What is a Las Vegas?

[holyzombiejesus]

I always imagine Las Vegas to be a town which is basically full of Trafford Centres with moving neon on the outside, which in turn are full of fruit machines roulette wheels and people playing cards. People who go there are either Legend Garys, Peter Stringfellows or rich fat men who look like Boss Hog who constantly chew on a cigar and touch their paid-company's thighs. Oh and you get the odd suave person there. Just like in the Trafford Centre, there is a food court bit but the Las Vegas one is swanky and expensive and you get people like Britney Spears or animal jugglers appearing there. All the staff live outside the main town in portacabins and it's dusty and pebbly. Is that right? I was puzzled to see that Morrissey had a residency there as I didn't think that Las Vegas people would be his demographic. Lots of people love the idea of going to Vegas (I presume that's the same place as Las Vegas) but I think I would prefer to go to my local A&E.

Has anyone been? What's it actually like?

[Fambo Number Mive]

Never been, the monorail looks fun though. No interest in gambling but wouldn't mind having a walk around the surrounding conservation areas/ national parks.

There's lots of cities I'd like to visit in the US but Las Vegas is not one of them.

[QDRPHNC]

It's an interesting place. Tacky beyond belief and an immense engineering marvel at the same time. Some of the casinos still cater to those looking for the old 70s vibe, some are for families, a few are genuinely modern and beautifully designed. Great restaurants everywhere, alongside horrible trashy trinket shops. I enjoyed it, I can see why others don't. But I think if you know what you're getting into and can take it for what it is, it's worth visiting at least once.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I wonder what it is like actually living in Las Vegas. My understanding is that there is no intercity rail service but there is intercity bus service and an airport.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I'm not really into gambling but wouldn't mind at looking mouth agape at the biggest shrine to opulence on the planet.

So big is the divide between rich and poor, and so many people with issues end up getting chewed up and spat out by the place, that there's a load of homeless people living in the storm drains. This became slightly prominent a few years ago as a documentary crew had a chance encounter with a relatively well known adult film actress and that went viral. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/world-famous-porn-star-jenni-22475669

[H-O-W-L]

I was reading a lot of true road stories from vagabonds and hobos (terms that the people writing these stories, with photo evidence, used, for clarification) and one of them talked about how he washed up in Vegas after a very long hitchhike, and he went down into the storm drains to see if he could get shelter and ended up being fired at by someone with an automatic (or rapid firing) weapon for invading their patch. Apparently the people that dwell there are (probably rightfully) fiercefully territorial.

Ah, here it is.

[shiftwork2]

Worth a visit due to it being fucking crackers.  It's the US taken to its logical conclusion.  The first sight from the air was an Eiffel Tower sitting illuminated in the desert like that's a normal thing.  Each new casino resort has tried to out-do the others on size or grotesquerie and the result is a strip of genuinely breathtaking scale and hilarious tastelessness.  As for the casinos, it's not so much Bond playing craps as rows of old Asian ladies feeding slots with a bucket of quarters hanging off a hook on the machine.  There's a sense of an adult Disneyland with anything available if you can afford it, a city that would allow you to choose to destroy your life and not miss a single beat.  After 5 days the non-stop grift, scam and licentiousness (it turns out I don't have a bottomless appetite for this) were enough to make me happy as we flew away.  Oh, and there are slot machines at the departure gates which is probably unique.

Basically, go once.

[Neomod]

We drove there from Redondo Beach, "Vegas Baby, Vegas" and arrived at dusk just as the lights were coming on. First impressions were that the Welcome to Vegas sign is a bit underwhelming.

Was there for 3 days, gambled for about 5 minutes. Did lots of old school stuff, tried the 99 cent shrimp cocktail, had a good time.

Not a place you take seriously.

[holyzombiejesus]

Why has Morrissey got a residency there? Who would go to it?

[An tSaoi]

shiftwork2 has nailed it.

The most interesting part of Vegas, for me, was how the passage of time becomes hard to grasp. When you get into the bowels of the casinos, there are no windows, and no clocks. You lose track of whether it's night or day. You forget the rhythm of the outside world. The repetitive lights on the slot machines make you feel like you're living the same five or ten seconds on a loop. You see people putting coins in the slots like robots, with no idea how long they've been sitting there.

There's no point going outside because it's 40 degrees. Very clever to build casinos in a completely unbearable desert.

That Fear and Loathing bloke wasted his money buying all that drugs. You don't need them in such a bizarre abstract environment. It's already unreal.

[Buelligan]

Went but decided not to go in.  Saw Baker, Barstow, Death Valley, the big trees and the old ones and the joshuas.  Desert was superb, mountains too.

[hamfist]

Fountains smelling of chlorine

Zsa Zsa Gabor making recorded airport announcements

A vicar of some sort drunk and slumped on a pedestrian bridge holding an empty change cup

[poo]

Bollocks duck off cesspit. WhT intestate me is the desert. Looking up at night in the desert

[Noodle Lizard]

It's pretty bad, I get depressed every single time I go. It's usually more fun in theory ("We're going to Vegas!") than actually being there ("Ugh, we're in Vegas"). It's worth seeing, though.

[Dex Sawash]

Donald Trump but a city

[EOLAN]

Nearly everyone I know says they couldn't last more than three days there.

Myself, enjoyed it thoroughly. Didn't gamble much and tried to game system by slowly playing blackjack machines while ordering free beer and crisps and giving waitress a decent tip but less than the cost of the items at the bar.

[Neomod]

Why has Morrissey got a residency there? Who would go to it?

All the L.A. kids.

[greenman]

Flown in/out of it a couple of times whilst visiting national parks and spent a day wandering around the strip each time not spending any money beyond trying to find a meal small enough to fit in my stomach. That does make for a rather strange holiday as really Vegas and the national parks feel like the extremes of US culture, the former commercialization pushed to maximum and the latter I'd say occupy the same kind of space as the NHS does in the UK.

[The Mollusk]

Someone I know got married there. Their outfit was a bright red suit with white Converse. I'm convinced it's the lamest thing I've ever known anyone do.

[Norton Canes]

Went there for a week three years ago. With family, so no Legend Gary antics. It was part of a trip so see in-laws in Phoenix, wouldn't have gone just for Vegas.

Yeah the Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard) is horrible, basically an upscaled Blackpool, and the big casino interiors are soul-destroying. The only place that had any remnant of charm was Fremont Street, in the downtown area at the north end of the strip, where a lot of the original 60's/70's casino's facades and the 'Vegas Vic' cowboy sign still remain. it's where U2 shot their video for I Still Haven't Found what I'm Looking For.

It's handy for the Hoover Dam, and Grand Canyon tours.

[Petey Pate]

Went but decided not to go in.  Saw Baker, Barstow, Death Valley, the big trees and the old ones and the joshuas.  Desert was superb, mountains too.

I've never been to California/Nevada or anywhere on the west coast of America but I would definitely be more interested in the fauna and the desert than Las Vegas.  Can't be long until all the Joshua trees and cacti get torched by wildfires too.

I'm also semi-fascinated by the airplane graveyard in the Mojave desert, although it's not open to the public except for occasional bus tours.

[TrenterPercenter]

Incredible to think Las Vegas population wise is the same as Glasgow or just about half the population of Birmingham.  Nuts.

[Buelligan]

I've never been to California/Nevada or anywhere on the west coast of America but I would definitely be more interested in the fauna and the desert than Las Vegas.  Can't be long until all the Joshua trees and cacti get torched by wildfires too.

I'm also semi-fascinated by the airplane graveyard in the Mojave desert, although it's not open to the public except for occasional bus tours.

I was lucky, was there in the early spring - April, I think, so there were huge swathes of wild lupins, california poppies, indian paintbrush, just the most incredibly beautiful plants, as well as the biggies, like joshua trees and the sequoias and bristlecone pines but there was also snow in the White mountains and shit like that.  Practically no humans at all.  It was incredible.

[steveh]

Only done a transfer at Las Vegas airport. Fruit machines amongst the baggage claim carousels and at the boarding gates as if people can't stop gambling for one second. Seeing lush golf courses in the middle of the desert from the plane as it came in seemed kinda obscene.

Spent a weekend in Macau a while back and we went to a few of the casinos, which are the same big operators as Vegas but with unbearably humid weather outside rather than dry heat. The Venezia with its indoor recreation of the Venice canals amongst a shopping mall was very odd. Standing on a plaster recreation of the Bridge of Sighs watching gondalas below with Chinese tourists having O Sole Mio sung at them. At the Sands we sat at the bar at the gaming floor drinking an afternoon beer while watching a troop of East European dancers give it their all on the stage in front to the complete indifference of everyone else. The only other people at the bar were an elderly Hong Kongese couple having afternoon tea.

In the evening we met up with a Macanese friend of my girlfriend and ended up in the bar in the middle of the MGM Grand being entertained by a British Level 42 cover band - who were surprisingly good. Again there were very few customers, despite it being quite busy outside, and nobody really looked like they were having fun. There were two incredibly obese middle-aged American men with the most tiny Filipina girlfriends who both looked bored out of their skulls. We did try some slots but they ate your money so fast it just seemed pointless unless you were stonkingly rich.

[turnstyle]

I'm also semi-fascinated by the airplane graveyard in the Mojave desert, although it's not open to the public except for occasional bus tours.

God I would love to fanny about in one of these places for an afternoon. Just jump all over them, pretend to be a pilot, hang off the wings, all that shit. Be better than Thorpe Park I reckon.

[Pancake]

I've been, only for a couple of nights, but it is absolutely gross in every conceivable way. The best thing about it for a non-American is just how American it is, I mean America like you get in films, motels, vibrating beds where you put a quarter (?) in a coin slot, unmarked planes ferrying engineers out to Area 51, giant steaks, arse-women who need outside escalators.

It's a fascinating place to drink in for a couple of days.

[beanheadmcginty]

I once fired an Uzi at an Osama Bin Laden poster in Las Vegas. Try doing that in Blackpool.

[kngen]

Was supposed to be going there for my birthday this weekend (and to see Devo), but I got sick and cancelled it. Can't drink right now, so seems like not only would it be fairly pointless to go there sober, it would be actively stress-inducing. Had a day set aside to drive to the Grand Canyon. Am more annoyed about missing that than anything else, tbh.

[Dex Sawash]

God I would love to fanny about in one of these places for an afternoon. Just jump all over them, pretend to be a pilot, hang off the wings, all that shit. Be better than Thorpe Park I reckon.

Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson AZ there are plenty of boneyards of military planes scattered about and you can see lots from public roads. I bet google maps street view would give an OK tour. The civilian ones are a bit samey, there is such a mad variety of military planes that I find them more interesting to look at. Lots of stuff I had to research wtf it was when I got home. I worry a bit about fetishising death machines but I like most machines and I'm really not sure how wrong it is to enjoy them.

[Ferris]

Someone I know got married there. Their outfit was a bright red suit with white Converse. I'm convinced it's the lamest thing I've ever known anyone do.

I once spent 20 minutes helping someone pick a shade of beige for their living room.

Bet you feel silly now.