Las Vegas, the adult playground

7/10/2007

There is a reason Vegas is known as Sin City.
Because it is.
Glittering in the middle of the desert like a new dime on sun-baked earth, Las Vegas lives up to its billing as the Entertainment Capital of the World. It was intended right from day one as an adult playground, and that is exactly what it has become. Someone sensible should hang a sign at the town limits saying, “No one under 18 allowed.”
Las Vegas was named "the Meadows" by Spaniards, who used the water in the area on their way north from Texas. Mormon missionaries quickly moved in, and Vegas officially became a town in 1905. You don’t see too many Mormons walking the strip these days. Must be the heat.
The city has a long history of reinventing itself, from oasis, to railroad town, to gambling mecca. Gambling was legalized in 1931, and east coast mobster Bugsy Siegel helped give birth to the mutation we know today, when he opened his famous Flamingo Hotel in 1946. Bugsy had a vision of what Vegas could become, until someone cut that vision short by shooting him in the face. A couple times.
Regardless, Las Vegas bravely soldiered on. The first of the megaresort casinos, The Mirage, opened in 1989, and Sin City has never looked back. Today it is one of the most dynamic cities in the world, and the capital of hedonism.
If you want it, you can get it in Vegas. If you have the money, and the stamina, you can get even more of it too. If you somehow wind up with something you don’t want, you can always see a doctor. Las Vegas is there to help.
Sin City also loves its booze. Alcoholic beverages are available at any hour of the day, in astonishing quantities, and in all kinds of places. The entire downtown strip is like a shimmering seven kilometre long barroom. Hunter S. Thompson wrote that Vegas loves a drunk, because, as the old saying goes, a drunk and his lunch are soon parted. Or, was that a fool and his money. After a weekend on the Las Vegas strip, things tend to get a little muddy.
Drunks there are not only tolerated, they are embraced. Sit for a while at a table or slot machine, and a beautiful woman with cleavage pushed up so high she has difficulty swallowing, will stroll along and offer you free drinks.
They don’t come around quite as often in the middle of the night, presumably because they expect you to already be drunk. Personally, I recommend a drink or two. There might be a few sober people roaming around at 4 a.m. in Vegas, but they’re the ones who really need some help.
If you do need help, there are always plenty of friendly, chatty young women walking the streets at night, willing to lend you a hand. I think they are probably Girl Scouts or something, because they all wear the same uniform, most often with high heels, short skirts and loads of red lipstick.
Yes, Las Vegas can be a fun place. Just don’t step out of line. There are cameras everywhere, security is beefy, and the police deal with problems quickly and harshly. And so they should. Sin City is the kind of place where you can eat, drink, sleep, party, vomit, win a million, lose it all, wed, bed and forget. You might as well be safe while you’re at it.