Sunday, April 9, 2006 | 7:34 a.m.
I'm always amused and occasionally intrigued by the opinions and pontifications of parachute journalists who land unannounced in Las Vegas and then return to their home base and write the definitive article on our city.
Typically, no matter how entranced the writer might be by our many offerings, there is more than a share of cynicism if not downright derision in the resulting essay. Occasionally, I even learn something new from these visitors.
Back in the late 1970s, a local magazine I was editing hosted a cocktail reception for esteemed travel writer Jan Morris. She was in town taking the pulse of Las Vegas for a profile she was preparing for The New Yorker.
Between sips of a mimosa fizz, I pulled Morris aside and asked whether she had developed a strong feel for our city after two weeks snooping around town. Her answer, which more than a quarter century later I can only paraphrase, went something like this: "Despite all the nice people I've met who've been so friendly and accommodating, I detect a large undercurrent of evil running through Las Vegas. Perhaps it goes back to the city's roots."
Her reference was not to the railroad roots of 1905, but rather to the days of Bugsy and the Boys as they accelerated development along the Strip.
At the time Morris made this observation, I agreed with her. Although I had been in town only five years, I could see that organized crime had a distinct presence on the Las Vegas Strip, and even in my own neighborhood.
No fewer than seven homes in my community on the east side of Las Vegas (which was then considered the center of town) had been burglarized, and the perpetrator turned out to be a member of the infamous Hole in the Wall Gang. This group of robbers and murderers and thugs was under orders from Anthony Spilotro, the alleged syndicate boss who ended up tortured and buried alive in an Indiana cornfield some 10 years later.
About three years after Morris' visit, in an expanded profile on Las Vegas that appeared in her book "Journeys," she wrote, "There is always a sneer in Las Vegas. The mountains around it sneer. The desert sneers. And arrogant in the middle of its wide valley, dominating those diligent sprawling suburbs, the downtown city sneers like anything."
I think it's fair to say that the Las Vegas Jan Morris found some 25 years ago would not have made a list of her Top Five Places to Visit. But I wonder if her view would shift today, if now in her 80th year she would return and observe the changes and enhancements we've gone through.
I dare say they are as dramatic as Morris herself underwent, when she changed her identity and sex from John Morris, a British army intelligence officer and adventurer, to the perceptive female Jan Morris, who has earned such great acclaim as a writer.
But I've found that getting people to open their minds to the Las Vegas of 2006, with its ever-expanding sense of culture, its open hospitality to all ilk and ethnicity of people looking for a second chance, and its growing allure as a burgeoning economic destination and major western American city, is extremely difficult.
In over 40 interviews I've given this year with regional radio talk shows, I find that the tired old capsules about Las Vegas still exist. These are just a few of the questions I've had to field from talk show hosts (who, one would assume, are significantly more enlightened than the general population):
While some of these questions may at first seem ludicrous, there is at least a grain of truth to all of them. Cutting through stereotypes and branded imagery is a delicate business, but I do my best in these conversations to enlighten the questioner about the city we have become.
I typically explain that Las Vegas' reputation as a den of sin is partly why I ventured here in the first place, as a lonely 26-year-old bachelor hoping to find some companionship, whether for a night, a month, or a lifetime. And that as much as I loved my hometown of Spokane, for a guy who yearned to scribble for the rest of his days I was finding it increasingly difficult to identify stories that aroused my passion up there.
Perhaps the reason many people tend to "sneer" back at Las Vegas is because our city offers a constant threat to their way of life. Do you suppose it's because we're having too much fun out here in the desert, or because our economy is among the best in the nation? Or is it that we don't have hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, or mudslides? Maybe it's that it's nearly always sunny outside.
It's a certainty that some regions of the country are angry at us for stealing business from them. Oklahoma City still hasn't gotten over our taking the National Finals Rodeo from them. North Carolina is in a panic over how quickly we've attracted furniture buyers. The folks in Atlantic City can't be overly excited that this year we hosted the Miss America Pageant. And New York is doubtless irritated at how many of their great chefs we've either borrowed or stolen in the last decade.
So I say, bring on the abuse. As long as it's well composed, with a modicum of intelligence behind it, such criticism can only enhance our reputation and contribute to the ever-rising tourist count in this wonderful place that happens to be a "bastion of heathens," or "the ninth ring of Dante's Inferno," or "representative of the moral decay of the country as a whole."
With all this pleasure we're surrounded by, we can certainly tolerate a little pain.
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