To the tourist who's only destination is Las Vegas Boulevard - a 6.8 km stretch better known as "The Strip", it's easy enough to forget that Las Vegas is a real city. With seemingly endless restaurants, casinos, and nightlife, it's more like a 21+ version of real-life Candyland.
Thousands of tourists flock to this city in the desert of Nevada every year. The thrill of the possibility of striking it rich with one spin of the slots, becoming a millionaire with the royal flush in a game of poker, or being dealt exactly 21 cards in blackjack and winning your fortune keeps the casinos full of hopefuls.
The Strip is a chameleon of sorts - it will make itself into whatever you want it to be. Alcoholic drinks are free in the casinos as long as you're gambling - whether it is the penny slots or the high stakes poker room, everyone gets all the free booze their stomachs can handle. Thrill rides are located in several of the casinos. Circus, Circus casino and hotel boasts an entire indoor theme park. For the camera-happy sightseer, the lights are never turned off. Fitness nuts can get their fill of scenic runs, and food enthusiasts have a wide array of buffets and restaurants to choose from.
When you're standing on the street admiring the view, it's effortless to pretend you don't see the man who digs into the garbage to get a drink. So desperate for a fix, he drinks what others have discarded. While excitedly skipping or drunkenly stumbling across the bridges that arc over the street to get to your next fun-filled destination, it's simple to close your eyes to the homeless man curled up, sleeping to the side of the well-populated walkway. Sitting on the top floor of the double-decker bus designed specifically to cart tourists up and down the Strip, it's easy to ignore to the conversation behind you about the high unemployment rate experienced by native Las Vegans.
I recently had my own experience in Sin City, complete with said drunken stumbling. As a University student on a pretty strict budget, my trip was not full of high stakes poker. But when you come with less, you're happy to leave with less. I saw a few shows, drank some free and some paid for alcohol, ate great food, and had a lot of laughs with my better half, who planned our trip on a spur-of-the-moment decision at the end of January. We didn't leave the Strip, and we didn't need to. There was more than enough entertainment to pack our four-night, three-day mini vacation.
But maybe it's because I'm a bleeding heart, or maybe it's because I'm a nosy journalist, that I noticed that not everyone in Las Vegas was having such an amazing time. I noticed the homeless man sleeping on the bridge less than a foot to the left of where we walked, and I wrinkled my nose when the desperate man grabbed a drink out of the garbage.
And maybe it's because I was on vacation that that's all I did - I just saw these things, and aside from a brief reaction, I just carried on with my fun. I never stopped to give the homeless man even a dollar, and I didn't give the desperate man one of my many free drinks.
A week later, I wish I had. While my trip was wonderful, and I will have lifelong memories of all the fun we had, I wish I would've made a difference in someone's day. I had so many smiles and laughs during those four days, and I'm not sure that the miserable people I saw had smiled in weeks.
But coming home, I was happy to just be one of the many tourists who packed the completely full plane. As I looked out the window, feeling blue about my fun coming to an end, I didn't think of the many other sad people - people who had far more substantial reasons for melancholy.
The jet picked up speed, taxiing past the buildings that would remind us, the tourists, that Vegas was a real city, with real problems - homelessness, unemployment, misery. In seconds it lifted off and Las Vegas was once again the light bright toy of childhood - scattered points of light with infinite possibilities.
