Las Vegas Silent Film

Nowhere Confidential

Nowhere Confidential Archive

The Convergence Of Las Vegas and Everything

"America doesn't really exist. It's just an idea -- an idea that changes every fifteen minutes. Las Vegas is the real capital of America. That's where I live -- nowhere."

NOWHERE CONFIDENTIAL

REPORT FROM THE CAPITAL OF THE 21ST CENTURY

BEN KATCHOR, REAL ESTATE PHOTOGRAPHER

4 November 2006

A couple of days ago I was delighted to read a notice in the newspaper that Ben Katchor was going to be appearing in Las Vegas as part of the Las Vegas Valley Book Festival. Katchor is one of the great fiction writers at work today, and he happens to work in the medium of the comic strip, or picture stories as he likes to call what he makes.

His signature creation is "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer", who wanders the back streets of a disappearing New York, the New York of the small-time merchants and manufacturers and wholesalers who used to be the life's blood of the city's economy but are now being moved out to the fringes of things by the inexorable yuppification of the city, or at least of Manhattan.

The disappearance of the small-time manufacturers in Manhattan made possible my own residency in the city, starting in 1972, when artists and various other undesirables started renting (illegally) the lofts vacated by the small enterprises that were becoming economically unfeasible. Back then, we lived among the remnants and the ghosts of these vanishing concerns, businesses that made flags and coat hangars, fur coats and uniforms.

We were, alas, only the pilot fish for a new influx of urban professionals who turned the loft districts into fashionable residential areas -- eventually the yuppies would drive us out of the city as they transformed our Bohemia into the capital of Connecticut. Fair enough. But Katchor remembers the city we Bohemians displaced, just as someday someone will remember the city we remade. No one will care to remember the new city of the yuppies.

The New York I miss most these days is the New York Katchor memorializes -- but I missed it even when I was living in New York. It exists now only in dreams and in art.

Katchor spoke today in a gallery at the Holsum Lofts, a converted bread factory that is part of a valiant effort to create a new Bohemia in Las Vegas. It's located downtown, on Charleston Boulevard, near the few places in the area which still retain the flavor of the dirty old city -- places like Johnny Tocco's, a classic and legendary boxing gym unchanged for decades.

Katchor read some of his strips, with the panels projected onto a screen. It was interesting to see how well they played with the small audience, which was often, like myself, laughing out loud. Katchor's tone in his strips is generally wistful and melancholy, but there's a dark humor to them that makes his visions bearable, and a quiet anger that gives them great energy. All this could be heard in his voice.

Katchor was kind enough to sign one of my Knipl books with an illustration of Mr. Knipl, and to add the date and place of the inscription. Julius Knipl in Las Vegas -- now there's a surreal image. I asked Katchor if he'd had time to investigate the urban landscape of Las Vegas, and he said he'd been here too short a time to do that, but that what he'd seen intrigued him. I hope he'll come back for a closer look. There are deep secrets here that would certainly reveal themselves to a dogged, mystical real estate photographer.

Here's a link to Katchor's site, where you can buy books and cards and prints, and see what he's up to:

Ben Katchor's Web Site

© Ben Katchor

OVER-UNDER

16 October 2006

A kandy-kolored sky and a sailing moon over the Strip at twilight. God, with playful irony, aims a rainbow down at the Mandalay Bay's pot of gold. The laser eye of the Luxor can be seen from space. The equally preposterous moon can be seen from the middle of the Mojave Desert. (And who decided to place the Mojave Desert out here, anyway, so close to this plangent, air-conditioned paradise?)

In Las Vegas, mankind jokes with God in his own language. Sometimes He responds by cracking your aces -- sometimes by letting your special numbers come up over and over again on the roulette wheel.

Eventually God will move on from Las Vegas -- when we fail to keep the lights on all night or to offer welcome to strangers on a 24/7 basis. Until then we can walk with Him here in the garden and ask Him if somehow this cup -- this yard-long frozen strawberry daiquiri cup -- can be passed from us.

He will never give a straight answer, of course, but He will provide the over-under, and we can make our plans accordingly.

Overheard at a bar at the Luxor one night:

Twenty-something kid to bartender: "Two strawberry daiquiris, please."

Bartender: "You want the yard-long?"

Kid: "Oh, definitely."