Perhaps it's not surprising that what joins these two images is that they are both advertising. I sent Buffet photographer Sarah Gerke to the Strip on Saturday night to archive images for the blog of different resorts, recent construction projects, restaurants, nightclubs and whatever else caught her interest.

Here are the two photos.

This is an advertisement near the entrance for Cher's show (photo). One of the hardest things for us who cover Vegas entertainment is to get a good understanding of how a show is doing financially. There are simply too many variables, including costs of the shows and marketing expenses. But the hardest thing to gauge is ticket sales. There are gimmicks that keep some shows packed by carpeting complimentary tickets or by using free tickets as gifts for people who, for instance, sit through a timeshare presentation. And, variable pricing, promotions and packages mean you never really know how much the person next to you paid. Few shows ever have the luxury of filling the room at retail ticket prices.

Also, unlike Hollywood movies, shows never release their own numbers on sales. That leaves most official statements about sales to come from publicity, advertising or marketing departments. If you believe the claims made on behalf of Siegfried & Roy's legendary show, for example, every show at the Mirage was sold out between 1990 and 2003. But to understand how marketing folk treat numbers, consider one of the same duo's big advertisements at Mirage, "Magicians of the Century," in quotes because the title referred to an award. But when the century changed, the marketing did not. Siegfried & Roy remained magicians of the century.

Despite the difficulties, there are still a lot of ways for me to check on how any given show is doing. I can drive to the Strip and check what is available at the half-price ticket outlets. As a local, I get lots of e-mails offering me free tickets. And, of course, I have a few sources. So there are ways to figure out if a show is having problems filling seats as everyone knew about "Hairspray" during its short life at Luxor. But success is harder to measure.

This is a great way, though. Sarah Gerke caught this image of a crowd of about 20 tourists, she says, lined up to have their photo taken at Caesars with the advertisement for Cher's show.

The other image captures adult entertainment leading the way in marketing technology in Vegas.  The people standing on the Strip who hand out the smutty cards have now also been turned into human billboards by their bosses.

This is a person with a billboard strapped to his back. The smut card peddlers' behavior long ago hardened into a ritual established as the result of court battles between casino interests (who wanted to ban the billboard peddlers) and civil libertarians (who saw the 1st Amendment under assault). The smut card people make a slapping noise with their cards to get attention as pedestrians walk by. They then reach out with an individual card (with many of the same details as on the billboard) directly in front of you as you walk past. For a moment a collision looks imminent unless you take a card. But if you don't, then they expertly glide their hand back to prevent any physical contact with you. The workers generally line up along the edges of the Strip's sidewalk, so as a group they avoid jamming the entire passage. For a tourist walking the Strip this means experiencing repeated attempts to be handed cards--part of being a pedestrian on a public street. Las Vegas Boulevard: You learn quickly.

Honestly, I've had a conflicted view on this since living here. I used to just shrug and agree that having  smut card people was part of the cost of free speech  I guess I still do, but increasingly I have come to see them as a physical nuisance. In practice, many of the workers are aggressive: They have yelled at me for not taking a card and blocked my passage. They also do not seem to care if they are handing stuff  to a bachelor party or a family with children. But mostly the Strip is so overloaded with pedestrians that these people, when working,  make things harder for anyone just trying to walk down the Strip. I know this means I've lived in Vegas too long when I can share the view of casino owners that the Strip would be so much more pleasant without the smut card workers.

Then I remember that the rules don't stop there but apply to all. So a resort is just as happy to try to ban union protesters (see the Venetian) with the same legal justifications as getting rid of the people who hand out those cards. That, however, was before the sidewalks of the Strip were declared public, and not the private property of casino resorts.

So recently when the union workers shut down the construction at CityCenter over safety concerns and briefly picketed in front of the project on the Strip, no one disputed their legal right to be there. And, an agreement was quickly reached with the general contractor that sent the workers back to the property with their concerns addressed.

(Photos by Sarah Gerke)