Viva Las Vegas

For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth. 
~ Hunter S. Thompson

Las Vegas has all the amenities of modern society in an habitat unfit to grow a tomato.
~ Jason Love

After a couple of trips to Vegas, to be honest I’m no closer to knowing what I think of it, and more likely I’m further away from knowing than I was before I first went there.

Vegas is a charmless, heartless, grim city. Step away from the Strip and you have a mean, bleak town in the middle of the desert devoid of charm, personality or any reason to visit. It’s a soul-less, soul-sucking place, brimming with places offering constant reminders of the cost of gambling, once you peel the pretense of glamour and fun away – the 'real' Vegas is Pay Day loans, pawn shops, bail bonds, hookers and kitsch.

Vegas is a town constantly hovering somewhere between a party and a melee, far more likely to erupt into sudden, unprovoked, shocking violence than it is into a sudden good time. Vegas is less looking for fun than it is looking for a fight.

Vegas is excess, masquerading as success. It is fun, in a muddleheaded way - just don't look, or think about it, too deeply. The lights are brighter here than anywhere else, the gold more golden, the marble is more marbled, yet the effect is overkill; your senses are carpet bombed into submission. Vegas is saccharine instead of sugar – everything is even sweeter than the real thing, yet all that sweetness comes bundled with a bitter aftertaste no amount of marketing can hide.

Everyone’s a winner in Vegas, except for the losers, the down and outs, and those on the inexorable downward slide toward rock bottom. Those who have already hit the wall and have all but given up are found crouched on pedestrian over-passes holding up brown cardboard signs hoping for change, unable to even make eye contact. Those who are still desperately trying to crawl out of the quicksand sell cold bottled water to tourists, or stand on street corners wearing fluorescent orange shirts, flap-flap-flapping business cards flogging bordellos and strip clubs. Their shirts guarantee girls, delivered to your door, in 15 minutes or less. In Vegas, people are pizza.

Everyone’s your new best friend in Vegas, until you have nothing to offer, then they suddenly find a new best friend. Walk into a hotel and you’ll be swarmed with people wanting to know your life history, all about you, where you’re from, how long you’re in Vegas for…  whether you’d like a cheap show, a free show, any show at all. When you decline, the winning smile and attention fades instantly, their eyes alight on someone else, you’re history, gone, an opportunity no longer worth pursuing. Hang around in their line of sight any longer and you become a hindrance*.


Vegas is crass, masquerading as class. It’s the desperate attention-getter of high school, doing whatever it can to be noticed, yet for all its strenuous efforts it's quickly forgotten. It’s a city where the meek attempt reinvention into what they wish they'd become as adults: in Vegas, everyone’s just won at the tables, or is a suave, cocktail lounge type in a crushed velour jacket, or is a totally extreme party dude, or a princess on the town. Everyone’s a roaring success. Everyone’s a winner. Everyone has limitless quantities of cash. All possess superhuman endurance and livers immune to cirrhosis. If everyone in Vegas partied the way they’d like everyone back home to believe they’d partied, only cockroaches and Charlie Sheen would survive.

Like any party, it comes to an end. Eventually there’s always a tomorrow, even in Vegas. People still walk the Strip by daylight, of course, still clutching drinks. The content of the cup provides no indication to the time of day – 10:00am could see it full of coffee, or full of tequila. Yet like any other party coming to an end, even Vegas is eventually caught in the daylight on its way home, with its make-up in a mess and its dress torn. The harsh light of day does Vegas no favours. The gold seems less golden. The marble seems less marbled. Yet the bitter aftertaste remains.

Vegas has the ability to make conservatives out of liberals, and liberals out of conservatives. It makes people blind to the misfortune of others, yet acutely aware of their own misfortunes. In Vegas, anything goes, and nobody cares. No-one has any dark secrets, or regrets, or wishes they could undo the events of the previous evening, or apologise for being such an ass, or not even come to the damn town in the first place. Nobody gets hurt, and nobody has any bad dreams in Vegas. It’s just a pity that such things only happen in fairy tales.

*Big shout out to the wanker outside Excalibur – I’ll put your photo on my website shortly.