The Importance of Environment

I have decided that I do not like exercising in the gym in our building in Las Vegas anymore. The facility itself is very nice and new, and it has excellent equipment. It is also very clean and well maintained; in fact, it is one of the nicest gyms I have ever seen. The window views of the stratosphere outside are also pretty cool. However, it is what is going on inside the gym that bothers me.

Almost every time I have been to the gym I have seen men running with their shirts off on the treadmills. Beads of sweat fly off them onto the adjacent equipment. People just do not act the way they should in the gym. Other people talk loudly on cell phones while people like me are trying to get some exercise right next to them. I was working out there a while back and saw an old guy with headphones, singing very loudly to himself. Many people do not wipe the equipment off when they get off the machines, and people seem to loiter in a way that makes me uncomfortable. For example, there are a ton of kids in their early 20s who like to sit in the gym because they can pick up free Wi-Fi there.

Las Vegas is in the middle of a real estate meltdown. Condominiums in the building that might have been $10 million a few years ago are now $3 million, and condominiums that might have been $650,000 are now $150,000. Even at these massive discounts, however, properties are not selling all that well. I would estimate that my building is less than 20% full, and many of the units have been rented out for a short term by the banks, with the hopes that things will return to normal soon, and they will be able to sell them. When I walk up to this giant building at night, only a few lights inside the units can be seen from the street.

At least once every few weeks there is some sort of “sales event” at the condo, wherein the owners of the property bring in all sorts of free food and attempt to interest people in buying the vacant units. They have hired real estate agents that look like models to give tours. In front of the building, they have leased Bentleys, Porsche’s, and so forth, which they park there to make people think these expensive vehicles are part of the lifestyle of the condominium. In reality, however, the garages are filled with primarily older model American cars, driven by 20-somethings who drive back and forth each day to their jobs in hotels and so forth around Las Vegas.

In front of the building, there are a couple of giant black signs that are at least 10 feet tall, which say: “Condos from the Low $100s!!” The signs have been planted in the Astroturf (there is no real grass there) in front of the building. When you get close to the sign, you can see that the area that says “Low $100s!” has been painted over several times after successive price cuts, which just keep coming.

Since there are so many younger people living in the building, and we are in Las Vegas, as I am sure you can imagine, there are also people who appear to be prostitutes and strippers living among us. A few months ago, I was in the elevator and there was a female midget standing there alongside a very tall woman. They were all dressed up, talking about how they had just charged some guy $1,500 for a “fantasy hour”–whatever that meant–but that he probably would have paid $2,000, if only the tall woman had not been in such a hurry. They were holding alcoholic drinks. (That’s another thing about this building: people walk around with alcohol much more than they probably do anywhere else in the world.)

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