Vegas, pt 2

Please, please read part 1 of this article first. Ok, done that? Good.

I didn't imagine that Vegas was perfect. In fact, I went knowing that it would be flawed, because there's no way that so much money can change hands without someone losing out. It was, as far as I could glean from the available media, a viper's nest of debauchery.

In some senses, I was proven utterly correct in this assumption. If, as requested, you have read part 1 of this twin article, you'll know that I was impressed by some parts of the city. However, there's plenty in Vegas for an anti-profligate such as myself to hate.

Wishful wastefulness is the catchphrase in the city. Why bother turning out the lights in your hotel room when doing so will only save a fraction of a thousandth of a billionth of the energy which gets wasted in the city every day? Of course, I believe in setting examples so I turned off the lights, but I was, I can assure you, in a significant minority.

Allied to this were two things which make the bile rise in me like nothing else - prostitution and destitution.

There were, I kid you not, men and women standing on every corner on the Strip wearing t-shirts and handing out flyers with the same slogan plastered across them - "Hot Girls To Your Room In 20 Minutes!". Don't even bother leaving your room, just give them a call and in 20 minutes you can be having your way with some poor girl who has to pretend to like your hairy, fat, pasty, BO-reeking body. Joys.

Let's not linger, though, there are far more enjoyable topics to discuss. Like poverty. Vegas is crawling with money. It flows through big pipes underground instead of water. It's the lifeblood of the city, it lubricates every cog in the great machine. And yet there is poverty all around you, both visible and invisible. The tramps on every street corner are an ever-present reminder of the fact that not everyone is here for a good time. But even worse that that was the run-down apartment block we passed in the shadow of one of the more impressive casinos.

We were being delivered home from an aborted trip to the Grand Canyon, and had been taken all around the houses by the driver in an attempt to avoid the Strip, the busiest place on earth. As we passed Stratosphere on one side, we also passed a run-down, dilapidated apartment block on the other side, straight out of the 1950s. Onto the balcony outside the front door of one of the apartments came a young boy, no older than ten years old, wearing what amounted to rags. In the midst of all of the money which was being spent there were children living in poverty.

I can neither understand nor stomach this discrepancy. In the world's wealthiest nation there is still room for poverty. What's worse, children living in poverty. How can the American public live with themselves when this is going on? Oh, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of work still to do in the UK, but at least we fucking try.

I've gone on too long already, and given my lead I'd go on for a lot longer. So I'll leave it there. Vegas has left me torn in two, impressed and disgusted, thankful I'd visited, even more so that I got out when I did. Now that's a trick...