To the Kuiper Belt of Vegas- my trip to Primm

Hearing that the Primm Valley Ranch has been reopened I took a road trip to see it. Yes, it has reopened! Just slots as you might expect, but it seemed a little busier than before Primm all shut down. Maybe because it's the only place open, or that the reliable Terrible's name gives it a connection to those who patronize their other properties.

So I walked out and decided to look around Primm a little. The mall is still closed, but walking around the perimeter had a nice postapocalyptic feeling to it. And there was one store open- a thrift store called Sanithrift.

That's an odd name for a thrift store. What are they implying, that they are sanitary? Oh yes that's it, I get it, there are people, usually urban, who have a personal problem where they believe other people and the things they are in contact with are dirty, and they express that as a way of expressing contempt and disgust for all those around them. Sometimes they pantomime it: "I am clean, but you are dirty, therefore I must conspicuously wipe the handrail on this bus with an alcohol wipe before I touch it." You've probably seen it.

I go in, and right away I noticed it was a large store with very little in it, and you could tell by the way they spread the clothing racks and a few other items out as if to fill space, rather than trying to conserve space. That's a bad sign in any retail. And it wasn't real thrift shop clothes, mostly unwanted promotional clothing, like urchins in Uganda might end up proudly wearing. There was artwork, but it was all the mass-produced, generic pieces you find on the walls of chain hotels. And in the middle was a really out-of-place collection of baseball cards and sports memorabilia, which I don't know much about so I don't know anything about its value.

But the weirdest part- there was no one in the store! No customers. And no cashier. The lights were on, there was some music playing, but absolutely no one was there. It's like they were telling me "You want postapocalyptic, we'll show you postapocalyptic!" I got out of there and left Primm.

I like that stretch of I-15 from LV to California. No articulable reason why, I just like it. Coming back past Jean I had an idea- did you know Las Vegas Blvd. goes all the way to the state line in Primm? I thought that might be a good bike ride some day, it's within my distance and elevation change capabilities so I got off the interstate to check out the terrain, first driving south on Las Vegas Blvd. back towards Primm. Good God, to call that pavement "washboarded" would not even be close! What a mess. Looks like it hadn't been maintained in decades. I would consider it on a real mountain bike but not on my hybrid road-gravel bike, that's too much and I'll crash there if I do a reasonable speed for such a trip. Going back north of Jean towards LV the road was better, but more heavily trafficked, and a very narrow shoulder with rumble strip along it. Oh no. Yes, this bike ride has "getting hurt" written all over it, and being I don't pop up and spring back into shape in one second anymore maybe I'll leave that challenge to someone else.

But along that road I was also looking for places to detect metal. For a detectorist finding places where you can leave your car nearby and walk with your equipment can be a challenge, but Deep South Las Vegas Blvd. has a lot of places like that. On the road south of Jean I saw abandoned, deteriorated structures, and got out and walked around. It looked like there had been little camps set up all around, full of broken bottles and ancient, crushed steel cans. How does that happen? Does someone go all the way out there just to break the bottles and step on the cans?

I did find an intact beer can! Here's the top. You can tell it was opened with a church key by an experienced drunkard:

Now a lot of the metallic paints they used on cans had things in them that would react with the steel in the can one way or another, and leave a latent image behind, and to my delight that was the case on this can! I was able to determine exactly what this was, with the information in this picture. Can you figure out what beer it was, and how long that can had to be laying there for?

Looks like Barkers, defunct by 1972... if google served me ok
This is blogging. Others do it so ok I guess

I've taken Las Vegas Blvd down to Good Springs and Jean, but not to Primm.
Primm is offering no resort fees for those willing to make the forty-minute drive. The town was thriving in the early 200s so maybe they can recapture the magic. The roller coaster used to be one of the best in the country, and the lottery store was the busiest in the land.

Quote: odiousgambit

Looks like Barkers, defunct by 1972... if google served me ok
This is blogging. Others do it so ok I guess
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Good try, but off by 1 letter and 1-2 decades.