It's almost gone now, the old Las Vegas. What remains of it hides -- sometimes in plain sight, sometimes under camouflage -- trying to evade the heavy hand of progress wielding dynamite or a wrecking ball.
Anyone who's visited Las Vegas in the past few years knows the story. The land has become too valuable, each square foot along the Strip too prized, for history. Every inch of space can be developed to an the density of an urban skyscraper and crammed with more shops or slot machines -- bad news for the tree-lined driveways, the two-story hotel wings and rolling lawns of the old Vegas. Names once synonymous with the city -- the Dunes, the Sands, the Landmark -- have tumbled in celebrated "implosions" staged for the amusement of giddy tourists and locals who've come to know the city too recently to feel any sense of loss.
With the original buildings disappearing fast, the rest of the Old Vegas is all attitude. And that's most of what you'll be reading about here. Not Las Vegas the place, but Vegas, the state of mind. The Vegas that never went away, but faded in politically correct times only to resurface as a backlash to Big Brother telling you that we can no longer drink, smoke or laugh. Š
And perhaps that old spirit just can't be extinguished. Time can take away the entertainers who put the town on the map, and the forces of so-called progress can blow up the fondly remembered places. But they can't take away the warped thrill of Vegas as long as true believers hold our their shot glasses high, and keep their cigarettes burning as brightly as the irrepressible souls who await them in the rest of these pages.
Click here to see the implosion of the Sands and other Las Vegas casinos.
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