Far above the bored, scuffling, T-shirt
and cellulite wearing masses flown in
from trailer parks across the nation,
ten-story video signs project images
of dancing chorus lines, rhinestone-studded;
of strippers with plain faces, their makeup
ladled on with a bricklayer’s trowel
to distract onlookers from that fact;
and of seemingly never ending
traveling shots of cafeteria
cuisine. These electronic billboards, run
by computer servers filling concrete
catacombs beneath the hotel casinos,
also occasionally announce the
LIVE! ON STAGE! appearance of what look
like knuckle-dragging brutes bumbled in from
the Pleistocene via a time warp.

At gutter level, meticulously
unkempt somebodies lumber in and out
of the darkened mouths of caves, which are
the doorways of momentarily trendy
nightclubs. Nearby, an imitation
volcano erupts. Light from the fake lava
plays on tattoos, once popular among
pier corner whores but which now adorn
the delicate ankles of long-limbed women
with million dollar smiles spread across
dime-store faces. 



Level with the gutter
runs an asphalt Boulevard over which
rides the latest in high technology
metallurgical skill and, after market,
pimped-up shrines to the owners’ vanity
and insecurity. A crystal angel
sparkles as it swings from the rear-view
mirror of one modern convertible,
just stopped at a red light. Chrome-framed mud flaps
shine behind the rear wheels of a pickup truck
as it passes, its retreating back window
plastered with the white decal of a Christian
icon surrounded by a delicate wreath
of roses.

Traveling north, the Boulevard
becomes a Main Street as it turns into
yesterday’s downtown. More neon cascades
down the sides of dirty walls, red and
yellow light splashing the windows of
the Greyhound bus station across the street.
Turning east, a crumbling side street shortly
passes first a Bronx modern city hall,
smug and prim in its paternalism;
then, the rotting remains of retail ventures;
paint peeled apartment flophouses; and,
finally, a fence festooned with hubcaps.
Cracker box houses—their windows and doors
wrought iron barred—traipse down a slovenly
slope, the value of the lots on which they slouch
officiously inflated by the local
property appraiser. A fluorescent glow
haunts the sidewalk outside a corner
Laundromat, in whose ghostly glimmer stand
the emaciated and the bovine.

Expensive headers gracing the butt-end
of automotive wrecks shriek by. The street
soon propagates a rat’s maze of walled-up
drives, lanes and circles. Within those cement
bulwarks erected to a fastidious
paranoia and a paucity of police
presence, lie neighborhoods of tract housing:
two thousand square feet of uniform,
building-code-commanded, Spanish-styled homes
sitting on two thousand square feet of desert
dirt, goose-stepping off into the darkness.
Welcome to fatuous Las Vegas!

Comment #203 on The Big Picture photo blog, 12 March 2010, showing aerial photographs of New York City and Las Vegas.