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THE NEIGHBORHOOD
26 February 2005
One day I woke up and discovered that I was living in Las Vegas, Nevada, the improbable city. Navigating its preposterousness
is like moving through an absurd waking dream -- I don't think I'll ever quite get used to it.
I can walk easily to the Hard Rock Hotel, with its gigantic neon guitar signs and several good restaurants, and to the
Hofbrauhaus, an exact replica of a Munich beer hall. By bike I can zip instantly to the Double Down, a sleazy but picturesque
punk bar with cheap beer and a totally sick juke box . . . and to some excellent restaurants:
Hamada, a fine Japanese place with a dramatic interior and terrific sushi.
Gordon Biersch -- which looks like an upscale sports bar and has a reputation as a prime Yuppie pick-up joint, but also
has excellent beer of its own brewing and excellent bar food.
McCormick and Schmick, a fancy seafood restaurant with startling specials at certain times of the day and night -- a 1
& 1/4 lb. lobster for $11 and four or five entrees which can be had for $2.
Ellis Island, a casino which has cheap eats but also a shabby, dimly-lit, magical bar with karaoke -- not to mention $2
bottled beer, and $1.50 draft beer of its own brewing. It's populated mostly by locals who belt out songs like practiced
lounge singers and convene for synchronized group dances every hour or so. Old and young, thick and thin mingle happily and
comfortably here. The picture above shows me with two of the better singers on the night I was there. The lady to my left
did a stunning version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" that brought the house down -- but old coots who mangled
Beatles songs got cheered, too. Awesome.
Gandi, a first-rate Indian restaurant in a tiny strip mall.
A slightly longer bike ride gets me to the Crown & Anchor, a fairly authentic recreation of an English pub with fairly
authentic recreations of English pub food. A cozy, welcoming place that's open 24/7.
There are many others just as close that I haven't checked out yet.
I find this abundance of cool places astonishing. Add to them all the places you can get to by motorized transport in
Las Vegas and you have an embarrassment of pleasurable temptations, many of them available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, and all of them welcoming to a smoker. And none of this is to mention even a single gaming establishment or poker room
or theater or concert hall or boxing venue. At 1.6 million inhabitants (but growing), Las Vegas is a very big, very civilized
town. With 35 million visitors a year, it still has a small-town feel.
It's a dreamland, where nothing makes sense in any conventional way but everything makes sense on some level beyond conscious
thought. It's everybody's secret home town.
LAS VEGAS: THEN AND NOW
20 February 2005
Las Vegas works overtime trying to forget or deny or destroy its history, but it does have one -- almost all of it, before
1931, quaint and provincial, almost all of it since then profound and emblematic. A watering-hole in the middle of the Mojave
Desert, about halfway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, Las Vegas was visited and settled briefly from time to time
by native Americans, frontier scouts, Mormons and finally, towards the end of the 19th Century, by a few ranchers. It didn't
become a city until the railroad reached it in 1905, and it didn't become much more than a whistle stop until 1931, when the
Nevada State Legislature legalized gambling and the Federal Government started building Hoover Dam nearby.
It's history as a genuine city thus falls entirely within the era of the automobile and the photograph -- something which
can't be said for almost any other major metropolitan center.
The book "Las Vegas: Then and Now" presents the whole modern history of the place in a series of vintage photographs
juxtaposed with contemporary photographs of the same views. There's a brief summary introduction to that history and concise
capsule explications of the photographs, but it's the images which tell the story and tell it in a way that's uniquely useful.
There is no writing about Las Vegas, at least not yet, which manages to successfully evoke the surreal, preposterous physical
fact of it -- its visual essence, its mixture of mad excess and structural incongruity, all inflected with a kind of poignant
frailty when experienced in its geographical context, as a surreal urban mirage thrown up against the odds perpetually established
by the desert around it, vast, inhospitable and merciless.
You can't really understand America in the 21st Century unless you understand Las Vegas, and as terrifying or exhilarating
as that understanding might be, it's something worth pursuing. "Las Vegas: Then and Now" can help.
You can buy the book here:
Las Vegas: Then and Now
LOS ANGELES
After leaving Ojai last month, Jae and I traveled to Los Angeles on "Nowhere" business. We stayed with my sister
Lee and her family. I was picking up some stuff I'd left in Lee's garage -- mostly action figures -- and had a chance to
examine recent toy acquisitions by my niece Nora and nephew Harry.
They are pictured above and below with elements of their extensive collections.
We celebrated my sister Lee's 50th birthday, found a really cool Korean barbecue restaurant in Koreatown and met a possible
translator for the "Nowhere" pilot script. Then we headed back to the Mojave desert oasis called Las Vegas. Approaching
the Nevada border after dark, we saw the shimmering lights of the first casinos that pop up immediately beyond where California
ends. My heart always skips a beat when I see them. "It's Silly Time again," I think. "The Rule Of Yuppie
Social Hygiene stops here." And soon enough we were swept back up in the delirious enchantment of Nowhere . . .
THE HOMEFRONT
Sometimes, when it gets a little cold in the apartment, I light a little fire.
How wonderful is that?
Elvis has come home.
Some toys . . .
. . . are beyond cool.
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