Las Vegas
This town had a lot of things going against it for me. To begin with, I don’t particularly like gambling. I never have enough money to do it properly and when I do gamble with a limited bankroll I usually do so poorly. Also at a time when the numbers of my bank account are only a fraction less important than the fitness of my car, needless to say, I didn’t have enough money (or wasn’t ready to risk enough money, it’s really all the same though) to sit at these tables properly.
Secondly, tourism rubs me the wrong way. The disingenuous nature of it, the “hey, hey look over here at all the neat things we have for you to do!” and fake smiles and feigned interest. Tourism, by and large, is greed coated in bullshit that’s sold with a big grin. This is a city built on tourism and greed. It is a city designed to dazzle and overwhelm and amaze. But for me, all the flashing lights did was bathe the gluttony of the city in a warm yellow glow.
Thirdly, I was alone.
But. I had to see it. Skipping it for any of those reasons never really registered with me. I had to see it. Had to see the spectacle. Had to see what everyone was so damned excited about. And so I did.
Initially I parked my car at the north end of the strip in front of a cheap casino/gift shop/restaurant/whatever. I had no intentions of paying to park my car and this particular parking lot was well lit and its location on the north end of Las Vegas Boulevard meant that I could walk down the strip, see the sights, gamble, lose, and walk back to my car all in one neat linear jaunt. I left my car in the row nearest to the entrance of the gift shop portion of the building and as I was locking the door I looked in. The woman working one of the registers was watching me, worse than that, it looked like she had been watching me for a while. Was I allowed to park in the lot if I wasn’t going to gamble/eat/shop/sacrifice a lamb (hey, why not?) here? I turned my key to the right, locking the doors, and tried to forget about it.
I couldn’t forget about it for long. The number of drunks and bums and drunk bums on the north end of the strip was a little unnerving. I thought about my car with its way-out-of-town plates and cooler visible in the backseat. I thought about my computer in the trunk. I thought about my not so cleverly hidden iPod and camera. I thought about a drunk or a bum or a drunk bum or the woman at the register who had been giving me stink eye getting a laugh at the expense of this foreigner, this tourist. Who the hell is from Ohio anyway? they would think. Why didn’t that son of bitch fly out like all the rest of these bloated tourists with their cameras hanging around their necks?
The greater the distance between myself and the car the more I worried. Maybe their alcoholic father was a Buckeye fan. Maybe the landlord who evicted them hung portraits of Warren G Harding in his office. Maybe the woman working the register was from Michigan. I had walked 10 blocks and was just getting to the edge of the major casinos when I turned around. I was going to find somewhere else to park my car with it’s out of town license plates and cooler to boot.
By the time I had walked from my new parking space (a dark, slightly populated so that my car wasn’t alone but not too well populated as to attract vandals and thieves lot behind a Denny’s) back to the main casinos I was starting to feel better. The bums had been replaced by balding white men who wore tennis shoes and socks up to their shins. There were women faulting their sunburned cleavage. There were people selling bottled water on the sides of street for reasonable prices. The world was back in order again. Hell, maybe I would even win some money I thought. Who knows, a couple of breaks this way or that, a bit of good luck with the roulette table and I might actually have a little extra cash to burn once I got to California. I would spend my evening at the Venetian Casino. I’ve been to Venice, hot shit I was even wearing a shirt I got when I was in Venice! Luck by lady tonight, right Mr. Sinatra?
No. No, of course not. I lost, gracefully and in very modest increments, and walked over the bridge. Below me were men wearing black and white striped shirts and broad hats, standing in their faux gondolas. The bastards probably couldn’t even find Venice on a map I thought to myself as I walked back north. I was out of cash, my feet hurt and I was tired from a day of driving, Hoover damming, and fretting over the prospect of hoodlums. My car was still in the lot behind Denny’s, mercifully unmolested, and I got behind the wheel to look for a quiet place off the strip where I could sleep in my car.
My first choice was a semi-lit one way street that had lower-income apartments on both sides of it but the yelling and crying of babies drove me from there promptly. Next I pulled into a neighborhood, one with not too shabby homes and an occasional Beamer in the driveway. I parked next to house with a truck in front of it, leaned my seat back and closed my eyes. Not five minutes after I had settled in did the ignition turn in the truck. The engine roared as the truck pulled out of the driveway only to return in a matter of minutes. Voices from the truck called into house, voices from the house called back to the truck. It was 1 AM on a Sunday, but Las Vegas wouldn’t let me sleep.
Tired and cranky I started my car and made for I-15 towards Los Angeles. I was broke, I was tired, and I needed to get somewhere that made sense. Nick Cage may have left Las Vegas, but Joel Bahr got the fuck out.
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