Why I hate Las Vegas

Why I hate Las Vegas

Call me a gambling man, but I’ll bet Las Vegas is worse than just about any nightmare you’ve had. Oversized, grotesque buildings loom over filthy streets filled with hordes of mindless, pokie-playing punters who stare straight ahead like zombies in search of ATMs.

On this trip to sin city I discovered the best thing about Vegas is actually 27km away from the main strip, and – no surprises here – it isn’t owned by any casino (yet!). It’s a stunning colourful natural feature called Red Rock Canyon. Home of both the coyote and the road runner, the 80,000-hectare reserve has 50km of hiking trails and a 20km scenic drive. It’s winter at the moment and the towering sunset-coloured rocks have received a rare light dandruff of snow, adding to their spiky hair of cactus and Joshua trees. They are real and natural, and so unlike the city, which is beautifully hidden once you are in the reserve.

Las Vegas hosts some 36 million visitors a year, and this little piece of parkland paradise cops a million visitors a year, so the scenic drive isn’t exactly peaceful. However, driving bumper to bumper around the colourful slice of the Mojave Desert reminds you that sham city itself sits in a barren desert and so every palm tree, every blade of grass and every flower in Vegas has been brought in from somewhere else at huge expense. Heck, Vegas even has a massive aquarium and performing dolphins that jump out of blue pools inserted in the desert sands. Now is that a triumph of human achievement, or a reminder of how ridiculous the whole place is?

At least the dolphins are real. All the fake stuff in Vegas – generously provided by one of the 1700 licensed gambling houses at your expense – is awful. Vegas’s Eiffel Tower may be a half-size replica of the Parisian icon, but without space around it, it has none of the original’s grace and charm. The gondola-filled canals at the Venetian casino might sparkle with chlorinated water rather than Venice’s muddy liquid, but they washed away all of Venice’s old-world class.

Even the food here is a conjuring trick as good as David Copperfield’s finest. 

On the surface, Vegas offers great food with almost unlimited variety, but – and this is really bizarre – none of it has any smell. At all. 

In fact there are no pleasant aromas in Vegas, just stale cigarette smoke. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what you order – everything from “$29, all you can eat all day” buffets, through to burgers, steaks, or items in expensive Korean, Italian or Japanese restaurants – it all tastes the same. Plastic-like and tainted. You enjoy eating it momentarily, but feel slightly nauseous after it’s over. A bit like a holiday in Vegas really.

Walk the overcrowded footpath along Las Vegas Boulevard and you’ll also discover it’s wall-to-wall porn, with insistent parades of pimps flicking and clicking nudie cards with phone numbers like some sort of obscene rhythmic group. Most of the cards end up on the ground, so you walk across a carpet of pornographic images, which is particularly enjoyable when you are dragging a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old along the footpath. 

Of course, the Boulevard isn’t called “The Strip” for nothing.

Inside the casinos it isn’t much better. Most waitress uniforms are – hmmm, what’s the delicate word for this, “slutty?” – not feminine or particularly alluring, but obviously designed by one of Hugh Hefner’s pyjama tailors. And you can’t get to your hotel room, or any of the restaurants, theatres or the toilets, without walking through the casino floor. Kids and all.

Even the shows, such as the premier extravaganza Jubilee, which has been running for nearly 30 years, are generally an excuse for live porn. (Have you seen Jubilee? They spent millions of dollars on costumes and still couldn’t manage to cover the performer’s tits and arses!) Don’t get me wrong – some shows are brilliant. In fact, they’re so good that you mercifully forget you are in Vegas. Fifteen years ago my wife and I were watching a Vegas show while the city’s biggest ever sandstorm ripped through town, knocking over the world’s biggest sign among other things. Cocooned in air-conditioned luxury (and surrounded by naked performing women), we had no idea at all of the devastation until we walked outside after the show was over.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Vegas without the 200,000 slot machines (for a city of 500,000 people), and at the airport they are inconveniently positioned to stick their arms out and trip you as soon as you get off the plane. They’re everywhere. Supermarkets. Service stations. They seep out of casinos onto the sidewalks, helping to generate the state’s $12 billion income from gambling each year.

As a result, the white noise in Vegas, wherever you go, is incessant. Although no longer as loud as they used to be (because coins are no longer dolled out – it’s all done with paper now), the machine armies emit a constant hum of tuneless tunes and pointless bells around the clock. This generally makes people talk louder, wherever they are. Combine that with a $1 billion annual bar tab and a 24-hour town mentality where nothing shuts, including peoples mouths, and you can be assured that whatever time you are trying to sleep there will be someone near your hotel room making way too much noise.

Bugger Vegas. I think I’ll stay up here at Red Rock Canyon and go hiking. 

I’d prefer take a chance with the dozen mountain lions that still live here than the card sharks and shysters back in town. Odds are two to one that I’ll come back alive.