Las Vegas (1901-2008) RIP

   I hate this place. There is nothing left of the great city I was born and raised in. The industry I grew up with and worked in for 17, beginning the year that I turned of legal age to do so, has been completely taken over by the corporate machine. The streets that I roamed as a boy safely are now buried inside of ghettos, lined with thugs, illegal aliens, and homeless people. Meanwhile the homes sit empty, unused, decaying...the property of the banks that reposessed them. Las Vegas has been slaughtered.

  I miss my father every day. Jan Bowman was one of those people that lit up a room by just walking into it. Everyone liked, or loved him. And he loved Las Vegas. If he was alive today he would be so proud of how far poker has come. The game that went from backdoor parlor games with crooked dealers & players to national prominence partially because of his commitment to cleaning it up, for which he is considered a pioneer and spent his life promoting & managing is booming.
  At least I can find comfort in the fact that he does not have to bear witness to what has become of Las Vegas. 
  The vast deserts that surrounded Sin City, where my band & numerous others would take rented generators and hold concerts ("desert gigs" we called them), some with hundreds of people, bonfires & very loud equipment without any authority knowing or caring, are now all gone, engulfed by the over-developement of the city.  
  The landmarks are torn down or imploded without a thought of history so quickly that the landscape is different literally everytime I drive around town. Of course you can't see Las Vegas because of the buildings now anyway.
  Lake Mead has dwindled away and is nearly gone, a fact which is somehow amazingly overlooked by anyone and everyone in this desert community. The only water supply to Las Vegas is running out. After two years of searching for alternate water options and failed attempts to purchase more H2O from Cali and Utah, the city counsil finally "solved" the problem by...are you ready for this? HAHA...by building a "third straw", or third pipe from Lake Mead to Las Vegas, thereby we get more water more quickly. So what if the lake runs dry 50% sooner? As far as today goes...PROBLEM SOLVED! 
   I better take a break before I get any more worked up, but there is lots more to come in the next days. Good luck.