Summer jobs for teen-agers are disappearing. Fewer than three in 10 American teenagers will hold jobs such as running cash registers, mowing lawns or busing restaurant tables from June to August, this year. The decline has been particularly sharp since 2000, with employment for 16-to-19-year-olds falling to the lowest level since World War II.
Jeffrey Armstrong is a soft-spoken guy, of evident Caribbean origin. He’s the owner and sole proprietor of “The Smoke Zone,” a rented storefront next to the Quizno’s on Rancho Boulevard just north of Charleston — though it’s one of several similar “RYO (Roll Your Own) Filling Stations” in Southern Nevada. The basic pitch? Cheap cigarettes.
I see where Kyle Gillis of the Nevada Journal posted a piece last week on the dogged fight of local prison guard Patrick Mendez against the dangerous hoplophobe policies of the College of Southern Nevada — until recently dubbed more appropriately the “Community College of Southern Nevada.” (www.npri.org/publications/pub_detail.asp?id=922.)