Presidents Day weekend saw us driving through the desert on a Friday night and arriving at the Flamingo Hotel to meet our fellow Guardian journalists. The hotels in Vegas are all microcosms of the city itself: they are simultaneously casinos, restaurants, bars, buffets, clubs, shopping malls, beauty parlours, underwear shops and even a Flamingo zoo and aquarium. Any lucky tourist who goes to Vegas has innumerable opportunities to waste their money as soon as they step into their chosen “hotel” destination.
Despite the Flamingo offering all of the above, our weekend in Vegas largely consisted of aimlessly wandering around all the other hotel-casino-malls that dominate the Strip. We clearly didn’t have the money to live it up in Vegas properly, but no matter — money just cannot buy style. Vegas will always be tacky, no matter how many thousands of dollars you throw down on the table. If Vegas were a fashion, it would be diamante rhinestones.
This is not to say we did not have a fabulously “wild” weekend. We even found fame in Vegas: We starred in the very first Vegas Harlem Shake video alongside Elvis, a storm trooper and drunken middle-aged women. As it was the worst Harlem Shake video we have ever seen, we are amazed that 6,444 people have already viewed us awkwardly dancing and hurriedly exiting what we call the Harlem Shambles, which can be hilariously seen if you search “The Harlem Shake (Las Vegas Edition)” on YouTube.
You can also find anyone in Vegas. What do families with young children do in Vegas? Why are there so many old women gambling alone? Are they there just to drink yard-long alcoholic slushies called “Fat Tuesdays” on the streets day and night? Vegas pretends to offer everything, but all it really provides is multiple ways for people to flippantly spend money in the name of having fun. At one point, we learned that you could even pay a dollar to kick a hobo in the balls as hard as you could. Luckily, no women tried — to think of the damage that one could do with a stripper’s stiletto… Speaking of strippers, we don’t want to preach, but the objectification of women in Vegas was appalling. Silicone breasts graced billboards, vans and podiums and were also distributed all over the ground in the form of flyers. You can’t walk down the Strip without having a call-girl “be here in 20 minutes” pamphlet flicked in your face.
We left masking our love for Vegas through use of heavy irony and sarcasm. Despite our European superiority complex, we admit that we reveled in the Vegas vibes. Whether this was by hugging strangers, looking at strippers or watching the night unfold from the Flamingo rooftop, we embraced it all. Vegas is terribly unique. Nowhere else is as fake, flashy and flamboyant. You can pay hundreds to see a show in Vegas, but why bother? The real spectacle worth seeing is the human circus that is Vegas itself.
