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Viva Las Vegas

Flying into Las Vegas is like witnessing a mirage; it suddenly appears on the horizon in the midst of the baking rock surface of the Mojave Desert, a four mile stretch of flickering neon in an otherwise barren surrounding. The view of the city is captivating as the plane makes its final descent, and as a first time visitor the experience is almost unreal. Las Vegas Boulevard, or ‘the strip’ as it is more commonly known, is dominated by huge towering hotels that resemble rides in a giant theme park, each one glowing with excitement and opportunity. From the golden shimmering towers of Mandalay Bay and the glossy pyramid of the Luxor at the southern end, to the lofty Stratosphere Tower at the northern end, the strip is an electric light orchestra that never stops playing.

Las Vegas possesses a unique style and intensity which can only be described as excessively excessive. On one occasion I found myself sitting beneath an oversize Harley Davidson replica eating a Philly cheesesteak, starring at the Statue of Liberty ahead and the Eiffel Tower to my right, enjoying 1980’s rock music in the blazing October sunshine and being served endless buckets of Pepsi by a buxom beauty. It is difficult to know where to look in Las Vegas at times, every blink constitutes a wasted opportunity to absorb something new. The city is a 24-hour construction site, and even in the space of a few days it was possible to witness significant progress in much of the development work. In spite of the extraordinary height of the major hotels, the strip is a very light and airy place to be due to its width.

The city is a cultural pastiche in every sense, combining elements of art, entertainment, food and drink, music and retail from every corner of the globe, resulting in one big show that is constantly evolving to keep the visitors coming. It mixes architectural styles from each great era of mankind into a single street, and yet somehow it makes sense; nothing can look out of place when everything is out of place. Las Vegas receives an estimated 39 million visitors per annum, making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in the USA.

The competition between the major hotels to be the biggest and best verges on childish, with little or no justifiable reason for the sheer size and excess of their features, other than as a display of wealth and success. A live volcano competes with water fountains dancing to Elvis records, a genuine outdoor gondola ride, and two full-size floating pirate ships in just one particular section of the strip. This quest for magnificence is akin to a grandiose pissing contest; the Nevada rock-face is merely the bike-shed wall at school, and the hotels are mischievous young boys in short trousers taking it in turns to urinate higher than one another.

There seems to be an established hierarchy in Las Vegas whereby jobs are assigned according to physical appearance, specifically when it comes to women. The best looking girls work in the most expensive casinos, after which there is a sliding scale of attractiveness down to the lowliest gambling bars, which employ the overweight lesser-toothed specimens. This segmentation is not unique to Las Vegas, but it is remarkable in that you never see any variation from it. Presumably, in order to apply for a job you simply send a photo and few vital statistics to the local job centre, which will then place you in the appropriate role.

This was my first encounter with Americans, and whilst I found them polite and courteous for the most part, they seem to lack the capability for independent thought. They excel at basic customer service, but should you ask them a question which they haven’t been trained to answer, their eyes begin to swirl with confusion, and you can hear their brain desperately searching for a vague pleasantry to pacify you with. We managed to chart a taxi driven by a man who had never heard of Dean Martin, and on one occasion went to a Chinese restaurant recommended by a hotel door-man which was nothing short of awful. For a town which is built on tourism, many staff are surprisingly poorly informed when it comes to giving advice. In fact one would do well to simply do the opposite of whatever they suggest.

Las Vegas is not to everyone’s tastes, it is definitely a love-it or hate-it place. Many find it vulgar and crude, its cultural excess constituting too much salt on their proverbial chips, but then criticism is a hallmark of anything truly successful. It is not possible to sit on the fence on the subject of Las Vegas, because the fence is made of bright neon tubing and has a semi-naked cow-girl dancing on top of it, and each hour she squirts champagne from her cleavage into the open mouths of the gaping crowd. You either lap it up vociferously, or you spit it back in disgust. The city is a testament to everything the Americans do best, namely spectacle, grandeur, and show-business. No other country could feasibly carry it off, and certainly not with such panache. It is not an addiction to gambling that visitors to Las Vegas need worry about developing, but rather an addiction to the place itself, for it truly is the entertainment capital of the world.

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