sin city (the forgotten post)

‘Should I go to heaven, give me…a vaulting red walled casino with bright lights, bring on horned devils as dealers. Let there be a Pit Boss in the Sky who will give me unlimited credit…[and] decree that the Players have for all eternity, an Edge against The House…’

-Mario Puzo, Inside Las Vegas

Flying in to Vegas is like travelling through a martian landscape. Endless dusty brown plains extend across to the horizon and one can imagine baking heat and gritty wind turning one’s mouth crunchy and eyes watery. There are small gatherings of houses clumped in the middle of nowhere, with only dirt roads ribboning their way through the landscape; then Vegas appears. From 30,000 feet it looks initially like someone has trampled heavily on a bottle in the dirt – small glints on the horizon are reflected from numerous windows. Slowly street grids appear then houses and the obligatory olive green golf fairways. Little verdant patches on an otherwise horribly bleak plain. The Stratosphere Tower is the first recognisable building from a distance, then the rest of the strip slowly edges into view. Landing at McCarran Airport, the strip looks almost ridiculously tiny. All the hotels one has seen in the movies or on TV shows are there, but seem childlike. It is only when you catch the taxi into town proper, that you realise that the hotels themselves are enormous – stupidly large.

I met UKdoc in the lobby of Circus Circus when I arrived. Certainly not the most luxurious of locales, but certainly a good starting place for the carnage that was to follow on the obligatory lads week! Sadly I had missed the first few days due to rostering at St Elsehwere’s, but even after an 11 hour trip was very keen to get involved. It turned out that UKdoc had already lost a fair amount trying to recreate Bond’s efforts in Casino Royale, but was still keen to spend up, with the UK pound comparing more than favourably with the US dollar.

At street level, the glitz of vegas turns a little more ‘real’. Every 20m or so, a bunch of Mexicans will slap cards together or click their fingers to get your attention, at which point they thrust cards into your hands. Each has a different advertisement for an escort. Of course, prostitution is illegal in Nevada, so these ladies are ‘escorts’! It seems strange in a town built on its Sin City reputation, that has pornographic magazine dispensers on the street and which in every casino (no matter how reputable) has some form of burlesque show, that prostitution is still somewhat hidden and a thin veneer of family values remains. Really there’s no hiding it, Vegas is built on money and sex and generally one leads to the other…so I hear…

When travelling with a group of lads, it seems that days in Vegas are spent sleeping, with the ‘real’ action starting as the sun goes down and the neon cranks up. For several days we basically drank and gambled, with a brief stop to the Native American side of the Grand Canyon (such culture buffs). We wandered from bar to bar revelling in the freedom that public drinking can provide, disoriented by the endless avenues of slot machines and felt clad tables; unnerved by the throngs pushing us this way and that. Going with the flow led us in endless complicated circles, briefly punctuated by free drinks served by scantily clad cocktail waitresses. Everywhere indoors looked eerily the same, yet disconcertingly different. It was an LSD trip without the drug. It took me days to realise that Vegas itself was the drug, delivered by glitzy mountainous casinos, intoxicating and euphoric.

Every night, after a long and somewhat annoying and noisy foray through several different parts of the casino, finally finding the hidden entrance to the accommodation, I’d retire to my enormous bed. When I shut my eyes there was dancing neon, my ears clamoured from the techno beeping of the casino floor and my fingers twitched, forever tapping the felt for that extra lucky hit.

~ by Dr Ben on May 24, 2007.