vegas

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Travel Las Vegas by Sten Grynir If Walt Disney had sat down to design Epcot while stoned on acid, he would have gotten Las Vegas. A place where everything is a simulacrum of something else, Las Vegas is, at heart, the silliest place on earth. It is place that has canals and gondoliers, dancing fountains and waterfalls in the middle of the desert. It is a place where the Eiffel Tower is just a few blocks from a giant black glass pyramid that shoot a brilliant beam of light from its apex into the night sky. It is a place where a volcano erupts in flames from a jungle cliff and fake lava flows down the mountain. It is great fun for a while. Everyone should go there once.

People sneer at the fakery that is Las Vegas, but fake is exactly the point. The gangsters that made a small desert city into an entertainment mecca knew exactly what people wanted: a chance to indulge a fantasy, whether that fantasy be sex, wealth, travel or sophistication. The fantasy of wealth is provided in two ways. The casinos float the fantasy of becoming rich. The glitzy hotels, free entertainment and cheap food and booze float the fantasy of already being rich. The fantasy of travel is provided by the hotel themes. Paris, New York, Italy (modern and Roman) are just a few steps from each other. Montgolfier's balloon and the Eiffel Tower frame a building, part Louvre, part Gare du Nord, which contains the essential parts of any Vegas operation – casino and restaurants. New York's Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Statue of Liberty, Grant's Tomb, Brooklyn Bridge and fireboats in the harbor are the exterior of a giant casino/restaurant/shopping mall laid out like lower East Side streets. Walk a bit and gondoliers (at exorbitant price) will transport you around Venice, singing gondolier-type ditties.

The main thing about Las Vegas is that there is no time, and there is no distinction between inside and outside. Most places are open 24 hours. The casinos are windowless and there are no clocks (except in the Sports Betting areas). The lighting never changes. Time is erased. Indoor restaurants have “outdoor” patios under a ceiling painted to represent the sky at night or day. When seating patrons, the Maitre d' will ask “Inside or outside?”, but outside is really inside too. Las Vegas is the ultimate virtual reality game.

There is no place on the Strip that does not provide an opportunity to gamble. The casinos, after all, are the profit engines of the city. One advertises loose slots, good service, which makes it sound more like a bordello. Another boasts that its machine have a 97% payoff ratio, which means, over the long run, if you give the casino a dollar, you'll go home with 97 cents. ATMs have a 100% payoff ratio, which makes them a better bet. If they put spinning things behind windows on the ATMs, the lines of players would go around the block.

The noise on the Strip is incredible. Between the jingles, jangles, beeps and bloops of the slots areas, the music blaring from loudspeakers indoors and out, the spiels of pitchmen and the announcements, you can't hear yourself think, which is the general idea. There are few straight-line paths, either. Walking down the street, intersections are blocked off by railings every few blocks, requiring you to turn the corner, go up an escalator, cross a bridge, go down an escalator and turn the corner again before you can continue on you your way down the block. Or, the sidewalk detours through a casino and continues when you come out the other side.

Critics rail at the greed of players sitting hour after hour at the slots or card tables or roulette wheel, but it's not greed, it is fantasy, a way of entering a grittier and somehow more satisfying Magic Kingdom than Walt Disney could ever provide.