ODE TO LAS VEGAS
Las Vegas was created to fill a universal longing for uninhibited gaming, hedonism and escape not only from the toils of life but from its rules and regulations that it is one of the few cities in the world built outside of a cultural landscape. Since then it has become as much an adjective as a real place that it isn’t so much the city itself that surprises upon arrival. Rather, it is how arbitrarily (at least superficially) it fits its surroundings. Las Vegas was built for the global, inter-cultural desire to play and dream of striking it rich. It could have been built anywhere and still have been the same glittering city. It has no culture or style of its own. Like Disneyland which replicated once in the United States and then abroad it is the same park filling a void that knows no boundaries. True, just like the locations for the Disney parks were strategically chosen so was that vast desert between the cities of the Gulf and the West Coast seen as a playground distanced ...