Downtown and Dirty

I love to judge the people who say they hate Vegas. The same way I judge someone who doesn’t like camping, or doesn’t like the sand at the beach. That is, I give them a little less time. If you hate Vegas you haven’t done it correctly. You haven’t approached it with the right mind set. When someone tells you at a gallery, whilst commonly gazing upon a Pollock painting, that they could have done it themselves, it tells you a lot about such a viewer. As does an appreciation of the dirtiest, sickest, most lawless, hedonistic and worst example of human behavior town of Las Vegas, Nevada.

I love that it exists and I love that I can leave. Freak flags deserve their right to be flown, and Americans deserve their place to really push all their ideals to the very limit. Collect these motives in a single dusty and surprisingly convenient (if you’re driving anywhere around the west) location. Wide skies interrupted by neon tube lights, sad creatures reflected against hopeful opportunists, one table hosts all kinds as we play round after round of blackjack. I don’t go to Vegas for the clubs or the pool parties, I go for the Old Town, for the $5 tables and the ability to light up even though I don’t smoke. A right of passage there, I will smoke. Befriending the woman dealing cards, befriending the drunk next to me in hopes he’ll toss a chip my way for my good luck I’ve brought to the table. I come for the outfits I like to adorn and the restaurants that are too busy to get into in New York, their soulless counterpart awaiting me on the Strip. I go to Vegas because I love everything American, and to my US readers I’m sorry to so simply put you all into one category but Vegas is a part of you. It’s capitalism, hedonism, your rights, your conclusion, your amalgamation of all that is good in this world, turned very quickly into all that is bad. The American experiment played out in full, waiting for you to roll the dice.