THE EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY PEOPLE
Being in Las Vega is overwhelming and it will overwhelm anyone, no matter how extrovert you may be if it’s the first time you have visited.
The crowds are staggering, coupled with the heat and the need to walk everywhere even if you are using escalators. Everything is vast in a relatively small geographical area – in so many ways it’s genius. The Strip itself has about ten lanes of traffic so even crossing the road is something of an undertaking.
There is also the smell of money. In the large hotel complexes, there are shopping malls full of luxury brands including Chanel, Armani, Cartier, Fendi, Rolex and so much more. Some shops choose to let you in – or not. More on that in another blog.
Very quickly I decided I hated this place – it’s loud, brash, tacky and celebrates many pastimes which don’t really interest me ie. gambling, casual sex, excessive drinking and junk food. Oh for a salad! And I don’t even really like salad.
However I tried to mitigate that by actually talking to people who live here and find out about their ‘take’ on Las Vegas. I’ve always found if you talk to people ‘in the know’ what you are seeing and hearing can take on a very different tone. Your whole perspective can shift.
Here are five I talked to.
*Kelly – a bar manager at the Robert Irvine Public House in the Tropicana Hotel. We found this place by accident on our first night at the ropey motel and went back twice. Kelly was joyful, friendly and chatty and he advised us to eat at the bar and then pay an overall tip at the end of the night, otherwise the tips could really mount up. He was born and brought up in Las Vegas and explained that the whole design is meant to beguile you into spending your dollars. For him this was normal. He talked about the shopping mall associated with Caesar’s Place (The Forum) as the place he hung out with his friends as a teenager. Suddenly that shopping mall became ‘normal’ because, for him, it was!
*Ellie – a tour guide for the open top business tour which we enjoyed. She had been in Las Vegas for a year to the day that we met her. It was only when we asked her how long she’d been in Vegas that she realised it was her first anniversary. She commented on my top and she laughed because her colleagues assumed Steve and I were her parents. She talked about Las Vegas offering far more than her home town in Montana and how she enjoyed her new life. We asked her about the mixed messages – Steve told her how from a bus he’d seen a gun shop next to a wedding chapel next to a cannabis shop. She said that typified Las Vegas and talked about her boyfriend smoking cannabis a lot. Indeed, the whole place stinks of cannabis. It’s legal to buy from shops off the Strip but it’s only meant to be smoked in the privacy of your own home. Anywhere else, it’s illegal however that would be impossible to police here. For Ellie, this was all normal and she was a chatty vibrant young woman.
*Chris – a young man we met when we were returning from a premium outlet village (there are two, one either end of the Strip) and he worked in a phone shop on the Strip and also in somewhere called the World Market Centre for two weeks of the year. The latter is vast and is some kind of trade show for home accessories where brands such as Ikea stock up. You can find out more here – https://www.wmclv.com – Chris, who is divorced, talked about coming to Las Vegas to rebuild his life. He explained that life away from the Strip is normal and full of vibrant family communities. The Strip is vital to the economy but locals accept it for what it is – a means to an end and vital for local employment. He was one of several people we met who had more than one job too.
*Gwendolyn – who was our Uber driver taking us back to the airport who is a grandmother. She finds Uber is a great flexible way to work and she spoke about how mad the traffic had been recently and how she would be leaving when the F1 Grand Prix took place to head to California to see her grand-daughter who is 12. She talked about how she’s used to the heat and when it got down to 24F in Las Vegas last year, that’s the coldest she’d ever been in her life (about minus 4C). She also talked about how Las Vegas gets ‘monsoon’ type rain when it rains. This was ironic given the floods which had happened in the UK during our trip. Her attitude to the weather was revealing. Yet most of our chat was beautifully mundane. She loves Vegas and all that we found to be bonkers, she found to be ‘normal’ even though she totally knows so much of it is fake and frankly ‘mad’. She said that it’s a great place to live.
*Gareth – Gareth is a little different in that he’s from Swindon. We met up for a meal as Gareth was locked down in Las Vegas with his fiancé Moana who is now his wife. He’s been there ever since and it clearly agrees with him. Although he misses family and friends and also runs his martial arts business with his team from afar, his standard of life is better. Moana works at the Nobu Hotel’s posh restaurant – how ironic that we were there and didn’t know it and she earns very good money. Gareth still runs his own business and also is involved with a local entrepreneur’s real estate business. Like us, he finds the need to ‘tip’ constantly annoying and sometimes illogical but explains that it is the local culture. It was wonderful for us – and hopefully for him – to catch up and find out how we are all doing. Gareth trained our son David in martial arts from white belt to black belt and the disciplines he learned from that training will stay with him for life. I know Gareth will be successful in whatever future ventures he undertakes and he will be returning often to Swindon. To talk to Gareth who can himself directly compare our lives in the UK to his new life in Vegas was very illuminating. He saw and understood all of our thoughts and feelings while demonstrating how he’s built a new life around Las Vegas.
*The picture shows Gareth Davies who has made a new life in Las Vegas since getting married to his wife Mo.
Next week’s blog will be all about shopping in Vegas
