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Vegas street fight Casinos object to proliferaton of celebrity impersonators
AP
Photo
While impersonating Elvis along The Strip, Rodrigo Gonsalez takes a moment to count the night's tip earnings, Thursday, June 23, 2011, in Las Vegas. The number of celebrity impersonators crowding the Las Vegas Strip has grown in recent months, in part because the stalled economy has left many actors and performers in California and Las Vegas without a job. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
By CRISTINA SILVA
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS
The Las Vegas Strip is teeming with Spidermen, Elmos and Elvis Presleys of all waistlines.
Nevada’s woeful economy has inspired dozens of jobless and under-employed men and women to dress up like celebrities, movie characters and cartoon heroes in pursuit of a buck. In the past year, fat and fit Elvises, as well as would-be Homer Simpsons, Mad Hatters, and Batmen, have set up shop on bustling sidewalks across this city of vice and excess, offering tourists the chance to pose for a snapshot with someone who kind of looks famous.
The gratuity-driven performances have created tension between Las Vegas’ mighty gambling industry and free-speech advocates who defend the constitutional rights of adults in spandex pants, rainbow wigs and foam muscles.
Casino titans, and government officials who understand where their tax revenue comes from, have eyed the street performers with alarm and, at times, called in police intervention. The Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip allegedly detained a man dressed like Zorro last year after he posed for a tourist’s camera on a public sidewalk bordering the hotel-casino. More recently, the city council relaxed its restrictions on street performers because of legal threats.
“Sometimes the mentality is what’s good for the casinos is what’s good for Las Vegas, and there is a tendency to forget we are in the United States,” said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Nevada. “The Constitution protects expressive activity.”
Sidewalk performers are not unique to Las Vegas. Creative and enterprising panhandlers are as common as hot-dog stands in urban centers across the nation.
What makes the ubiquitous players along the Las Vegas Strip noteworthy is how swiftly their numbers have grown. In a city where celebrity impersonators have long enjoyed headliner status, sidewalk showmen were mostly unheard of before Nevada’s epic economic fall. The Silver State has led the nation in unemployment for months and, for some, street performance is a final attempt to fend off financial disaster.
“It helps pay the bills, and it lets them go home with a memory they love,” said Luis Reyes, an underemployed electrician who poses with tourists in downtown Las Vegas as KISS frontman Gene Simmons.
Reyes, 48, began his sidewalk tribute to Simmons in November after, to his surprise and frustration, his move from San Francisco to Las Vegas put him no closer to full-time employment. His homemade costume includes a studded codpiece, high-heel boots designed to look like angry dragons and a pair of leather black wings. He hopes to parlay his street hustle into a paid gig as a celebrity impersonator.
Police spokesman Bill Cassell said the performers began mushrooming on Las Vegas streets last year. They gained national attention last month after a man dressed as Batman became involved in a street tussle with a tourist near the Monte Carlo casino on the Las Vegas Strip. No one pressed charges, Cassell said, but the video of the fight circulated on social networking sites.
Pavement performers appear encouraged by a series of court rulings nationwide affirming their right to dress like SpongeBob SquarePants in public. Most recently, a federal district court in 2009 determined that Seattle’s restrictions on street performers were unconstitutional. The case revolved around a balloon artist who opposed the city’s efforts to require all buskers to obtain permits.