Wedding Bells in Vegas

After the intense experience of shooting a Glock at human-figure targets for four days in the desert, I decided that a change of pace was in order. So on my last day in Pahrump, I went onlne and booked three nights at the Hilton Grand Vacations Elara, a high-rise hotel on the Las Vegas strip.

It was a short drive over the mountains into Vegas. On the way I detoured off into Red Rock canyon, a park just west of the city, which turns out to be good for hiking. Just to give myself an extra reason for relaxation, I spent much of the afternoon climbing a steep trail a couple thousand feet up to the top of Turtle Mountain, which looks down over the city. From there the hotels of the Strip were visible, a thin line of buildings in the metropolis.

After all these travels, I'd never really been to Las Vegas, except passing through a couple times. As I drove into town, I remembered many years ago when I was in Eastern Europe, before the fall of Communism. After a couple brutal weeks in Romania, I was finally crossing the Bulgarian border. For reasons too long to explain here, I was extremely eager to get out of Romania, and I was all by myself in the train compartment.

The young Bulgarian passport control officer came into my compartment. He was very amused to find an American---a novelty back then. A couple other officers came in with him to look on while he asked me questions. He was very friendly, thankfully, and just wanted to know about my life.

"Have you ever been to...Las Vegas?" he asked me, in a thick accent. Regretfully I had to say no. "Have you ever been to...Grand Canyon?" Again I said no. I felt like I'd let him down.

So finally I was fulfilling that ambitions of that Bulgarian passport officer.

The hotel turned out to be a dream. As the Thai-born man at the front desk told me while I checked in, it was one of the few hotels on the Strip without a casino. "Just fine by me," I told him.  He also wanted to know why I wasn't staying at the Trump Tower instead. "Maybe next time," I told him.

He noticed I was wearing outdoor gear and proceeded to keep me fifteen minutes at the front desk with stories about his outdoor adventures as a young man in Thailand. He asked me if I wanted to climb the Himalayas. "You should do that while you're young," he told me. That was amusing since he didn't seem much older than me.

After hunting in the computer, he gave me a corner two-room suite on the 27th Floor. The elevator zipped me right up. The room was first-rate, with a view out over the Strip towards the "Eiffel Tower" of the Paris casino nearby. On the wall was a print of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. I was really in the heart of Las Vegas, no doubt this time.

From a Vegas perspective, there was only one thing wrong with the room---it was so nice that I didn't want to leave. Actually that was quite good for me, since I needed to catch up on my work. Moreover I didn't have the least interest in gambling, and any the fun Vegas stuff I might have enjoyed with companions was little interest to me on my own. But I did get out a few times to explore the Strip and to people watch.  And just for fun, at the moment that the giant asteroid was making its closest approach to earth, I went out and stood right in front of the "Statue of Liberty" by the New York, New York casino. Just for old time's sake.

It was all fun, to be sure, but there was definitely something about it that was creepy to me. First off, the room, and the Strip itself, kept giving me flashbacks to my corporate apartment in Canary Wharf in 2000 when I worked for the Big British Bank. There was something so Londonish about the Strip, and not in a good way. I kept trying to place my finger on what irked me about it so much, but without success.

What was it about London and Las Vegas that was so off-putting to me? Part of it was not just not the ads for prostitutes and escorts, but the feeling that everyone there was in some sense a prostitute. But most of all it was a sense of the fake exclusivity, one that creates a class system of privilege of access to things, just so you can charge people more money. People pay for things just because other people can't afford it. It's phony somehow.

I was thankful to be happy with my usual pursuit of turning the city into an open-air architectural museum, all for free. In that sense, Las Vegas was certainly amusing (I can hear my neo-urbanist architect friend in Fort Collins throwing up as I write this).

After three nights at the Elara, I decided it was time to move on. But I didn't want to leave Las Vegas yet. So for the weekend (when hotel rates went up) I decided to slum it by seeing the "other side" of Vegas. So I booked two nights at the Super 8 on Las Vegas Boulevard just on the edge of downtown.

As a budget hotel, it wasn't so bad---although it was quite a transition from the Elara. The room was a standard Super 8 room (although at first they checked me into a room that was not made up). But the clientelle was quite different from the Strip. And instead of a view down on super-modern hotels reminiscent of Times Square, my window looked out on a grimy parking lot.

But the fun part was that the Super 8 turned out to be smack in the middle of the Las Vegas wedding chapel belt. There were at least half a dozen on the same block, and the hotel shared a parking lot directly with the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel. I personally saw at least eight weddings in progress during my short say (perhaps more than usual because it was the weekend after Valentine's Day).

Moreover, there was one huge advantage that the Super 8 had that the Elara lacked---Turner Classic Movies!

My extended stay in Las Vegas also afforded me the pleasure of a Saturday of snowshoeing on the trails on nearby Mount Charleston. I gave my MSRs a workout over a five-mile trail.

After all, who goes to Las Vegas without doing a little snowshoeing?

So if I've done nothing else on this voyage, at least I've fulfilled the ambitions of a young Bulgarian passport officer from 1985. One guess as to where I'm heading now...