fooc_43功撇

Las Vegas: The Gambling Capital of US

It's one hundred years since Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the United States, was founded. In 1905, to mark the community growing up round the new railroad, the city was officially inaugurated -- an oasis in the middle of the desert. Since then, Las Vegas has sucked dry the natural springs it was founded upon and transformed itself into the fastest growing city in the United States. Emma Wallis has been exploring what's behind the continuing success of Las Vegas.

Before arriving here, I believed the city to be a fantastic fountain of fakes and forgeries, the high priestess of Kitsch. I consumed its image from the mobsters and villains in 'Ocean's Eleven', the remake; to the high rolling glamour of Scorsese's 'Casino'.

But Las Vegas is all about facade. Everything that happens here takes on a surreal quality, making it the perfect backdrop for film and TV directors.

Las Vegans love to tell you conspiratorially that 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas;' Presumably so you'll partake freely of the supposed 'sins', the city sells; from gambling, to shopping to sex, or at least the allure of sex, in the form of showgirls and strippers. But, like many other things in the city, the truth is slightly different.

In the fifties, one of the Casino owners Jack Binyon was famously quoted as saying 'this is a city which will find your weakness, and exploit it'. Even today, a journey up the strip, is like a journey into the heart of darkness; a voyage to the core of conspicuous consumption, and a pilgrimage to the temple of mammon.

On the surface at least, the city is everything it promises to be. Home to the Liberace museum, a mini Eiffel tower, a shiny black pyramid, a sphinx and out of scale replicas of Venice's St Mark's Square, New York's skyline and Brooklyn Bridge. It is indeed, fabulously fake. But after being dazzled by the bright lights and neon signs which illuminate the city like a Christmas tree it was hard to tap into this adult Disneyland.

Las Vegas might have clad its newest buildings in veneers of mirrored glass, and built a tower to reach into the stratosphere but in essence, it’s still a frontier town, with a wild west mentality.

Bright eyed tourists in voluminous shorts troop up and down the walkways and moving carpets from one casino to the next. One Ohioan woman I stopped on the street told me that Vegas encapsulates everyone's favourite fantasies.

She told me that here you can fit the whole world into the palm of your hand, or at least the length of the strip, and that there was really no need to go anywhere else. That's certainly what the town's hoteliers would have you believe. Vegas might be four hours' drive from the sea but one hotel has built its own beach, complete with wave machine, shark reef, and beach parties to create the illusion of seaside fun. In a city where classics are less than 40 years old, and most things survive only a few years, culture has been shipped in from the world's greatest museums. For the right price, Vegas can make anything possible.

Perhaps that is why it's the fastest growing city in the United States, an unabashed advert for Capitalism and cash. The ultimate American dream, offering anyone who cares to try their luck, the chance to get rich quick. However, rubbing shoulders with all that money is poverty and misery. The flash cash and upbeat music of the casinos do nothing to hide the darkness that pervades them. As scantily clad cocktail waitresses, downmarket versions of the bunnygirl, deliver drinks, lone figures sit hunched for hours over the slot machines, their only movements, the flicker of their eyes and their hands as they feed their masters with money. It’s estimated that one in four households in the city is affected by compulsive gambling. Linda was one of its victims.

'I wasn't happy, she told me, it was as though I was in a timewarp, I lost everything, money, car, the respect of my family, but most of all I lost myself'. Off the strip, the crime, homelessness, drugs and sex trade of any big city show up in stark contrast to the manicured lawns, and marble malls of the plush hotels.

I went with a team of crime investigators to the scene of a drive by shooting on the freeway. One of about 150 homicides they have a year. As we approached, we found a black woman with a hole in her head slumped across her car, her sports top and chunky gold chain covered in blood. But this shocking scene failed to register its full horror, mediated as it was by countless other American cop shows. The helicopters buzzing overhead and the Italian American names of some of the investigators made the whole thing seem like I'd just walked onto the set of a film. I kept expecting the woman to sit up and call for someone to wipe off the fake blood and walk away. Unfortunately of course, this was reality and that didn't happen. She was probably a victim of gang violence, and her dreams, like those of many in the city, when never going to be realised.