Pology Magazine  -  Adventures in Travel and World Culture.
Travel and World Culture   
Las Vegas
 Photo: Adam Booth
Las Vegas
 Photo: Csaba Fikker

Las Vegas: Resolving To Get Away
By Ben Bostick

On December 29th, two nights before the biggest (and last) night of the year in Las Vegas, there are tens of thousands of cars driving into the city, full of people anxiously anticipating an end to the blood-boiling traffic, eager after hundreds or thousands of miles to get out of the car, into the hotel room and out on the streets. 

Going the other way is the wiser crowd, knowingly evacuating the area that will in about 48 hours be the scene of some of the most terrible disorder ever considered fun by the masses and legal by the government.

Long before you cross the city line, the sublimely manic abundance that characterizes Las Vegas begins to take shape. 

Vegas is splayed out and lit up, and sears itself directly onto my cerebral cortex like a neon branding iron; it dazzles if only for the sheer volume of bulbs, neon and LCD. The contrast is bizarre, a giant throbbing pulse of lights and then—nothing on every side—just a few lonesome strands of headlights and taillights extending far beyond the horizon in both directions.

I look ahead transfixed, vision blurring as my mind tries to understand the myriad lights, too many to count and too close together to distinguish one from another; and then suddenly—I am among them.  They are everywhere. 

We exit onto Flamingo Road and ride it south toward the Strip.  I think I am ready for anything; but once I start closing in on the strip and see that unholy filament flashing and filling the ether, all my preconceptions about this city gather together in a little lump in my throat, making it harder and harder to breathe. 

To survive on the strip, it is necessary to take on a new mindset.  I must train my brain to ignore as much of the surrounding environment as possible: the Jumbotrons, fountains the size of the Great Lakes, pyramids next door to the Empire State Building next door to a pirate’s cove and lights, lights, lights! 

All you can do when faced with this kind of sublime silliness is laugh uncontrollably until you start to doubt your own sanity and the direction of the human race.  A 200 feet tall television likeness of Celine Dion is enough to send almost any man or woman into hysterical convulsions of laughter and/or suicidal depression. 

I can see the colossal pink clown that marks our residence for the next three nights: the Circus Circus.  I steer the car left onto Circus Circus Road and pull into one of the enormous parking structures.  We unload our luggage and meet up with everyone on the promenade level of the hotel. 

The girls are tired, so Andrew, James, and I take the elevator down to the promenade and shuffle through the clown-motif maze of children, shops, and an amusement park rides. The bell clang of thousands of slot machines becomes louder until around the corner and up a small flight of stairs we find ourselves in the middle of a slightly organized train wreck of one-armed bandits, just waiting for us to shake their hands. 

People of all ages, shapes, and sizes are feeding their meager paychecks into these unforgiving clanking machines in every way possible: coins, dollar bills and some terrifying piece of plastic resembling a credit card with a string on one end attached to the sucker’s belt.  The wonders of modern technology.

We had never been to Las Vegas before, but we had all heard rumors of the complimentary drink policy.  If you are spending money in the casino, the policy goes, you drink for free. 

Of course the goal is to get you drunk so your wallet loosens up a little.  You move from the five-dollar table to the twenty-dollar table where you keep drinking and feeling more confident.  Inevitably you bet every dollar you have on one big hand and—just like that you're broke; and you need a drink, which now you have to pay for.

We decide to try to get "comped” next door at the Frontier; but being young and financially fragile, none of us are even willing to play the five-dollar tables.

We hang around the quarter slots trying to catch the eye of the cocktail waitress
who has passed us some two dozen since we first arrived twenty minutes ago.  Sometimes she smiles, but not once does she come over to ask us what we want to drink.  I can’t say that I blame her.

 

Page 1 of 2   Next Page

 

All contents copyright ©2006 Pology Magazine. Unauthorized use of any content is strictly prohibited.