For 16 consecutive years I visited Las Vegas on New Years Eve with my friends, starting in the mid-80's. The writer Michael Ventura described what it was like in a 1993 essay entitiled "Las Vegas- The Odds on Anything". It was a place where you felt that you could do Anything, and that Anything could happen. It was a crazy town started by gangsters in the middle of the desert, and it still felt like that a little bit in the 80's- a little wild, especially on New Year's Eve. In the 90's it started to change... they put the "canopy of lights" up over Fremont Street downtown and turned it into a mall of gambling called *The Fremont Street Experience". As "The Strip" was getting more and more heavily developed Vegas lost a lot of it's old flavor. It feels very corporate now. They still try to promote it as a place where anything goes, but it feels more like a place where everything is rigidly under control.

I spent a few days there the week of July 4th. It's still pretty interesting, but I wouldn't describe it as fun. Did you know that slot machines don't even take coins anymore? No- you use a card with a magnetic strip. All the big new casinos have mega-shopping malls attached. People just seem to wander back and forth all day in a daze shopping and gambling.

It's successful! That's what people like- safety, a controlled environment. You have to give them Something, not Anything. They want to choose options, not make decisions.

I also think Vegas is a mean town. The day I was walking around with my camera it was 117 degrees. There were guys sleeping on the sidewalk in the heat. Others were fishing soft drink cups out of the trash so they could drink the melted ice. At one point I was crossing the street in front of someone making a right turn. I had a bottle of water in a bag hanging from my camera case. I jogged past the guy so he wouldn't have to wait, and the bottle broke through the bag and hit the pavement. Instead of letting me go back and pick up the water, he sped up and ran it over! Maybe it was Don Rickles- I don't know, the windows were tinted.

Anyway, that's that- my 2007 Vegas trip. Pictures are in the album.