| It is my third visit here and every time Las Vegas reveals something new. The city of lights is being built and rebuilt tirelessly, reinventing itself constantly and remolding from one fairytale to the next. |  |
Authentic Las Vegas – Vladimir Belogolovsky
It is my third visit here and every time Las Vegas reveals something new. The city of lights is being built and rebuilt tirelessly, reinventing itself constantly and remolding from one fairytale to the next.
Coming to the city you either get stumbled upon its ecstatic appearance at the main entrance Las Vegas Boulevard South, historically known as the Strip or channel through, gradually stripping layers of ramps, backyards, garages and cheap motels along dreary-looking secondary streets, rewardingly revealing the real thing, the Strip. In the first case you are greeted by astounding facades of the flamboyant casinos and hotels, whereas in the second case their backstage sides. In any event, the impression is theatrical and no matter from what side you come. Be prepared, there will be plenty of surprises all along the way.
An assumption that Las Vegas ("meadows" in Spanish) is a fairytale city is not quite accurate. It is not a city at all, but a boulevard of amazing dreams and mirages. Navigating this boulevard can be compared to visiting a world expo.
Despite the fact that most casino complexes are located on either side of the Strip, getting from one casino to the next is not an easy task. I suspect that the creators of exuberant complexes did this on purpose to prolong the visitors’ stay in their casinos or shopping malls. The buses move slowly and infrequently along the Strip. The monorail is fractured into a bunch of short links and is masked somewhere deep inside. The taxis can’t be hailed on the street and can only be boarded after standing in long lines. People still walk here, but walking can be too far, too hot and not exactly a fairytale experience. Not surprisingly, such futuristic tricks as moving walkways gracefully move people only towards the casinos. Going back one should rely on a pair of legs. Even to cross the Strip can be a challenge. Moving up, down or across a matrix of overpasses and escalators at the most central intersections takes eternity!
Time in Las Vegas is an extraordinary phenomenon, since it is much more compressed inside than outside. Traditionally casinos don’t have windows or clocks, but there is such a wide variety of entertainment offered here that if one can live without windows however one can definitely not function without a watch. You can play at a card table at any time, but to keep a reservation at an upscale restaurant or to see a spectacular show you have to follow a schedule.
Another particular notion in Las Vegas is the perception of space, especially an interior space. It is completely washed-out here. Instead of interiors the exterior facades dissolve into interior facades on a smaller scale along dashingly recreated plazas, streets, artificial lakes and rivers. It seems that everything here is just like anywhere else, but much better because it is a lot more comfortable! The first advantage is the air-conditioned space, which seems to be everywhere. Without this most important invention of the 20th Century, I’m afraid it would be almost impossible to expect anyone to come to the city within a real desert.
Second is the perfectly recreated sky on a ceiling. Outside is either daytime or dark-pitch night. And nothing can be done about that. But indoors an artificial lighting accelerates this natural cycle, transforming a natural phenomenon into an amusing toy for a modern man.
Just like in a theater, the most interesting things in Las Vegas take place indoors. There was a time when most of the Strip was swarmed with oversized road signs. Their inflated scale targeted at drivers passing here with an average speed. Today everything has changed. The Strip no longer can be navigated fast. It is a slower place now with more things to see and to do. There are many impressive casinos in Las Vegas, but I’ll describe just a few, only the most striking.
Situated in the very center of the Strip there is a huge complex Bellagio. During my previous voyage this edifice was still being constructed, but today it looks like it was always here. Its mighty shoulders are reflected in the mirror of an artificial lake which is also a stage for thousands multicolored computer-operated fountains accompanied by soothing music of Strauss and the lyrical voices of Frank Sinatra and Luciano Pavarotti.
It is an old tradition in Las Vegas for most casino complexes to follow a thematic design. It is not important what kind of theme, what is more crucial is that it should offer some sort of transformation into the world that cannot exist in real Las Vegas. In Bellagio the theme is not very strongly defined. Very few will suspect that its design has something to do with a mountain lake Como in Northern Italy. But it is in those paradise-like lands that one can find a town on a hill called Bellagio (beautiful lake) with picture perfect scenery dotted with beautiful villas of the aristocrats. Once I was lucky to spend a few lazy days in such a villa. And it is for that very reason my choice of lodging in the city of entertainment fell on the hotel recalling a fairytale-like setting near beautiful lake Como.
Bellagio is one of the sweetest places on the Strip. Already in the hallway with impressive, almost railway station like grander the hotel announces some of its main trump cards. A huge portion of a ceiling is decorated in glass flowers of renowned contemporary American sculptor Dale Chihuly and the walls feature huge paintings by another famous contemporary American painter Robert Rauschenberg. Is it possible that these are originals? Of course, don’t even think of having any doubts, after all, you are in Las Vegas! That means that most of what you see here is as real as it gets. Since when did Las Vegas, the capital of plastic and cheap transformation, become a place to go to if one desires to see something real? I don’t know, but be warned. I’ve been to many corners of the world, but I’ve never spent as much money in three days as I did in this city, imagined on a flat stretch of land in the middle of a hot desert. However, the sin city can be as expensive or cheap as your unleashed imagination can allow.
Here are just a few main treasures at the Bellagio all lined up along a picturesque gentle curve: Cirque du Soleil’s high-tech production called "O", a truly unforgettable spectacle on water, a fine art gallery with original impressionist landscape paintings by 16 of the world’s most renowned artists including Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and Renoir and a heaven for shopping with a showcase promenade of such expensive labels in fashion as Fendi, Dior, Prada and Tiffany’s. In the midst of all this luxury there must be a very expensive dining experience. That’s right. It is called Picasso, the most popular restaurant in town with the interiors decorated in original paintings, graphics and ceramics by the great master. In such a luxurious setting the lake Como is not something that comes to mind. Here is where the true and authentic Las Vegas is hidden! In its quest for reproducing the most refined and desired experiences gathered from different parts of the world it has become the most unique place, the real Las Vegas.
Where else one can visit Luxor’s Great Pyramid of Cheops dressed in black reflective glass, Excalibur with its fairytale medieval castle, New York, New York with a bouquet of Manhattan skyscrapers, statue of Liberty and even a rollercoaster from Coney Island, Paris which is of course, presented by the Eiffel Tower and Grand Opera, Caesars Palace with colonnaded porticos and the likes of the Pantheon and the Coliseum and finally the Venetian with Dodges Palace, Campanile and even Canal Grande, two of them to be exact, one inside and one outside!
Let’s pay a special visit to the Venetian. It appeared here just a few years ago and in my opinion it is the most successful thematic design complex in the city. Those who have never been to the real Venice, no longer will have a chance of having their authentic experience. I can’t say whether this is good or bad, but my perception of the magic city, which I never compared to anything else, will now be adjusted by Venice from the Strip.
Approaching the casino one can’t help, but hope that what is awaiting ahead will turn out to be the real Venice. The authenticity of the ornate façade of the Doges Palace is hardly believable, but why for example the local version of the Campanile is less authentic than tragically collapsed and then rebuilt in the beginning of the 20th century original? Also let’s not forget that especially during summer months Venice becomes so attractive to tourists that it turns into no less a theme park than Las Vegas. It is even appropriate to ask what is more authentic, a real Venice, the city that stopped developing and growing long ago and now is mostly preoccupied with its own conservation, or Las Vegas concentrated on reproducing different realities that nevertheless appears to be alive and forward-looking urban organism.
Is there such a thing as real authenticity, anyway? For example, being in Egypt a few years ago and observing the sanctuary of the Luxor temple I could not fail to catch the sight of a shamelessly protruding garish sign of modernity, the yellow arc of McDonald’s. That is the reality of our kaleidoscopic world in which we live today.
Perception of reality and playing with it is the most apparent entertainment in Las Vegas. These games have become a very real and lucrative business. At every step the tourists are smiling into the zooms of professional photographers depicting empty backgrounds, which with a few clicks and tweaks offer fancy high definition views of you over imposed with Grand Canyon, one on one with a huge shark in a local aquarium or in a seat of a rollercoaster letting into the sky a thousand feet over the Strip. These are intended to evoke a healthy dose of jealousy in those colleagues and relatives who stayed home, but already preparing for exactly the same trip. There are also many magic photo studios where your own face can be pasted into any imaginable sexy and athletic figure. Let’s be honest, for many of us the important thing is not the reality, but the fact that for just ten dollars one can buy and hang at home a figure-perfect card conveying to everyone around, a different reality, not real but desired.
Let’s go back to the Venetian. Apart from already mentioned Dodges Palace and Campanile the attention is attracted by buildings and colonnades from Piazza San Marco and white marble bridge Rialto. Figurative and extensively detailed exteriors washed by crystal clean waters of Canal Grande with gliding gondolas, brought from Venice, by the way) are gradually followed by interiors that are abundant in sculptural details and color, palatial stairs, grand halls, winding cobbled streets, purposely lop-sided embankments and of course, surrounded by Canal Grande breathtaking Piazza San-Marco under hand painted clouds on soft blue sky-ceiling. Everything here might appear to be fake but it is worth noting that crowds of tourists are not here to simply gaze around but are truly enjoying, believe me, the real Venice!
There is a new notion in Las Vegas. I think the city now stands at a threshold of a recurrent transformation. The most recently and the most expensively built casino complex in town, Wynn Las Vegas refuses to be thematic. There is no desire here to imitate anything. Coming to Wynn, unlike other casinos, you are no longer expected to be transported to Venice or Paris. Look around, you are physically in a very real and material fairytale of artificial lakes, waterfalls, carpets of vividly alive flowers, elegant glass vaults, surfaces incrusted with semi-precious stones and clad in rare species of woods, endless display of prohibitively expensive luxury items and exotic viands and of course, there is a stunning show, appropriately called Le Reve, a dream, in French. No, there is no trace of imitation here. Everything is quite real. And what else one could expect from a fairytale built for such astounding amount of money, 2.7 billion dollars! Don’t even try to understand what kind of money that is. But just as a reference I should note that the price tag of one of the most extravagant concert arenas the Los Angeles Walt Disney Hall designed by the most famous contemporary architect Frank Gehry the construction of which was delayed for fifteen years was ten times cheaper!
Thus Las Vegas tries itself in new original qualities. In such a quest, it is hardly possible to avoid the involvement of the leading contemporary architects who never treated the city of mirages seriously. So far the scale of high architecture is quite modest. Since 2001 the Venetian features the stylish Guggenheim Museum designed by renowned Holland architect Rem Koolhaas. But the advancement of high caliber contemporary architecture is under way. Recently MGM Mirage unveiled its ambitious new development Project City Center at a staggering cost of five billion dollars. This enormous enterprise is being designed by such World-class architects as Cesar Pelli, Rafael Vinoly and Norman Foster.
Yet, it is worth noting that such a shift from entertainment to high architecture can cause the loss of the unique character of the city unlike any other in the whole world. If Las Vegas is destined to turn into an experimental polygon of star architects who produce their architecture like a fashionable brand, then how are such innovations going to be different from what these architects are designing for other cities around the globe? No, it is better to leave this city the way it is; original, real, genuine, authentic Las Vegas.
