LAS VEGAS — Leigh Sogoloff, who spends her evenings lap-dancing at Rick's Cabaret Vegas on Procyon Street, says she's making half her income of a year ago.

"You don't shop, you don't buy stuff you can't afford," the 36-year-old said between dances at the Las Vegas club. She has postponed buying a house and is reading the writings of spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra. "I know how to save money. I'm not a dumb stripper."

The city that sold Americans on the dream they could lay down a small wager and walk away millionaires is reeling from speculation in the housing market that helped bring down Wall Street. The quick profits that so easily spread from Nevada to Florida, just as casino gambling migrated to 37 states, are now proving what happens in Vegas rarely stays in Vegas.

A DIFFICULT TIME

Las Vegas leads the nation in falling home prices, foreclosures and stalled construction projects. The "main nerve" of the American dream runs through this desert metropolis, Hunter S. Thompson concluded in his 1971 book, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

More than $10 billion of hotel and casino projects with 10,000 rooms have been delayed on Las Vegas Boulevard, better known the world over as the Strip, according to locally based real estate and economic consulting firm Applied Analysis LLC.

Gaming revenue for casinos on the Strip fell 7.4 percent in August from the same month a year earlier, the eighth straight monthly decline, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board in Carson City. It's the longest down streak since records began in 1983.

"The only comparable period was around 9/11, when we were down for five straight months," said Frank Streshley, senior analyst at the board. "This is a very difficult time for the gaming industry."

All this in a state that led the U.S. housing boom with an estimated 275,000 new homes built from 2000 to 2007, a 33 percent increase that was the highest of any state, according to the Census Bureau. Now, many of those homes are empty and worth less than when they were built.

FINANCIAL CRISIS

The bust that started almost three years ago has brought down New York-based securities firm Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., led to the forced sales of investment banks Bear Stearns Cos. and Merrill Lynch & Co., and erased more than 137,000 jobs in financial services worldwide.

Las Vegas had the biggest home-price decline in the country in July, and Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate in August. One in 91 homes in Nevada were in some stage of default, compared with one in 416 for the U.S. overall. California had the second-highest rate and the most foreclosure filings, and Florida had the second-most filings.

The signs of decline are right on the Strip, where halted construction of Boyd Gaming Corp.'s $4.75 billion Echelon casino and resort may be the most obvious symbol for the city's economic slowdown.

At Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport, the total number of arriving and departing passengers in August dropped 9.9 percent from a year earlier, when a record 4.3 million passengers went through the airport.

"We are uniquely positioned to be penalized by the global slowdown, because we're hugely dependent on the consumer getting in a car or plane to get away from their lives," said Jeremy Aguero, co-owner of Applied Analysis.

DIMI'S STORY

The unemployment rate for the Las Vegas metropolitan area rose to 7.1 percent in August, a 2.1 percentage point increase from a year earlier. And those numbers don't even tell the story of people such as Dimi Doronis, a banquet server for Aramark Corp.

Doronis worked just four days in July, six in August and 10 last month catering at conventions, down from about 25 days per month a year ago. She doesn't get paid when she's not given a catering assignment, and the Bulgarian native spends her days reading books about Eastern European politics.

"I've been 18 years in this town, and I've never seen what's gone on like it has this last month," the 44-year-old Doronis said. "I don't know how I'm still alive. I'm digging into my savings right now, but soon it's going to be done."

SILVER LINING AHEAD

A relative bright spot on the Strip may be CityCenter, an $11.2 billion joint venture between MGM Mirage, the world's second largest casino operator, and Dubai World, a holding company for the government of Dubai. About 60 percent of the development's 2,647 luxury condominium and hotel-condo units are under contract, with $350 million in nonrefundable deposits.

"Our product is different and we're selling real estate for future delivery," said Tony Dennis, executive vice president.

Since Mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel popularized Las Vegas in 1946 with the opening of a hotel named The Flamingo, the city has become the destination of millions.

They come for the shows, the gambling tables or just to sit bleary-eyed in front of the slot machines, pumping in coin after coin, "still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino," as Thompson wrote in "Fear and Loathing."

Some also come for entertainment that justifies the Vegas slogan, "What happens here, stays here."

Rick's Cabaret Vegas was known as Scores Las Vegas until Houston-based Rick's Cabaret International Inc. bought the club last month.

Sogoloff, the stripper there, said she moved to Las Vegas in 1999 because "I knew it was good out here."

Now she's watching her money. "That's why I don't own a home right now."