Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 24
HERE'S A RIDDLE for you. What is the difference between Nevada and a toilet? Answer:
You can flush a toilet. Nevada has the highest crime rate of any state, the highest rape rate,
the second highest violent crime rate (it's just nosed out by New York), the highest high-
way fatality rate, the second highest rate of gonorrhea (Alaska is the trophy holder) and the
highest proportion of transients-almost 80 percent of the state's residents were born else-
where. It has more prostitutes than any other state in America. It has a long history of cor-
ruption and strong links with organized crime. And its most popular entertainer is Wayne
Newton. So you may understand why I crossed the border from Utah with a certain sense of
disquiet.
ButthenIgottoLasVegasandmyuneasevanished.Iwasdazzled.It'simpossiblenottobe.
Itwaslateafternoon,thesunwaslow,thetemperaturewasinthehigheighties,andtheStrip
wasalreadythrongedwithhappyvacationersinnicecleanclothes,theirpocketsvisiblybul-
gingwithmoney,strollingalonginfrontofcasinosthesizeofairportterminals.Italllooked
fun and oddly wholesome. I had expected it to be nothing but hookers and high rollers in
stretched Cadillacs, the sort of people who wear white leather shoes and drape their jackets
over their shoulders, but these were just ordinary folks like you and me, people who wear a
lot of nylon and Velcro.
I got a room in a motel at the cheaper end of the Strip, showered lavishly, danced through
a dust storm of talcum powder, pulled on my cleanest T-shirt, and went straight back out,
tingling with clean skin and childlike excitation. After days of driving across the desert you
are ready for a little stimulus, and Las Vegas certainly provides it. Now, in the oven-dry air
of early evening, the casino lights were coming on-millions and millions of them, erupting
into walls of bilious color and movement, flashing, darting, rippling, bursting, all of them
competing for my attention, for the coins in my pocket. I had never seen such a sight. It is
an ocular orgasm, a three-dimensional hallucination, an electrician's wet dream. It was just
as I had expected it to be but multiplied by ten.
The names on the hotels and casinos were eerily familiar: Caesar's Palace, the Dunes, the
Sands, the Desert Inn. What most surprised me-what most surprises most people-is how
many vacant lots there were. Here and there among the throbbing monoliths there were
quarter-milesquaresofsilentdesert,littlepocketsofdarkcalm,justwaitingtobedeveloped.
When you have been to one or two casinos and seen how the money just pours into them,
likegraveloffadumptruck,itishardtobelievethattherecouldbeenoughsparecashinthe
