Leaving Las vegas

Although Victory Pedal Cab has been successful in many markets, the Las Vegas market has been exceptionally difficult and practically impossible to do business in. It is therefore that I will be leaving the market. Here are a few reasons why:

• Overly restrictive regulations on pedicabs. So although pedicabs are legal in Vegas, the regulations are set up for them to fail. Such as with the inability to go onto certain streets that a virtually empty or streets that would be the most efficient to take people to their hotel. For a pedicab to use these streets, it is considered to be a criminal misdemeanor. Pedicabs are also not allowed to stage in an unused bike lane and they are not allowed on the strip either. Many of the streets where they are allowed do not have any pedestrians.
• Clark county business licensing division employees did not know what they were doing. During my time of building my business in Downtown Vegas, I also tried to get a Clark county business license as well. Clark county being a different jurisdiction than downtown Vegas, a separate business license is required to operate near the strip from Circus Circus all the way down to Luxor. The Clark county business licensing technicians gave me incorrect information several times which required me to fly in to Vegas on numerous occasions as they were unable to answer questions nor the phone, because I didn't have the correct information filled out on the application several times, and because I was missing other things I needed that they did not tell me about previously. I was finally able to submit the application and paid the fees, but the application was not approved due to violating a stupid regulation.
• Harassed by police several times. Now this may not be a typical experience for most people that visit Vegas, but it happened to me often when LMPD had disrespected me and baited me on several occasions. Whenever I tried to report a crime, they would take the criminal's side and pretty much treat me like the criminal with their lines of questioning and not doing anything about the crime. These crimes were theft of service, burglary of my vehicle, theft of pedicab, and armed robbery against me. They had also misconstrued the law 3 separate times in order to charge me with any stupid crime they could. I have never had such negative experiences anywhere  else I've traveled to, except Sturgis, South Dakota.
• Many people are con artists. This type of behavior also seems to carry over into many of the locals that live there as well. In my experience, a lot of these people would create weird or non existent reasons for not paying me money that they owe me or working together. It seems to just be a big culture of screwing over each other and tourists out of their money. Several people also damaged my equipment.
• It was a very depressing, toxic place. With all these experiences combined, I had acquired nearly 40,000 dollars in credit card debt, the most debt I have ever had in my life. I was always stressed out with dealing with everything and everyone out there, and my overall mental and physical health were very negatively affected as well. The market has potential, but there was a lot of bureaucratic sabotage that interfered with the success of that business.

As they say, "Las Vegas will chew you up and spit you out." To say it's been a very stressful 2 years is an understatement. It is very unfortunate and sad that this type of energy exists anywhere, but I will be very happy as soon as I leave that place and move on.