Pretty Vegas

I first visited Las Vegas in March of 1999.  My mother was house sitting for a wealthy friend of hers on the north side in a neighborhood of mansions with 5-car garages, broad, freshly paved streets, and immaculate shopping centers.  I drove around with her looking at condos in retirement villages and we saw some nice ones with pools, gardens, and views, where seniors putted around happily in golf carts.  They were bargains by California standards, and Vegas seemed like a sun-drenched, antiseptic town, built just for retirees. 

One day I went down to The Strip to see what it was like.  Mandalay Bay had just opened and was all glittery and fresh.  I explored it, even played a few slots, but found them more boring than solitaire, and losing money didn’t make them any more interesting.  The other people playing all looked like they’d wandered in from a trailer park or a truck stop and had a vacant look in their eyes.  I walked down to Bellagio, watched the fountain a little bit, and went in there as well as Caesar’s.  The Strip struck me as an exercise in bad taste with an unlimited budget, a place of non-stop sensory overload, a flashy racket, tacky, tawdry, trashy, sleazy, and skanky (especially in the daylight).  It was the polar opposite of my mother’s neighborhood, but I didn’t much like either of them.

Despite shopping, my mother never got a pied-a-terre in Vegas but Frieda was curious about the place so in June of 2004 we stopped there on the way back to California from visiting my mother in the Midwest.  We stayed at the Luxor because she liked the faux-Egyptian décor.   Neither of us found gambling entertaining, so we just wandered around looking.  Kind of on an impulse we got married, just because we’d been thinking about doing it and they made it so easy there.  Afterward we went to a Star Trek convention, had our pictures taken with a Klingon and a Borg, and took a ride in a shuttlecraft, which was kind of fun, but I still wasn’t sold on the place. 

On our most recent visit, after I drove the Ferrari, we hit a vintage car show at the Imperial Palace (fittingly full of Chinese people) and later had dinner at Casa di Amore, an old-Vegas style restaurant off The Strip on Tropicana.  It was kitschy but it’s the kind of place that doesn’t exist anywhere else, and while listening to George Bugatti play electric piano and sing old standards of the 40s and 50s, I began to get a grip on the unique character of Vegas.  Yeah sure, it’s gaudy and loud and vulgar, but that’s just who it is. 

We stayed at the Luxor again this time and they had a show there called “Bodies,” skinned, plasticized corpses posed in athletic positions, and we were curious about it but didn’t have time to fit it into our 24-hour stay.  As we were on our way back to our room after dinner we passed the in-house nightclub, The Cat House, and I wanted to check it out, but was just too tired.  I don’t even know what goes on in there, whether it’s pole dancing, stripping, burlesque, or what, but I’m pretty sure it’s a different kind of place than we could visit at home, so next time we’re in Vegas we’ll have to give it a try.  Because having new experiences is what Vegas is about.  So I guess what I’m saying is, even though it’s a paragon of bad taste and gambling is stupid, nevertheless Vegas may be starting to win me over because, in spite of these things, there’s always something new to see or do there, and every time I go I manage to have some new kind of fun.  Not to mention that cheap flight and hotel packages are plentiful.  And if all else fails, I can always drive another Ferrari.