Journal

What’s most remarkable to me about Hoover Dam is the date of the audacious vision: well over a century ago. They didn’t even possess the technologies to build it when the inspiration was first conceived. I can imagine the chorus of nay-sayers was deafening and I admire the ones who push through the easy negativity to get into the design phase of such an achievement.

Paying $8 for a chance to go out on that "observation tower" on the right is a ripoff. The shot I took wasn't even worth posting.

In the distance is the Mike O’Callaghan and Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, recently completed in October of 2010. It allows US 93 to avoid going over the dam and is a wonderful design complement, I think, to the dam. The lines and curves as viewed from underneath are amazing; unfortunately there is nowhere to pull over on the road which winds down below it to the dam.

There is a pedestrian walkway on the bridge which I hiked up to for this shot:

Hoover Dam from new bypass bridge

I’m surprised they put Tillman’s name on it given that he was the victim of one of the most embarrassing military propaganda stories in recent years. A plaque about him on the bridge talks mostly about his academic and athletic achievements with only a brief paragraph at the end about his “death in battle.”

This monument is found at Hoover Dam. It struck me in that the same things are necessary for many great works, including software.  All three are needed: Vision, Genius and Labor. Vision supplies the initial inspiration and guidance, Genius is the design which is brought to bear on the Vision and Labor is needed to create it. “A vision of lonely lands made fruitful” is also poignant and relevant for a long term direction we’re trying to establish at work.

Creation Elements

My original plans were to follow the advice of a book I read and spend a weekend winding down in Las Vegas before continuing on to the silence of the National Parks. But Monday came and I stayed for another day. Then Tuesday came and I stayed for another day. Then I started feeling like I could do the same with the remainder of my two weeks. There are so many distasteful things here and yet there is much to like. The architecture is one of them.

The new City Center in the middle of the Strip

At night the city is transformed into a wonderland of lights and music. Most of the major casinos have a theme, and you can enjoy something of a unique experience as you hike from one to the next (and I mean hike). New York, New York is one example. Its inside shops and restaurants are designed to mimic a nighttime city scene from the Big Apple. I’m not sure how well they pull it off but it’s fun. So too with Paris, so too with the Venetian, the Bellagio, MGM Grand, Wynn and so on.

Notice the roller coaster

At heart though are the gambling halls. They are vast and you can get lost inside any one of them. I was surprised at the complete lack of security and noticeable lack of police. The ceilings are covered with cameras and there are employees everywhere, but the overall atmosphere is one of safety and fun.

Multiply this view by ten for each casino, of which there are many

They each also have walls of big screen televisions. Not as a sports bar might have, but entire walls with twenty or more massive screens and another twenty smaller screens, all of which are playing sporting events from around the world on which you can place bets. The current scores and details are displayed on enormous, NASA-like LED screens. It’s quite a sight.

Bar. Bartenders. Let's dance!

By far my favorite activity was merging with the crowd and walking around the Strip and throughout the hotel complexes. One night while I was walking through MGM Grand a group of about one hundred Asian men went running past me like Godzilla was after them. There were serious looking business men talking on their cellphones walking hurriedly by with briefcases while near them strolled lesbian couples holding hands. A clump of college buddies were at the craps table getting served drinks by women with lacy black lingerie. One guy at a poker table had been there awhile: he had a woman giving him a massage as he played cards. Her shirt read “Massages.” In front of most stores were beautiful women coaxing me in. As I entered one lobby there was a cute girl (they’re all cute) dancing to the music in front of her store holding a sign which read “Ask me about specials.” She looked like she was having fun. Everybody was having fun. Seeing a thousand faces go past me with expressions of excitement, wonder, anticipation, amusement, tiredness and everything in between really charged me. The only bored ones appeared to be the dealers.

“It is boring, it’s painfully boring,” one of the bartenders told me. “I came out here from Philly to be a dealer and quit after three months.”

* * *

Back out on the Strip are the street magicians, dancers, pairs of girls in lacy police officer uniforms you can get your picture taken with (handcuffed of course), black guys giving away music, hispanic guys giving away porn cards, guys and girls playing guitars with cups in front of them, guys saying to you “Hey bro, come party with us tonight?” “Yo my man, 20% off a strip show, you down?” “Hey cool dude, how about some music?” The gnomes with the porno cards have no smiles on their faces. They look wretched.

There were a couple of girls dressed in lacy pink outfits with enormous pink feathers everywhere. They looked like a cross between flamingos and peacocks. You could get your picture taken with them. I walked on by and turned down a side street toward a parking garage where I had my rental. As I looked over my shoulder I noticed they finished their shift and were coming down the street. I waited inside the dicey looking parking deck by the elevators until they entered. I wanted to ask them how much they could make in a day doing that. But as we got on the elevator (they barely fit) I never got the chance such was their prattling. “..and she said like ‘if  you want that shade of pink I think you could ok, probably put it down the side of the feathers, or’  “uh, oh yeah, I see!”, “yeah, she was like ‘or you could probably put some up on the front, where it wouldn’t fade, and then I was wondering, how it would be if there were other larger areas out the sides of the feathers, ’cause you know, the larger ones in the back are better I think,” “oh yeah, definitely” “cause what, you know how it goes when they are like off the back…”

“Floor three please,” they said.

“Ok,” I replied. And exited on floor two.

Las Vegas – the entertainment capital of the world. At least that’s how it bills itself. I’m not sure about that but it certainly must rank among the top gambling spots on the earth. From the gates at the airport to grocery stores to the unimaginable acres occupying the casino hotels there are slot machines everywhere.

I’ve resisted early and easy thoughts about this place, thoughts which have generally fallen along a continuum between fascination and condemnation. On the fascination side you have a city which is probably one of the best places on earth to watch people. People come here from all over the world to watch and absorb, to experience what mankind can do when he really sets his aim on excess. At the slots there are the timid newcomers and the addicted loners. The gambling tables are largely surrounded by men with the occassional trophy hanging off an arm. The restaurants are populated by couples and the bars by small groups of men. Roaming everywhere are women dressed to seduce. Up and down the strip at all hours of the day and night is a demographic largely composed of those in their 20’s and 30’s. Everyone is here for a good time and folks are surprisingly polite. There is a pronounced lack of families. Children are a rarity. This is undoubtedly a playground for adults.

The Strip - an Altered Reality

It’s easy to find things to condemn. Large electronic billboards serve up a continuous array of advertisements for sex, even though what they’re drawing you to are the gambling halls. Women here are commoditized and they seem as much drawn to the role of exhibitionist as men are to voyeur. If there is truth in advertising it is not to be found: if you want to experience the various perversions the billboards promise you don’t go into the casinos you go out to the street. There, on nearly every corner and pedestrian bridge are small clumps of hispanics handing out playing card-sized ads for hookers. They descend on men like mosquitoes. It’s hard to get angry at them, pathetic as their appearance is. They affect one as a gnome might, living underground with scrunched up, wrinkled faces, bent over from long hours on rock. They remind me of European gypsies and are as likely exploited as the women on their porno calling cards. I wonder who the bosses are. Perhaps the casino magnates. Money flows in one direction, deviancy and exploitation in the other.

The Service Industry

It is fitting that the Strip begins with a towering monument to an ancient civilization in which there was also a vast gulf between the uber-elite and the peasant class. I speak of course of the Egyptians, their pharaohs and the slaves used up in serving them. Behold – The Luxor:

All that's missing is an Eros capstone

It is a marvelous work of architecture, and as much can be said of many buildings along the Strip. As you step inside you are made to feel small. The entire city has that effect on you. The buildings are enormous, the scale deceptive.

Those are rooms along the roof perimeter

Communist countries hang massive banners of their leaders everywhere to create the effect of omnipresence and belittlement in the presence of grandiosity. Los Vegas conveys the same sense of hopelessness in the face of towering temptations to illicit pleasures. This is succinctly conveyed on the massive billboard for MGM Grand near my hotel. It shows a woman’s reclining body with a man shoving a diamond studded ball into her gaping mouth. “Take it all in!” it says.