Entry #24

May 30, 2004 - Bob

Fundraiser II (Electric Boogaloo)

It was quite different than the Oakland affair -- and that makes sense as Vegas is quite a different city.

Fremont Street is old Las Vegas; Binion's Horseshoe (the poker place), Glitter Gulch (the OLD stripper place), every walk of life you can imagine, a spectacular sound and light show every hour on the hour once the sun goes down -- in other words, just your every day Las Vegas freak show.

We had a number of amazingly generous sponsors. The only thing we lacked was a crowd. There were plenty of people walking by as Fremont St. is always happening, but getting them in to join us was quite a different story.

There were a few who did, though. One man, in particular, made me smile as he was, by his own admission, homeless. One of the challenges we faced was the number of homeless people around us. On the one hand, my heart goes out and I'd love to give each of them food. On the other hand, the food is for a fundraiser and if we give to one, then all will come to us and we won't be able to get the crowd we're trying to get. At any rate, George (our homeless friend) said he thought the cause was great and gave us $10 without a blink.

Annamaria was helping him get everything he wanted. She offered him a few whole pizzas to take to "his boys" as he called them. He said no, all he really wanted was a beautiful woman to make him up a plate as it reminded him of how his sisters used to do that for him. He went on to tell me about his son, Michael, who's name he had tattooed on his arm. I had my "little brother" (from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program I'm involved in), Ryland, with me. George smiled widely at Ryland and said how much he missed his son, who's 18 now.

After George got his food, he thanked us and went on his way. $10 from him meant the world -- much like the story in the Bible about the woman who gives her last pennies.

We had an awesome DJ (Brian from Starz DJ services in Las Vegas) who plugged the heck out of our event, God bless him. Though we couldn't get many people to join us, we had fun trying. When it was over, we packed up like the Cat in the Hat and made our way to the Las Vegas 51's game. Annamaria and I were so tired it was hard to make much sense of the game. But for Ryland, it was his first-ever baseball game and he was very interested (for at least the first couple of innings).

The 51's hammered the Tacoma club, 15-5 and afterward there were fireworks. It was very nice just soaking it all in. We let the crowd file out before us, then took the slow route home. It was a tiring but great night, all told.

Certainly, I wish there had been more people to join us. We ended up donating a good deal of food to a homeless shelter, eating a good deal of the tickets we didn’t sell and barely breaking even.

Now it is on to the actual tour -- it's only a few weeks away...

Cleveland 4, Oakland 3

WP: R. White (2-0)   LP: A. Rhodes (1-3)

Note to Mr. Rhodes: you, too, are trying my patience.

Annamaria:

I had a fear with the party at Fremont St. that a lot of people weren’t going to show up. It was a spectacular set up -- great food, great venue, we had everything a party could ask for -- except the people. 

We need to get thank you cards sent out to everybody right away.

Thinking about the trip, I know I am going to miss Bob like heck. I’m concerned about work. I feel like it’s on me to take care of bills, rent, etc. I’m temping right now, which is okay...

Bob and I have a saying we like to remind each other of in scary: “this too shall pass”.