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Las Vegas Hawaiian Population Myths
There's many myths pertaining to the population size of Polynesians (especially Hawaiians) here in Las Vegas. We've heard numbers from 75,000 to over 100,000 Locals living here!  NOT!! In fact, we would LOVE to see so many locals calling "Lost Wages" home but it is not so...not yet anyway. 

So here are some information about this "9th island" that we called Las Vegas .  The US Govt just conducted the 2000 Census. They used to just lump the pacific asian islanders into 1 category, but this time, it's all segmented out, Hawaiians, Samoans, Chamorro/Guam, and other islanders. We are hoping for more and at the rate of our sagging hawaiian island economy is going, it's only a matter of time that the population of Hawiians living on the mainland will be larger than back on the islands.

if you want your own copy directly from the US Census website, you can download all the charts here
or if you want just the summary sheet, you can download the PDF or the Excel sheets

For information on confidentiality protection, nonsampling error, and definitions, see http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/decenial.html
Table DP-1. Profile of General Demographic Characteristics for Nevada: 2000
Subject Number Percent
Total population................................................................................. 1,998,257 100.0
SEX AND AGE    
Male................................................................................. 1,018,051 50.9
Female................................................................................. 980,206 49.1
RACE     
One race............................................................................ 1,921,829 96.2
White.............................................................................. 1,501,886 75.2
Black or African American.................................................................. 135,477 6.8
American Indian and Alaska Native............................................................. 26,420 1.3
Asian............................................................................ 90,266 4.5
Asian Indian.................................................................. 5,535 0.3
Chinese................................................................. 14,113 0.7
Filipino......................................................................... 40,529 2.0
Japanese.................................................................... 8,277 0.4
Korean.................................................................. 7,554 0.4
Vietnamese..................................................................... 4,420 0.2
Other Asian 1...............................................................… 9,838 0.5
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (total of the next  4 lines)............................................................. 8,426 0.4
Native Hawaiian............................................................ 3,471 0.2
Guamanian or Chamorro............................................................. 1,346 0.1
Samoan............................................................. 1,474 0.1
Other Pacific Islander 2..........................................................… 2,135 0.1
Some other race............................................................. 159,354 8.0
Two or more races............................................................. 76,428 3.8
     
Race alone or in combination (HAPA folks)  with one or more other races3    
White........................................................................................ 1,565,866 78.4
Black or African American............................................................. 150,508 7.5
American Indian and Alaska Native............................................................. 42,222 2.1
Asian................................................................................... 112,456 5.6
ALL Pacific Islanders (includes all Polynesian segments hapa or not,  this is the entire polynesian population)..... 16,234 0.8
Some other race............................................................. 193,720 9.7
     
- Represents zero or rounds to zero. (X) Not applicable.     
1 Other Asian alone, or two or more Asian categories.    
2 Other Pacific Islander alone, or two or more Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander categories.    
3 In combination with one or more of the other races listed. The following six numbers may add to more than the total population and the six percentages    
may add to more than 100 percent because individuals may report more than one race.    
     
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000.    
So Not even 20,000 Polynesian folks live here...
and that's including the Samoans, Chamorros, Tahitians, Micronesians, Tongans, Fijians, and other polynesians and Hawaiians, 
That's not even 1 percent of the populations of Nevada.  Even if the number from the US Census is super wrong, it can't be off by over 400%. It's true that Asians makes up a large segment in hawaiian isles, but even if we were to add a percentage of the Asian segment of the populations into the vegas hawaiian population, it's still nowhere near the numbers as stated above.  Las Vegas can say it's has a lot of polynesians,  What is our guess? probably around 25-30,000 polynesians calls Las Vegas Home. Which does make Vegas one of the more populated Polynesian communities on the mainland. but by far, the biggest population of Polynesians resides in our neighboring state of California. And Arizona's Poly crowd is nothing to sneeze at also!

Why are the numbers so skewed
and so many folks think the polynesian population in Vegas is bigger that it it? well, here are some factors to consider..

- each year over 500,000 tourist FROM Hawaii visits vegas, they don't just all stay on Main Street, the Cal, or Downtown.

- in the tri-state area (Utah, Arizona, & California) there's way more polynesians living there and they LOVE to visit vegas and they run around vegas but they don't call this home nor do they live here, they are part of the 35 million tourists that vegas gets. 

- It's true many hawaiian locals moves to vegas, but just like the rest of the population in vegas, they NO stay. At most, they try for 3 years here and they leave. NO family, NO beach, and Super Dry. Vegas is fast becoming a portal into the mainland, folks
come here for a while and then move on to other states where there are more job opportunities.

- Almost to a fault, everytime one sees a "Hapa" person, they think it's one hawaiian local, but that is NOT so, inter-racial marriages happens a lot on the west coast and not just in Hawaii. 

- Based on pre-historic studies, it's been shown that possibly,  the true origin of polynesians could potentially come from Alaska, as they traverse south, they populated Northern America (Native Indians) as well as South America. So all these cultures, native indians, and south american natives as well as mexicans/spainards, shares similiar facial features and physical structures & art. It's quite easy to run around in vegas and mistakes a native indians to be a hawaiian local (especially if he's wearing a surf oriented t-shirts or shorts), try going to a POW-WOW and look.

- Hawaiians get noticed more at work places because your fellow employees usually CANNOT understand why a Hawaiian would move OUT of paradise into a desert!  (they never had to pay the price of living there)so, they tend to remember a hawaiian working with them more than a transplant from CA or UT..i bet if you were in hawaii working, and i say i was from Ohio, you'd remember me too!

If you find some REAL facts (like from some survey or something like that) to dispute all of the above, we loved to hear from you,  send us an email and we go chat! We just want the REAL truth. Like we said previously, we definately want more locals here and are always hoping for more. Maybe you can consider Vegas your home also!
 
 
 

Another Las Vegas Myth
this one is written by a weekly newspaper called Las Vegas City Life. His view is a bit sarcastic and not targeted toward just the Polynesian Crowd, but Vegas in General. It's tongue and cheek but quite funny.

Las Vegas AIN'T so big
By Geoff Schumacher, assistant editor         Las Vegas City Life - Oct. 26, 2000
 

Unless you're from some Gotham-like monstrosity like New York or Los Angeles, you probably think Las Vegas is a big place.

That would be wrong. In fact, despite its nation-leading growth over the past decade, Las Vegas is still fairly small potatoes, according to new Census Bureau statistics.

Among metropolitan areas in the United States, Las Vegas ranks 33rd with 1.38 million residents. Sure, that's a helluva lot more residents than the valley had in 1990, when a mere 853,000 folks called Las Vegas home. But it's still only about.. one-twentieth the size of New York, one-fifteenth the size of Los Angeles 
and one-eighth the size of Chicago.

Las Vegas also is quite a bit smaller than some metro areas that few people think about anymore, places like ...
St. Louis, 
Pittsburgh, 
Cincinnati 
and Milwaukee. 
Hell, even lowly Columbus, Ohio, has us beat by 100,000 people.

As for Las Vegas' 62 percent growth rate, keep in mind that, in actual numbers, Las Vegas growth hasn't been so incredible. The Census Bureau reports that Las Vegas added 528,000 people from 1990-99. Well..during the same period..Los Angeles, which grew only 10.4 percent, added 1.5 million people 
Atlanta, which grew 30.3 percent, added 898,000 people, and Dallas, which grew 21.6 percent, added 872,000.

So, the next time somebody starts yakking about how big Las Vegas is, arguing that we ought to have a major sports team or something, put things in perspective for them.

Oh, one other thing. It's always important to note that the Las Vegas metropolitan area and the city of Las Vegas are quite different things. For stupid reasons, historical, political and otherwise, the city of Las Vegas actually covers just a portion of the valley. As a result, city population rankings put Las Vegas a humbling 37th nationally with 419,000 people--well behind such illustrious burgs as Oklahoma City, Long Beach and Albuquerque.

Oh yeah, one last note: All this growth ain't all it's cracked up to be. Those fancy clothing stores and celebrity chef restaurants it's brought to town, well, you can't afford 'em anyway. 

see for yourself with loads of stat at the us census website
Hawaii    and      Nevada             Comparison

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