i was born in Vegas. I could say Las Vegas, but New Mexico folks know the difference. One place is a city in the desert, the other is a mirage.
I grew up in an advertisement. No one cared about who lived in that dream. As a child I remember a kid being hit by a car and killed riding a bike along the very same urban streets I walked to school each day. I remember a girl I once liked ending up dead, naked and murdered, left alone in the desert. I remember racism and hatred, much of it by my family. I remember running eight miles in 100+ degree heat, training for track. I remember gangsters and thugs on my TV screen. I remember those same gangsters being replaced by corporate ad-men selling a mirage of Las Vegas, Nevada to you.
Do you want to know the truth?
Lake Mead.
The Las Vegas I remember is a desiccated shadow.
I am certain that people who live in Las Vegas, Nevada now are building their own set of memories... hopefully good memories. Yet, I have my doubts. I have returned to Vegas a couple of times since I left. The city is still at war with its history. I see strip malls, strip clubs, endless plastic, and corporate casinos replacing those despoiled with old memories of the mobster age. It's still shit.
Mostly, I cannot help but notice the changing demographic. If there is any hope for Vegas it is that it might become more like Las Vegas, New Mexico. The old Las Vegas, Nevada is a ghost town that has not come to term with its own ghosts.
I know those ghosts. I once lived in the midsts of that Mojave Desert where every hope ends in dust and decay.
The Mohave will win in the end. Keep positing your plastic and glass. Time will laugh at you. You can either learn to squeeze water out of plastic or learn to live in a desert. Glass will return to sand.