A Vegas Photo Drive

It has been awhile since I’ve brought out a Phoadtography post!  So far you’ve been subjected to shots from the Vegas skyline, shots of Vegas from a photo walk and it just seems fitting that I close out the Vegas scene with a traditional “photos from the road” collection.  For those not familiar with the concept of Phoadtography, it is pretty simple.  Linda drives and I take shots of interesting things – in between my expert navigation duties of course.  To start us off on our little excursion I bring you the prototypical Sin City billboard…

I marveled at the genius of this particular advertisement.  It has so many alternative takes – are they talking about the Vegas Strip, the common theme of stripper shows in Vegas, how to strip a gun down and put it back for cleaning or don’t even think about stripping me of my Second Amendment rights.  This sign must make gun control advocates shake in their house slippers.  One goal activity Linda and I have not been able to cross off is to hit the Gun Store and fire off some (okay, maybe A LOT) of rounds from an automatic rifle – yummy goodness!

“Who ya’ Gonna Call?”

Clearly this was taken closer to the downtown area where these kinds of businesses are everywhere.  Almost as common as drive up wedding chapels.  Based on the vehicle outside of this place, business is good.  What happens in Vegas .. stays on your arrest record.

Hit the jump to see a few more shots!

This trip we made another round of all the Vegas reality shows.  Truthfully, they are not exactly located in the best areas of town – it is mostly their art/industrial/commercial district near the downtown area.  We had already been inside the Pawn Store location on a previous trip so I just snapped the shot to say we were there.

Next up was to locate the American Restoration buildings.  They had moved into new digs on the show and we wanted to check it out.  It didn’t take too long and of course it helps if there’s a big sign that marks the spot.  This by the way was the sign his new new wife recreated for him as a gift (think for his birthday or maybe anniversary).  As you would expect, her new step son was feeling awkward while viewing the pictures.

They talked about putting up a new facade on their buildings to spice it up a bit.  It is pretty impressive and this is the section devoted to Rick’s new step son Brettly

… which by the way we had a celebrity sighting of.  Brettly came out of one of the buildings with another dude and got into this sweet looking truck and took off.  That’s him in the passenger seat.

It was unclear at the time whether they invited tourists to visit the place or not so we opted to just take pictures from the outside.  Later we did learn they have a little gift shop you can go in (my standard saying .. never leave money on the table).

And then there is the Counting Cars location.  As with the Gold and Silver Pawn we had already visited this place before.  From that visit we knew they let you walk around their showroom so we didn’t hesitate to check out all the new stuff.   Sorry for the crappy shot but it does make it a little more gothic scary.

As far as relationships go, Danny and his crew are very hospitable to their fans.  If they are out and about they will acknowledge you and in some cases come on up and greet you in person.  While at the shop we say Horny Mike and Ryan standing around by Horny Mike’s bus.  Linda actually spotted Danny at the Rio Casino bar hanging out with some friends.  He has a tattoo shop there that Linda is always taunting me to go into.  She let me down though when she wouldn’t walk up and just say hi to him (like she did to the Trading Spaces dude at the Sugar Bowl).  I’m sure he would have responded in appreciation, but we will never know now (shame her if you get the chance – tell her the blog readers need to know!)

This sign cracked me up.  No idea what it is for (other than Western) and not entirely sure what it is.  Reminds of a cross between the Monopoly dude and those old Spy vs Spy comics in Mad magazine without the pointy hats obviously.

One thing for sure, Vegas definitely has the best highway scenery. On the major highways around Vegas they have these cool plate metal sculptures scattered about on overpasses and medians.  I always appreciate it when the architects take a little extra time to add in pleasing design elements.

Guess what else they have a lot of in Vegas!?!

Seemed fitting this would be seen on the drive.  By the way, I patted myself on the back being able to nail the composition of the light to the bottle going 65 miles an hour hehehe.

Remember earlier when I mentioned my expert navigation duties/capabilities.  There was one specific time this failed to manifest itself.  Now having purchased two framed shots from Linda’s favorite photographer – Peter Lik (go ahead and laugh at the name, I always do), we decided to go find their headquarters.  Finding the address was pretty easy, locating the specific spot was an adventure.  We must have circled the area for hours trying to figure out how to get to the identified location.  Every road we took either ended in a dead end our came to a gated community.  We tried the North side, we tried the South side, we tried the East side and then the West side.  NO LUCK.  It was like trying to find Area 51.  You could see it from a distance…

but damned if you could actually drive to it.  Eventually it became an all out quest and when that happens nothing is going to stop us from figuring out how to crack the nut.   Not sure if I could pull it off a second time or not, but we eventually found it and pulled into their parking lot.  At that point we proceeded to take a bunch of photographs at the entrance and the Peter Lik signage to have as supporting shots for our gallery items.  Eventually someone came out of the building and gave us an curious look as they walked to their car… time to leave heheheh.  Clearly we have paid enough for Peter’s work to have the opportunity to visit their parking lot – hell, probably enough to enter the building and see how the process works!

That’s all folks.  This post was actually written while on the road to another photography shoot which is both exciting and a little depressing.  Always a thrill to hit the woods in search of birds, but  depressing in the sense it means I fall even further behind on my blogging.  Oh well, plenty of content to play with on a rainy day.  For the opportunistic thieves out there, don’t start salivating.  We will be back before you have the chance to read this (ha)

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4 comments on “A Vegas Photo Drive

  1. admin

    Yep, I did not want to disturb Danny 🙂 He was at the bar having a beer!

  2. admin

    That was Linda responding by the way – she was apparently using my admin account to comment

  3. Ron

    Linda, we are very disappointed in you for not going up to Danny! BTW, what exactly was the reason that Brian couldn’t go up and introduce himself?? I must have missed that.

    I don’t watch TV so a lot of this went over my head, unfortunately (or not!). But the pictures are interesting as is the text. And as I think I said the last time you undertook a reconnaissance mission on the Lik headquarters, that windowless cube is definitely spy headquarters, with a huge satellite antenna and a huge antenna tower, cameras all over the building, a fence with spiral barbed-wired stuff over it, and dirt piled up from recent underground tunneling.

    Ron

  4. admin

    Because Brian isn’t as big a fan of Danny as Linda is – she is hooked on that show – I just watch it for the spray paint artists.

    Hey, you may be on to something – that dude that came out had that “spook” look about him and I’m sure we were tailed for at least 10 miles after we located the site. Also getting mysterious clicks on the line during my phone conversations. Can’t wait to see what decide to hunt down next time!

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