Vegas

World Market Center, Las Vegas (CC)

Las Vegas was God’s test of your self-control crammed into a couple of blocks. It was everything to excess and if you haven’t managed to kill yourself, you could return to normal life. Though you may wish you were dead to avoid paying off your debts. The big hotels were all replicas of historied cities from Venice to Paris. While the facsimiles was spectacular, there were no locals from the respective cities going about their everyday lives to carry the illusion you were immersed in another culture.

What did convince me I went through a rip in the space time continuum was time didn’t exist in Vegas. The interior rooms had few windows and blue skies were painted onto the ceilings. In the span of an hour, you witnessed, depending on your views, three sunrises or sunsets. It wasn’t unusual to see someone at the bar by six in the morning. The sadder possibility was they started drinking the night before and haven’t stopped. In addition to having little light, dirt was quickly brushed away, probably because the people themselves were grimy enough.

The maintenance work was constant so you could really snort a line off every surface. That everything was a show extended to the cleanup to. Scuba divers scrubbed the aquariums, steelworks mended fences with sparks flying.  Appearances were what mattered and Vegas was fantasy roleplay for the 99% to get a taste of la dolce vita. To give people of modest means the moxie to order dishes without prices. Haute cuisine, designer brands, luxury car rentals and barely legal Asian girls were all a stone’s throw away. After you played your part, you would be wise to use the intermissions to play the slot machines so you could pay down your bills.