Why We Are Here By: Joey Kantor / Vegas Retrospective Las Vegas is an ever-changing dream, a living myth. We crafted something out of nothing here. It was a place born from a desire for great freedom, the kind of freedom then mostly frowned upon in other parts of the country. Las Vegas-styled freedom has been a balm for a secretly pining nation enmeshed inside of a public righteousness which on closer inspection could be anything but. The world has concluded that perhaps it is better to let off a little steam. While the wild west is long gone it does, in a way, live on in Vegas. It has been corporatized, of course, so it’s not so easy to make a night of it and still have a little cash left in your pocket. You can’t walk into your average hotel/casino in your muddy boots like you could in the days of the Las Vegas saloon scene. But there is no removing the wild west completely. You can see this through the fact of its most famous slogan: What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas. What other city has advertised itself by depicting the morning after a naughty one-night stand between a middle aged woman from Peoria and a fawning young man? We must push the boundaries here, always have. We are adults, after all, and Vegas has always reminded the world that that is okay. Alas, sin isn’t edifying as a stand-alone project although it can be fun to dabble in for a while. The acceptance of being a human being, id included, has always been our stock in trade. The Rat Pack flitted from this Vegas hot spot to that one, always a drink in their hands, but they say Dean Martin often just liked to stay in after a show. Sammy said the drinking was so constant that you could have a real problem if you weren’t careful. Man does not live on booze and nightlife alone apparently. Still, we are here because we are the world’s biggest proprietor of unabashed, not always proper in polite society fun. Like a bee to a flower we go right to the source. Now we have all day pool parties followed by all night dance parties. We wrote the book on fun. Yet we also earned a reputation for kitsch. The 1980s was a period riddled with examples. We opened the door to everybody. Vegas went low-budget. It became acceptable to walk around in shorts, something my childhood self would not be able to understand. Everybody, and I mean everybody, was a fine lady or gentleman as late as the 1970s as I recall. Picture it. The blackened fingers of true believers as they deftly place quarter after quarter into the one-armed bandits. Slot play, plunklunkplunkpull, plunkplunkplunkpull, was once a skill to marvel at. Blue-haired ladies, their cigarette ashes about to fall into their free cocktails. Even the Irish rock band U2 did a video downtown in celebration of the lowest common denominator proudly asserting itself. Free drinks, free cigarettes, 99 cent shrimp cocktails, a buck twenty-nine for two eggs, sausage, coffee and toast. In Vegas you truly could have it all. Steve Wynn substantially changed that. He gussied up the place. Now that same breakfast is 12 bucks before ordering coffee. We’re fancy again. I guess I shouldn’t complain even as I tout a love for fancy Old Vegas, but did you ever have one of those shrimp cocktails? Totally worth the money. Joey Kantor is a journalist and novelist. He writes fiction under the name Fargo Kantrowitz. His Las Vegas based novel, Babybirds, is available at Lulu.com. 18 January 2019
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