Vegas: Living on the street in the city of Sin

This human pictured above, this is Peanut. He's originally from New Mexico, according to a conversation he and Antho had one afternoon. Peanut likes to drink alcohol, like a lot of alcohol, a hobby he's had since he was a wee little baby when his mum would put booze in his bottle to keep him quiet and sleepy. Perhaps this makes it no surprise, then, that Peanut is now a homeless young adult at the ripe old age of 23, and he's right on track for needing a kidney replacement within the next year or risk a more or less certain death. And so it goes, another homeless young American wasting the dwindling days of his short and brutal life here on the streets of Sin City, where he points to tourists and tells them if he thinks they're hot between swigs of malt liquor. I mean, we could wax poetic and try to write an optimistic tale of how his future will invariably be brighter and better than his current lot in life, but for people like Peanut that would be a bold-faced lie. It's highly unlikely that there's any sort of GoFundMe campaign to get Peanut a kidney, because who is worried about a homeless kid like Peanut? At the end of the day, he's just another face blending into the background, another awkward aversion of the eyes for the residents and tourists alike. Homelessness is not an easy thing to fix and there's an incredibly complex web of variables and choices coalescing together to land someone in such an unfortunate position, and how much of that is fated and how much of it is personal manifest destiny is hard to decipher at a quick glimpse. 

It takes a whole lot more than a quick glimpse to work out a solution to the problem of homelessness, and here in the city of sin, it's an especially unfortunate situation to wind up in. Not only is the city itself rather hostile to the homeless, who wind up camped out on the walkways and stoops of downtown, but the environment too is extremely harsh and very dangerous. A lot of our homeless in Las Vegas have taken to hiding underground, making their homes in the drainage tunnels that exist to spare citizens the brunt of the flash flooding, and coincidentally end up drowned when those floods find their way to their intended corridors. It's a lose-lose situation, though some intriguing new ideas have been added to the mix in an effort to help alleviate the issue, or at least divert it to less tourist-prone areas. Whether this is really the right solution is yet to be determined, but again, this isn't an easy issue with a clear solution. Unfortunately for Peanut, it's probably too little, too late.  

Photos in this post provided by Antho Jay...

Until next time...

💖

XOXO,

NAU