Quick trip report

[MikeM]

I was in Las Vegas last Thursday. From what I remember:

1. It's barren and ugly. Desert scenery can be very beautiful, but turns ugly quickly when man builds on it. The architecture is awful, the sidewalks are littered with advertisements for hookers, dust and grit blow in your face from every direction, there's bad music and obnoxious commercials blaring from loudspeakers everywhere you walk, and outside of Wynn's there might be twelve trees in the whole town. The campus of UNLV is no better.

2. The place is way overbuilt [[probably contributing to the high/highest? mortgage default rate) beyond the ability of the local resources to support it. A pleasant oasis could have been created but instead a tacky, gaudy heat island intensifies the desert climate. Casinos with air conditioning on full blast while the doors are wide open, and fountains spraying thousands of gallons of water into the air every hour for the entertainment of mouth-breathing white trash shows no concern for the environment.

3. The weather sucks; it's too hot in summer, and too cool and cloudy in winter. And it's windy all of the time.

4. Homeless people. The first thing I saw when I walked out of my hotel was a sunburnt homeless man sleeping in the parking lot, on the cement, in the shadow of an electrical transformer. My co-worker was accosted then assaulted by a homeless dude three weeks ago. Being 6'4" he easily bitch-slapped dude to the ground, which attracted the cops attention, who initially gave my coworker the business and let the homeless man go.

5. The clientel - I've never seen such a collection of loosers in one place in my life, ranging from pale white Indiana trailer trash pushing kids in strollers, to gaggles of obese middle aged women, to drunken frat boys who don't realize they're going to pass out before they get laid, to the Kardashian sisters. And nowhere have I seen so many peoples so eager to waste what they can least afford to.

6. What's with all the Mexican immigrants shoving prostitute flyers in your face every twenty feet? Can't they get the homeless people to do it?

7. The water tastes like dirt and there's no pressure. If you have a thick head of hair, just take a bottle of shampoo down to the pool.

8. The sales tax is north of 8%.

9. It seems like they took the worst of Disneyland, Times Square, the mall, a porn theater, a Catskill show, spring break, and the circus and the combination is no better.

10. For the most part, the infrastructure is new, there is a mass transit system, and the old people are nice.