Las Vegas
Where excess becomes its own aesthetic — and somehow the desert surrounding all of this is the most honest thing in the picture.
"Las Vegas is the only city I have visited that is entirely transparent about what it is. It makes no claim to be anything other than the maximalist, sensory-overloading, relentlessly entertaining machine that it is. This honesty is strangely refreshing."
— Personal notesFour miles of superlatives
The Strip at night is one of the genuine spectacles of the contemporary world — not because the casinos are individually impressive (though some of them are), but because of the cumulative effect of four miles of competing magnificence. The Bellagio fountains perform every fifteen minutes to music, lit from below, with the casino towers reflected in the lake behind them. The ARIA, the Venetian, the Wynn, Caesars Palace — each one is trying to be the most extraordinary building on Earth, and the effect of all of them together is overwhelming in a way that no single building could achieve.
The interior design of the major casinos is worth examining on its own terms. The Bellagio lobby ceiling — Dale Chihuly's 2,000-piece blown glass installation — is a genuine work of art that most people walk past without looking up. The Venetian's reproduction of Venice is absurd and somehow compelling. There is a level of craftsmanship deployed in the service of gambling that feels like the wrong priorities, and also entirely characteristic of Nevada.
Red Rock Canyon and the honest Nevada
Seventeen miles west of the Bellagio, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area presents the Mojave Desert without any of the neon enhancements. The Calico Hills — red and cream sandstone formations eroded into shapes that are simultaneously geological and sculptural — rise above the desert floor as a corrective to everything happening on the Strip. The 13-mile scenic drive circles the canyon rim and the contrast between this landscape and Las Vegas is one of the most striking within any metropolitan area in the United States.
Las Vegas, it turns out, has a genuinely interesting position in the desert. The Red Rock escarpment to the west, the Spring Mountains (with ski runs in winter) slightly further, and the Mojave stretching in every other direction — the city exists in a landscape that is extraordinary and largely invisible to people who do not leave the Strip. This is their loss.
"The desert is the true Las Vegas. The Strip is just the thing the desert decided to tolerate on its surface, in the way that deserts tolerate everything eventually — with indifference and geological patience."