Desert road trip relieves stress
The best cure for the mid-semester blues is
a seedy trip to the City of Sin. Nestled in the midst of the Nevada desert,
Las Vegas offers more ways to blow off some steam than any other city in
the nation.
Ken Hanson
Vegas has as its main attraction, high
stakes gambling, as well as shows, drugs, comedy, women, and booze.
A couple buddies and I made the four-hour
trip from Long Beach to Vegas last weekend, and we came home absolutely
invigorated. It started as a weekend getaway and ended up being the
sort of trip that you will never forget.
Now, everyone knows that going to Vegas
and staying in a nice fancy hotel is a lot of fun. The high energy of the
casinos, the free flowing alcohol and the lure of potentially winning big
draw all sorts of people to this oasis.
But to take a seedy, low budget trip to
the city of Lost Wages is an experience that shouldn't be missed. It is
not meant for lightweights, however.
Not everybody enjoys dodging drug dealers
and playing penny slots in one of those cheap casinos downtown. Some people
might think this isn't much of a vacation. But it's not a big change from
living in Long Beach.
And drinking nearly 2 liters of awful,
bottom-shelf rum, staying in a one-room, smelly, crack motel in downtown
Vegas with two other guys is not exactly a luxury vacation.
But if you can handle the seediness, it
can prove to be more fun than staying at one of those big fancy "pirates
of the Caribbean" type places on the Strip.
Those places are great to go pick up girls
and drink a lot of liquor, but the real, hard-core gamblers hang in downtown.
That is also where the true mystery, allure
and intrigue lie in Vegas.
Downtown is the heart of Las Vegas. That
is where to find the topless bars, original casinos, and crime.
Las Vegas is a dirty city, with crime,
greed and sex providing the fuel for this thriving city in the desert.
These are the tenents the mobster-founders
of the city were looking to foster.
And there is no better place to find the
real Las Vegas than in downtown.
There is nothing like a low-budget, bottom
of the barrel trip to Vegas.
The only problem is that it can turn you
into one those people who think the world's tallest thermometer in Baker
is an exciting tourist attraction.
Ken Hanson is the opinion editor for
the Daily Forty-Niner. |
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