A brand new ordinance that outlaws stopping on the Las Vegas Strip’s pedestrian bridges has thrust into the highlight the individuals who have been already doing enterprise there illegally. Certainly, the function {that a} brigade of unlicensed bottled water peddlers performed in triggering this ordinance might be not insignificant, as On line casino.org’s Very important Vegas blogger Scott Roeben just lately argued.
An unlawful vendor sells three water bottles (be aware their equivalent labels and caps) to a lady on a Las Vegas pedestrian bridge. (Picture: KLAS-TV/Las Vegas)
These distributors promote water, for wherever from $1-$5 per bottle, through the summer time months to guests who didn’t plan correctly as a result of, hey, they’re on trip.
However are these distributors doing one thing worse? Based on a persistent rumor unfold by vacationer web sites, they routinely acquire empty bottles from trash cans and refill them with faucet water.
Fantasy Interpreted
The earliest model of this warning we may discover got here from a professional supply. In 2010, late Las Vegas police sergeant Mike Ford advised KLAS-TV/Las Vegas that unhoused folks will “take water bottles out of the trash can, fill them up with water from an unknown supply — might be a faucet, might be wherever — then put them in a cooler and promote them for $2.
Vacationers don’t know the place the bottles got here from, and after they open them, any individual has already drank from them earlier than.”
A personality from the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire superglues the cap again onto a used water bottle. (Picture: Warner Impartial Photos)
However wouldn’t everybody discover if these clicks didn’t accompany the opening of the bottle caps?
The 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire has that half coated. In it, the character Salim could be seen supergluing a cap onto a water bottle he took from the trash and crammed with faucet water.
A Tripadvisor consumer from Roanoke, Va. apparently didn’t see the film, however heard the identical story from an much more dependable supply.
“I truly heard it from two folks, the primary being the Elvis impersonator on the Present Bus of the Stars tour,” the consumer posted in 2012.
“Elvis stated they take empty bottles from trash cans and fill them up with faucet water, supergluing the tops so that you assume you’re getting a brand new bottle.”
Doesn’t Maintain Water
Sorry, Elvis, however the nearest Walmart to the Strip at the moment sells a 35-pack of 16.9-ounce bottles of Pure Life purified water for $7, together with tax.
That’s an outlay of 20 cents per bottle.
This Las Vegas water peddler has opted for the comfort of an outsized cooler with wheels — in any other case referred to as a rubbish bin. (Picture: city-data.com)
What’s extra probably — that somebody spent hours recycle bin-diving to gather completely uncrushed empty bottles of water from solely a single model, together with caps which can be color-matched, after which refilled every bottle, or that they’re OK with sacrificing 20 cents revenue per bottle to earn $28-$168 for each $7 they spend at Walmart?
Whereas there is no such thing as a vouching for the honesty of people that select to interrupt the legislation to earn an earnings, we’ve by no means heard of a single vendor being caught doing this. Ever. And that’s most likely as a result of doing so could be a preposterous waste of their time.
Oh, and superglue? Not solely can’t it reproduce these opening clicks, it will go away a telltale odor behind.
Water Over the Bridge
Whereas what Las Vegas water distributors do is unlawful, they’re not begging you for cash. They’re not harassing you for an even bigger tip after posing with you of their superhero or showgirl costume for a selfie. They usually’re not scamming you with a confidence sport like three-card monte.
They’re offering a service — one which has most likely already saved many lives. As concluded by a 2002 examine revealed within the American Journal of Epidemiology, dehydration will increase the chance of coronary heart assault in any given second by 46% in males and 59% in girls.
And, unlawful distributors wouldn’t be illegally merchandising if Clark County, the Strip’s governing physique, supplied extra alternatives alongside the Strip for dehydrated vacationers to hydrate in authorized, inexpensive, and sanitary methods.
And sorry, we don’t contemplate $7 resort reward store water to be inexpensive, nor water fountains that folks shove components of into their mouths to be sanitary.
So the following time you are feeling parched whereas strolling the Strip in 115-degree warmth — particularly after you’ve had a few drinks of a stronger and dehydrating selection — it’s completely OK to buy a chilly bottle from an unlicensed stranger. At the very least it’s lots much less dangerous than strolling a mile and a half farther in your situation.
That’s, if yow will discover a water peddler who hasn’t been hauled off to jail by the point you get right here.
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