The Greatest Rebel in Las Vegas
My investigation into modern decadence has led me to Las Vegas. Not really, but here I am anyway, hanging out for the weekend without much of an agenda. I’m writing this in a Moleskine notebook, which is a very non-decadent form of archiving thoughts, so I’m already off to a bad start. On top of that, I’m off the Strip, out on the eastern side of Fremont Street, sitting at a family-friendly coffee shop.
The good thing about writing by hand is that thoughts come out more fluidly and randomly. It’s bound to be a little incoherent. I’m ok with that.
There are all varieties of fake eyelashes here. I noticed it first on the plane. Now I can’t help but to see them everywhere. But I don’t intend to simply list out the ways in which Vegas seems fake. On the grand ledger I’m sure it has more fake things going on than other places, but is it enough? Do they ultimately tip the scales one way or the other? And which scales?
This coffee shop, Mothership, is A+. The coffee is about as good as it gets. The ambiance too. Every city needs a space like this (a repurposed motel now featuring fancy boutiques, a classy Latin American restaurant, and a centerpiece coffee shop).
I’ve been reading The End of the Road by John Barth. In the author bio at the back of the book is this quote from Barth: “My own talent has been to make simple things complicated.” That’s a little too on the nose and the book is ruined.
Nature knew what it was doing when it created palm trees. Palm trees, bright colors, and female curves. That’s what Vegas is all about.
Vegas is known as one of the world’s capitals for decadence. It’s Sin City. Drugs, sex, gabling—plenty of easy access to fail-safe depravity. But despite this, Vegas isn’t, in fact, particularly decadent in my view. Real depravity requires a lack of structure, a lack of regulation, a healthy dose of chaos. None of that is found in post-mob-run Vegas. It’s now highly safe, tourist-tested. It’s not just regulated, policed, and monitored, every public space on the Strip comes with all these cues that prompt you to act reasonably and ethically. In the casinos, there is no chance of acting freely. You are coerced at every turn to act in a specific way. To do specific things. Mostly to spend money.
Ross Douthat, author of The Decadent Society, says in a Vox interview:
“Basically, a decadent society manifests forms of economic stagnation, institutional sclerosis, and cultural repetition at a high stage of wealth and technological proficiency and civilizational development. So it’s a society that, by definition, has succeeded in a lot of ways and may actually give the appearance of great energy.”
By this definition, Vegas is decadent in spades.
But what’s missing in Douthat’s definition is any sense of what it’s like to be a participant in a decadent society. As I’ve written about before, the decadent movement of the late 1800s is interesting because it centered around artists finding new ways to experience the world around them. In doing so, they reshaped society, giving us many of the 19th and 20th centuries’ most colorful artists and thinkers.
Certain cities still give you (as a participant walking around) a sense of free-spirited edginess. Some parts of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York come to mind. A sense of: “This city is a playground—my playground. I can do anything and be anything I want!” This is why, I think, young people still flock to these cities: to revel in this sense.
Las Vegas doesn’t really give this feeling. Unless what you want is a city-sized Cheesecake Factory, Vegas is just kind of meh. It doesn’t threaten normie society in any way. The little marriage chapels, for example, are quaint as hell and are the only places I know of that serve as essentially shrines to the ultra-normie institution of marriage.
I keep seeing these groups of young guys (18 – 25, I’d say) who are walking around looking both wide-eyed and bored. They want girls and drugs. Instead they get gaudy slot machines and over-priced alcohol.
Why is it that all the places I find to be very cool (Mothership, The Arts Factory, the general urban wasteland vibe of Fremont East and the Arts District) are not at all busy, while extraordinarily lame places on the Strip are beyond packed? I know the answer to this, of course. People come here specifically to do certain things, even if that is to go to Starbucks and get the usual. To go to the Hard Rock Café and get the usual. To play the same slot machines or card games that exist anywhere in the world and all over the internet. People like the usual—especially if it’s packaged as an “experience.”
Congratulations, your normie thing is an experience now! Welcome to Vegas!
I’m now in my hotel room with a bottled water and a beer that together cost $16. Charging way too much for basic shit—that’s a little decadent. Or is it just a scam?
Coming to the end of The End of the Road, here’s Barth with the final word on my Vegas experience: “The greatest radical in any society is the man who sees all the arbitrariness of the rules and social conventions, but who has such a great scorn or disregard for the society he lives in that he embraces the whole wagonload of nonsense with a smile. The greatest rebel is the man who wouldn’t change society for anything in the world.”