Flickers

Click for larger image

Las Vegas is a pretty cool place.  I have no use for the casinos, but the mass of people make for an enjoyable time shooting on the streets.  The bane of the streets, however, are what I refer to as flickers.  I am guessing that there is a local term used to describe these people, but I refer to them as flickers because they flick cards in your path in the hopes that you will take them.  The cards are advertisements for local strip joints and have pictures of nudes with strategically placed stars over specific parts of their bodies.

Initially their presence is amusing, but very quickly becomes Vegas’ version of street spam, something that 99.9% of the people do not want, but have to go out of their way to ignore.  There are times when half a dozen flickers will stand in a line. flipping the cards so that they make a snapping noise, and even though one might ignore the first three, the second three are just as insistent that you take their card.

Of course, ignoring them does not necessarily mean that you will not end up with a card.  I was walking behind a couple who had been shopping.  A flicker offered a card to the man, and when he ignored the request a card was dropped into his shopping bag as he passed.

Spam works, which is why it is such a problem.  My guess is that there may be a discount offered on the card, so that the proprietor can see that the person’s presence in their strip club might be due to the fact that he took a card.  I did not count the number of flickers along the strip – I think that the number may vary with the time of night – but my guess would be a couple hundred around 10pm, so they are ubiquitous.

The sad thing is that I am sure that this is the only work many of these people are able to get, certainly this is not a career path.  I wish these people well with the understanding that in other circumstances they would be performing more interesting work.

Advertisement