A Girl’s Guide To Las Vegas

Tiffannie Bond

Kris Gundersen

Melissa Martin

Ginger Mikkelsen

Stephens Press Las Vegas, Nevada

Copyright 2005 Tiffannie Bond, Kris Gundersen, Melissa Martin and Ginger Mikkelsen, and Stephens Press.

All Rights Reserved

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher,

except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Design: Sue Campbell Layout: Scott Harmon

ISBN 1-932173-29-3

CIP Data Available

A Stephens Media Group CompanyPost Office Box 1600

Las Vegas, NV 89125-1600www.stephenspress.com

Printed in Hong Kong

DedicationTo one of the founding mothers of the Sinning in the City guides, Stephanie Marie Coll. She made conceiving sin a

sweet and memorable experience. We miss you.

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix The Girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xii

1 WrathTransportation with Ginger . . . . . . . . . . 3Self-defense with Kris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2 SlothWhere to stay with Ginger . . . . . . . . . . . 17Hotel pools with Kris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Spas and relaxation with Tiffannie . . . . . . 39

3 GluttonyRestaurants on the strip with Ginger . . . . . 47Restaurants off the strip with Ginger . . . . 61Buffets and cheap eats with Melissa . . . . . 66

4 Vanity/PrideGo shopping with Kris . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73Getting ready (dress code and salons)

with Tiffannie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81Entertainment with Ginger . . . . . . . . . . 87Visit the top of the world, or just Las Vegas,

with Melissa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Where Do You Begin?

5 LustSee T&A with Tiffannie . . . . . . . . . . . . 107Go to the bars with Kris . . . . . . . . . . . 114Hit the clubs with Tiffannie . . . . . . . . . 122

6 GreedGambling with Kris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131Tipping with Melissa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139Comps and how to get ’em with Kris . . . . 144

7 EnvySee the city sights with Melissa . . . . . . . 149Gaze at celebrities with Tiffannie . . . . . . 155Outdoor wonders with Melissa . . . . . . . . 161

8 RepentanceGet out of huge trouble with Ginger . . . . 169Gambling help with Melissa . . . . . . . . . 177Religion guide with Ginger . . . . . . . . . . 181

Address Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Coupons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

viii ix

It starts around dinner or after a movie. A girl friend mentions one day wanting to take a trip to Las Vegas. The rest of you laugh at first, and then ask a col-lective, “Why not?”

You’ll always remember the first time you see her. Her beauty appears slowly over the horizon. She’s petite for a major city, and sparkling, just like she is in all her movies.

She’s waiting to greet you like an old friend, arms wide open to embrace you.

If there was ever any doubt Sin City is a female, take a look at her in person. They say Las Vegas is a guy’s town, with a stripper or a cab ride a phone call away. Secretly, though, she takes care of her ladies.

And so will we.Girls who are wise can take advantage of Las

Vegas. Complimentary club admission and free drinks are used to lure beauty in the door in the hopes that lusty men will follow. Temples have been built to shop-ping, dining and entertainment to keep women busy while men roll dice. But don’t forget, you can roll the dice yourself.

We learned a lot writing this book. In fact, we were surprised, and at times embarrassed, how much we didn’t know when we first started. Las Vegas is a woman of many moods. What is cool now, won’t be cool later. Goliath-sized buildings are constructed as fast as they fall. Learn the word imploded . It’s the city’s unofficial, one-word motto.

There are four of us, so you’re bound to iden-tify, in whole or in part, with one of us.

Tiffannie is the single one, Kris is a newlywed and Melissa is well on her way, while Ginger has wed-ded bliss down. Tiffannie is the only one of the group born and raised in the city, but has inducted her friends as honorary natives. Kris and Ginger have called Las Vegas their home for a handful of years. Melissa has lived in Las Vegas a short time, but she fell in love at first sight.

Preface

AcknowledgementsBritannie Bond, the first eyes on all the copy—

you helped us out in a bind.Jason and Elaine EdmistonAmy Beth LeberBrian GonzalezThe Bond familyThe Ramirez familyThe Mikkelsens, Meurers Boswells and WimmersThe O’Neill familyThe Martin familyThe Gundersen familyBrian and Owen WalkinshawKen and Linda de MasiThe View Neighborhood Newspapers staffDoug Elfman, Las Vegas Review-JournalNorm Clarke, Las Vegas Review-JournalMonica Miceli, our cheerleaderGeoff Schumacher, our editorCarolyn Uber, Stephens PressStephanie WasanoAnthony Curtis, the Las Vegas InsiderTim ShalhoobMike SweeneyBill ArthurMike WaffleJonathan BaileyJill SalvoLily LoosTim Carvalho and Aidan Coll CarvalhoMarianne VenturaPhanny MomDJ Anthony from GhostbarBrian Albertson, the PalmsVanessa Thill, the PalmsDallas Orchard, Hard Rock HotelStephanie Heller, MGM MirageAlicia Malone, MGM MirageMichael Boychuck and his staff at AMP and Canyon Ranch

salonsKirvin-Doak CommunicationsRenee Rietgraf and Gina Yager from Preferred PRTyri Squyres, AladdinMichael Gilmartin, StratosphereLisa Kein, TropicanaDeanna Pettit, Flamingo Las Vegas

xi

secrets in cameos scattered among the pages. Some-where in the middle of all of it, you’ll fi nd your own little piece of our favorite city to take home to yours.

The girls who scribed this book hope it is as much fun to read as it was to write. Maybe you will discover a secret of your own in these pages, some-thing you can impress your friends with as you’re sip-ping Cosmopolitans on the plane or cruising into town for a weekend.

Or maybe you’ll just order the steak and shrimp special that’s not on the menu at Mr. Lucky’s 24/7 inside the Hard Rock Hotel and smile knowing the purchase of this book wasn’t in vain.

Nevertheless, enjoy. Soak it in. Drink up. Simmer.

Drive Carefully, and Come Back Soon.

x

The idea for this book started as a lunch-time conversation. Ginger often comes up with hair-brained ideas and it’s the rest of us who reel her in. This one was different. With this idea, we all said, “Let’s do it!”

Together with our dear friend Stephanie Coll, we brainstormed the idea and thought up the Vegas trends, hotspots and must-sees that would fi t under the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins. It doesn’t take a tawdry tart to sin in Vegas. If you take the tradition-al seven deadly sins literally, almost anything in ex-cess is questionable. And Las Vegas is all about excess. We’ll tell you how to eat too much, nap by the pool too long, or drink a few too many cocktails. We’ll show you how to get in trouble and out again before you go home. Some of our sin chapter connections are a stretch, we know. But Las Vegas is all about imagination.

Transportation is in WRATH. Why? Because fl ying, driving and parking can really piss you off. City Sights are in ENVY. It makes sense. Our sights will make you wish you had a tower with a roller coaster on top or a Red Rock Canyon in Duluth.

We had a goal. This should be a fun book for the girls, from the girls. This isn’t your mother’s guide to Vegas, although she also might have fun with it. And if you want to bring your boyfriend, that’s fi ne, too. There is a blue book (hopefully sitting right next to this on the shelf) for him.

This one is for you.You’re not going to fi nd stripper lessons or the

hottest bingo in town listed here. Las Vegas is a place to let down your hair, loosen up, and act the way you want to without anyone looking. This book will help you break free from the bonds of everyday life.

Las Vegas is too big a city for four not-so-big girls to cover completely, so we enlisted our friends, family and co-workers to tell us about their favorite corners of the city. Not only do you have our opinions, you have a collection of tour guides giving you their

xii xiii

The GirlsKris Gundersen has lived in the Las Vegas

Valley for only three years, but feels right at home in the desert. Raised in Mesa, Ariz., she jokes that she moved to Las Vegas to cool off.

Kris loves playing tour guide to the tons of friends and family who tend to visit someone living in Las Vegas. She enjoys taking them to quiet places on the Strip where they can enjoy the city views, talk and enjoy a top-quality cocktail.

Kris admits gambling a little more than she should. “A rum and Coke in one hand and a soft 17 in another, there’s nothing like it. It’s Vegas, baby!”

She’s as fresh to the city as the latest scandal, but Melissa Martin is making an adventure out of it. Although Las Vegas is probably the last place on Earth Melissa ever thought she would move to from Omaha, Neb., that hasn’t stopped her from surpassing many natives and becoming one of Vegas’ most “in the know” residents.

Bachelorette parties at Jaguars and racy bill-board advertising have caused this Creighton Uni-versity graduate’s eyes to widen, but after a full day of shopping and a well-poured raspberry Stoli and 7 decorated with lime, she has no trouble calling Vegas her own.

“What do you know about sinning?” was the re-sponse Tiffannie Bond heard when the idea for this book first came up in the View newspaper newsroom.

In the movies, she would’ve had a quick-witted response that would’ve left mouths agape and heads turned. Instead, Ginger Mikkelsen gave her one later:

“You don’t have to be a Nazi to write about Hitler.”Aside from bikini bull riding, Tiffannie has

gone to every extreme to share an insider’s view of her hometown. And it was hard work. She had to become accustomed to foreign ideas familiar to tourists. The UNLV graduate grew up assuming you had to waltz

through a casino to see a movie, and what the hell do you mean by “last call”?

There is nothing about Hitler in this book, al-though people say the Imperial Palace used to look like a swastika from the air. Now that’s an insider’s look. Go figure.

Every Las Vegas adventure needs a designat-ed driver. We decided to let ours write.

More Mary Ann than Ginger (and never Mrs. Howell), Ginger Mikkelsen was born in the Bible belt of Tennessee and raised with the “saints” in Utah. So, sinning didn’t come easy.

Ginger was dragged to Las Vegas kicking and screaming a handful of years ago by her now ex-hus-band. She wised up. Divorced. And decided to import a new husband, Josh Meurer, from Nevada’s safest neighbor, Utah.

Her Las Vegas escapades were experienced during a brief span between husbands. She’s ready to share her wild child phase, although really brief, with visitors who plan to spend as much time exploring Las Vegas as she has.

Chapter One

WrathWrath

Wrath 3

Ginger’s Guide to Transportation

For generations, jetting off to Las Vegas has been a tradition for men intent on tak-ing in gambling, strippers and sin. Girls need not miss out on the fun. Whether you are celebrating a bachelorette party, los-ing yourself in post-breakup debauchery or reveling in the glory of a 21st birthday, Las Vegas is the place to be. But fi rst you have to get here.

Trips to Europe, Africa or Australia require meticulous planning, advanced scrimping and saving, passports and sometimes even shots. Las Vegas isn’t like that. Sure, you can plan. I’m assuming you’re a little bit of a planner since you bought (maybe bor-rowed or stole) this guidebook. But planning is not necessary. Vegas is the kind of destination that begins as a whim that need not be much stronger than the im-pulse to make an ice cream run.

4 Chapter One Wrath 5

If you live within quick driving distance in Utah, Arizona or California, it’s easy. Just throw a bag together, pick up a few girlfriends, roll down the convertible top and go.

If you live farther away, airfare deals and hotel specials are numerous, even with minimal notice. For ideas on how to pick a hotel, get a deal on a room and when to visit, check out my “Where to Stay” guide in the Sloth Chapter.

For now, let’s concentrate on getting you here, and helping you get around once you arrive. Flying is the preferred mode of transport for 45 percent of visitors. Before September 11, 2001, that number was much higher. Since then, airport security and fear of terrorism have scared scads of foreign tourists.

As if you didn’t have enough to fear, our friend Stephanie Wasano reminded me to warn readers about the airport escalators. A few years ago, an escalator collapsed. The metal stairs flattened into a slippery slide, sending luggage and travelers zipping to the floor below.

Other than that, you may be happy to hear that flying into town is easy. Flights in are packed with ex-cited tourists (many of them male and hot) planning their exploits, talking, laughing, making friends. I’ve been on flights where strangers buy girls drinks and propose future rendezvous. If you have the opportuni-ty, fly in at night. The view from the airplane window as the plane circles the Strip is second to none.

The way home may not be so jovial. Get on a Sunday afternoon flight, and no one is happy. Tired, grouchy, hungover crowds are the norm, and that’s just in the long security lines before you get on the plane.

Be sure to allow plenty of extra time for depar-ture. It’s not unreasonable to bank an extra hour or two for your return voyage.

If you arrive far too early or you’re stuck at the airport, no worries, there is plenty to do. McCarran is

one of the best airports to get stuck in. The place is packed with hotel gift shops (just in case you didn’t get enough of that in the actual hotels), reasonably good food and, of course, slot machines.

But whatever you do, don’t put any money into these slot machines, unless you would like to make a direct donation to Clark County.

Instead of working the one-armed bandits, check out the aviation museum. The Sen. Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum has no walls of its own, but is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with collections displayed throughout McCarran Inter-national Airport.

“We get greater visitation than any museum in Nevada,” Museum Director Mark Hall-Patton joking-ly testifies. “From 350,000 to 400,000 people per year come through. We’re where the people are. ”

The main museum collection is set up over the baggage claim area on the airport’s second level. Exhibits extend out to the A and B gates, C terminal, ticketing and the D satellite gates. The star of the col-lection is a plane used by Robert Timm of Las Vegas and John Cook of Los Angeles in 1958 to set the world record for the longest flight at 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and 5 seconds. A museum exhibit tells of the harrowing adventure.

But if you are a new arrival, you’re not here to waste time in an airport museum; you’ve come to Ve-gas to play.

Step one is to get out of the airport and to your hotel. The flight in can be deluding. It looks like the airport is on top of the Strip, just a quick walk away. It’s actually about five miles, with no direct easy ac-cess. Lugging suitcases, you’ll never make it.

In many towns across the country, hotels will send a shuttle or a car to the airport to fetch incoming patrons. That is not the case in Vegas. Unless you’re a high-roller, there will be no man in a black hat with your name on a card. So it’s up to you to find a ride.

6 Chapter One Wrath 7

You can take a taxi or a limo. Ask both to skip the airport tunnel and take Swenson Avenue or Para-dise Road, routes that should save you money in rush-hour traffic.

You can also hitch a ride from a shuttle service. Bell Trans (702-739-7990) is one of the most popu-lar. You can buy your ticket and jump on board right outside the baggage claim area. Bell Trans charges $4 for one-way transport to hotels on the Strip, $5. 25 for downtown or off-Strip hotels. It operates from 7:45 a.m. to midnight. Tipping the driver a buck or two as he unloads your bags is expected.

They may try to talk you into purchasing a round-trip ticket for cheaper, but don’t do it. If they’re not timely on the pickup (and they weren’t the one time I trusted them), you could be left holding your re-turn ticket when you give up and catch a taxi to avoid missing your fl ight.

If all you have is a carry-on bag, you may want to consider taking the Citizen Area Transit (CAT) buses. You can get from the airport to downtown with no transfers, but there is no direct service to the Strip, so you’ll have to take a transfer. For detailed, up-to-date route and fare information, visit www.rtc.southernnevada.com. Once you get to your hotel, CAT buses can get you up and down the Strip cheaply.

At www.lvmonorail.com, you can fi nd de-tailed information about Las Vegas’ newest transpor-tation option, the Monorail. So far, the system has seven stations stretched along a four-mile route be-tween the MGM Grand and the Sahara. In addition to those two stations, you can get off at the Las Vegas Hilton, Las Vegas Convention Center, Harrah’s/Impe-rial Palace, Flamingo/Caesars Palace or Bally’s/Paris stations. Tickets are $3.

Eventually, the goal is to have the Monorail go downtown to Fremont Street and extend to the air-port. But we’ll believe that when we see the powerful taxicab company lobby topple.

“Monorails don’t wait in traffic!” the website brags. The Monorail can travel the seven-station route, end-to-end, in as little as 14 minutes as it reach-es speeds of up to 50 miles per hour from 8 a.m. to mid-night, 365 days a year.

Las Vegas is using the Monorail for advertis-ing, too. I went to the kickoff for the system’s fi rst car, bearing a burst of bright green Monster Energy Drink along its side. The event was fi lled with typical Ve-gas fanfare. Fireworks went off and showgirls danced while Mayor Oscar Goodman sipped his energy drink from a martini glass. In fact, the ceremony was held up at least 20 minutes while organizers scrambled to fi nd the mayor that martini glass.

The hope is Monorail branding will bring in millions every year to help fund the $650 million project.

If you plan on staying out after midnight, the Monorail won’t do. You’ll have to turn to your friendly

8 Chapter One Wrath 9

taxicab driver. You can get a cab anywhere in town at any time, but before you do, take one simple step that will save you enough money for at least a cock-tail. Make sure you won’t be asking your cab driver to make a U-turn to get to your destination. Sometimes simply crossing the street before you catch a cab, espe-cially on the insanely busy Las Vegas Boulevard, can save time and money.

Are you daunted at the thought of trusting cab drivers? Maybe a rental car is the answer for you. Just about every car rental company in the country offers rentals at the airport. Make certain to reserve in ad-vance, and call the day of your reservation to make sure a car will be waiting. There’s nothing like being stranded at the airport waiting for a car to come in.

On the Strip, there are luxury car rental sites where you can rent a splashy convertible by the day or the hour. A California entrepreneur tried to set up a rental service for the trendy new Segway scooters, but dust from construction on Steve Wynn’s newest resort made his rental course too slippery.

One of the quirkiest options is the open-air, buggy-style cars rented on Las Vegas Boulevard near the Harley-Davidson Café. The back seat is raised, and there are no windows, so these cars are perfect for quick sight-seeing. They’re kind of glorified golf carts, not really street ready, so don’t try to take one on the freeway.

If you would like to make yourself street-wor-thy, the world’s largest Harley-Davidson dealer-ship, at 2605 S. Eastern Avenue, rents bikes by the day, week or hour. It has a free shuttle that will pick you up from your hotel for renting or just shopping. It also teaches multi-day 25-hour riding classes on its deal-ership course for $350. Bikes are provided, but you’ll need your own helmet. Classes run from 5 to 9:45 p.m. on Friday, and from 6:45 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Satur-day and Sunday. So in just a weekend, you could walk

away ready to ride with the Hell’s Angels. For more information, call the dealership at (702) 431-8500.

You may just decide to drive to Vegas yourself. Be prepared for traffic insanity. The freeway system, with crazy traffic jams in the tied-up interchange, re-ferred to as the Spaghetti Bowl, and lanes that force you off the highway onto roads you never intended to visit makes driving here a challenge.

Commuting isn’t helped by the fact that (at least when I moved here) new residents simply swap their out-of-state license for a Nevada license without even a written test. Since only 3. 5 percent of the popu-lation is native, that means 96 percent have never even glanced at the rules of the road for Nevada. The traffic is starting to resemble that of Los Angeles.

In movies, driving down the Strip is a roman-tic thing. You’re welcome to try it, but only once. Af-ter that, use either Interstate 15 to get around or any one of a number of super-secret back ways. Roads like Koval Lane help to sneak behind casinos and beat the traffic. My new favorite is Frank Sinatra Drive. The entrance to the route is just past Mandalay Bay on the east side of Russell Road. Frank Sinatra Drive is a frontage road that travels behind all the casinos on the west side of the Strip. You can use the road to get all the way down to Industrial Road. From In-dustrial, you can access the back parking lots of the Stardust, Circus Circus and more.

Parking in Las Vegas is surprisingly cheap and easy, especially when compared to big cities like New York or Seattle. Almost every casino on the Strip has a free parking garage behind it. Several do secu-rity checks and some require photo I. D. , but most are pretty simple to enter. Just be sure to remember what floor you parked on, or you may never find your way back to your car.

Downtown, most parking garages charge or they make you jump through hoops. The key is to get a

10 Chapter One Wrath 11

parking validation from the casino. If you’re planning to check out the Fremont Street Experience, it has a garage just for the Experience that accepts valida-tion from any participating casino and several retail outlets. A list in the garages is updated frequently to let you know where to go.

Free valet parking is provided at most hotels. Tipping a couple of dollars when you drop off and pick up is expected.

Rarely in this book will we provide you with addresses to hotels on the Strip. Saying that the MGM Grand is at 3799 Las Vegas Boulevard South doesn’t tell you anything. The Strip is about three miles long, so knowing a casino is located there is direction enough. You can see most of the hotels from the inter-state. It’s a little like having the address for the Statue of Liberty.

Kris’ Guide to Self -Defense

So now you’re in Las Vegas. You and your girlfriends have settled into your hotel room, you’ve done a little shopping, played some roulette and even lounged poolside for a bit. Now that the sun has set, it’s time to put on your best clubbing threads, throw caution to the wind and par-tay.

Girls must always remember, however, that it is a dangerous world out there and safety should always be the utmost concern. Las Vegas Metropoli-tan Police Sergeant Tim Shalhoob offers safety tips to girls in town on vacation.

First, Shalhoob tells tourists not to “take the world with you” when going out on the town. “Take only what you need,” says Shalhoob. “Bring your room key, cash, one credit card and your I.D.”

The good detective forgot about the female staples like a tube of lipstick and a compact, but we’ll

A stop in

Las Vegas wouldn’ t be comple te

wi thout a photo nex t to the famous “Welcome to Las

Vegas” sign. I t ’s located on the Strip, just south of Mandalay

Bay. The easi est way to keep from playing a l ive game of Frogger

across the stree t is to park at the Klondike and walk across a couple

of lanes of traffi c to the median, where the sign is located. In the old

days, visi tors from Californ ia would trave l to town via the old Los

Ange les Highway ( now Las Vegas Boulevard ) and see the sign

on the ir way in. Today, most trave lers who drive to

Vegas don’ t se e the sign be cause they come

in on In terstate 15 .

12 Chapter One Wrath 13

let it slide. Never, ever take your Social Security card with you. He told me we should all keep this in a safe place at home.

“The only time you need your Social Security card is when you get a new job. And how often does that happen?” Shalhoob asked.

When out with a group of girls, be sure to keep an eye on your stuff. When the bouncer at the door of a club takes your I.D., make sure you get the right card back. It’s the same with a credit card. If you pay for a round of drinks for your friends, make sure you get your card back. Tourist attractions are generally always busy, and waitresses are responsible for a big area. It’s easy for identification or a credit card to get swapped.

This probably sounds like common sense, but when you’re loopy, and in a strange city, common sense is sadly the first thing to go. So, as your friendly travel adviser, I’m here to remind you.

Keep your purse close to your body, with the flap facing you. Make it hard for a would-be pickpock-et to turn you into a victim. Interestingly enough, car-rying a purse crossed around your neck is OK, and I always thought it was very dangerous. Shalhoob says it’s fine because a potential thief probably wouldn’t target you.

He added that many crimes happen to women when they leave their purses unattended in the rest-room. Never hang a handbag from the hook on a bath-room stall or on the ground. Rather, keep it on your lap or on the back of the toilet.

When the purse is left on the hook, a thief can reach over the top of the stall, grab the purse, dump out its contents and throw the empty purse back to you. All cleverly done when you are in no condition to chase after someone.

Once inside the bar or club, keep a close eye on your cocktails. Don’t let your drink out of your hand,

as GHB and other date-rape drugs can be a concern. Take the drink out on the dance floor with you, or have a trusted girlfriend hold it for you.

“If you feel more intoxicated than you should be, then chances are you’ve been drugged,” Shalhoob said. “Never, never leave a bar or nightclub with a stranger when you feel more intoxicated than you should be. That is how sexual assaults occur.”

If you are going to hook up with somebody, make sure your friends know the name of the guy and/or the name of your destination. My friend even went so far as to take down a guy’s driver’s license informa-tion and license plate number before she allowed my eager friend out of her sight.

At the hotel, don’t hide valuables beneath the bed or in a drawer. Use the room safe. Pick a combina-tion that would be difficult to figure out, such as the last few digits of your cell phone number. Something that wouldn’t be on your confirmation sheet and only people close to you would know. Use a room safe as op-posed to checking in valuables at the hotel’s front desk. If this is done, too many hotel employees have access to your jewelry, money or other valuables.

“Don’t give opportunists any opportunities, because they will take them,” Shalhoob says.

Unfortunately, some will become victims of a tourist crime. The best thing to do is to bring atten-tion to you.

Yell. Tell him to get his paws off you. Nine times out of ten, a would-be victim will recover her property by drawing attention to the situation.

If you feel crowded in line at a bar or on a bus or tram, grab onto your purse and hang on tight. Per-petrators rely on distractions, so you might think that someone was awfully rude by bumping into you and realize a bit later that your wallet is missing.

Many times, a purse grabber will not be vio-lent, but he might be argumentative. If you feel

14 Chapter One

threatened, distance yourself from the situation. Your personal safety should be the most important thing on your mind, so draw the attention of a store employee or security guard.

The suspects will draw attention to themselves just by walking quickly. If you do feel threatened or the perpetrator has a weapon, DO NOT ARGUE WITH HIM. But try to get a description, including race, approximate age, height and weight, any accent or voice inflection and what he was wearing. All these things will help police.

This kind of thing happens fast, ladies! The best advice is to always, always be aware of your sur-roundings, know where your belongings are at all times and keep your purse close to you. Don’t ruin a perfectly good vacation by becoming a victim.