Columnist Susan Snyder: Upgrades a tough sell on Fremont

Friday, June 28, 2002 | 9:25 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

City officials blocked off Fremont Street on Tuesday for a ceremonial sprucing up of an area where they hope to lure taverns and blues clubs.

The area between Eighth Street and the Strip was cordoned off again Wednesday -- this time because a knife-wielding man was shot by a Metro officer.

East Fremont Street already has the blues, with its homeless wanderers, prostitutes and drug dealers.

"We don't sell glass roses or pipes, loose Chore Boy or Brillo pads, glass pipes or pen devices or loose cigarettes," says a sign posted at Brothers Mini Mart on Fremont near Seventh Street.

Mid-morning Wednesday a woman wearing a tight miniskirt and a T-shirt cut too short on purpose strutted across Eighth Street. A man with his worldly goods lashed to the frame of a bicycle waved a blue tennis racket and talked to himself.

Tourists in Dockers and sundresses walked about half a block east of the Strip, then turned back to Neonopolis and the Fremont Street Experience. They walked briskly, as if they had ventured into a place they didn't belong.

Up to about 6th Street, Fremont is lined with discount stores and sundry shops where T-shirts are three for $6.99 and are emblazoned with half a dozen variations of "Grandma went to Las Vegas," and "I lost my a-- in Vegas" designs.

Bikini-cut undies and an inflatable doll adorn the window of Hollywood Fashion Dancewear & Lingerie.

" 'Scuse me lady, you know what day it is?" a street-weary man asked as we both walked near Fremont and Seventh.

Did he want to know whether it was Wednesday or the 26th, or did he simply want another human being to acknowledge him?

Outside the Fremont Medical Center, a woman probably 15 years younger than she looked pushed an old wheelchair very slowly, as if the next step might make her crumble. The chair carried a beat-up suitcase. A filthy T-shirt and shorts hung like sacks on her thin frame. She had stringy hair, vacant eyes and no shoes.

A bath, clean clothes, a decent meal and a good night's sleep would improve her appearance. But her insides would be harder -- maybe impossible -- to fix. Decay can overtake the very fabric of a thing, like petrified wood.

Casino workers in crisp white shirts scurried up Fremont Street to work. Behind them a pair of men in rumpled clothing walked to wherever it is they go during the day. One of them carried a big can of beer in a paper bag.

Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" blared from speakers at Neonopolis: "They follow each other on the wind ya know, 'cause they got nowhere to go ..."

We're not Orlando or San Diego. We are Las Vegas.

We are gambling and pawn shops. We put slot machines in the supermarket and ads for topless dancers on billboards. Some dreams are made here, but more are broken. We are a town of resorts hiding a town of last resort.

We built a town on the money of losers.

And we can't simply clean them up on the outside or erase them from view or reduce them to a cartoon on a piece of poster board.

The blues already have come to East Fremont Street. And it will take more than a ceremony and a clean sweep to whisk them away.