Steve Bornfeld's essay on walking in Las Vegas (December 18) elicited this response:
I just read your image-packed article describing a seemingly spectacular walk down Durango as I rode the bus home and walked the last couple of blocks in the area that strikes you as somewhat ironic, The Lakes. I couldn't let the feeling go that this was almost identical to the poetically inspiring surroundings I took in earlier this fall as I walked from around Durango and Russell north to Fort Apache and Sahara. The expectedly torturous and exhausting 8-mile walk turned out to be a walk of reflection, realization of our anti-pedestrian community and some kind of higher state of mind. This was probably my climax as of yet of walking the streets of unwalkerfriendly Las Vegas, in an ever-growing enjoyment of using my feet to commute in the face of awed/horrified drivers.
There seems to be a war between the autoworld and the footworld, though sometimes these worlds must collide, and each usually becomes a traveller in one world at one point or another. After my appreciative walking experiences and your inspirational article, apparently also inspired by the Rebecca Solnit poetry in addition to your own experience, being a film student at CCSN, I feel inspired to make a short movie on walking.
Since many walking experiences occassionally have the awkward or unbelievable encounter or sighting, I believe something interesting and visually involving can be made to show how underappreciated and undernoticed walking is. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know your article speaks for the walking masses (or minority) and the subject is justified to be exposed and glorified in new lights. Vegas right now seems to be the epitome of Western automobile civilization and possibly where the world is headed, a very unpedestrian downfall for us all.
Jason Nellis
This Week's Best Letter on the Theme, Why I HATE This Stinking Place!
I can't believe what I see. Of course, I understand this IS Las Vegas, but I've finally cracked and HAD to write this down in order to vent off some of the excess pressure.
Water shortages ... can't wash your car or water the lawn of your overpriced home, but, by God, them fire boat props at NY-NY will keep spewing water in the name of tourism ...
And every time I open the newest isue of the Weekly, I am blinded by slick ads for trendy night spots, whos ad graphics make it almost a sure thing that any moron willing to pay the ridiculous admission price can get laid by one of the many hotties that fill the place ... they all look just like the twiggy girls in the ads, right??? They are all dressed in little more than their underwear, right???
And the music ... WOW!!!!!!!!! (it's a joke, people ...).
I come from a city ... a REAL city, where DJs are second-class citizens to REAL musicians, playing LIVE music and real instruments, at clubs where the cover is maybe five bucks. I can't believe the celebrity afforded these record-spinning self-proclaimed gods (notice "gods" is NOT capitalized, as only one is truly worthy of the respect). I've come to truly understand that there simply is nothing of substance in Las Vegas at all. Take away the booze, gambling, and overweight, meth-addict hookers, and there is nothing left, save a corrupt legal system. Nothing grows here, nothing of any real value is made here. All Las Vegas exports is out-of-work strippers, mainly because there are over 30,000 of them in a small city where a few hundred of these washed-up, over-the-hill showgirls would be more than enough.
Everything here is fake.
For now, I'm stuck here due to a lapse in good judgment a year or so ago, but Las Vegas has managed to make me appreciate ... ANYWHERE else ... and I'm anxious to go as soon as possible.
P.S. A letter I wrote about the Mormon Missionaries article you ran last year was completely ignored by its author, Kate Silver. She didn't even have the balls to acknowledge it. Apparently, the journalism community here is as phony as everything else I've seen in Vegas.
M. Edward Tate
Editor's note:
Let's see if we can follow your reasoning here. 1. Las Vegas is evil because casinos run fountains in a blatant attempt to attract business while not allowing you to wash your car. 2. People who can afford high club admission prices are evil because they can afford high club admission prices. 3. Ads should reflect actual life. 4. A city is only as real as its musicians. 5. You want to leave. 6. Reporters are somehow obligated to personally respond to every piece of mail sent to them. To which we must add a question: When's the last time you saw an overweight meth addict?
Mr. Tate, you seemed doomed to a life of deep disappointment. You have our complete support in your efforts to leave Las Vegas.
No New Zoos!
I must express my disdain at the proposed shortsighted idea by the city council of establishing a zoo where we now have a gun club plus a relaxing, natural desert environment that beckons families who enjoy fishing, picnicking, hiking, bird watching and a bit of natural Nevada for an afternoon's enjoyment. Floyd Lamb Park is this location. We ride our horses there, hike, have dog shows, plus we spend hours watching herons, peacocks and other birds. The serenity is overwhelming.
We have an existing zoo in this town that is never busy and probably is not doing very well. Why? Because the interest may not be there. Is a study being done to determine the popularity of a local zoo? People can bring their kids to the Strip to see tigers, sharks and whatever. The finest are found there. No one comes to Las Vegas to go to a zoo. Local residents are not running to the existing zoo. It simply doesn't work. Not in the framework of allotting untold amounts of money for this project when we have existing need in this town of such money. Like schools, homeless, public transportation, more cops, etc.
Let me quote an article from the Associated Press:
RENO—The Sierra Safari Zoo is rapidly running out of money and may be forced to sell animals if additional funds to feed them aren't raised this month, the Reno facility's's co-founder said.
"It's a crisis every year" said Dale McDaniel, who helped start the zoo in 1989 and is on its board of directors.
Despite the constant money trouble, the zoo never has been forced to sell animals.
But now the zoo, with a monthly budget of about $10,000, has enough cash to feed its population of about 200 animals for only about a week, McDaniel said.
Reading that article I began to think about Floyd Lamb State Park. You know, if it's a zoo, it's going to smell. What about all of the housing being built adjacent to the park? What about the effect on adjacent Mountain Spa? How will the golfers feel about it who use Silverstone Golf Club? We need to think this through more carefully.
What are the results to the animals if the park is not a success?
Micki Jay
Tissue of Lies
Army Specialist Lori Piestewa, a Hopi woman killed while driving a Humvee carrying Jessica Lynch, was a single mother who left behind two orphans—Brandon, age 5, and Carla, age 3. According to Lori's mother, Priscilla, Carla "saw her mom's picture on the computer one day and she said, 'Grandma, my mom has been in heaven too long, it's time for her to come home.'"
The neglected final verse of our National Anthem refers to the duty of "free men [to] stand between their loved homes and the war's desolation ..." We are now a nation that allows male cheerleaders in high political office to send women—mothers like Lori Piestewa and fragile little girls like Jessica Lynch—to fight the foreign battles of an entrenched Power Elite.
Our men and women in Iraq are not killing and dying on behalf of our nation. As George Bush has explicitly said on scores of occasions, the war on Iraq is intended to validate the UN's authority and prestige by enforcing its disarmament decrees.
With Americans being killed and maimed in Iraq, and the advertised rationale for war exposed as a tissue of lies, King George and his retainers have a lot to answer for.
Frank M. Pelteson