I. Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
Christmastime in Las Vegas: tinsel on the slot machines, Santa hats on the pit bosses, short days, vivid winter sunsets, balmy nights. Tourist shortages have recently put the city in a nervous mood, as Americans increasingly choose to gamble from the safety of their couches, but you wouldn’t know that making your way through the crowds that fill the plush lobbies and malls and casino floors of the Wynn and the Venetian and the Flamingo, crowds of staggering variety: couples and families from Tel Aviv, from Dubai, from Shenzhen, all there to experience the most American of cities, that strange neon bloom in the desert built on mob money and defense money and the fantasy of hitting it big. That’s where I was, in town to meet up with my girlfriend and her family for the holidays, and consumed with thoughts of The Wizard of Oz.
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