Street vendors

Walking back up the strip there is one of those card flickers sitting in the median with a motorcycle cop writing him up. Pedestrian ahead of me asks another flicker what is going on and he says jay walking, a three hundred dollar fine. Ouch. I think he's going to have to move a palette full of Bambi cards to work that one off.

A little way down the street I run into a guy dressed in black on black promoting clubs. Curiosity gets the best of me and I finally ask one of these guys what the story is because I don't know how the economies of giving away free admission to night clubs work. He pitches the Playboy Club, Pure, Voodoo Lounge, and Studio 54 to me. Says I can get passes to all of them for $10 per person for my group. Ah ha. So that is the price of free. Still don't get the whole food chain though. The clubs would seemingly need to charge the promoters for the passes, right? But not full price since there will inevitably be breakage and he is not getting full price either. I tell him I need to talk to my group and ask how long he is going to be there. He says he is just about to leave but will give me his phone number. I ask if he has a card and he says he runs out of them. Hello? Isn't that the idea? And he has a giant fanny pack full of cards anyway. Hmmm. Then I wonder if those door and line passes actually get honored at the door. I assume they are legit enough though the conspiracy theorist in me wonders what is stopping anyone from printing up fake passes and hocking them for cash to unsuspecting tourists. I figure there is more tipping that needs to happen downstream for those passes to fully work. More investigation needed. I will ask around the table next session to see if anyone knows.

I haven't really been using my Bluetooth keyboard much. Almost all blog entries this time have been thumb typed on the phone's keypad. I wonder how much life there is in these buttons and when I will need to retire this and get a replacement. I will miss this hurking thing.