I spent the last weekend in Vegas. As you can see from the picture the hooker hawkers are not just handing out cards anymore. Now they walk around with lit billboads strapped to their backs! Freaking amazing. I don't quite understand why the city allows these guys on the street. Most of their handouts end up littering the streets. I took this picture out in front of the Paris Hotel.
On a housing note I went and took a look at some homes. I was a little surprised to see that there are still plenty of new housing tracts trying to sell homes. I stopped in at a half dozen to see what the prices were. I was a little surprised to see what they were trying to get. The prices still seemed high to me. I'm not sure what they would actually take but they were still asking well over $100 s/f on everything I saw.
I didn't see another soul looking when I was there. I was the only person at looking at all the tracts I stopped at. Not a good sign considering I was out between noon and 2 on a nice Saturday afternoon. One thing I noticed at the tracts I looked at. All of them had 4 or 5 cars parked out in front. One was the sales person, but who's driving the other cars? I thought that they might be parking cars out front to make it look like people were looking.
On an economy note, even though Vegas was quite busy it was noticeably quieter in the casinos. Also the restaurants were much quieter than usual. On Saturday evening we walked into a nice place, were immediately seated and found the place to be 2/3 empty. It sure made for great service from the waiter (the lobster bisque was awesome!). I wish I could remember the name of the place but after a bottle of wine I don't remember much. Obviously I didn't hit any jackpots because I'm still here typing.