Vegas, baby!

Over the three-day Valentine's Day/President's Day weekend in mid-February, my girlfriend and I went to Las Vegas, NV.

The most succinct description of Las Vegas I can conjure up is: New York City meets Disney Land meets a strip club/brothel.

It had the busyness, grittiness, rudeness, noise and crowds of a big city. It had artificially-fantastic themed hotels, the ersatz miniature worlds of a theme park. And it had sex. As other cities might have music, food, museums, art galleries, Las Vegas has sex. In Vegas, sex isn't an act of passion between two people, an expression of love or lust, it is just, only, merely, exclusively business. Sex in Vegas is a commodity like sugar or pork bellies. The most prominent display came in the form of gauntlets of men and women standing on the street, all hispanic, heavily bundled against the cold, forcefully handing out baseball-like cards featuring nude women. As you walked by, they would make their cards click or slap a card against the deck, and shove one in your direction. They would hand out cards to men and women alike. A phone number on the cards and emblazoned on T-shirts they wore could be called and a girl was "guaranteed" to be to your room within 20 minutes. Kind of like Domino's Pizza I guess, but different. In the vicinity of these gauntlets, the street was heavily littered with cards, thousands of miniature nude bodies laying out in the cold winter sun, like some kind of nudist beach for paper people.

Then there was the gambling, every hotel had ground floors with hundreds upon hundreds of slot machines, blackjack and poker tables, roulette and Keno. The noise, smell, lights were an assault on the senses. Smoking is allowed almost everywhere, and a thin haze filled the air.

In the morning, coming down for breakfast, we walked past bleary-eyed middle-aged women from Des Moines and Butte, still awake from the night before, still feeding the slot machines.

Interestingly, there was nowhere to sit. No outdoor benches, no chairs (except at slot machines), no couches in lobbies. I guess sitting doesn't make money, so isn't allowed.

There were also shows, lots and lots of shows. We went to see a (not-so-funny) comedy show, but also Cirque du Soleil's "Mystere", and David Copperfield, both of which were great. We saw a huge collection of antique cars.

We ate at several good buffets. I think I gained five pounds.

Drinks in Vegas are expensive, small, and watered-down. Stick to beer or wine.

We didn't really do that much, other than see our shows. We mostly just walked, mile upon mile, through all the big hotel lobbies, past the dancing fountains, and fake outdoor cafes, pirate ships, Venetian canals. We played a few slots, but never had (took) the time to play blackjack or other games we had planned to play. We were hilariously middle-aged, collapsing exhausted on the bed whenever we got back to the room.

All in all, it was an interesting trip. Vegas is a very strange, surreal place, yet it is part of this country, every bit as real as my town, my job, the rows upon rows of suburban houses of my neighborhood.