Vegas, Baby!

"I think we have left Planet Earth," I said to Tamar as we entered Las Vegas.

Our search for America has taken us to cities, towns, and hamlets (actually, I am not even sure that if we found a hamlet we would know it), but I think few places epitomize America more than Las Vegas. It's proof of the capabilities and rewards of the capitalist system. It's a living testament to the spirit of the Frontier. It's a place where the American dream of "Rags to Riches" can occur in a moment.

Las Vegas basically proves that there is no such thing as excess. This is a city where too much is never enough. Everything is BIG and done on a grand scale. When you drive down Las Vegas Boulevard, more commonly and simply referred to as "The Strip," you are assaulted by a commercial visual display rivaled in no other place in the world.

The first thing that you see are the hotels, which contain at least 150,000 rooms all told, but calling them hotels in the traditional sense is really not accurate. These aren't just buildings, they are monuments.

When we were in Los Angeles, I saw a TV ad for Southwest Airlines, which had opened up a new service to Las Vegas.  In the ad, a man goes into a convenience store to ask the clerk, "which way to the prizefight?"

The clerk responds: "Ok, go out of here and turn left. When you see the Eiffel Tower, make a right. Go past the flaming volcano and the Statue of Liberty. When you see the Roman Forum, you are there."

The screen then reads: "there's no place like Las Vegas."

First there is the Luxor, which has a full-blown pyramid. Then, New York-New York, complete with Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building. The Venetian looks like St. Mark's Plaza and has a canal going through it. The Mirage has a waterfall with an exploding fire volcano, which goes off every
15 minutes. Treasure Island (where we stayed) has a "Battle for Buccaneer Bay" complete with pirates and sinking ships every 90 minutes. Off in the distance, I saw Seattle's Space Needle and two full-size roller coasters.

Of all of the casinos, I think Caesar's Palace was the best. The building itself on the outside was nothing special, but the copy of the Winged Victory of Samothrace in front gave you an idea of what was to come.

I do have to admit that I felt a sense of elitism when I noticed the statue and, at the same time, I heard a woman behind me say, "Hey, look!  That angel lost her head. She must have been a bad angel."

Now, I'm not trying to say that everyone should know the history of every statue. I guess I would expect someone to say "hey, this statue is standing in front of Caesar's Palace Casino, which obviously has a Roman/ancient theme to it, maybe there's something to learn about this."

As you can undoubtedly tell, I'm really working hard on not feeling elitist or snobbish about the whole experiences, but clearly I'm having issues with it.

To the hotel/casino's credit, in front of the building along the semi-circular driveway, there are statues of the Roman gods with decent introductory explanations of their significance.

The Strip is just non-stop visual stimulation. The buildings are lit up, the neon signs are flashing, there are fountains in front of them and there are tons of people walking on the street.

Now, keep in mind, we were there on a Sunday night, so the weekend crowd (which we passed on the way to Las Vegas as many of them were returning to the LA area) was probably thinned a bit already, but there were a lot of them.  What was noticeable, however, was that in my unscientific research, it seemed like a good 90% of the people there were Caucasian. The remainder were minorities (few Blacks, some south Asians, and mostly Asian) as well as foreigners (granted, some of the Caucasians could have been foreigners, but I doubt they would have dressed this way knowingly.)

So these buildings are all lit up (24 hours a day) and in front of many of them are video screens inviting you to attend the shows or eat the food.

As my father, who met us in Las Vegas for this portion of the trip to Oklahoma City, astutely pointed out, 'everything that is designed to get you into the Casinos is cheap (i.e. food and lodging), such as the numerous 'All You Can Eat Buffets" and if you enter any hotel, 'all roads lead to the Casino.' Tamar and I had to wheel our bags (partially as a result of our own
ignorance) through the slot machine area to check in. On the other hand, it cost $20 just to use the workout room.

Speaking of slot machines, I have to say I don't really understand them and found myself being very judgmental about the people sitting in front of them.  And there are a lot of them. By our estimates, about 70% of the floor space is devoted to slot machines which means they must be profitable and there are all types of games for all types of money. You can play for a penny, a nickel, a quarter, a dollar and you can play traditional machines, or what I called advanced video games such as Monopoly or The Price is Right. I didn't bet, but my dad lost $2 in front of one.

The thing that troubles me about the slots is that it requires almost no thinking whatsoever. At least in the card games, such as poker or blackjack, you need to assess the overall situation and make a risk assessment about your next move.  To me, the people sitting in front of the machines (and you don't even put money in every time, you just put in a bill or have a card and just keep pushing the button to see how much you win.) Ultimately, I guess you have to decide when to cut your losses or take your profits, but the actual game itself didn't do much for me. Now, to be fair, some of the video games do require a little bit of thought, but from my perspective as I walked by, all I saw were people casually sitting in front of machines, staring at them, and occasionally pushing a button. It was just a little depressing. Call me elitist, but I really felt like those individuals were behaving like mindless automatons, escaping from their lives, and not growing their brainpower at all.

The other thing that really impressed me at the casinos was the intensity of technology involved. There are thousands of cameras in black orbs in the ceilings, but the slot machines have card slots where you can insert your Frequent Gambler card and where the casino then knows who you are, how long you have been there, how often you come and the like, then use that information to comp you a room, a drink, a meal, etc.  Basically, this way, the guy at machine 1428 gets a free drink while 1427 does not.  Along with the psychology of the gambler, which I didn't really understand, observing the crowd and trying to find some patterns (only a few), it was the technology that really did it for me in terms of excitement.

Tamar went to bed earlier than I did and when I got to the room, I could not open the door. Not wanting to wake her up, I went downstairs and found out that she had probably dead bolted the door (see what 7 years in NYC will do to you?) and I needed a special security entrance. I showed my ID, he radioed in and minutes later, I was met by another guard at our door. Very smooth, very easy.

With so many dollars on the line, any place where a casino can make a difference by implementing technology, they do so aggressively. And in the non-stop, ferocious competition, the continuous one-upmanship becomes increasingly obviously, thus raising the expectations on the part of the consumers for what the acceptable basic level of experience should be.

What Vegas represents in the American psyche, perhaps, is the opportunity to reinvent yourself.  For many years, frustrated Easterners would go out West in order to start anew and forget their problems 'back East."  Now, with the urbanization of the North American continent, you can't really go to a place where nobody knows you; in Vegas, however, you can go and have the chance of 'making it big,' without the hard work and limiting your risk.

In this way, Las Vegas is a uniquely American experience, a chance to begin again, to lose yourself in a fantasy land.

It's 24/7 stimulation. At any time of the day or night, you can find a place to gamble, to eat, to walk around and see something you haven't seen before, to dance, to drink, and to be entertained.

Entertainment is Las Vegas' specialty, of course. In addition to all of the gambling, you can see shows such as Siegfried and Roy, Gladys Knight, and Celine Dion. There are magicians and musicians. Then there are the feats of the spectacular.

Las Vegas is home to the Cirque du Soleil (I believe), which currently produces two shows. One called 'Mystere' and the other called 'O'.  We were extremely fortunate (thanks to the heroic measures of my mother and my cousin, Doris Epstein) to acquire 2nd row seats for 'O'.

The name, as far as I can surmise, is a parody on the French word "Eau" for water, because the show is based around water. Well, not really around, more like above.  The feats, which include precision aerial aerobics, high diving, jumping, spinning, swimming with bits of cabaret and slapstick, take place ABOVE a swimming pool.

Here are some of the highlights:
-a woman balancing on her head on a trapeze bar 50 feet above the pool of water

-gymnasts being hurled off of swinging diving boards and spinning, flipping, and diving into water

-synchronized swimmers

-chinese acrobats who can lie on their stomachs and bring their feet up over their bodies so that they face forward next to their ears

-a metal frame in the shape of a small boat that rocks back and forth at significant speed, hung from the rafters and, all the while, trapeze artists are performing stunts which include being held by their feet only by the ankles of the individuals suspended above them

None of us wanted the show to end. The performances kept getting more impressive, more daring, and more exciting. At times, I even felt my stomach jump up, so to speak, as I witnessed some of the performances. It was really spectacular. My dad called it "middle brow entertainment" meaning that it was a spectacle, but not on the order of Shakespeare. It wasn't meant as an insult, just an observation.

Las Vegas is sort of like the yin yang of modern capitalism.  On the one hand, there are thousands of people who live in the area and make a living by working in the casinos and hotels, building them, and entertaining in them. There are millions of people whose lives and businesses depend on the existence of this industry. Built in a desert that was once the middle of nowhere, the city is fairly clean and safe and provides entertainment and diversion for millions of people.

On the other hand, the industry is based on people who like to wager money on games of chance, where the odds are announced to be against them.
Advertisements for topless dancers abound as do opportunities for gluttony.
In stark comparison to CA, smoking is permitted pretty much everywhere (save for the dedicated non-smoking rooms) and carrying open bottles of alcohol on the street is commonly practiced.

So, it's both Sodom and Gomorrah and the epitome of the American entrepreneurial dream of building something prosperous out of nothing at all.