EDITOR’S NOTE: “Vegas Myths Busted” publishes new entries each Monday, with a bonus Flashback Friday version. In the present day’s entry in our ongoing sequence initially ran on Jan. 29, 2024.
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.
Water bottles like these are bought by unlawful distributors alongside the Las Vegas Strip. (Picture: truesport.org)
These distributors promote water for wherever from $1-$5 per bottle through the summer season months to guests who didn’t plan correctly as a result of they’re on trip.
However are these distributors doing one thing worse? In keeping with a persistent rumor unfold by vacationer web sites, they routinely accumulate empty bottles from trash cans and refill them with faucet water.
Fantasy Interpreted
“Don’t purchase water from avenue distributors in Las Vegas,” warns the web site maketimetoseetheworld.com. “There isn’t any manner so that you can examine whether or not or not the distributors are following security and sanitary protocols when ‘repacking’ your bottled water.”
The earliest model of this warning we may discover got here from a respectable supply. In 2010, late Las Vegas police sergeant Mike Ford instructed 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 — may very well be a faucet, may very well 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 once 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 Footage)
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 might be seen supergluing a cap onto a water bottle he took from the trash and crammed with faucet water.
A Tripadvisor person from Roanoke, Va. apparently didn’t see the film, however heard the identical story from an much more dependable supply.
“I really heard it from two folks, the primary being the Elvis impersonator on the Present Bus of the Stars tour,” the person posted in 2012.
“Elvis mentioned they take empty bottles from trash cans and fill them up with faucet water, supergluing the tops so that you assume you might be getting a brand new bottle.”
Doesn’t Maintain Water
Sorry, Elvis, however the nearest Walmart to the Strip presently 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.
What’s extra doubtless — that somebody spent hours recycle bin-diving to gather completely uncrushed empty bottles of water from solely a single model, together with color-matched caps, 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 isn’t a vouching for the honesty of people that select to interrupt the legislation to earn an revenue, we’ve by no means heard of a single vendor being caught doing this. Ever. And that’s in all probability as a result of doing so can be a preposterous waste of their time.
Oh, and superglue? Not solely couldn’t it reproduce these opening clicks, however it could additionally depart a telltale odor behind.
Water Over the Bridge
This Las Vegas water peddler has opted for the comfort of an outsized cooler with wheels — in any other case generally known as a rubbish bin. (Picture: city-data.com)
Whereas what Las Vegas water distributors do is against the law, 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. And so they’re not scamming you with a confidence recreation like three-card monte.
They’re offering a service that has in all probability already saved many lives. As concluded by a 2002 examine printed within the American Journal of Epidemiology, dehydration will increase the chance of coronary heart assault at any given second by 46% in males and 59% in ladies.
Unlawful distributors wouldn’t be illegally merchandising if Clark County, the Strip’s governing physique, offered extra alternatives alongside the Strip for dehydrated vacationers to hydrate in authorized, inexpensive, and sanitary methods.
And sorry, we don’t think about $7 resort present store water inexpensive or water fountains that individuals shove elements of into their mouths to be sanitary.
So the subsequent 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. No less than 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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