Vegas on the Rocks

A trip to Vegas has never been high on my priority list and surprisingly enough in all of the tradeshows and conferences that I’ve been a part of, none of them has taken place in Sin City.

The first and only time that I was there was in 1988 and from what I had heard, things had changed a lot… but only on the surface. There’s more amusements, more lavish hotels bringing a shimmering facade to the desert floor but one thing had not changed… the people who were there. From the low-end casinos a block off the strip to the opulent ones at the Bellagio and Wynn, most of the gamblers had the same hopeless look that I had seen in Atlantic City 3,000 miles away a couple months ago. A clear, vacant desperation rested on their features as they gambled away their kids’ college tuition, or rent money or the last of their money for food in false patronage to the gambling gods on the slim chance of just one more lucky pull on the one-armed-bandit. I found it very sad to see… and they only got $2 out of me. I’m not one to go against the advice of Kenny Rogers… I know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

No, there was nothing that was inspiring to me about going to Vegas. The shows looked good, but expensive, and I did reallocate my spa massage budget to see Cirque de Soleil’s O, which was incredible and will be the subject of another blog. But aside from that, there was no real desire to be there. Or so I thought until I looked outside the Strip to the Northwest… specifically Red Rocks Canyon, 45 minutes outside the city.

Most of our collective vision of Vegas is from the movies. In that medium very little reference is ever made to the deserts and hills surrounding the city. In fact about the only time you ever hear about the desert is when someone’s about to get whacked for pissing off the local mafia… see Joe Pesci in Casino (I always wonder if Pesci will EVER come out alive at the end of a Scorsese mob film) and Bill Macy in The Cooler for a couple of clear references. So, given this frame of reference, you expect to see a vacant wasteland of scattered bones or freshly dug graves from mafia hits, expended shell casings from bullets and maybe a vulture circling above for scraps. Certainly not a place of inspiring beauty.

I hadn’t heard too much about Red Rocks aside from the amphitheater that is supposed to be out there – home to, I believe, a great live performance of Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 from my teenage years. But looking out of my window on the 23rd floor of The Flamingo, the streak of red earth in the distance pulled me in.

Once you make it past the strip malls and dive hotels to the line in the sand where development stops and Red Rocks begins, you cross into another world. It’s not especially warm this time of year in Vegas, and because of this the crowds are just not to be found at Red Rocks. I’m completed stoked when I drive into the park because it’s the desert picture I had always had in my mind. The Tom Petty or Tears for Fears video on the deserted highway or maybe even more accurately the night drive through the canyons from Thelma and Louise… with the Ballad of Lucy Jordan in the background. When you come from the most populated state in the union, it’s hard to find a deserted road anywhere. This was a treat… eventhough I wasn’t in the red convertible 1968 corvette that I had pictured in my dreams.

You pass small signs for wild burros and horseback rides as you pull into the state park to find a 15-20 mile loop that takes you past massive sandstone and terra cotta boulder formations and up on vistas looking down through the desert valley. The wind whistled through the valley and around the rounded rocks that look like frozen sand dunes as I wound my way from place to place for a little over an hour and I blew through the cheapo throwaway camera that I had picked up at the last minute.

The Native American Gods who dwell there must think something went very wrong with mankind when they started building the pleasure palaces to the east of this beautiful location. But at least there are still places like this where urban/suburban spread have been locked out. Thank God for some environmentalist that protected this space or we’d have a casino built ON TOP OF the Red Rocks along with condos and golf courses through the valley… wait, I think that’s called Palm Springs.

A couple of days before I went on this trip, I was having dinner with my friend Kelly at a French bistro in NYC. It turned out that it was psychic night at that restaurant and we decided to have a little fun and see what she said. After getting through the “you’re going to meet a tall, dark handsome stranger” part of things… where I replied that I already had… she said something that I remembered as I made my decision to take the drive that day.

She said, “I see that you need some time in the desert. To clear your mind and prepare you for the wonderful things you have ahead of you this year.” Huh? Wait a minute, my airline ticket wasn’t sticking out of my bag, was it? How could she know about the desert? I said, “Well I am going to Vegas in two days.” Even the psychic looked startled… I guess she doesn’t get them right that often, or maybe that specifically. She recovered saying, “See it was just in the cards that you go there… so to speak.”

I guess I was meant to see a prettier side of Vegas on that trip and I fulfilled a dream sequence that had been in my head for a long, long time. And since the cards she referred to were tarot and not a deck of 52, I came home with a great experience and my rent money still in hand… at least until the check for this month clears the bank.