This short lived mobile meat phenomenon brought new meaning to the phrase Las Vegas Strip. The article in today’s Las Vegas Review Journal ‘Mobile Strippers Derailed’ has me both gladdened and sadden. It is nice to see Sin City has its limits, but on the other hand Live Mobile Strippers! Damn, I’m sorry to see them go-go. As a Las Vegas cabbie, I can tell you, the last few weeks the meter wasn’t the only thing going up. These mobile pleasure palaces brought myself—as well as other cab drivers, pedestrians, tourists, and everyone else in Vegas for that matter—to near Nirvana and to near death experiences.
No matter where the fare wanted to go, I seemed to aimlessly follow the pole dancing darlings (PDDs)—sometimes to the delight of passengers, sometimes to their chagrin. It was exceptionally awkward when there was a group of nuns in town for an ethics convention.
“Forgive me sister for I have wood. My thoughts are impure and I…just get the fuck out of the cab!”
Then there was that time “hey we’re late for our flight, where are you going, dude? Oh…Never mind…follow those girls.”
More than once I heard, “Hey cabbie! Both hands on the wheel!”
“Sorry, Sister.”
It helps to remind people there are always flights out of Vegas and I usually add, “Where you’re from probably sucks anyway.”
I realized the trick was to get the fare to think it was their idea. Starting off with a “Wow, would you look at that!” and then guide the conversation and the taxi toward the semi-clad mobile hooters, swinging around poles on the back of a plexiglass enclosed flatbed truck.
For a few great weeks, while it lasted, it was all tits, tips, and traffic—all the while on the books. Longer fares and longer…er, other things. The only downside was my tips were being directed towards the PDDs. Fortunately the childproof locks on the rear cab doors and the sealed Plexiglas around the lovelies kept the tips where they belonged–with me. No matter your view on stripping, you have to be impressed with women who can dance in heels and bikinis on the back of those trucks amidst LV traffic. It impresses even a cabbie like myself…in more ways than one. As it turns out, the PDDs are legal passengers, so they had to wear seatbelts, which may have saved lives but they sucked as stripper tools (much too restrictive, unless you’re promoting a bondage club).
Oh, and they even had microphones, so you would hear things like “follow us to the strip club” and “tell your friends” and, “Hey, cabbie, both hands on the wheel. Freak!”
In the end, the stripper mobile went bust (sorry). With mounting pressure from county commissioners, the strip club finally stopped the mobile flesh parade. Wasn’t that a Doors album? It was a sad, sad day in Sin City when the axe came down. The neon does not seem to glow as brightly as it once did, the Bellagio fountains seem not to soar as high, and the Mirage Volcano seems to spew less lava (and several other bad Las Vegas impotency metaphors).
But for a few uplifting weeks, the Las Vegas Strip really was the Las Vegas strip.
Thank you for visiting Fabulous Las Vegas.
