Spending time in Las Vegas is always a surreal experience – the flood of lights that come out of nowhere as you approach from the air, the way the cartoonish buildings just sit there, visible from the tarmac as you taxi in, and of course, the crowds of people from all walks of life, in all degrees of sobriety and states of undress, wandering the streets at all hours. I’m sure this was all apparent to me when we were last there, last February, but it was really striking this time, as the novelty of seeing Vegas for the first time in ten years had worn off. Luckily, we were there to hang out with Aimee’s family and to finally see the entirety of “Love,” the Cirque show that was rained out (with sprinklers) half way through the last time we were here, so we had no expectations beyond catching up with family and relaxing.
It was a little on the hot side – 104° on Sunday? – but Las Vegas is nothing if not an HVAC technician’s paradise/nightmare, with more air-conditioned square footage than I can comprehend. Seems more is on the way; the view from the roof of our hotel was a horizon filled with cranes as construction continues on a new Planet Hollywood tower and City Center, “the visionary city-within-a-city featuring four luxury high rise residential condo developments on The Las Vegas Strip,” which the website proclaims is “destined to be one of the great urban places of the world.” Can you predict that sort of thing? It is certainly impressive, from an engineering standpoint.
On Saturday, we headed up to Fremont Street, where I’d never been before, to see that side of the city, and I recalled that the Neon Museum was located somewhere nearby. I checked it out on my phone, and it turned out that at that very moment, the museum had opened its boneyard for visitors, rather than restricting it to appointments made in advance, for one day only. I walked the mile or so up to the fenced-in lot and spent an hour wandering among the fallen masterworks of classic Las Vegas neon. The scope of the collection is incredible, with twenty foot-tall signs lying on their sides, letters from different signs in different typefaces stacked next to each other spelling out words, and the burned-out hulk of Mr. O’Lucky, lying on his back, bowler intact. I hope the plans that our tour guide discussed, to have renovated signs lining the median of Las Vegas Boulevard at some point in the future, become a reality.
Saturday night, we enjoyed the show from beginning to end, a hugely impressive creative effort that was done with intelligence and taste, and without a fire alarm, this time. Dinner at Kokomo’s afterwards was very tasty, an occasion for my thrice-a-decade (?!) steak (not a planned interval, just doing the math). Seeing all of these different aspects of the place in one day – Fremont Street, with none of its former glory, the empty lots under development between the Strip and the Sahara, the derelict signs that proclaimed the hotels and casinos of the city’s glory days, and then the decadence of a massive stage spectacle and a serious steak and seafood restaurant, made me wonder what people who have lived and worked there over the years must think. How different it feels, even to me, having been there in an era when things seemed at least a little shoddy, where the casinos were populated with folks accompanied by their oxygen tanks, where we got a room at the Excalibur for thirty bucks, and actual coins were accepted and awarded at the slot machines. Now it’s all pricey concerts by legitimate musicians, Thomas Keller and Wolfgang Puck restaurants, and every casino is also a hotel is also a mall. Things have certainly changed.
