Las Vegas, you leave me hot and cold.
The hot summer winds sweeping down from the mountain leave my mouth dry in seconds. The sun beating down, relentlessly, glares off every surface. Sweat evaporates as soon as it appears. Then I walk indoors........ and I'm cold. Artificially-fabricated coconut scented arctic-feeling air streams from vents.
You are a city for beautiful people - at least on the strip, in the tourist area. Size 1 girls coiffed, made up and dressed to the nines stand in lines to shop, party, and drink. Men follow like puppy dogs. The nightclubs turn us mere ordinaries away, as we are not beautiful enough. Gorgeous girls in bikinis are everywhere: the hotel lobbies, taxi lines, walking the strip.
You are a city for old people. Elderly are as ubiquitous as the beautiful. Are you preying on their dreams of a more comfortable retirement by luring them into your gaming dens to steal their futures?
Your hotels reach for the sky, each new one trying to outdo the last: bigger, taller, swankier, sleeker, more technology.
Your service industry rolls. The people who serve others here do it well. I learned from a fantastic hair stylist yesterday that most of the people he knows who have completed college don't use their degrees. They go into the service industries and work for the casinos instead. The casinos pay more. He doesn't like living here; he has children and hates the constant barrage of sex, gambling and other vices they are exposed to every day.
Food - oh my gosh. How do you produce such fantastic-tasting delicacies in the middle of such an arid wasteland?
I love how you emerged from the mirage of the desert, making something of nothing. And what a something it is! Money built this town, it is clear. Money, greed, and ego. I look around and see - and hate - so many things geared toward the pursuit of pleasure, filling selfish needs.
Las Vegas, I can see why Stephen King cast you in The Stand. Yet I succumb, at least briefly, to your allure. Hot and cold.
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