What is Vegas … baby?
A year after moving here from the East Coast, I’m still getting my Vegas bearings. It takes time. You know it. Unless you were born here -- and I rarely meet anyone who was. But maybe I move in the wrong circles. Which I do tend to do. But at my personal one-year mark, it's time to take stock and nail this city down.
You come from outside the piranafishbowl and Vegas is the almighty Strip. It’s neon. It’s smiling blackjack players and showgirls on travel brochures. That’s what you expect. And desert. Just the Strip surrounded by desert where Joe Pesci buries bodies. That’s it. Except you gotta have the hole dug first or else you’re there too long and somebody else comes along and before you know it you gotta dig a couple more holes. Or somethin like that.
Where was I? Vegas. What about Downtown? I think Downtown’s great. It was the embryo. The miners and soldiers and ladies of the night and day had digs there long before the Strip existed. Then the mob came and started throwing up the early Strip casinos and getting everybody to toe the line or else…no toes. So, y’know. That’s your abbreviated history lesson. Pretty sure I got it right. But it seems like not many people here know that much about Vegas history. Downtown? Fremont Street Experience and dirt cheap trinket shops. That’s what a lot of people know. But maybe that’s Vegas.
Sociological anomalies. How come you never hear of a serious crime on the Strip unless it’s a famous rapper being gunned down outside a heavyweight title fight? How come there are more cameras in the main room of any casino watching for cheats but the dumbest burglar on the planet can get into a gated community and gut a dozen condos in a night?
Superficiality. Billboards for boob jobs. Teeth veneers. Collagen injections. Hair extensions. Hair transplants. Laser hair removal. Please stop me, you know this list goes on and on.
Excess. Limos with spas. Bust-the-bank bottle service. VIP this, VIP that. $60 burgers. Remember that old expression: “You have to know the meaning of a dollar”? No?
Propaganda. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” “Vegas baby!” “Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas.” How about: “If you take any of this shit seriously, you’re missing the bloody point!”?
But then there’s the neighborhoods, the charities, crime and poverty, schools and sports. The aspects of Vegas that outsiders don’t know or think about. Real locals seem to be pissed about this cultural oversight. I tend to think they should be.
Someone I know told me Vegas is the devil, sapping all the good out of people. This, in part, is how I responded: "I've never met so many liars, backstabbers, sleazy guys (no, not me!), whorish chicks, dream merchants, exploiters and egomaniacs anywhere." But I was pissed off when I wrote that email because someone had just polished off the last of the donuts in the lunchroom.
Sooooo…. What is Vegas? For me, after 12 months, I still can't get beyond the obvious. The things that flicker across the synapses and burn into the brain. It’s Disneyland on steroids. A sassy, sexy freakshow with an Elvis on every corner. It’s decomposition and rejuvenation filmed by a time lapse camera on crack. And maybe that's as it should be. Just don’t say you weren’t warned.
Adrian Zupp is the Web Content Editor of LasVegasWeekly.com. Email him at [email protected]