What Happens in Vegas

Started: 2025-11-16 16:26:20

Submitted: 2025-11-16 16:50:47

Visibility: World-readable

Leaving a fake place

By Sunday morning, after spending three nights in Las Vegas, I was ready to leave. The Las Vegas Strip was a fake place where everything was fabricated, nothing was real or authentic, all of the culture and experiences were simulacra imported from elsewhere. This included my breakfast: I ate a German apple strudel from a quasi-Italian pastry shop in the Eataly food hall on the ground floor of my casino-hotel.

Getting to the airport from my hotel on the Strip was fast and easy. I walked up to the taxi rack outside my hotel lobby and there was already a taxi waiting to take me to the airport for the $25 flat rate. We ended up waiting for a couple of cycles of the light to turn off Las Vegas Boulevard onto Tropicana Ave while a parade of hot-rod cars of different vintages drove by; my driver said they were related to the F1 race in Las Vegas later this month. Once the cars passed it was a quick drive the rest of the way to the airport, located close enough to the Strip that I could see it from my plane window as we taxied to the end of the runway to depart.

View of the Las Vegas Strip from a departing 737

Coming to Las Vegas to see Alanis Morissette perform was a great experience, but I was also happy to be heading home. Before the show I thought about the music I listened to in my formative years as a teen and young adult in high school and college. I saw Garbage the week before heading to Las Vegas (on what they announced would be their last tour ever, because the economics of touring and the music business as a whole makes it unsustainable); after them and Alanis the next group on my list is No Doubt. They haven't toured for years and only occasionally show up at music festivals. But just before I left for Las Vegas I learned that No Doubt is playing a series of shows at the Sphere in May and June so I will have to come back to see them.