A Las Vegas Bartender 30 Days Into Unemployment: What Happens When an Entire City Shuts Down

Vance Crowe [00:00:03] As the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast, Kevin Edwards, welcome back to the podcast.

Kevin Edwards [00:00:12] What's up Vance Crow. Hey,

Vance Crowe [00:00:14] Good to see you. We spoke about a month ago where you were one of the very first people that I had met that had been actually impacted by Coronavirus more than a couple events got canceled or thing, you know, we're not supposed to be going outside too much. What is life like for a Las Vegas bartender that lost his job a month ago?

Kevin Edwards [00:00:37] So what has been the most interesting thing to find out from me is that life as a Las Vegas bartender is like life as almost everybody in Vegas. And that is we're not working, nobody's working. And it's been fascinating to me to find out that almost everybody I know from out of state is still working. They're working from home or they're working reduced hours or they're doing something. But there is still we're, I've been tracking on my, my Strava bike rides each day, how long I've been outta work. So this is day 32 since I was laid off and all the bartenders were laid off and everything's shut down. And, and I, and I still personally know one person in Vegas that is currently working their job and she's a doctor and everybody else I know is outta work.

Vance Crowe [00:01:44] What has it been like during the day? Like, are you, how, how are you spending your time?

Kevin Edwards [00:01:50] Do a lot of mountain biking every day. That, that has been a really crazy thing to watch Transition in Vegas is the trail heads and the outdoor recreation activities have been bombarded with people because it's the only thing to do here. Literally there there is, the stores are jammed, Walmart is jammed, home Depot, Lowe's, all of those are packed because nobody here has anything to do during the day. Everyone's doing home improvement projects. There are so many people hitting hiking trails and biking trails that they're having to send park rangers out to turn people away because cars are backing up the highway traffic. It's literally, we just there, I mean there was a meme like with Bill Murray from the Groundhog Day thing, like, oh, it's quarantine day again. Like, my friends and I have trouble remembering what day of the week it is. There's, so

Vance Crowe [00:03:11] The whole place

Kevin Edwards [00:03:12] Is shut down.

Vance Crowe [00:03:13] The, what you're describing is what would everybody do if they had anything that they could do with their time within these parameters? And what do you're seeing that people are going outside, they're biking, they're trying to shop. Do you think this is a bad experience for people? Are they, are they in, I mean, are they worried out there on the trails or are they having a good time?

Kevin Edwards [00:03:42] Well, they're having a good time when they're out there, but I know everybody is going home. And then when you're at home, and this is why I'm guessing is why so many people are not staying home. Because when you're sitting at home in Vegas, all you're thinking about is how there's nowhere to go. There's nothing to do that we don't have, nobody's making any money. Nobody is, I, I don't know how else to explain it. I mean, there's, there's people posting videos almost daily now of like riding their bikes down the Las Vegas strip because when have you ever been able to do that? Just weaving in and out of the casino entrances and the parking garages that are usually so backed up with cars that it takes half an hour to get in and out of an entrance to a casino. And now it's like a ghost town. There's nothing there.

Vance Crowe [00:04:53] I I mean, Las Vegas truly, it only exists so that people can come together and interact in the way that they want to. And if you keep people apart, it, it is an oasis out there in the desert and there's actually not water there. Yeah.

Kevin Edwards [00:05:10] And it's, so now the governor has come on and said that they're gonna try to start considering reopening and, and I read an article o of a meeting of all the casino CEOs and execs getting together and figuring out how we're gonna do this and like the, the win for example. So the win in Encore, that's one of the, the major players on the Las Vegas strip. So the CEO already came out and said that we're gonna start implementing measures to get ready to reopen. But part of what that means is that they are going to have thermal imaging sensors at every entrance to the casino. And anyone who registers over a hundred degrees, they will be pulled aside and separately tested. And if they still register over a hundred degrees body temperature, then they will be isolated and either sent away or isolated until they cool down. Which is hilarious because it's about to be 110 degrees here.

Vance Crowe [00:06:21] Oh,

Kevin Edwards [00:06:23] Everybody's gonna walk in with body temperatures over a hundred degrees.

Vance Crowe [00:06:28] Oh God, I never thought of that.

Kevin Edwards [00:06:31] And, and they said that every single employee is going to have to wear a face mask, think about how much it's gonna suck to walk into a casino and be like, yeah, we're in Vegas. And everything you look at just reminds you of this massive pandemic and fear.

Vance Crowe [00:06:57] Yeah,

Kevin Edwards [00:06:58] I mean they're, they're so excited to get the casinos back open. 'cause that's the only thing that generates money for the city, the county, I mean all the city governments, but nobody's gonna wanna come. I mean, who's, who's gonna hear where you're in Kansas or St. Louis, right?

Vance Crowe [00:07:23] Yeah. I'm not, I'm not hopping on a plane to go to Vegas. Right. There's no, there's no exchange. So

Kevin Edwards [00:07:27] You're know, the casinos are gonna open, you're gonna be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna jump on the first flight. No. And we sure as hell, we as the like frontline people. We don't want, like anyone from overseas coming over. I don't want to interact with anybody from overseas for six more months at least.

Vance Crowe [00:07:49] Are you worried about getting the disease?

Kevin Edwards [00:07:52] No. The I I'm of that same believer that it, it's a really bad flu. It's bad, I don't wanna get it. But I, I think that all of the steps that were taken, and I think it's they were taken correctly, was to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. I don't think the biggest fear is that you're gonna catch this and die. I've had, I had a friend, I've only known, well two people personally, but only one in Las Vegas that has tested positive for it. And it was a, a husband and wife, they were on a cruise ship when all the shit hit the fan. And, and so they were, they were on a cruise down to Costa Rica, then everything happened worldwide and Costa Rica wouldn't let them port. So they just sat off the cost of Costa Rica for four days and then Costa Rica said, no, you gotta go back. And they sent 'em all the way back to San Diego. So they just sailed down for seven days, sat in the ocean for four days and then sailed back for seven days. And the captain told everybody that, no, but there's no symptoms. Everybody's fine. They ported, they let everybody off. And then they said, oh, by the way, there was a bunch of sick people, sick people on there, but we knew they wouldn't let us port if we reported that.

Vance Crowe [00:09:23] Oh,

Kevin Edwards [00:09:24] Oh yeah. So his wife tested positive and she got pretty sick, but they didn't get the test results back to her for like two weeks. So he was sleeping with her every night. They've got three daughters and they were just running their family like normal, but none of the rest of the family got sick. She's the only one that got it. So that's the only personal experience I know of anyone getting it. The other one that I know, she's out in North Carolina now and she almost died.

Vance Crowe [00:10:09] I had a, that was

Kevin Edwards [00:10:09] Crazy, but

Vance Crowe [00:10:10] A, a nurse, an ICU nurse on, and we were talking two days ago or yesterday. And it was really interesting because he was describing like caring for a person that has coronavirus and seeing how many more people that have been placed into the hospital because they can't breathe. And then, and he actually does the, the pud the putting the, the oxygen down your throat and knowing what it takes to make that happen. And he's like, this is not normal. This is, we do not fill up rooms and rooms, hallways of people with ventilators. This is a serious thing.

Kevin Edwards [00:10:47] Yeah. And

Vance Crowe [00:10:47] That's, that's a good thing to remember because you start watching this stuff saying, Hey, I, I really want the economy to go open and I really want it to be so people have jobs, but you listen to a nurse's explanation of what's going on in the healthcare system, it is legit. It has like actual serious consequences.

Kevin Edwards [00:11:06] Oh yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:11:07] But you can't freeze everybody up for it because some people have to keep going.

Kevin Edwards [00:11:14] One of the, I think I said this last time we talked, but this virus has not only been the worldwide pandemic, but it also has been the greatest meme creator on the internet. I haven't ever seen of anything. And somebody posted up yesterday because our, the mayor of Las Vegas has been very outspoken about, this is ridiculous. We need to open everything back up. And of course if you follow, if you're

Vance Crowe [00:11:48] The mayor of Las Vegas, you're probably really

Kevin Edwards [00:11:50] Opening

Vance Crowe [00:11:50] Up and people that support mean if

Kevin Edwards [00:11:51] Follow

Vance Crowe [00:11:52] Get in the office, they want you open.

Kevin Edwards [00:11:54] It's just following the money. Yes. So, but somebody put up and then said, okay, so saying that we've flattened the curve so we can open the economy back up now is kind like being halfway through a skydive and saying, well my parachute has slowed me down dramatically, so I'm just gonna take it off now. That was pretty good explanation.

Vance Crowe [00:12:24] Like, so what, what are you doing for income right now? Like how are you managing and surviving

Kevin Edwards [00:12:30] Surviv unemployment?

Vance Crowe [00:12:33] How does that work?

Kevin Edwards [00:12:37] Well, I got in pretty early 'cause I was laid off pretty quickly and it, it's primarily done on an online system and if you can get through, it's fantastic if, if you can't, I had one week where it took me three days to get through on the online system, but that's been fine compared to what I've heard. 'cause if you mess up any every week

Vance Crowe [00:13:09] You have to apply.

Kevin Edwards [00:13:11] You have to apply every week. And, and the people that have to do it by phone, there are some people that I know have been out of work for three weeks and still have not been able to get through by phone. Somebody screenshotted the other day and put it up, they've at 302 calls to the unemployment office, they finally got through and then we're told that the queue is full and they'll have to call back.

Vance Crowe [00:13:48] What happens when these people don't have money? How, how much do they have in reserve to be able to buy groceries and, and keep, keep things going?

Kevin Edwards [00:14:02] It's Vegas. Nobody saves money here. Everybody lives before this. Everybody I know lived like

Vance Crowe [00:14:17] Paycheck to paycheck.

Kevin Edwards [00:14:18] Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean there's, there is a lot of excess and waste in Vegas. We'll just say that. And, and when you live here, you get kind of sucked into it. 'cause there's just, I mean I've, I've been here for 18 years now and I remember when I first moved here with who is now my ex-wife and we'd been here for like three weeks and I turned to her at one night and said, yeah, I don't really feel like drinking or gambling tonight. What do you wanna do? And the ongoing joke is it's been 18 years now and I still don't have a good question for that. And that's just what you do in Vegas. You just go out and the places you go out everywhere has gambling. The grocery stores have gambling, the gas stations have gambling. Every, everything has gambling. And so you just go out and you throw a few bucks in a machine, you have some drinks and then you start talking about what you wanna do that night.

Vance Crowe [00:15:26] Wow.

Kevin Edwards [00:15:27] Then it's when the, when the governor put in that order and said that all gambling, all machines, all forms of gambling will cease at midnight tonight. And that was March 14th or 17th or whatever. Like I don't think people really understood. I know some people like even later on were like, well let's just go to the gas station and throw 20 bucks in one of their machines. I'm like, no. Every machine, everything stopped. And when you take gambling outta Las Vegas Yeah. There's, there's just nothing here to do. It's, it is literally half a million people living on unemployment. Now

Vance Crowe [00:16:20] Is weed still available in Las Vegas? Yes. I wonder if you could even have what's going on right now happen if you didn't have weed as widely available in that city? 'cause there's gotta be a lot of people smoking weed right now.

Kevin Edwards [00:16:35] Oh yeah. There's a ton. And they're, the liquor stores just got approved to reopen last week for curbside pickup and immediately the dispensaries started saying the same thing. Well, because right now you can order, but it has to be delivered. And apparently they were lo and behold having some problems with deliveries actually reaching the people they were supposed to get to. So dispensaries wanted to have curbside pickup as well to make sure that the people that were ordering it were actually getting it.

Vance Crowe [00:17:22] So what do you think happens next? I mean if you're talking about Las Vegas not really being able to open under the parameters that they're talking about, like how long do people live in Las Vegas and take and get money from the government in a, in a place where you don't know when it comes back?

Kevin Edwards [00:17:43] That is an interesting question. And first off in talking about the reopening of the casinos. So they have laid out that they will try to reopen, they're gonna try to do it the first week of May is the last I've been told. But they will have, every employee will have to wear a mask. They will have social distancing protocols. So that means you're gonna have a maximum of maybe three people at any gambling table. And all the video poker and slot machines are gonna have to have six foot gaps between them. You've been to a casino, right. You know how jammed in those things are and the whole, I mean the, for the last 10 years, the greatest revenue generator in Las Vegas, has it even been gambling? It's the nightclubs. You can't have a nightclub if people have to stay six feet apart.

Vance Crowe [00:19:03] Yeah. There's no blowing on dice. There's no getting loaded at the nightclub and then walking around and playing blackjack and blowing all that money. There's none of that.

Kevin Edwards [00:19:12] I mean, literally when they reopen it, the people that are gonna come are gonna be problem addicted gamblers that have been like drug addicts on withdrawal. But the fun, crazy, the reason people come to Vegas, that's not gonna exist for months or even more even when they reopen these casinos. So the second part of your question, talking about, well Will, one of the other greatest things about Vegas, not greatest as in terms of yha, but one of the biggest known elements of Vegas is its continued growth. And so many people move here from California, places that have high state income taxes. 'cause we don't have any state income tax. And and there's always jobs to be had. There's always, and and they were just, there was an article showed up yesterday the day before about how rental rates, housing rental rates are about to drop way down because nobody's moving here, but they're still building apartments and houses like crazy. So if we don't have a hundred thousand people a month moving here, like has been historically, then now what do we do?

Vance Crowe [00:20:54] A lot of people don't realize that after the housing market and then you have the, the, when prices collapse and then they slowly come back up. People think, oh, we're not gonna get leveraged in those same way that we were before people buying all these houses and trying to flip 'em. Well there was another way to keep houses on the market, which was Airbnbs. And so there are a lot of people that mortgage or that, that took on a mortgage and was able, were able to get the bank financing because they could prove that the Airbnb would be there solid and that would be a steady source of revenue. And there are a lot of Airbnbs available in Las Vegas

Kevin Edwards [00:21:33] That is true about

Vance Crowe [00:21:34] That. And there

Kevin Edwards [00:21:34] There

Vance Crowe [00:21:35] Are people that are not only covering the mortgage on that apartment or house, they're also helping them cover their own mortgage. And that when that starts to collapse, that's what my friend Kate Crosby calls a trophic, a trophic collapse where the thing on the bottom starts to fall out. And then you have this cascade of a trophic cascade. You have this cascade of other things that break down as a result of it. It seems to me like that's what happens when a place like Las Vegas people are, are not coming there, moving out.

Kevin Edwards [00:22:08] That is absolutely true. And that cascade effect is like what you talked about in the oh 8, 0 9 when people were buying a house and then they'd, it would go up in value. They'd have all this equity, pull it out and buy another house and that would go up. They'd pull out all the equity and buy another house. And then that whole cascade happened in reverse to where they ended up losing all the houses. And Yeah, you're right with, because there are a ton of Airbnbs and in fact so many more people were buying those for that reason because of the Raiders football team moving here because they're supposed to start playing football here next

Vance Crowe [00:22:47] Season. Yeah. Two home games a year would would pay for that all year long. Right? Like

Kevin Edwards [00:22:52] Yep. And how, how soon are we gonna be able to pack 80,000 people into a football stadium?

Vance Crowe [00:23:06] So Kevin, what is, what does this mean for you? Like what you, you look around, this is the, the environment that you're trying to grow in. What do you think?

Kevin Edwards [00:23:22] I think, well I think very differently than a lot of people, particularly in Las Vegas. The, the focus on wealth and, and money growth and everything that drives this town is not part of me. I never intended to be in Las Vegas for more than a few years. So for me it's kind of interesting. It's almost kind of an enjoyable to sit back and watch this whole thing collapse. And it's, it's not enjoyable for me personally 'cause I am collapsing along with it. There's no doubt. But as a human perspective for everybody to realize that maybe the constant ongoing pursuit of generating more and more and more wealth is maybe not what this life is supposed to be about is kind of an interesting thing to me. It's being centered in a whole city that is driven by generate more and more and more and more wealth.

Kevin Edwards [00:24:58] Come to Las Vegas and get lucky and get wealthy.

Vance Crowe [00:25:02] I mean I think that that it's

Kevin Edwards [00:25:03] The whole concept of the city.

Vance Crowe [00:25:04] Yeah. Like it, it is that there's some divine force that will take fortune on you and that you'll walk away without having to make a sacrifice. Right. Right.

Kevin Edwards [00:25:17] That

Vance Crowe [00:25:17] Your money will come because you just put a little bit up and then the gods might bless you. It's an interesting thing because everybody in Las Vegas is gonna be forced to say, what sacrifice am I gonna make going forward? Because the old place, the old rules, the old ways to make sacrifices to make money aren't gonna be there anymore.

Kevin Edwards [00:25:38] Yeah. And and the people, I mean there's still a, a massive customer base for the gambling industry that is the local population here. I mean the strip is primarily tourists, but there's almost 3 million people that live in the valley and all of those locals don't go to the strip. We go little neighborhood bar and all this and that is a massive, massive industry here.

Vance Crowe [00:26:13] Do you gamble a lot,

Kevin Edwards [00:26:15] But not a lot, but some every week for sure. Like most everybody that lives here,

Vance Crowe [00:26:24] Some every week is like, is like jarring to me because like if I go to Vegas, I barely ever gamble. And if I do, it would be like I took a certain amount of money that I was saying is the equivalent of me going to the theater and I just bought a theater ticket or a baseball ticket or something. But outside of that, I never gamble.

Kevin Edwards [00:26:46] Right. And it, and it, that's an interesting thing when you live here 'cause it's like, hey, well let's, let's go out to eat. And for you, if you say let's go out to eat, well that's gonna be 40, 60, 80, a hundred bucks, whatever that you're gonna spend going to eat. Well here you can do the same thing and say, let's go eat, but we'll put 40, 60, 80, a hundred bucks in the machine and then we'll get our drinks and probably some of our food, if not all of our food comped and we have a chance to get the money back. So I mean it's just, it's just for a majority of the people that live here, that's just kind of the way life is when you live here.

Vance Crowe [00:27:35] Can you imagine living a life where that's not the nightlife?

Kevin Edwards [00:27:40] Absolutely. Definitely. The one of the funniest things, and I don't know if you even know this, and we didn't definitely didn't talk about it last time, but one of the funniest things to me is I've spent the whole last year of my life like whittling down all my possessions. And on Christmas Eve of this last year, I bought an rv and that was where, that's where I live. I, I bought an RV specifically because I wanna live in an RV and that's it. This awesome wonderful house that I'm sitting in right now is my girlfriend's house. But whoa. But that, so while I, when I was working three nights a week, I would just go park my RV outside my work and then I'd go to work from midnight to 8:00 AM and then I'd get up and I'd walk out to the parking lot and go to sleep. And then three nights a week I'd go camp it out by a mountain bike trail head or a friend's house or girlfriend's house. And I'd stay there and I had just, this has been a dream of mine for 18 years to do this. And I had just got it done and started to transition my whole life to live that way. And all of a sudden I have this RV and all this time on my hands and I've got unemployment money coming in, which isn't enough, but it's still money coming in at least.

Kevin Edwards [00:29:22] And gas is super cheap and that I, there's nowhere I can go. Everything's closed.

Vance Crowe [00:29:32] Oh man. That's like a Twilight Zone episode.

Kevin Edwards [00:29:35] It is. It's so weird. My girlfriend's never been to the Grand Canyon ever and it's only two and a half hours for us to drive there. And I was like, and her birthday was on the 18th, it's just a few days ago. And so I was like, well, for your birthday, let's take the rv, I'll drive you out to the Grand Canyon. It's closed, the whole Grand Canyon is closed, the highway to get to the Grand Canyon is closed. You can't get there. I had just created this massive transition in my life to live an entirely different way from the way society lives. And all of a sudden there's nowhere I can go.

Vance Crowe [00:30:17] Is there, is there, if, if the quarantine was lifted right now, is that what you would do? Just go around to parks?

Kevin Edwards [00:30:27] Yeah. Oh yeah. I would, I would travel a lot because there's nothing we can't

Vance Crowe [00:30:36] How far will the money take that, that take you, that you're getting on unemployment, like of your obligations that you have to meet? How, how is all that working out?

Kevin Edwards [00:30:46] It will not take me far. The only reason why I'm surviving right now is because my ex-wife has agreed and understands that I have to give her a very reduced amount of child support. And the company that finances my car and my RV is allowing us to just not make payments right now, which is amazing. But so, so my obligations have been whittled down quite far. But it's still not, unemployment money is still not enough to cover all of those obligations, but there's nothing to do. There's, so yeah, I would, I would take, I would take off.

Vance Crowe [00:31:44] What are, what are your friends doing now with their time with, I mean you said if everybody in Vegas except for the one doctor you know isn't working, what are your friends doing?

Kevin Edwards [00:31:58] They're all doing the same thing. We go mountain biking almost every day. My girlfriend is really into kickboxing and she has a, her trainer started doing lessons in the park and one at a time. So they just, so she does that a couple times a week. I mean that's, people go to the store all the time because there's just nothing else to do. It's, it's, it's just so different from talking to my family in Colorado or my friends in Seattle or my friends in California where everybody's still kind of like managing their work schedules and rearranging, you know, to work from home but still having to do these meetings and things. And I'm just surrounded by an entire city of we're all just sitting here going, well now what?

Vance Crowe [00:33:13] Yeah, there is no at home work when with Vegas, right? Like

Kevin Edwards [00:33:17] Yeah, there has been a bunch of bartenders that have posted up, Hey, just Venmo me eight bucks and then I'll just Skype you and listen to your, listen to your pitch about your problems.

Vance Crowe [00:33:30] It's bartending tomorrow. Not a bad idea. It's a good pivot. How long do you think do you think people stick in Vegas for then?

Kevin Edwards [00:33:43] It's interesting, just, just on the street where my girlfriend lives, I have seen two different houses packing up and moving U-Haul trucks and whatever I'm like is like, are people just abandoning? And I, I don't know. I mean there's all these hashtag Vegas stronger we'll make through this. We're all in this together, there's all this stuff going on, but I just don't see how the industry is gonna recover. I mean there was M-G-M-M-G-M resorts is losing $3 million a day and, and they have said that they're gonna pay, well no, not MGM but Win and Sands that owns the Venetian and Palazzo and everything. They have all said they're gonna pay their employees through May 15th. I think MGM is actually already cut off a lot of their employees. But, and then, you know, the mayor is saying, we're gonna try to open everything up the first week in May and all this stuff, which I don't really think is gonna happen. And one of the other casinos just announced yesterday that on May 11th they're gonna lay off a majority of their workforce.

Kevin Edwards [00:35:21] And that's, I think they understand that even if they try to reopen, it's gonna be on such a limited basis that they're not gonna be able to afford, it's gonna cost them more money almost to reopen than it will be to stay closed. Because theoretically those big casinos, they could pull the total dick move and just lay everybody off and say, okay, now all of you have to go get unemployment now too. I mean that, that's another probably hundred thousand people that are still employed by the casinos and don't have to get unemployment insurance because they're still getting paid. But if this goes another month,

Vance Crowe [00:36:14] Those phone lines get a lot longer.

Kevin Edwards [00:36:19] I mean, I, I don't know what the total numbers are for unemployment right now, but it will be another massive wave of people filing for unemployment if the casinos are unable to reopen and they've hemorrhaged so much money that now they can't keep paying.

Vance Crowe [00:36:38] So when you look at how dire it is for the disease to, to be contained or handled man managed, how long do you think it'll be before things are under control enough that, that the city could be as vibrant as it was in January?

Kevin Edwards [00:37:05] A lot of my opinions on that are based on what happened in previous pandemics that I read about, the Spanish flu and that kinda stuff where second waves came through and decimated the population all over again. And my feeling is that they are probably going to reopen the casinos prematurely and there will be outbreaks and they'll have to shut everything down again. And, and I am guessing that we are, well more than a year out from really being able to open back up to where Vegas is a destination where people want to go to.

Vance Crowe [00:37:51] Wow.

Kevin Edwards [00:37:53] That's just, that's my opinion.

Vance Crowe [00:37:57] You know, and you think about that and it's not just the gambling that people will do, it's not just all the meals that they won't eat, it's all those conferences that people attend. It's all that booth space, it's all the, the interactions and the hotel rooms and the number of beds being made and the number of, who knows the guys that deliver the glass, the glasses for the, for the bar. You know, like there's, it is just, it's unimaginable and really in every city in America where hospitality, the parts of the city where hospitality is what drives that part of the economy, you're talking about those things going away.

Kevin Edwards [00:38:36] Yeah. That I, I just don't see how it almost ever comes back to what it was.

Vance Crowe [00:38:44] What do people in the hospitality world do for work if there's not hospitality?

Kevin Edwards [00:38:55] I don't know, but I know there's not gonna be enough of whatever that is in Vegas to sustain the population that lives here. And, and part of the problem with living in Vegas, as I said, I had only planned to be here a couple years, but part of the problem is that once you start in that industry and get a little bit established, you can't go anywhere else and make the kind of money that you're making without going back to years of schooling and retraining and reworking your way back up the ladder and that. And so living here and working in the casino industry, it, it almost kind of traps you, you you can't get out because there's nowhere else you can go to make the kind of money that you were making doing this.

Vance Crowe [00:39:58] Yeah. That's, I mean a lot of people call corporate America the golden handcuffs. You know, you get paid doing a job that you absolutely hate because you're not willing to sacrifice the money and the position that you got to in life to go somewhere else. Golden

Kevin Edwards [00:40:12] Handcuffs.

Vance Crowe [00:40:13] Yeah.

Kevin Edwards [00:40:13] Yeah. I mean there, there's a lot of people that get really sick of working in the casino business and they go get whatever degree radiology or where that just happens to be one friend that I can think of. But, but they leave and it is amazing the percentage, vast majority of them that just come back because they had a dream and a desire to go do something else, but you're only making half the money and working twice as hard.

Vance Crowe [00:40:52] What kind of money are people making when they're working in Vegas? Like if, if you're dealing cards, you're dealing blackjack, what are you making doing that?

Kevin Edwards [00:41:02] As a, a blackjack dealer, I was making really the, the best year that I ever had was probably just shy of 50,000, which is one of the reasons I got out of blackjack dealing.

Vance Crowe [00:41:19] Okay.

Kevin Edwards [00:41:22] I really wish I would've gotten into bartending 18 years ago when I moved here because if you're working at the little joints, I work at a pretty small joint. I'm not making a killing. But bartenders that I know that are full-time working at big bars, you know, on the strip nightclubs, whatever, I mean 500 to a thousand a night.

Vance Crowe [00:41:53] Wow.

Kevin Edwards [00:41:58] Some of 'em more.

Vance Crowe [00:42:00] Yeah. And the other type of work that you make that kinda money is if you're doing oil rigs out in the middle of Alberta or something

Kevin Edwards [00:42:08] Yeah. For like four months straight. Yeah. That kind of thing. And there's a, it's one of, it's really funny in Vegas to, well not anymore, but in normal Vegas times, it was really funny to be at the airport on a Friday afternoon or a Sunday afternoon and watch all the off-duty strippers arrive in their sweatsuits, in their juicy couture and you know, they fly in from California or Phoenix or whatever and work for two nights and make five grand, eight grand, 10 grand and then fly home and work their dental hygienist jobs or whatever.

Vance Crowe [00:43:00] I didn't know

Kevin Edwards [00:43:01] That. It's, it's a massive influx every weekend. It's hilarious to see it.

Vance Crowe [00:43:08] Oh wow. Well that's probably, I imagine stripping is probably, it'll be one of the first to come back, but it's probably not going on too much right now.

Kevin Edwards [00:43:17] Yeah. There was a, one of the strip clubs in town was advertising for a little while drive through lap dance.

Vance Crowe [00:43:28] Wow.

Kevin Edwards [00:43:30] I don't know if they were kidding or not, but I think they were reaching for straws, anything they could do to keep going.

Vance Crowe [00:43:38] So earlier you mentioned about people having some vices there where there's alcohol or gambling there, what you're getting out and cycling, right? Yeah. But there are people that must be sitting in their places drinking or doing whatever drugs they were doing before. What does that look like in a, in a city like Las Vegas?

Kevin Edwards [00:44:00] I, I have read several reports already of the, the vast drop in a majority of the crime here, with the exception of domestic abuse that has apparently gone way up. And that's just obviously sad and I don't even like to think about it. But that, that is definitely an issue. There are a lot of people here that, that is all they do is go out and drink and gamble and they just work in order to fund their drinking and gambling and Yeah. I don't even, I don't even like to think about it 'cause I never wanted to be a person like that. I don't wanna associate with people like that, but it is a big percentage of the population that lives here.

Vance Crowe [00:45:03] Yeah. And you know, once you have a vice to be in a bad situation makes that vice, you know, have that much tighter of a grip over you and you

Kevin Edwards [00:45:12] Yeah. You just get angry.

Vance Crowe [00:45:13] Yeah. I think about like if I, if I would've been 15 years old living at home, I would've been like wanting to get out and I probably would've had conflict with my parents, but I was not afraid of my parents. You know, like I didn't have to worry about my parents having too much to drink and beating the crap outta me.

Kevin Edwards [00:45:31] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:45:31] You know, like with that going on right now, like there have gotta be a lot of little 15-year-old boys and girls that are in a bad, bad spot. They're old enough to know what's going on, but not old enough to take control of their destiny and they're with people that let their vices take over.

Kevin Edwards [00:45:48] Yeah. That is scary. 'cause you're right, it's, it's gotta be happening. Not just here but all over the place. And, and that is terrifying.

Vance Crowe [00:46:00] Kevin, man, I am really grateful you've been so open and it, I am I think a lot of people will benefit from understanding what's going on in Vegas from where you sit right now, April 23rd, 2020, what will the world look like in two weeks? We'll be in the beginning of May

Kevin Edwards [00:46:21] In two weeks. Yeah. The whole world or a Vegas world,

Vance Crowe [00:46:26] However far you can see. However,

Kevin Edwards [00:46:28] Those are definitely two different worlds.

Vance Crowe [00:46:29] Yeah. What's Vegas look like in two weeks?

Kevin Edwards [00:46:33] I think Vegas looks exactly the same. Just it's a ghost town. It's, it's so bizarre to go down the strip and just see barricades in front of all the doors and caution tape and cones in front of all the entrances. I mean, it, it's almost like a zombie movie apocalyptic kind thing.

Vance Crowe [00:47:01] You'll have to get me some photos or videos of that. I wanna see it.

Kevin Edwards [00:47:04] I I will, I'll, I'll send you a link to, there's been a couple guys that have really gone out and documented it well and posted on social media and stuff, but I'll send you some of that stuff and you can add it into the video or whatever. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:47:20] I'll threaten the show notes

Kevin Edwards [00:47:21] Because it is crazy to see that just vast emptiness where you're so used to seeing hundreds of thousands of people. But in, in two weeks time, I don't think anything changes in Vegas in the world's time. I think that the, the uproar will get more and more to get the economy back going and really pushing for that. And I think it's, it's gonna turn more and more political. Whatever views you are about the president or about our government or whatever, it's gonna just polarize it even more. And

Vance Crowe [00:48:17] A month ago you mentioned you had, you had gotten a, you'd picked up a gun from your dad. Are you glad you have it? Yeah,

Kevin Edwards [00:48:25] Yeah. Haven't really felt anywhere where I I've that I've been unsafe or that I feel like we've gotten to that point society wise. But yeah, I, I think I will definitely be a gun owner for the rest of my life Now.

Vance Crowe [00:48:49] Is that different than the past?

Kevin Edwards [00:48:53] Yeah, it wasn't, it was just kind of a here or there. I didn't really feel passionately about it one way or the other. But to see through this pandemic how quickly society can collapse lapse and, and again, I I'm in a hotspot for how quickly fall apart, but I mean, I, I think that it wouldn't take too much more to push people over the edge, especially somewhere like here where just everything goes away.

Vance Crowe [00:49:41] Are the, are the bartenders and waitresses and and card dealers, are they pushing by the end of two weeks to open up the casinos? Or are they afraid to go back to work?

Kevin Edwards [00:49:58] I, I don't think they're pushing for it. I, I think mostly we're kind of afraid to go back to work. If anything, more of the feeling of what I get, at least from the industry people is kind of the longing. I, I, I miss making money. I miss spending money. I miss going out and doing things and having fun and meeting groups of people. And I, I get more of that sense of the feeling that people just miss living the Vegas kind of life that they do as opposed to, Hey, we really need to get our economy going again. And that kind of push,

Vance Crowe [00:50:54] Well living in Las Vegas wasn't like living in all of the US and it was on purpose. People went there because the rules were different there. Yeah. So you can imagine there being a sort of allegiance in the same way people are from Texas, they really are from Las Vegas and everybody's a foreigner. Right? Like everybody's an outsider.

Kevin Edwards [00:51:13] Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's, everybody talks about it. It's, you know, it's Disneyland for grownups that this is where grownups come to forget about their life and not care about their responsibilities and all that stuff. And if, if we can't reopen back up with that atmosphere of, Hey, come on over and we'll just help you forget about your responsibilities for a while. We'll help you forget about the drudgery of your life. 'cause it's Vegas. You can do whatever you want here. Well if it's, Hey, please come to Vegas, but maintain social distancing please. And we're gonna be checking your temperatures all over the place and there's not gonna be any entertainment venues open because we can't pack people in. But you can come sit in these massive, massive rooms far apart playing video poker or slot machines.

Vance Crowe [00:52:15] Not as enticing.

Kevin Edwards [00:52:16] It is not as enticing. And I, I think that's what, I think that's what the politicians and the executives are missing out in their thinking here. And I think that's what the, the industry people are missing is the idea of the fun that we have. Even when you hate your job in Vegas as a bartender or a dealer or whatever, there's usually always somewhere and that's out there, that's just there to have fun and you can interact with them and there's just not a lot of interaction going on.

Vance Crowe [00:52:54] Yeah. So last question and then I'll let you go. The, a couple of days ago I interviewed a truck driver that was hauling hogs, and I interviewed him right at the beginning of the crisis about the same time you and I spoke, and then just spoke with him just the other day. And he's no longer hauling hogs. They're no longer people working at the plants to be able to process those. Now at some of the plants, they're still going, in fact a lot of them. But more and more you hear about USDA people or inspectors or workers not at these plants. Yeah. Are you hearing about this in the regular news? Is this something that you're aware of and is it, is it something that people are talking about?

Kevin Edwards [00:53:41] I specifically heard that yesterday just because my girlfriend's mom said, we're gonna go to this meat supplier tomorrow and we're gonna buy a bunch of meat because they have just announced that they don't have anywhere to, to send their meat anymore. And so that I, I realized that that whole supply chain, everything about it is falling apart. And she mentioned that several of the meat processing plants here have now shut down because too many of the employees have tested positive. So Yes, that specifically that meat packing plants. I just heard that yesterday.

Vance Crowe [00:54:36] Wow. Okay. Well, I, I think that our, our food system has been astoundingly resilient to this point because a lot of what we're throwing away was what used to go to restaurants and now goes to grocery stores. But I do think in my candid assessment, the meat packing just is uniquely, it's, it's difficult to do because you have to have people come together in a single location. A lot of those people are living in families and apartments that are tight knit. They're traveling together because oftentimes it's, they're at the bottom of society. They don't have a ton of money. So you have a, a bunch of people coming together to do this work that they get paid really well to do because it's a really difficult job and it's really difficult to keep coronavirus outta there or, and it's really difficult to, for that population to hear it's in there and to want to go to work. But the, this is, this is where the challenge is because if they don't go to work, then meat doesn't get processed and we're okay for a little while, but if you keep that from turning back on, you have real problems in the, in the American system.

Kevin Edwards [00:55:45] Yeah. And I had, I had also just heard about the, the strawberry industry in California. I think that was, since the last time I talked to you, I

Vance Crowe [00:55:54] Haven't heard this.

Kevin Edwards [00:55:55] They, so I heard this interview a week ago and they said starting next week, so that would be this week, the California growers we're gonna have to start throwing away 20 million pounds of strawberries a week because none of the restaurants are ordering now, the grocery stores is only 30% of their supply chain and the other 70% is just gone. And it's not like they can just pause the strawberries.

Vance Crowe [00:56:32] That's right.

Kevin Edwards [00:56:33] And so the, the interviewer said, well, why don't you just allow people to just drive up and take strawberries? And they said, yeah, that's, that's fine. Okay. So you show up and your Mustang and you buy five pounds of strawberries from us at a great rate. So now we only have 19,999,995 more pounds to try to get rid of this week, and now we got 20 more, more next week that we have to get rid of. He said, it's, it's a great idea in theory, but we just don't have the infrastructure to make it happen. Like I said, well, why don't we just freeze 'em? Same thing. And we don't have storage facilities to handle that kind of output when 70% of your market just goes away. There's nothing you can do, but just throw it away.

Vance Crowe [00:57:31] So now becomes a complicated time because you have dairy farmers, for example, 30% of what a US dairy sold into was the restaurant industry because you'd make creams and cheeses and sauces and all kinds of

Kevin Edwards [00:57:45] Things. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:46] So when people go out to restaurants, big slat of butter, you know, like,

Kevin Edwards [00:57:50] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:50] And, but you see, so this milk is now overrunning and there's too much of it, so they have to dump it because those cows they were eating yesterday, they gotta be milked today whether you have the demand or not.

Kevin Edwards [00:58:02] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:58:02] And on the one hand you think, oh man, we do not want to one dump milk, which we don't. Right. That's waste. But two, then you start saying, well, if we don't buy that milk from those dairy farmers by the government or you know, private enterprise, then those dairies are gonna go out of business. And, you know, like it's tough. You don't want dairies to go outta business, but then you think about like, well, they are actually contributing too much milk. Maybe they do need to be sold and slaughtered and eaten. And maybe we do need to pair down that, that amount. I don't want to have to choose which dairies succeed or don't succeed based on who you're buying milk from. I'd rather say like, let the market do what it's doing, because if we have too much milk, we don't wanna just keep producing it just because we don't want the economy to change.

Kevin Edwards [00:58:52] Yeah. I, I kind of feel like that about all the industries. I mean, the airline industries are screaming for bailouts all over the place. Well, why do we need 15 different airline companies? Why do they all need to get bailed out? Why don't we just not bail them out and let's see who can survive this thing? And

Vance Crowe [00:59:18] I mean, that's the way you use capitalism to ensure that there is a pandemic response. Because if they know that when something terrible happens that they're gonna get bailed out because there's only, you know, a certain number of us, and you've gotta have these flights, then maybe if you change around the calculus and say, when something bad happens, if you're not prepared for it, we're gonna let you die. People start getting a lot more resilient and start taking on appropriate risk as opposed to inappropriate risk.

Kevin Edwards [00:59:46] Yes. And that, that I think is gonna be one of the major things that comes out of this both individually and as businesses, is people are gonna go, holy crap, the whole world literally can change within a week. And I need to start making better, better preparations that I can handle, that I can survive situations.

Vance Crowe [01:00:15] What would you have done differently from the, from the way you prepared for Coronavirus? And then this is seriously my last question.

Kevin Edwards [01:00:24] Knowing what,

Vance Crowe [01:00:25] Knowing what you do now, what would you have done differently

Kevin Edwards [01:00:28] Together? We'll, keep talking. God, I, you know, I don't know that I personally would have done anything different because like I said, I was already on this path of getting rid of almost all my possessions, whittling down my bills to as little as I possibly could. Like I was designing my life to live minimalistically and, and spend more time concentrating on adventures and things that give me enjoyment in life rather than just focusing on work. So, and I know that I am such a minuscule percentage of people that think like that. Like there's a whole bunch of tiny home people out there somewhere that are like my people that I will meet someday, or RV people or something that have just kind of said, you know what, I just, I hate this society thing where all I have to do every day is focus on how much I'm gonna work and how much money I'm making and how many more bills that I can pay. So for me, like I, I don't know that I would've done anything different. I would've liked to get a little further along in my path before this had all hit to really understand how I'm trying to live like that.

Kevin Edwards [01:02:01] But, but I in a way, kind of my preparations were already headed towards this. And so I don't, I don't know that I'm really a good one to answer that question for you because

Vance Crowe [01:02:14] There'll

Kevin Edwards [01:02:15] Nobody else will relate to that.

Vance Crowe [01:02:16] If we were together, I would give you a big hand clap and back pat, like, it'd be great because you always have such a different perspective on life. It is so different from mine. And I agree with you. It's really different from a lot of people. And I'm grateful that during Coronavirus you've been willing to share. And if things change out in Vegas, you start seeing something happen, gimme a call man. I'd love to have you come back on.

Kevin Edwards [01:02:41] Oh yeah. And

Vance Crowe [01:02:41] Keep us posted on what's going on.

Kevin Edwards [01:02:43] Yeah, for sure.