Hotel Introspections IX - #BhK
Las Vegas
Aug 2017
We flee DV around 5AM, applying the same methodology used to enter. Despite exhaustion and smashing my shin on a bench in the quasi-darkness just before departure, all was good. As we reached the state line we stopped at a service station. The heat was already doing its worst. It took a few minutes to work out the change in ambience. Slot machines, one or two already in use at 7.30am.
Ditching the RV in Henderson was liberating, like seeing the back of a relative who has stayed a few days too long. We also managed to pass on loads of our food and bog roll to an American family who were about to embark on their RV torture session. The mother, large and eccentric, was in direct contrast to her kids – teenaged and gormless. “Olive oil? You took olive oil on a camping trip?” “Well we are European.” She stuffed an over-sized marshmallow in her mouth and was gone. Having binned the RV and made some people happy (and grateful), life affirmation (for me) took further quantum leaps in the next hour.
It had happened a few times whilst on the trip, various compliments on my stylish collection of metal T-Shirts. At the gas station in Mammoth Lakes a guy 20 years younger than me seemed confused by the fact that I continued to seek out new bands and music, as if that was something that had to end once the last trace of adolescence had skulked off. We had been discussing my Deftones T-Shirt (also referred to as ‘cool’ by a young woman in Santa Monica). His levels of confusion increased as I enthusiastically recommended their 2012 offering, Koi No Yokan. It wasn’t so much that an old British guy was relaying the information it was more his surprise they were still recording. As Alan would have said, ‘this country’.
The Uber that collected us from the RV Park was driven by a young guy, who looked Hispanic but in fact was not. We got talking about the radio station he was listening to that played old British alternative music like The Cure and The Smiths. He too was a fan of Deftones. We managed to also cover-off Slayer. The conversation had been precipitated by my Pantera ‘Vulgar Display of Power’ shirt, which had also provoked an exchange in our San Francisco hotel lift with a guy who had seen them ‘just outside’ Salt Lake City in ‘92.
Our relief and excitement on arrival at what seemed like absolute luxury became almost hysteria. We literally flew down the 100m corridors, adorned with their garish carpets and chandeliers. We queued outside the restaurant waiting for breakfast, covered in desert dust and encrusted with exhaustion. No-one seemed to care, apart from the manager, who was staring me down to the degree I felt he was going to refuse us entry due to our filthiness. Eventually we were ushered to our table by a hyped-up former majorette. As we passed him, he uttered one word: “Pantera.” “You are the second person to comment today,” I grinned. “There’s a lot of metal heads out here man.” Welcome home. After ordering my Elvis breakfast waffle (you can imagine what it contained and it was fucking majestic) I headed off for a pee. On the way to the bogs another thickset American guy approached me at speed. Imagine stereotypical US fireman or cop. He stared into my eyes and began to swing his fist, then uttered one word: “PANTERA!” Not going home.
Despite all of its faults and Trap music, America continues to Rock. Even around the Mirage Pool (our final accommodation) you could hear Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Nirvana and local boys, The Killers. Alright not exactly Twelve Foot Ninja, but a darn sight better than Ellie fucking Goulding, which is what you may experience on certain evenings at my local pool; a few seconds before I attempt to drown myself.
By an incredible co-incidence the living, breathing heart and soul of Rock n’ Roll happens to be in town while we are there. CLUTCH. I could write 10,000 words, easy, on why Clutch must be revered and respected, but I won’t. I have forgotten how many times I have seen them, but I think Vegas was around number 15. Every show they oscillate between good and great, which when you think of the amount of touring they do, and being in their mid-40s, is quite a feat. And how can four pretty geeky guys be so groovy? An Uber deposited us at The Joint. Clutch were on first, in a quasi-support slot for Primus. There was still a while before they were due to hit the stage so I was forced to buy a round of drinks. The still attractive, but nonetheless middle-aged, female bartender, replete with stock rock bodice might as well have attacked me in a dark alley. $40+ for two beers and two Cokes. And we had two rounds, the second precipitated by cannabis.
Here in this hedonistic desert outpost called Las Vegas, my kids are not allowed to stand by slot machines without an overly serious security guy moving us on, but they can see virtual nudity on the streets and passively smoke dope in a gig venue (despite a smoking ban). Go figure. I would add that the hemp was insufficient to make us stay for Primus. We stood through the first few songs, my daughter’s assessment was sufficient: “I don’t have a fucking clue what is going on”.
As high as kites we were Ubered back to the boiling strip and deposited at the New York New York Hotel. Ahead of his trip to the Stratosfear, it completed one of the final parts of my son’s Coaster Pilgrimage – it goes round and through the hotel. He went on it twice I recall as my Muse and I played ‘guess the price’ in the gift shop, whilst being eyed by another officious security chap. It was a great game and should probably be on TV; basically it involves a passively stoned middle-aged couple, one half of which asks the question “how much?” and the other guesses the price, whilst they both cry with laughter. The objects must be absolute tat in a comparable gift shop, the show is to be co-hosted by a drunk Ben Shephard and a teenage girl whose reaction to the whole sorry performance, and the dope, is paranoia. Mint.
This being Vegas I tried to build-up the courage to have a crack at gambling. I failed. The 10 feet tall digital slots were too confusing to even consider. Black Jack and Roulette, both of which I have some experience, were slightly more appealing; but I could not even go there. Despite feeling moderately intimidated what really put me off is that it is all so desperate; grim-faced androids ploughing their limited wealth into a void that is configured against them. Surely for the fun to stop it has to have started in the first place? [FYI – I have a vague outline plan for a novel about the gambling industry, but I have two others in the queue before I get to that one].
At night the temperature never dipped below 32C, but that did not prevent me from insisting on the last evening in the USA we went to Downtown, sometimes referred to as the Old Town. Earlier the family had done Circus Circus while I enjoyed a real mantasy – I went to the museum of Organised Crime. We convened, surprisingly successfully, on Fremont. I generally loathe people who tell me ‘oh you must do this, see that, go there’, so for the next few words I must turn that dislike on myself. If you get the chance, go to Fremont at night. It has been excellently gentrified but still has some decent Vegas seediness, along with numerous stages occupied by hilarious rock and metal bands. Lots of street performers, including African American four-year-old drummers. And you can have your photo taken with Catwoman, Hispanic ‘show girls’, 18 year old nubiles in nothing but a thong and bodypaint, slutty cops and Nefertiti. I didn’t, a bit awkie with wife and sprogs gawping, but if I was twenty years younger and single, I would currently be looking at ways of emigrating. #whynotme?
And I guess there is much about Vegas I am meant to be appalled by, it being this desert Sodom, but I can’t. It is a fantastic monument to human ambition, self-expression and controlled madness. For me the whole point of an advanced civilisation is that there is some space for excess and ‘deviancy’.
PS only a few weeks after our visit, Stephen Paddock locked himself in a hotel room and opened fire on an outdoor Country concert, killing 58 people and injuring nearly 900. Nobody really knows why, but it felt like a judgment.
