what i learned on my summer vacation.

I’m a bit of a shut-in. I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve lived in Oregon as a kid, in Reno as a student, and spent a lot of time in Southern California; briefly glimpsed Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Minnesota and Colorado. Went to Mexico once. That’s it. I’ve tried to figure out how my perceptions are altered or restricted by a life spent in Las Vegas without a lot of comparison. It’s hard to assess because, hey, I don’t know anything else.

Staying in Vegas may have some negative impact or produce some inefficiency in my development as a writer-human, but there’s at least one awesome upside: when I do go somewhere, I'm wide open. It’s like outer space travel. If it isn’t my beloved dry desert, my brain and body don’t know how to react. Super-cold temperatures inspire fear. Inches of snow might be a natural disaster. Sky-high mountains, thick rows of forest green, rivers and oceans are fantastic things straight out of the movies. Maybe I’m being a little dramatic.

In July, I was in Chicago for the first time ever. I crashed with and was guided around the city by family, a couple of jazz musicians/personal trainers. Seems like a perfectly normal dual vocation for people who live in Chicago. We walked a lot. We didn’t drive much. We rode a train. That was some outer space shit; in fact, moving from the subterranean airport corridor straight to the train made me feel kinda Total Recallish. We saw some touristy stuff and some art museum stuff, a really old and beautiful church, and some amazing, never-ending cityscapes. We ate deep dish pizza, great burgers from Kuma’s Corner, and jicama salad and duck enchiladas at Frontera. I fell in love, with a bar. It was five days and it went by too fast. But it was long enough to see a city, a real one, and long enough to gain a bit of that perspective I’ve been missing. And I return refreshed, with a healthy dose of appreciation for what we’ve got here that you just can’t find anywhere else. It’s also very easy to see what we don’t have in Vegas, but exploring this issue through comparison is a slippery and senseless slope.

There’s a lot of discussion going on these days about the state of Vegas, the culture and community of this place, and where we are headed. Our backbreaking shift from ultra-growth mode to cover-up-and-hide recession fuels the conversation, and conceals the fact that despite its size and population, this city is an adolescent. So Vegas cannot be legitimately compared to New York or L.A. or this crazy Chicago place I just discovered, or even to metropolitan areas with closer population like Houston or Philadelphia. We are just a baby, or maybe more appropriately, a whiny preteen.

One publication I write for recently did a package called What Las Vegas Really Needs. All the usual suspects were rolled out: A pro sports team. Cultural and economical diversity. Walkable, urban areas full of retail, restaurants, museums and fun shit. Public art. Public transportation that actually works and makes sense for the region. (A Vegas L-train would totally be like Total Recall.) In a demonstration of egotastical laziness, I declined to contribute to this package of articles. I didn’t want to beat a deaditorial horse. And I was disappointed, but not at all surprised, to see the vast majority of these suggestions are less What We Need and more Ways Vegas Could Be More Like Other Cities. That’s the way the collective Vegas brain operates because almost all of us are from some other place, and what we really want is all the convenience and sunshine of Vegas with the best amenities from back home. All we want is everything. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think that’s fair. If you spend a lot of time wishing for these kind of things We Need, I think you should ask yourself why you want so much out of Vegas, which has done nothing but entertain you and make your life easy. Hasn’t it given you enough? I think so.

I’m going to go see more places. I don’t want to be such a shut-in. Other cities may expose the shortcomings of my home, or they might make me love Vegas more, but those are just instinctual, superficial reactions and they don’t mean anything. A larger understanding, a wider perspective … that’s the plan. My Vegas is going to grow up to be whatever it wants to be. There might not be a consciousness, a spirit or soul of this city that’s driving its development, steering growth and change, and that’s fine with me, too. Maybe Vegas doesn’t want. Did you ever consider that?