The Dawn of a New Las Vegas

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/opinion/vegas-shooting-aftermath.html

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LAS VEGAS — At around 7:30 p.m. on Monday, the evening after the massacre on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, a packed express city bus detoured around the closed streets surrounding the site of the attack. A passenger yelled out, mystified at the mind-set of the suspected gunman, Stephen Paddock, “What I don’t get is, why would you go through the trouble of setting up the retirement he had and then end your life like that?”

Las Vegas is often an incoherent place, but its distinct brand of confusion has hit a new pitch in the aftermath of one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history.

For a few years now, I’ve been covering the frenzied energy that can only flourish at America’s last-chance terminus. Coming into town yesterday, though, I anticipated a decidedly more subdued tone than the one I’ve encountered in my wanderings through conventions, grand openings and hotel-casino implosion parties.

But when I stepped onto the Strip near the gleaming and crowded outdoor bazaar of chain retailers and fast-food counters in front of Bally’s, a hawker held out two-for-one drink coupons for a nearby bar. “All right, who wants to get drunk?” he asked anyone, as if to say, all right, let’s just move on and forget it.

The electronic marquees of the resort-casinos, usually blasting promotions for shows and restaurants, said otherwise. They flashed heart-shaped logos of the Strip skyline with the hashtag #VegasStrong, messages of thanks to emergency medical workers, information about where to donate blood and phone numbers to call to track down missing loved ones.

Go inside a casino, though, and you might think nothing happened.

East of the Strip, at the locals-favorite Ellis Island Brewery and Casino, crowds sipped pilsner glasses of two-dollar beer, hit video poker machine buttons and cheered at the “Monday Night Football” matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Washington Redskins on the many screens throughout the casino, except for a muted one tuned to Fox News in a corner by the restrooms.

In the property’s low-ceilinged karaoke lounge, patrons took turns wailing hits by Green Day, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adele and Christina Aguilera. A middle-aged man in a Hawaiian shirt delivered a heartfelt rendition of America’s 1970s song “Ventura Highway.” It felt like a gesture toward some long-gone innocent dream, a nostalgia for something rendered utterly meaningless.

Outside, a few minutes past 10 p.m., about 24 hours after the attack, drunk couples stumbled toward the Strip along Flamingo Road. A solitary man clutched a jumbo flute containing a frozen red daiquiri.

Back amid the talky noise of the laughing crowds on the Strip, I almost felt the familiar Las Vegas time warp, the idea that the night would go on forever. This was a momentary deception, though; as a young man blew on an alto saxophone with a sign at his feet that said, “Spread the love, hug somebody who needs one,” Las Vegas never seemed so serious, so locked in self-reflection.

When a truck zoomed past pulling an escort-service advertisement — the perennial “Girls to Your Room” message — it looked out of place.

“The Beatles” on a sign at the top of the Mirage, home of a Cirque du Soleil production, only heightened the dissonance.

In his 1987 book with the artist Guy Peellaert, “The Big Room: Portraits From the Golden Age,” the journalist Michael Herr wrote of Las Vegas: “There has never been another place like it for connecting the unconnectable.” I’ve often been inspired by those lines in my quest to understand this uncanny city.

But the night after the massacre, the atmosphere was flooded with unconnections, fragments at the dawn of a new Las Vegas, where the logic of drawing connections had utterly disintegrated.