Every city has any number of crosses to bear and "Crack Alley" is a Las Vegas' case in point, among many others.
"Crack Alley" is popular Vegas slang for an area between Paradise Road and Maryland Parkway. One of our writers regularly takes a bus route that passes through the quadrant formed by Maryland, Paradise, Flamingo Road (on the south) and Desert Inn Road (on the north). Frankly, it's a ghetto and not anyplace that a tourist should be lingering. It also contains a popular homeless encampment, Molasky Family Park, less than a block from Boulevard Mall. That mall – which has had some financial struggles in the past but seems to be on the rebound – and the shopping on the east side of Maryland are tourist-friendly turf.
However, the west side of Maryland is curiously hexed: a string of low-rent shops and vacant storefronts. It's as though the urban blight reached the 'shore' of Maryland Parkway and stopped. The neighborhoods to the east of Maryland are quite pleasant and include upscale hangout Viking Road. And, just to the north of Desert Inn, you will find the Las Vegas Country Club and Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center, two longtime Vegas institutions. A third, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, sits one block south of Flamingo.
