I’ve managed to get to a few places on the planet, and my least favorite, BY FAR, is the Las Vegas Strip. It felt like a celebration of everything I despise about humanity – excess, unregulated capitalism, exploitation, classism, racism, ignorance, and pollution. I wondered about the people who could enjoy a place where they painted a sky on the ceiling so that you never had to go outside, or where you had to see a fat, ugly old man getting his dick rubbed by an unenthusiastic 20-something woman in a hotel lobby.
But there’s nothing that reveals the hollow luxury of the Las Vegas Strip like the fact that 400-500 people live in the miles of rain tunnels underneath it (or the fact that LV has the 8th highest homeless population in the country). Every day, over 100,000 tourists – 81% of them Americans – shuffle through the casinos of the Las Vegas Strip, giving their money to MGM Resorts and Caesar’s Entertainment to the tune of $1 billion a month while people literally live under their feet because they can’t afford shelter. It’s revolting, and it’s the perfect metaphor for the state of “the land of the free”; the land of the fake and unethical is a bit more fitting when you see how some residents of Las Vegas live. Below you can check out these short documentaries that show the stark difference between the tunnel-dwelling homeless and the greedy suckers on the strip. Maybe this documentary will have some people thinking twice before they book their bachelorette party.
