensation of arms wrapping around my waist shocks me out of my reverie like a lightning bolt to a swimming pool. I spin around to find a middle-aged man hunched behind me, beard stained with tobacco and the smell of alcohol on his breath. “Don’t fucking touch me,” I screech. He looks neither shocked nor apologetic; rather, he gazes into my eyes as if appraising my reaction, then silently turns and shuffles away.
I’m walking home from my 6 a.m. yoga class, stepping gingerly because I ate dirt on my way to class that morning. I’m checking Twitter on my phone, although usually I walk without it — something must have stuck from all those times my old boss told me I was going to hurt myself. I stop short when I notice the looming shadow of a bus that means I’m about to step into the street. An older woman with a big smile opens the driver’s window and sticks her head out. “Hey! Hey!” she calls out. “Are you playing Pokémon?”
I’m crossing 3rd at Bonneville toward a beige-looking man standing on the opposite street corner. I’m not wearing my headphones for once because my phone is at 5 percent. “Are you single?” he asks me as I near him. I stutter out a no, obviously a lie, and he follows up. “Are any of your friends single?”
I’m picking up my festival wristband when I notice a photographer friend across the street shooting the naked Trump statue that had popped up overnight at 6th and Carson. I call his name and walk toward him, but I’m accosted by a tall, burly man carrying an equally burly trash bag before I reach the opposite curb. He had chased me across the street to say, “You look gorgeous, but I bet you get that all the time.” (Only from bums.) I side-eye him and continue across the street. “I know, I get it,” he says, walking away, taking his garbage with him.
I’m walking down Ogden with two good friends late on a Monday night searching for Anything but Subway. We stop to wait at the traffic signal at Las Vegas Blvd. and the grizzled old man in front of us turns around and looks at my guy friend. “How much did you have to pay for two women?” he asks. I ask him if he thinks we're prostitutes, and he turns around and walks away.
I’m standing in line at the shady bodega down the block from Atomic Liquors when I notice a little black dog that looks exactly like my 3-year-old chihuahua-something, just twice as big. I try to catch the dog on Snapchat, but his owner, a friendly looking man with sadness in his eyes, looks up as I take a photo and walks toward me. I think I’m caught, but he didn’t notice the photo, just my stare. “I saw you looking at my dog Oreo, so I thought I’d introduce you,” he says. “You can be his aunt now whenever we run into you downtown.”
I’m in a weird mood at Atomic, looking anywhere but the street, when my friend tells me “the guy with the dog is back.” I glance up and Oreo and his owner are standing on the other side of the fence, waiting for me to say hi. I pet the dog and ask how the man is doing. He says he’s “on the rag; see you later” and walks away. My friends ask who he is and I say I don’t know his name and he doesn’t know mine, but some relationships are built around not knowing one other, and those can be the vibrant ones.
