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I stayed at New York New York. Every three minutes you hear the rattle of the rollercoaster, and faint screams past your window.
We walked down to the Fabulous Las Vegas sign. It was a couple of miles. Nearest I've come to being in a desert, I think.
Overall I was very disillusioned by Vegas. It was like Disneyland these days ~ a lot of sweaty, staggering people, utterly un-glam. Nothing remotely swish. One expects as much from Disneyland but in Vegas for some stupid reason I'd thought it might be a bit like the original Ocean's 11. (I mean, the Rat Pack at the... the Sands Hotel I think.) I was hoping to see suits and frocks.
Instead: some really nasty cheap hotels squashed into the spaces between the huge, themed ones. And on a limbo level, hotel-casinos that would have seemed fairly flash in the 1980s, but now felt like an average mall (a few palms, some carpet, perhaps a half-hearted fountain).
A local detail you cannot omit: young men every five yards giving out laminated cards for hookers and strippers. Flipping the cards against their palms, making this regular slapping sound. They only offer them to other men.
And also, at regular intervals, adverts and booths for cheap copter flights.
It was a strange experience for me partly because the closest I'd come to Vegas before was "Las Venturas", the simulation of the city in GTA San Andreas ~ and the simulation was not just uncannily similar to, but in some ways better than the real thing. |
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