Vegas, Baby.
Musing over Sin City.
This is the only time I visit Las Vegas by car: the pivotal summer between high school graduation and freshman year of college. We drove in on the two-lane highway that connects Los Angeles to Las Vegas — I didn’t know the route number then, now I know it is I-15, that godforsaken stretch of highway that became my first image of the American West. The pavement churns beneath us, a liquid mirage flowing ever forward. Tractor trailers pass due West and the compact rental shutters in momentary spurts. Mountains push and pull against the horizon, dotted with brush and foreign plants. Everything all around looked hot and bright, amplified. Exaggerated.
Which is exactly the impression I would get, in a few hours’ time, of the famed city of Las Vegas – a grouping of oddly shaped buildings unfurling out of a barren landscape, growing closer. A neon peacock glowing against the setting sun. The sky pink and orange and a gradient of blue. A streak of wispy, misplaced clouds floating overhead, clearing, making way for the shimmering wonder of excess. The sight of it, the sheer beauty of engineered lights as they challenged the sun, is a kind of hubris I will never forget.
***
Journal entry, dated 09/15/21:
Wednesday. Very early morning. Las Vegas.
From inside this hotel room, with the [sun] screen down, the outside could be Tokyo or some major city in Singapore. I am on the 21st floor, which gives me a mid-line view of the towering buildings around me. From where I am on the bed, I cannot even make out the tops of the buildings. All I see are lit windows, tiny, neatly organized squares. Some are colored (there is an advertisement for something moving beyond the screen, I can make out the color and the movement, but not what I am being sold), but most are neutral white or beige.
Vegas is such a raw city. When I am here, I feel that I am closest to understanding what cities are – made up places. The caricature of this place allows me to consider the realness of other places – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin. No city feels the same as another. And no city reminds me just as much as Las Vegas that all these places are manmade shrines to existence.
***
I have resisted having a crush on Las Vegas for a long time for reasons that are wholly legitimate: Vegas is a tourist trap of poor behavior, which is less than appealing when you are there in a professional capacity, as professional as ‘live event industry gig’ can possibly be. The crowds, a methodical lack of windows, the price of food, the weaponization of music playing 24/7 in elevators and lobbies and from speakers hidden behind plants, the overt over-sexualization of all things — these are the aspects of being in Las Vegas I could do without. It is a place where people are encouraged to be some other version of themselves, where there are supposedly no consequences for actions because of the promise that what happens here, stays here. Even the skyline is in on it, with casinos – New York-New York, Paris Las Vegas, The Venetian – parading as caricatures of their namesakes. The mental games being played in Vegas are strung out in plain view up and down Las Vegas Blvd. The vibe is one big party where everyone is invited to play the part of their alter ego.
Yet, despite all the ugly complication, it is a fascinating place with a fascinating history. The story of Las Vegas is the story of the American ethos, of promise and perseverance, of good natural resources and the influx of settlers that would follow. Between the railroad and a now-famous dam, Las Vegas became home-away-from-home for an entire sector of laborers in the early 1900s as they quite literally built the West. Not to mention legalized gambling, organized crime, prostitution – in Las Vegas, there was no shortage of industry.
My relationship to this place falls weirdly in line with this founding history – I, too, have only ever known Vegas as a work destination that holds some undefined possibility of progress. My first freelance job out of college was here — a broadcast show out of the Grand Garden Arena — where I was awake for over 24hrs between the show, the load out, and the airport shuttle. Brutal, yes, but so was building the Union Pacific Railroad. So is any job where you're unsure of what you're doing, or if you'll fit in, or if you'll be any good. And then to do it all so far from home?
But as it goes, for a 22-year-old, it was the best gig ever: I had been the given a chance. And by some measure, it worked out – I have been back in Las Vegas working nearly every year since. Roll of the dice. Luck of the draw.
***
This is the only time I travel away from Las Vegas by car: after the load out, overnight, in a 12-passenger van headed to Los Angeles, so we make the load in at the Forum the next day. There are only 4 of us traveling West, so in theory the 12-passenger provides enough room for each of us to stretch out and sleep, which is only practical in theory. I am the youngest on the crew, so I am stuck with the back row because "young guys in the back." Again, this is fine, in theory, but the reality is there is no such thing as sleep in the back row of a 12-passenger van at 2am, with your backpack as your pillow.
The desert sky is piercingly clear, and there are stars, millions and millions of stars. The mountains are cloaked in shadow, their mass hidden in darkness, a haunting presence. I am listening to the new Death Cab for Cutie album, from top to bottom, as is the custom for those born in the 90s. And although Asphalt Meadows was released a week ago, the ride feels more like Transatlanticism days, where instead of this crew van, I am in my parent's minivan on some road trip consumed by Ben Gibbard's voice, wondering about the 405. Wondering where on Earth there is a highway called the 405.
Somewhere in the distance, in the early morning light, Los Angeles appears, and I consider how strange it is to be here. Right now, in this van.
***
Journal entry, dated 09/21/22:
Again in Vegas, on the 9th floor of the Park MGM, where I am compelled to write because the view of the sunrise and far away mountains with great, fluorescent structures in the foreground is one of the most stark representations of human and natural conflict I have ever witnessed.
When I lay on the bed at night, the incessant flashing of the New York-New York casino hits me at eye level. I consider the irony of having just landed from JFK, to then end my day being annoyed by a replica sign that, to my knowledge, does not actually exist in the city of New York. Albeit the sign is here to evoke the "feeling of New York," a longing for a place you may or may not have been. This is the feeling of Las Vegas – a place of multiple identities, replicas of actual identities, a mirage.
I understand the appeal. The desert is, after all, a magical place. I feel that magic every early morning when I am still on East Coast time. This transition, which only takes a day or two, is my favorite part of Las Vegas because it turns me into someone I am not – someone who wakes at 4:30am and immediately starts writing. By 7am in New York, I am late. In Vegas, I am early. Or, I have never gone to bed.
***
I write this as I wipe Las Vegas dust from the wheels of my Pelican; it rained on the final day, and the walk back to the hotel was gritty and wet. Caked into nooks and crannies are the remanence of yet another trip, every memory a grain of desert sand – an early morning run along The Strip, a last call round at the whiskey bar in the MGM, a hike at Red Rock Canyon on a dark day, the lizard statue in LAS – gathering at the bottom of an hour glass.
Back in New York, I consider that I have been changed by Las Vegas, or perhaps, I become most aware of my own change every time I am there, every time I return. I consider that I am beholden to Vegas’ most famous export – the feeling of luck.
— caro.
Listening to:
The song from my memory, which turns out is not, in fact, on Transatlanticism. Memories – pesky and inaccurate!
Also, another banger from the early 2000s, inspired by the article I link to below:
Reading:
If you only read one thing, please treat yourself with this one: A Place in the Sun by Jennifer Haigh. It’s a short story I re-read at least once a year. Spoiler: it takes place in Las Vegas.
Otherwise, I caught up on a long list of reading, including this excellent piece on "vibes" and the implication of AI, the Daniel Nigro NYT feature, remembering (and kind of missing?) my short few years spent commuting on Metro-North, an article about work (Hi Jeremy!), and a brilliant Dirt piece on what going out in NY feels like after turning 30.
In terms of books, I just finished Brian Dillion's Essayism (an Alicia Kennedy rec from a long time ago), and The Pole, which was a random buy from McNally Jackson at Rockefeller Center. A short, lingering, entertaining read.
You can find a Bookshop.org list of recommended books from my posts here.
Happy weekend everyone!