Live nude girls. Twenty-four hour pawn shops. Wedding chapels. Hourly hotel rates. Empty lots. Barbed wire. Burned-out apartment shells. There may be no better word for Las Vegas Boulevard, between Sahara and Washington, than scenic. And the city council voted at last week's meeting to embrace that scenery, declaring it a scenic byway, and seeking a federal designation and funding.
So it may lack the mountains, wilderness and natural waterways generally associated with scenic byways. But there are mounds of flesh, opportunities to see man at his beastliest and, well, Oscar's (currently dry) River's not too far away. Sure, it's a far cry from the California's Big Sur Highway. But so what? Consider it the id of Las Vegas, where residents and tourists root around for Downtown truffles, like cash, food, sex, booze, drugs and marriage. It's scenic, historic, cultural and honest about the grit that still clings to Las Vegas.