|
|
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Questions about Las Vegas
|
|
|
|
|
Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!
Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000
|
posted 05-17-2007 01:41 AM
Can't say that I'd recommend moving here either these days. Anything close to the Strip is gang- or homeless- or transient-infested ghetto. Every neighborhood here has gang, drug (especially meth), and graffiti problems - even high-end areas like Summerlin. Rents and housing prices have gone SoCal insane though a market crash is imminent.
The town is very transient in nature, thanks to the gaming industry and its allure to shark-like people with a "fast buck" mentality. I believe we're still the only metro area in the country that has to print the phone books twice a year, since about a third of the population turns over in that time. Many people here are here only long enough to make that fast buck and move on to somewhere else. As Chris puts it, people are indeed "shallow" here - they're too busy scratching out an existence to be focused on anything else.
The high population turnover and abundant cash contribute to very high levels of social dysfunction here. The rates for property crime, drug use, alcohol abuse, drunk driving, spouse abuse, murders, teen pregnancies, kids in protective custody, high school drop outs, and suicide are all off the scale here. And yet 5000 to 8000 new people continue to move here every month. Another 3000 or so leave.
The unending explosion of uncontrolled growth which hasn't been made to pay for itself has led to other issues that have never been effectively dealt with. Worsening traffic, air quality, overwhelmed schools and public transit, and a looming water shortage are all things that the local government has swept under the rug. They're making too much money off the land developers to do anything else. Maybe when we finally get the National High Level Nuclear Waste Depository open near here in a few years, at least the growth might slow down.
There is some culture and sense of community here. Heck I'm a part of that, teaching and volunteering at schools and several cultural and civic groups. But it's all very bush league compared to any other city of similar size. Nobody here wants to pay or put in volunteer time for things like that, so it doesn't happen. Taxes are low though.
Really, I don't understand how a working person can afford to live here these days. This town used to be a place where a busboy could afford to own a house, but those days are long gone. It is a great town to be rich in though, as money really is the only thing that matters here.
No I'm not bitter. ![[Smile]](smile.gif) I've just been here off-and-on since 1964 and have watched the town grow and change. Up until about 1980 this was a great place to live and the growth helped make it better. The changes that have happened since around 1980 haven't been for the better.
Why am I still here? Failed escape attempts. Bailed out in the mid-'80s and again in the late-'90s. The third time will have be the charm. There's nothing here for me to come back to anymore.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
|
posted 05-17-2007 11:08 AM
Boiling it down to the lowest common denominator:
People are willing to pay extra to live where they think the pussy is.
Sorry to make it sound crude and even sexist, but that really is the truth on why some areas of the country, like Las Vegas, Southern California and Southern Florida have such insanely priced real estate and an increasingly soul-less shallow feel.
Pussy is also what drives our economy. Someone who is single yet content is far less likely to buy a huge house he or she cannot afford. When you have a spouse to keep happy you're going to be upgrading cars, homes, clothes and lots of other shit a lot more often. If you don't, you might find yourself single again.
It's pretty evil how our mass media indoctrinates women to tie their self worth to how good they look and how successful their boyfriend/spouse is. That's part of what drives lots of women to areas of the country like SoCal, Florida and 'Vegas. All the glamour, money and adventure is there. It sure isn't in the old home town. Thankfully, most women are smart enough to see through all this pop cultural bull shit.
The pricing insanity on the coasts has been driving more people to this part of the nation lately. Texas has been growing in population by leaps and bounds, due in part to the fact its real estate market hasn't seen the perversely high price escalations seen elsewhere. Even Oklahoma is starting to add population (although it may not grow enough to keep from losing a congressional seat in the 2010 census). Cost of living is much lower. Issues about water and electrical power aren't nearly as bad as they are on the coasts. Basically there's room to grow. And there's pussy here too. Lots of beautiful women are born in this area of the country. They just move to the coasts later. The reigning Miss America, Lauren Nelson, is from Lawton.
My long term hope is that the effects of globalization and technology advancement will do more to further decentralize the industries of movies, TV, fashion and other creative endeavors. Places like Las Vegas and SoCal are still going to have their allure, but spreading out some of those industries might bring some of the living costs down out of the stratosphere.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
|
posted 05-17-2007 12:42 PM
People are flocking to Montana too, not as fast as Vegas, but they're flocking. Lots of Calfornians. The big thing they seem to want is "safety," followed closely by just a desire not to have so many other people around. Clean air, also. All that is availble in northern California, but they seem to think Montana is where it's at.
They're flocking mostly to the western part of the state, where the mountains are, so housing prices there are ridiculous compared to my part of the state, where the mountains are hills but almost as pretty, and you don't have to shovel 3 feet of snow off your driveway with every winter storm. (More like 3 inches.) A house that costs a million in LA would cost $200,000 here. If my li'l movie theatre was 300 miles west of where it is, I'd have to sell tickets for $15 to survive.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
|
posted 05-17-2007 02:53 PM
quote: David Stambaugh
Bobby, I luv you man, but as a former resident of SoCal myself, I can say that's mostly a crock of shit.
How exactly?
Beaches, mountains and warm weather aren't unique to Southern California. You can find that in many other parts of the country.
A great deal of Southern California's economy was built upon the entertainment industry. Its massive tourism industry grew out of being peripheral to the entertainment industry. Both have drawn countless millions of people to that region, either to work directly in those industries or to just be near it by living in an area on the country with a legendary status. Numerous movies and TV shows set in L.A. work as great marketing tools to get people from all over the world to move into that area. IMHO, young women are more enticed by that than any other demographic. The Valley's porn industry probably wouldn't exist if I was wrong about that.
Agriculture, shipping and military jobs are among the few industries established in SoCal well before the entertainment and tourism businesses boomed there. If Hollywood had never established itself Los Angeles might not have been any different than Corpus Christi, Texas.
The simple truth is lots of people are willing to starve their asses off living in a happenin' city rather than make ends meet comfortably in a more modest community. It's just like the insane shit so many "nuclear families" across the nation are doing in chasing after other unaffordable lifestyle obsessions.
Southern California and Las Vegas certainly aren't the only places drawing lots of young women (and the others who want them) to their regions. Some other major American cities are lucky enough to have a cool enough image to get some of the same result happening. Miami, New York, Austin, Chicago and perhaps a few others are doing well.
The one thing I can at least give Las Vegas is that it has no pretentions about its identity. 'Vegas is "sin city" and it doesn't try to hide it or apologize for it.
quote: Mike Blakesley
They're flocking mostly to the western part of the state, where the mountains are, so housing prices there are ridiculous compared to my part of the state, where the mountains are hills but almost as pretty, and you don't have to shovel 3 feet of snow off your driveway with every winter storm.
Sounds a little like the situation in Colorado Springs (yet another glamour city).
Over the past decade I've been floored by how much building has happened there and never received a straight answer on how the people coming into the area could afford the ridiculously high prices.
Now the real estate situation in Colorado is in a state of crisis. There's a record number of defaults and foreclosures happening. It seems the ratio of personal income to housing price has turned out to be a pretty important factor after all.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
|
posted 05-17-2007 05:21 PM
I was born and raised in "SoCal". In "The OC" as it happens. Lived there for a total of, umm, let me see... carry the aught... About 30 years. Left there in 1990 when I moved to Oregon. There are many things I miss about it, but I'll probably never move back.
Now my point is that entertainment, in the sense of the popular notion of "Hollywood", is a very small part of the overall SoCal picture. It's really rather miniscule. I'm not going to research it but I'll bet less than, oh, say, 1% of the population of what we're calling "SoCal" (which represents tens if not hundreds of square miles and many millions of people) are directly involved in the glamor-glitz side of Hollywood Showbiz. Yes, that's still a lot of people, the biz is high-profile, and it draws wannabes from around the country, but hell, the vast majority of people living there are not even remotely connected to that specific industry. You get out of that core area of LA where showbiz is the main biz, and it's regular people doing regular jobs and living regular lives and not giving a damn about the glamor. The pockets of glamor that may exist outside of Hollywood per se are just aberrations. I will grant you that there are probably more of those aberrations per capita in SoCal than most other large cities, but it's still a relatively small subset of the total picture. It (the "glamor") is just high-profile, with TV shows etc popularizing it and creating a mostly-false mythology.
I dunno, after living there for 30 years, I never ever felt like that stuff was anything more than a sideshow, albeit one that gets a lot of attention.
The chasing of social status, i.e. bigger houses, faster cars, etc. may happen more there than in some places, but it's not exclusively a SoCal thing, not at all, and it just bugs me when people think everything there is "The OC" or something, because that's just not the way it is.
![[beer]](graemlins/beer.gif)
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
![[evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic