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lenadams

who are you addressing, scoobiesusieque?

Where is the ACLU in all of this? I can't imagine that this practice would stand up constitutionally under any circumstances.

The right (or ability) of one person to give another person food (be they hungry, homeless or not) is unquestionably not a legitimate concern of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police.

Using this bogus enforcement as cover for the admitted policies discouraging homeless encampments is cynical at best, and approaches what might be called institutionalized evil.

Note that the building, identified as an "old fingerprinting station", is actually closer to 60 years old than 40 and was actually the site for Sears & Roebuck until they abandoned it in 1967 for their newly built store on Maryland Parkway (immediately north of, adjacent to and one year earlier than the Boulevard Mall).

Although its most recent use has been as an administrative building for the Metropolitan Police Dept, I believe it was Central Telephone (aka Sprint Centel) that took over the building in the early 1970s and did the brick cladding as a way to both "modernize" and securitize the building, which they used as a central switching facility.

Of course this is Vegas, so all of this is ancient history, if not pre-history.

trapper, no disrespect, but I'll check back with you in "a year or two" and get your take then.

Vegas has always relied on the young, creative, educated blood willing to work for trash pay on the theory that we've just got to push it to the next level. I think I first heard that line of reasoning in 1977.

The real cycle goes "young, bright-eyed, looking to the future > slightly older, tired-eyed, focusing on the practical > old, burnt-out, looking for bandages".

And meanwhile, the city twinkles ever brighter. You really *do* get what you pay for.

I spent more than half my life contributing to the establishment and stabilization of the arts in my hometown. I finally gave up and moved away.

All of the arguments can be summed up by saying "Las Vegas gets what it deserves". It gets exactly the parks, schools, politicians, cultural facilities, university, police services and natural environment the citizens of southern Nevada are willing to invest their time, money and attention in.

We lost Libby once because UNLV was too stupid to recognize what it had and find a way to give her tenure. They lost her husband, too, one of the nation's most trenchant cultural commentators and someone who, along with Libby, brought tremendous legitimacy to the Vegas cultural scene (and, say what you wish about "legitimacy", it is as valuable and necessary in the cultural world as it is in any other endeavor, including your own life and career).

And having gotten her back, she is lost once again.

In truth, this is likely to have happened eventually anyway, because for something like LVAM there is unlikely to ever be enough stable support to prevent the repetitive budget crises that scar every cultural and educational institution in Nevada.

Vegas will survive, and will glitter far into the future. But each day it becomes less and less a place any sane person would want to live in, much less raise their children in.

Sorry, Libby. Sorry, Vegas.