Las Vegas

So I'm in Las Vegas for a conference. Now, mind you, it IS May in the desert, so it is HOT!! (and that dry heat crap is just that). Having said that, some thoughts:

This is not an 'urban' city. Oh sure, there are thousands of people walking the strip, and they have all the highrise hotels, but that does not a city make. The green is artificially maintained, and it is painfully clear how close the desert is. Downtown Las Vegas (ha!) has all of THREE high rise office buildings (none over 20 stories), and eight casino hotels. And there are vacant/parking lots everywhere, even on the Strip.

Oh, and the casinos don't feel any different than the ones in St. Louis. A little more flashy lights and scantily clad women, but otherwise they're just casinos. Hell, even the airport has a casino.

This city reminds me of the poem Ozymandias:


I met a traveller from an antique land Who said:
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


--It's not a bad place, and the people are all nice (although the cabbies keep trying to rip me off), but it just feels wrong. I'm a city rat, so I'm heavily biased. It's just eerie how potemkin-esque this place feels.