Strip of Nervousness

“I hate it here,” the taxi driver tells me on the way from the airport to the Hilton yesterday afternoon. Okay,.I think, it’s a short ride, I’ll bite. “If you hate it so much, and don’t mind me asking,” I say, “then why are you here?”

My question elicits a long response. He tells me he moved here from Turkey three years ago and I congratulate him on his English, which is excellent. He came here because he heard Vegas was always busy, and there was always work. He bought a house right away with “one of those mortgages on the news now”. But, just yesterday, he says, they announced the tourism dollars are down 50 percent from the same month last year. There is no work. He is making half what he made last year at this time. “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble and I now I have a house I can’t sell,” he says “ I hate it. I am very worried. I don’t sleep so good at night.”

Welcome to the club. There’s an aspect of nervousness and unease among those attending the GlassBuild America Show in Vegas this week. The effects of the economy can be seen everywhere—even in the cab you take from the airport.

It will be an interesting show, I think, so check back for more reports this week. I don’t know whether to feel really good or really bad about the following fact, but I am going to share it with you anyway: this is actually my 27th consecutive year of attending this show. Sometimes I was working at it, sometimes exhibiting, one or two years just attending but I haven’t missed a one since the first I attended in 1981 when I was barely out of college.. (Besides my esteemed colleague, Charles Cumpston, who has the exact same record, I’d be curious to know if there’s anyone else out there who has a longer consecutive attendance.).

I remember when the show was in March (much better I think for the industry), when it went to family-friendly cities like San Antonio and all the stories I have from things that have happened during it. (I’ll put them in that hypothetical book I write some day.).

So what, besides a nervous industry on a nervous strip, will we find this year?

I lean back in the cab. We are stuck in traffic due to an accident and my short trip has gotten longer. I look at the cabby and around the cab. He has no wedding ring, no pictures of a wife or kids around. “Okay,” I say, “you don’t gamble, you don’t drink and you don’t smoke, but what about girls? Surely Las Vegas is good place to meet women, no?”

Oh he gave me an answer all right, but I’ll save it for next time….