Idea 1: Teach others to skank it up.
KNPR (LAS VEGAS, NV)—They might be a shy librarian or housewife at home, but here in Las Vegas, ANYONE can be a burlesque dancer.
For the past 7 months, X Burlesque University has been teaching tourists and locals to perform burlesque. They learn how to decorate G-strings, when to add glitter for a sexy dazzle, and how to shake it onstage. Students come in all sizes and all ages - the oldest dancer was 88. Instructors and students join us to talk about the allure of burlesque, and why boas and pasties actually empower women. Listen to radio broadcast on KNPR's website, but only if you want to lose a few brain cells.
Ideas for lateral career moves: limited, but there's always this.
Date: 10/04/2011
Source: KNPR, State of Nevada
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Making Sense of the News
BBC (LAS VEGAS)--Las Vegas has a very big hangover.
Not in the sense of waking up in its hotel room with a tiger in the bed next door and a baby in the wardrobe, as in the recent film of that name, but a hangover of an economic kind. At least the tiger would probably finish you off quickly.
When times were good, Vegas boomed bigger than any city in the US. When credit crunched, it crashed harder too. For those looking for work, it is a
As jobs go, being a 'human billboard' has got to be worse than flipping burgers. You're not kidding.
Standing on a street corner in 44 degrees centigrade, flipping an advertising sign as traffic rumbles past, Chris is getting his first taste of employment in Las Vegas. What the article doesn't say is that having an income automatically makes him middle-class in this wretched diarrhea pit.
It took him a while to find it. Years, probably.
"It's my first job, so I cant expect that much." That's probably for the best, actually.
And in the future? He pauses for thought in the narrow shade of a telegraph pole, and grins. "Something with air con would be nice." Air conditioning is for the weak! Damn kids these days, always wanting more.
He has not got a family to support, or a house and car to pay for.Hence why he can afford to stay in a dead-end job in a feral city making peanuts per hour in 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
The huge increase in unemployment in Las Vegas has hit those who did have those commitments, hence the stories of people setting fire to their own houses to escape their debts, or living in tents in their gardens because the bank changed the locks. Maybe they set fire to their homes to escape Las Vegas!
Burning through savings
William Rivera works at a call centre, but needs another job, to look after his ageing parents. "My pay-cheque comes in and it's gone. I need savings," he says. "If anything was to happen I'd be stuck. Its very tough here in Vegas." If it makes you feel better, everyone is going down with this ship.
James Ritchie is a victim of the downturn, a former construction manager burning through his savings just to survive. How long has he got? "Until I'm out? Let's say a couple of months," he says. "There's my wife, two kids, a decent-sized mortgage and that's being paid out of our of savings. "It's pretty tough out there right now." He has savings! That means potentially no alcoholism or gambling addiction! You can stay in the gene pool, we need you here more than you know.
She is taken aback by how few firms are taking on new recruits. So are we.
"I was a little surprised there weren't more employers here. I thought there'd be a few more people trying to hire, but then that's to our benefit that there aren't." It makes me feel so much better that everyone's collective misery is to her corporation's benefit! Please die in a fire and never, ever breed.
'Bigger boom, bigger bust'
At nearly 15%, unemployment is well over the national average, and regional economist Steven Brown thinks the real figure could touch 25%, almost all of it down to the collapse in construction. But wait! I thought road construction plus tourism was going to make everything better!
Some areas of Las Vegas are littered with foreclosed homes. If by 'some', you mean 'all, plus Paradise, Henderson, and North Las Vegas, too'.
Mr Brown says it has made Las Vegas a mirror for the problems of the American economy. "Las Vegas is the poster child for what America has gone through. Greed plus ignorance plus shiny things=success! Until now, oops.
"We've seen a bigger boom, a bigger bust, we've also seen the unemployment rate in the state the highest in the nation - Las Vegas has the highest rate of any big city in the US." At least we're first at something! Oh wait...
Taxi drivers will tell you they are doing well, because the weak dollar means more foreign tourists are coming to Vegas and they don't drive themselves. Therefore, we shall rejoice that the US economy is weak, because it brings in foreign tourists.
Visitor numbers are recovering but visitors are spending less. Except that Nevada's tourism-based economy is dependent on how well the general US economy is doing, oops.
There is work from the casinos but there are too many hotel rooms, a legacy of the boom, and an empty hotel room means trouble across town. New economic development plan: nuke Macao so that citizens of the Asian Tigers can't blow their money there instead.
"We usually say each hotel room is good for two or three jobs," says estate agent Mark Peveler. Because it's Nevada, and we can't think of any other kind of jobs to create.
"So for every house it's one or two jobs to keep the house alive, so when those go away, the people move out and, well, go elsewhere." So people are leaving because there are no jobs, but there are no jobs because people are leaving? Well, there's a shit sandwich.
Which is why his list is full of houses that have been foreclosed by the mortgage provider, including several burnt or flooded by furious homeowners forced out by their banks. That, or they finally realized the best long term solution to Vegas's economic problems: burn everything down, leave. The end.
Job creation
Diversification is the buzz-word in Las Vegas - not surprising in an economy reliant entirely on one sector, gaming. If by 'diversification,' you mean, 'add more new casinos!'
There is talk of renewable energy, warehousing, medical tourism, but for now Las Vegas is a place to leave, not - as it has been for decades - a place to come to and reinvent yourself. Finally, a positive trend.
President Barack Obama is to announce his fresh job creation plans to Congress after the Labor Day weekend. Oh, good, more road construction!
Nevada, a state which prides itself on self-reliance and light government, will prove to be one of the toughest tests of its success. Ah, well, if we've learned anything in this sandblasted trash can, it's that Nevada prides itself on lots of things that it shouldn't.
- Lawrence Pollard, BBC World Service
Date: 09/04/2011
Monday, October 3, 2011
An Exceptionally Stupid Idea (TM)
Nevada's shitty educational system is the gift that keeps on giving. It seems like there are some basic considerations to building a metropolis in a desert that never occurred to anyone before.
"The state engineer is holding hearings on the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s application to take more than 125,000 acre-feet of water annually from areas of rural Nevada northeast of Las Vegas. The state engineer will decide whether the authority, the region’s water purveyor, will be allowed to take any water and, if so, how much."
Stealing water from other places to support this overblown fuckhole is a super idea, why didn't we think of it before??? Vegas forever!
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