This Main Street has been needy for a long time

It is that time of year -- the beginning -- when we can pretend the past did not happen. When we can look ahead with glee, with hope, with the certainty of possibility that only the future can hold.

It is time, in other words, for New Year's resolutions.

We will vow to lose weight. Spend less money. Get in shape. Call mom more often. Be nicer. Be more focused. Get crackin' on stuff we should have been crackin' on all along.

The reality is, of course, the more you have to improve, the more difficult the whole process becomes.

Which brings us to Main Street, north of downtown, which is where those among us with the most to improve reside. This is homeless headquarters, where the sidewalks serve as bunks and the future is frustrating.

It is 8 a.m., still cold enough that breath is visible in the air.

A cranky guy with a shopping cart piled higher than his head says he doesn't bother with resolutions. It's all pointless, he says. Go away, he says.

A woman with a baby stroller but no baby says she used to make resolutions, but no more. Nothing good can come of it, she says. She doesn't want to talk anymore.

"My New Year's resolution is to move forward as best I can," says Richard E., 33, who doesn't want to give his last name because he swears his ex-wife doesn't know he's homeless.

"I don't want to stand still," he says.

He says he's been on the streets too long. "I'm taking a break," he says. "That's all I'm doing."

He's been in Las Vegas for 17 years. Spent his first 16 years in Alaska. He ended up on the streets after his wife left him. She was his high school sweetheart, he says. Then his mom died. That devastated him.

The joke going around here is that drinking more is Richard's resolution.

"I don't got a drinking problem," he insists. "I got a depression problem right now. I'm not happy with the world."

He doesn't want to set a goal too high, like getting off the street, because it would be too easy to fail. He knows he'd be no good in a job interview, anyway.

"My head's so screwed up, if I talked to anybody, they'd put me in an insane asylum."

That's not unusual talk on Main Street, where everyone is constantly shifting from one sidewalk to another when the cops come and roust them.

Joshua Collins, 33, says he's been arrested more than 20 times in the past couple of years for sleeping out here. He shows off his latest arrest report, a trespassing violation from a couple of weeks ago.

"They want to put me in crazy court," he says.

He says he used to be a math teacher in Washington state, but gave it all up to become voluntarily homeless seven years ago. He's been in Las Vegas for two years.

He carries handmade signs proclaiming his love for Jesus. He says he has no use for resolutions.

"I don't make promises," he says, "but I always make efforts to better myself every day."

This is when the word comes down that the cops are coming, so everyone grabs their stuff -- packed mostly into blankets or plastic milk crates -- and drags it across the street.

Leo Afshar, who turns 51 today, carries the most stuff. He's got a white Santa beard and smiles more than everyone else here combined.

He says he's not homeless; he's a refugee from Iran. Yes he sleeps on the streets, sometimes, but that doesn't mean anything.

He tells stories that meld into one another. They involve his travels around the world, an appearance on the Tonight Show, the wife that he had long ago.

"I want to get my passport and go to Germany," he says, so at least he has a dream.

Laura Daniels, 50, has a smaller goal: She wants to stop cussing. She keeps getting in trouble in the shelters, she says, because of her foul mouth.

Ut Nguyen, 39, wants a job.

"I have no place to stay," he says. He's been in Las Vegas a month and a half, he says. He came from Houston, where he lost a good job working on an offshore gas drilling operation.

Cruz Camargo, 27, just wants to go back to Seattle. He says he came here a month ago looking for his friends. They were gone when he got here.

Now he has nothing.

"This is a bad place for me," he says.

Eileen Maria Rosa, 40, cries when she's asked about her future, about how she wants to make it better.

She left California for Las Vegas a while back, fleeing an abusive husband, she says.

She says she's got 10 kids, none of them with her. She swears she saved up a bunch of money to buy them Christmas presents, but it was taken the last time she went to jail.

"You can't be happy living out here," she says.

Then the city crews come, sweeping the sidewalks free of junk, the stuff these people live with: blankets and clothes and shoes and trash.

A cop comes up, angry.

"Move your stuff," he yells, "and move it now."

This they do, until the next time.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.