Blind Prophecy

This is an essay I’ve taken stabs at writing before. Since I’ve only got one week (to the day) before I move, I thought I’d revisit the idea while it’s fresh in my head.

[preamble]

But before I do, the reason I feel so compelled to write this is probably a result of my University experience. See, in the English (and most humanities) department of the University of Nevada, Reno, it’s All. About. Environmental. Literature.

Seriously, to get tenure at UNR, you should write a book of poems about the Blackrock Desert, a massive analysis of nature and location in classic literature, essays and stories about how the desert/mountain landscape affects modern writing, or something along those lines. Every class I attended eventually had the “sense of place” discussion of whichever literature we were studying at the time. At one point, I asked my academic adviser to recommend a class in actual current and/or popular literature instead of yet another course about environmentalists turned authors.

[/preamble]

My Las Vegas

My Las Vegas is nothing like the city they show on TV, the movies or in travel articles – yet I realize that it’s exactly like the Vegas these people have seen.

My Las Vegas is basically a conservative city experiencing the growing pains of becoming a large metropolitan area. My Las Vegas is politically dominated by Mormons who disapprove of sex, gambling, drinking, smoking and people who “refuse” to learn English – yet these same Mormon politicians realize that it is sex, gambling, drinking, smoking, and people who “refuse” to learn English who fuel the local economy, so they will tolerate it… up to a point.

My Las Vegas includes a vocal but vanishing minority of people who refuse to succumb to the “California-cation” of Las Vegas and a quiet but growing majority of people who actually came from California and don’t see what the issue is.

My Las Vegas ends before you get to the massive master-planned communities in the northwest and southeast that only the ultra-rich could afford when they were new and still carry some of that stigma. My Las Vegas is actually a smaller, more diverse, more interesting core within the official city boundaries. The only time I leave the core of the city to visit places such as The Lakes, Summerlin, Green Valley or Anthem is when visiting friends – once you get into these mammoth gated zones, there’s nothing to do.

In my Las Vegas, only people who actually work at the casinos on the Strip go to them. Sure, the locals will occasionally hit a nightclub or a concert on The Strip, but we mostly wish there was another option.

In my Las Vegas, the people who appear most ignorant are those who refuse to acknowledge that we live in a desert and spend thousands of dollars on water and landscape care to maintain big brown-ish lawns. Meanwhile, the most beautiful of homes and businesses have converted to stylish desert landscaping.

In my Las Vegas, you’ll be surprised to learn that not only can I not give you directions to your hotel when you stop me at the gas station, I cannot call my buddies at the front desk and tell them you’re on your way, I cannot recommend the best topless show, I cannot get you comp tickets to anything and I cannot tell you where to eat. (Actually, I can do a few of those things depending on the circumstances, I just won’t.)

Congresswoman Shelly Berkley has been using this same joke for years and gets a lot of mileage out of it because we can all relate. “When people in Washington find out I’m the Congressperson from Las Vegas they ask me which casino I live in. I tell them the Bellagio. I might as well live in one of the nicest casinos, right?”

In my Las Vegas, everyone has heard and is bored with jokes like… “Las Vegas=Lost Wages.” No matter how clever you think you are while making jokes about losing money while gambling, we’ve heard it before. No, no, I’m serious, we’ve heard it before.

We hope that even the tourists realize that only rubes wear those shirts with a picture of Ace-King-Queen-Three-Ten and the slogan “I was a jack off in Vegas.” Same goes for anything with glittery casino logos.

In my Las Vegas, there are four gay bars worth repeat visits out of an estimated dozen city-wide. This all stands to change in the next few months as four new nightclubs are planned before the end of the year. In the meantime, there are several clubs and community groups, hangouts, and activities to keep us busy.

My Las Vegas is most active in early Spring and mid Fall, because locals realize this is the time when it’s most comfortable to be out and about. During the winter, it gets cold really fast and the winds are nasty. During the height of summer, people will dash for shade the way they dash for shelter from the rain. On windy summer days, it often feels like living in the path of a hair dryer.

My Las Vegas is filled with children, babies, and teenagers – something you’ll never see on TV or in movies because they aren’t really allowed into the casinos (except for designated areas).

My Las Vegas is becoming as bored with celebrity sightings as Los Angeles or Vancouver – possibly because they all do the same thing when in Vegas… drink recklessly, gamble, cruise for easy sex and generally act like every other tourist. If a celebrity really wanted to make an impact on Vegas, they’d come to town and spend their entire vacation doing random charity work and visiting with locals far from The Strip.

My Vegas is quite beautiful if you look away from the casinos. Mount Charleston, Lake Mead, and Red Rock Canyon in particular are lovely examples of the best a desert ecosystem has to offer. That said, these areas are being destroyed a little more each passing year because of too much traffic.

Las Vegas is one of those legendary cities that people worldwide can describe. It’s Sin City, it’s a place of dreams and risk, a place to indulge your wildest fantasies. We proudly wave our slogan “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.” People come here to go against the odds, to let loose and act recklessly or spontaneously.

Yeah, right.

My Vegas is a city like many others. People go to work, go to church, shop in supermarkets, and complain about local politics. There are the dirty parts of town, the homeless, people going broke slowly, people working hard to get ahead. We take a certain pride in being known all over the world, but often get annoyed that the reputation is inaccurate at best to our actual lives.

People are risking it all for quiet lives of love and family. People are going against the odds to find that perfect life partner. Some are trying to figure out what their wildest fantasies are, others are planning out their futures and retirements.

See, while Vegas is very much like any other major city in the United States, it has an energy and a personality all it’s own. You can’t live here and not feel the urge to take big risks, to dream big. It’s easier to cut loose and indulge your desires. It’s easy to get lost in those dreams and desires, or to lose it all.

Filed under: livejournal by Jere Keys