The City of Sin, Revisited

For the second time in a year (which is a lot for me), I am in Las Vegas. This place had always been more fascinating than entertaining to me, mostly because I'm too big of a chicken to gamble and going to strip clubs and shows of mostly has-been entertainers isn't appealling to me. I used to say that I hated the place, but it's starting to grow on me, which is interesting given that I find too few things amusing here.

It's a beautiful city though, if you can call it a city. It's the urban manifestation of escapism, of a place where rules can be bent because everyone's bending them, a place where past and future are forgotten.

Today I read an article in The Economist about how difficult it is to be a foreigner anywhere anymore. I think the reason that Las Vegas (or the Strip at least) is so distinct is because no matter how often you come here or how well you know the area, you're always going to be a foreigner. I feel that, in some way, everyone is trying to be someone else, or to at least escape themselves and their day-to-day situations. It's almost as if Las Vegas allows us to become expatriates of our own lives, to live differently in a world where social expectations are warped in some way.

As usual, I'm probably intellectualizing the place a lot more than I should be doing, but as an Urban Studies major, I find it interesting how similar and especially how different the notion of Las Vegas as a city is versus Los Angeles or San Francisco as a city. And I'm going to be real: I'm not here to overthink this place--I just want to win a couple of bucks playing video roulette at the Mirage.