Vegas Taxi Driver: Blacks Get Bad Rap Las Vegas NBA All-Star Week

A blog by a Las Vegas taxi driver about Las Vegas, Nevada, including the good, the bad, and the ugly: The Nevada Taxicab Authority, cab company owners and supervisors, Metro Police, dispatchers, door-persons, the "pit", back-loading, front-loading, long-hauling, meter-rolling, high-flagging, run-outs, robberies, drunks, accidents, and mandatory 12 hour shifts. All cab drivers in Las Vegas are employees of the nine taxicab companies that own all the taxis in Las Vegas. Las Vegas has 40 million annual visitors, the 4th busiest airport in the U.S. with an average of 8600 taxi pick-ups per day, 22K conventions a year, and 15 of the 20 largest hotels in the world.

Vegas Taxi Driver: Blacks Get Bad Rap Las Vegas NBA All-Star Week

Blacks Get Bad Rap Las Vegas NBA All-Star Week

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Blacks Get A Bad Rap

In Las Vegas On NBA All-Star Week

by Vegas Taxi Driver
March 1, 2007

In my opinion, there was a lot of negative publicity about activities in Las Vegas during NBA All-Star week because the 2000 media people had to come up with stories, and because Las Vegas is still a cow-town that doesn't want to see a lot of black people here. Las Vegas needs to grow up and respect all races and cultures that visit and spend money.

Here is what I wrote a few days ago:

The black customers in my cab during NBA All-Star weekend were nice, friendly, fun, and, best of all, good tippers. I am white and over 40 years old. Almost all of my customers on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during All-Star weekend were African-American. My tip percentage on those days was way above what I normally get. Maybe that is because I was nice and respectful and did not try to rip them off. My customers told me horror stories about the other cab drivers they had. Many of them asked me for my cell number to call me to come back and get them next time they needed a cab.

I hate working on any 3-day weekend because of bad traffic. Every 3-day weekend is an opportunity for everyone who lives in Los Angeles and southern California to drive their car to Las Vegas. The traffic turns into gridlock until they jam the freeway on Monday heading home. I don't blame them for coming to Las Vegas. If I lived in California I would leave every chance I got, too. However, I was glad that Presidents' Day weekend was also NBA All-Star, because that meant that the hotel rates would be through the roof. That keeps all the cheap families with kids that don't spend money from coming to Las Vegas. I knew that anyone flying in for the weekend and staying on the strip had to have money. I don't care about the color of my customers' skin; I do care about how much money they have and whether or not they are spenders and tippers.

It is unfortunate that the visitors who flew into Vegas for NBA All-Star had to put up with horrible traffic conditions. Those traffic conditions had nothing to do with NBA All-Star. The traffic was just as bad during the All-Star game as it was during the rest of the weekend, which proves that the bad traffic was not caused by the game. The traffic is awful anytime Californians have enough time to drive here. Most of the 2 million residents living in the Las Vegas area are from California, and their friends all come to visit them, and where do you think they drive their cars when the sun goes down?

On Thursday, Feb 15th, I went online and found as much info as I could about the various Hip Hop and Rap parties going on at the different clubs in town. I printed them up and gave copies of it to my black customers coming into McCarran Airport for the weekend. I was amazed on Thursday and Friday that the taxi line at the airport was more than half African-Americans. Unlike other drivers who don't like black customers, I was glad to see diversity in Las Vegas, and knew these people had spent a lot of money to come here. I joked with them and treated them like VIPs in my cab. I got $10 and $20 tips all night long.

It would be interesting to see the revenues that were taken in by hotels and nightclubs and limo companies this year compared to Presidents' Day weekend last year.

I am not naive. I knew that with so many celebrities and all-night parties that there were going to be fights and problems and probably shootings; not because of all the black people, but because that is what happens when you get large crowds of people together drinking all night long. What do you think Las Vegas is? Did you watch the movie "Casino"? According to the Las Vegas Review Journal there were 117 gang-related shootings during the first five months of last year.

There were three shootings during NBA All-Star weekend. The shooting at Minxx Gentlemen's Club was tragic, but it could hardly be blamed on NBA All-Star. The club did not have a lot of promotion for their party, and did not have police protection lined up like other events. The other two shootings could have occurred on any given weekend in Las Vegas. One of those shootings was in an old strip mall across the street from the closed and boarded-up Stardust - hardly where most Las Vegas visitors want to hang out on Friday night. With a town full of NBA stars, NFL stars, movie stars, music stars, and 2000 people from the media, I would say it was a better than expected weekend.

Then there were the 362 arrests. How many arrests do you think there usually are? I have heard there are 200 arrests on a normal weekend in Las Vegas. Do you think that people who usually are in Las Vegas go to bed at 10pm and don't drink? In the last 10 years all the big casinos in Las Vegas have put in expensive nightclubs for people to stay up drinking and partying all night long. All of these nightclubs were fighting to line up the biggest names and best music venues for NBA All-Star weekend, because they knew they were going to make big money off of this crowd. Do you blame the crowd or the clubs? The people partying inside Wynn and Palms and Mirage and Aladdin and MGM were there because the clubs wanted them to be there.

A while back I heard a radio interview of a former Sheriff in Las Vegas about mob beatings and violent robberies and shootings in Las Vegas, and he said that these people are obviously "not listening to country music". The first bar I was in where I saw security guards wearing head-sets and walkie-talkies to let each other know where the fights were breaking out, was a big country bar in Kansas City. You could stand at the back of the bar and watch two or three brawls going on at once. There were no black customers there and nobody had heard of hip hop.

The weekend after NBA All-Star weekend I only had one ride with black passengers. It was a black couple that was very nice and tipped me well. Most of my customers were snobbish stuck-up lousy tippers. I wished the NBA All-Star crowd was here.

Before the NBA All-Star weekend began, I heard cab drivers talking to each other about how bad it was going to be because of the African-Americans coming to town. I am sure that many restaurant managers and casino workers and newscasters thought the same thing. It is a shame that in 2007 in Las Vegas people are still prejudged by the color of their skin.