What Doesn’t Happen in Las Vegas

Las Vegas keeps growing, and growing more crowded. If your desire is to immerse yourself in thick waves of people looking for their moment that stays in Vegas, it may be just what you’re looking for. To be fair to the city, the Strip has never looked so spectacularly lavish. Every time I visit they’ve thrown up another massive structure. Casinos and arenas grow bigger and more elaborate. The classic older casinos remain the familiar smoky maze that brings comfort to a certain crowd. The new casinos draw in the hip, young, and beautiful with their seemingly unlimited bank accounts. To walk through one and then the other is to see almost the entire history of this place. One can become almost invisible to the throngs staring in wonder at the visual display around them.

Finishing a dinner at the Paris Casino, a business associate and I chose to walk back to the casino we were staying at. Our other associates chose to take a taxi back. We beat them by twenty minutes. That doesn’t speak to the briskness of our walk, but the crush of traffic from one to the other. The sidewalks might be crowded too, but at least you can keep moving along. I shudder at the gallons of fossil fuel burning wastefully as the long line of cars awaits the next light. But that’s part of Las Vegas too. Building a city in the desert necessitates an embrace of wastefulness. Water, electricity, gasoline and lives drift away in unison.

Las Vegas has built itself up to be whatever you want it to be for yourself, so long as you’ve got the money to fund your life choices. Gambling, fine dining, shows, sex, drugs and alcohol are all here awaiting those who choose to embrace it. Some of these choices will be lifetime memories, some will be things you’d like to forget. Always choose wisely. No matter what the slogan says, some things don’t just stay in Vegas. Being a prudent practitioner of what doesn’t happen in Vegas is a sound way of having just enough fun to make it out unscathed.

This may read like an indictment of Las Vegas. It’s not meant to be. Simply put, it’s hard not to have fun in this city, and I always find it enjoyable, just in more moderation than the majority of people around me. This has always been my way. Give me quiet places in abundance, and the madness of this adult playground to remind me of why I choose those quiet places far from here.