On sin city

From: Laurence Shandy
To: Oscar B. Goodman, mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada
Re: Our town

Dear Mayor Goodman,

Congratulations on winning another four-year term. Historically, the mayor's role in a town like Las Vegas has been negligible. He's the crazy old man who haunts city hall, or he's the retarded nephew of some gambling tycoon/mob boss who might find some simple-minded pleasure presiding over ribbon cutting ceremonies at the new Arby's or Panda Express.

And why should the mayor of Las Vegas have any real power? The powers that watered a little stink hole in the middle of the Nevada desert until it grew into a gaudy, glitzy empire of murder and profiteering have done a fine job of running the place all by themselves. The mayor's office is really just a side-effect of turning Las Vegas into an official municipality with an official police force that can do the really dirty work the whores and hitmen can't handle. No thanks to the mayor, Las Vegas floats atop an oil well formed from the remains of stool pigeons and hangers-on who couldn't pay their debts. The streets are swept clean by the dragging feet of the downtrodden running only on the fumes of their broken dreams.

Or, should I say, that's how Las Vegas used to be. It's a wonder what a few decades and an uppity city government can change. The last time I visited Las Vegas, Frank Sinatra was still young enough to get an erection, and I have the scars to prove it. But what did I find upon my triumphant return this past weekend? A faded shell of what once was. The air burns the moisture from your loins and smells perpetually of a $4.99 all-you-can-eat buffet. It's a sickening potpourri of stale snow crab, sausage links, and chicken fingers. The streets themselves seem to sweat a constant stream of shitty easy listening, as if 1987 were on a loop. I couldn't purchase a rusty trombone in a back alley with a veteran prostitute and her eager daughter without damming my ears against an onslaught of Bon Jovi and En Vogue.

Las Vegas used to be home to the kinds of shows that required a Hepatitis shot and a rubber poncho, but what's the biggest attraction there today? Fucking Carrot Top, sir. That's the kind of entertainment I expect on a Wednesday night at a Boca Raton retirement village, not in the town that used to serve me caviar with one hand and fist me with the other.

I don't know what you've done with the real rulers of Las Vegas, but you should really consider ceding your new found power to one of the old guard. At this rate, people like me will never return. Do you really want to base your town's economy on the American middle class and their tax break money? "What happens here stays here" is a laughable slogan for a town where the most sinful thing one can do is forget to tip the beef carver on the buffet line. How about this instead:

"Las Vegas. What happens here will cause internal bleeding."

Best wishes,
Laurence Shandy, gentleman