There are a number of famous personalities who have left there mark here in Las Vegas, a city that sleeps, but sleeps strangely. The effect of the neon lights is as strong as it ever was, suggesting that the glory days of the city are still lying somewhere in a distant future. These same lights gave endless inspiration and energy to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Wayne Newton, and countless Elvis impersonators, all riffing on old African rhythms that get reinvented to suit the times.
The times have been unraveling on the strip these days, where the downtown section is now looking more and more like the main strip, as if they were caught in an endless loop. Las Vegas is the ultimate simulacrum, mirroring a world that doesn’t exist anywhere else, except here, where a view out of a Las Vegas hotel might look like ancient Rome, or a miniature version of old Europe.
No one could make sense out of the absurdity and irony here better than Hunter S. Thompson , or at least no one could ramble about it in a way that made splendid nonsense out of the noise. It’s a hard place to get a grip on psychologically, especially if the whole is something that’s still seen as holding a possibility of grasping. However, it’s an easy place to enjoy the moment if the idea of sense and order is left tucked away in the luggage for later.
These sidewalks carry moments lost in time, but easily regained by re-tracing them, looking for a chance to experience something new in the middle of the afternoon or in the wee hours of the morning. It’s always alive. HST may not be around to enjoy the new face of Vegas, but it’s still difficult to know if he enjoyed the former masks. He certainly did enjoy thinking about the masks here, and investigated them until he eventually was caught staring at his own face in the fun house mirrors.
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