Strip Search

I walked the Vegas Strip three times yesterday. That really wasn’t what I’d set out to do, but sometimes things just happen to you, and there isn’t much you can do about it.

Three times up and down the thing—plus a couple more times in vehicles—leaves one overwhelming question: Why?

People standing on corners, sucking drinks out of glasses shaped like the Eiffel Tower; Japanese carrying huge tripods that support cameras the size of business cards; that intense look of absolutely no pleasure at all that people have when they’re hunched over the slot machines.

The last time I was here, eleven years ago, someone told me that in summer, the big hotels—which were much, much smaller back then—expected one heart attack each per day in summer, with people drinking too much and then going into the heat.

Not understanding this place is a problem, because it’s my job to understand places, to get into the them, figure them out, and report back. Been doing it a long time, pretty good at it, and rarely fail to find some kind of hook that lets me into the place.

Girls with more tattoos than I have; handfuls of flyers for strippers; extremely charming elderly couples walking hand in hand in a way that offers hope.

I don’t know.

But tonight, a lovely breeze was blowing across the desert, there was the slight hint of rain in the air, and some flash echoes of very distant lightning that made all the neon seem irrelevant.