"You ain't had it like I do it."

 "You ain't had it like I do it"

LAS VEGAS CITYLIFE (LAS VEGAS, NV)—CAUGHT BETWEEN THE STRIP and Fremont Street, not really part of Naked City and just beyond the southeastern border of the arts district, sits an old neighborhood still without a proper name but with some big, persistent problems.

With its string of undeveloped, dusty lots and a revolving cast of shady characters, this neighborhood, if you can call it that, is packed with strip clubs, adult arcades and tattoo shops and is anchored by a Las Vegas institution: White Cross Drugs and its popular 24-hour diner, Tiffany's, which straddle the action at the intersection of Las Vegas and East Oakey boulevards.

With Metro's crackdown on the Strip in the wake of five recent killings just to the south, and its already robust presence a little to the north, beneath the vintage glitter of the Fremont Street Experience, you'd think crime would be down here, too -- and it is, compared to just a few years ago. But the neighborhood, plagued by roughly one major crime a day, still faces challenges: low-rent hookers with so little fear of arrest they turn tricks in the daytime; drug dealers slinging baggies of sunshine across the boulevard; and the gang-bangers who still kill rivals with guns, knives and beatings.

Terry Morrison has seen it all. From his perch inside White Cross as the daytime security guard, Morrison -- armed with a stocky, muscle-laden frame, intimidating cop sunglasses, 18 security cameras across the property and a set of handcuffs (for subduing unruly customers) -- laments the still-persistent criminal element here.

"A couple of weeks ago, we had a gang beating, right out here, outside the store," he says. "Three guys jumped out of a car and started working on this guy; in 10 seconds it was over, and one of the kids got stabbed."

A few days after that came retribution: One of the alleged aggressors was himself attacked and killed just down the street. Morrison says he heard the attacker might have been stabbed; he wasn't sure. He is sure, however, that the alleged attacker got a free trip to the morgue.

And so it goes, Morrison says. "We see everything around here, you name it. I don't see too much of what happens around here at night, but there's a lot going on in the day."

I can tell Morrison what goes down here at night: Things get worse, a lot worse. I've combed this neighborhood for the past several days and nights, talking to business owners, vagrants and garden-variety Las Vegas crazies. Ten-dollar blowjobs are as easy to come by as the bags of pills behind the nearby 7-Eleven.

Once the sun sets, the air crackles with criminal possibility. On a recent night, just up the street from where Morrison guards his shop, the dealers are out in full force, expanding their outdoor sales floor far beyond the glow of the convenience store, as a guy in an Army surplus jacket tries the handles of cars parked outside a tattoo shop, a vintage clothing store, a strip club. The second they see a Metro cruiser turn south onto the boulevard and head in his direction, everybody scatters, gone into the night.

The hookers, however, provide the biggest dose of free entertainment, if only for their brazenness. At just before 1 in the afternoon on a recent weekday, I meet Debbie (she actually goes by her "street name," Juicy, she says) just up the street from White Cross in front of an abandoned strip mall. Eager to please but also desperate for cash, Debbie offers me a blowjob for $20, just before I whip out my press badge and start asking questions. "Twenty bucks," I ask, "you're twice the going rate. What's up with that?"

"You ain't had it like I do it," she says. Watching Debbie/Juicy stand there, wobbling atop scabbed, twiggy legs that barely fill out her cutoff jean shorts, which along with a bedazzled yet sweat-stained halter top complete her ensemble today, I take her at her word. I walk away when she refuses to say how many times she's been arrested or much of anything else that doesn't involve haggling over price.

For Chris Vex, who works the red-hot ovens at Boston Pizza not a half mile away, the persistent criminal element is just part of the neighborhood. Vex has nothing but praise for Metro's efforts to scrub this area clean. "I've lived in this neighborhood for eight years, and the crime is fucking way better than it used to be," he says. "Shit, we used to have the fucking SWAT teams riding up and down the streets here, man. Today, it's fucking way better."

Opinions about the level of crime vary among business owners and longtime residents. Some, like Vex, praise Metro for its hard work. Others, like Morrison, realize there's still a long way to go before this stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard, like the busier swaths just south and north, engenders any sense of real safety, day or night.

Date: 08/11/2011