Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

146 pages of lawyers

I've always held the opinion that if you want to know about a place, the place to start is the phone book. I currently have the Las Vegas phone book in front of me, and the classified section (the Yellow Pages) contains:

• 146 pages of lawyers (including quite a few full-page adverts and much macho chest-beating about how aggressive various lawyers are)
• 102 pages of "entertainers", mostly exotic - sample advert "Barely Legal Girls for Big Boys". It's interesting to note that while prostitution is legal in many parts of Nevada (I passed a fantasically dodgy-looking place beside US50 a couple of days ago with a neon sign advertising the traditional "Girls, Girls, Girls") it's illegal in Clark County, where Vegas is located. I don't believe all these entertainers are just there to serve drinks, especially as many advertise "full service"..
• 2 pages of casinos - let's be honest, most of these places don't exactly need to advertise their existence in the Yellow Pages, so there aren't any huge spreads of adverts.
• 7 pages of pawnbrokers
• 85 pages of physicians
• 15 pages of wedding locations (including at least five Elvis-themed establishments and a good few drive-in wedding chapels) with prices as low as $39 including tax.

More mundanely, there are a mere 4 pages of tyre fitters, 2.5 pages of shoe shops and 29 pages of plumbers.

The above just about summarises the priorities of this weird, unworldly city. This is an incredibly seedy place, but it's a good-natured, un-selfconscious kind of seedy and a lot less intimidating as a result. My motel room is exactly like the rest of Vegas - slightly peeling and decorated with poor taste including a pink pan in the lavvy. Still, having come from northern Nevada over the last couple of days, arriving here is somewhat like landing on Mars.

I got here after taking a long detour off US95 south of Tonopah, which was a little too full of enormous RVs and groups of that kind of motorbike which (a) takes up an entire car-width parking space, (b) uses most of its engine power generating noise, and (c) when viewed in the car's rear view mirror, looks alarmingly like the rider is riding a giant set of motorised birthing stirrups. The detour was through the Death Valley National Park, and it's a trip I can recommend anyone to take. Foolishly, I had the roof down and as a result I'm a kind of lobster pink with a fantastic shadow of my sunglasses on my face, but the trip was still fantastic. Not only does the National Park contain Badwater, in the middle of the salt flats and the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere (280-something feet below sea level), but it contains some of the most sun-baked and desolate landscapes you'll see anywhere. It's unbelievable that early settlers crossed this godforsaken, dessicated area, which regularly records the highest temperatures on Earth. It was blazingly hot today, but in summer it's much, much hotter.

The highlight was probably Artist's Palette, a rocky hillside which has been stained different colours by various mineral compounds. It's almost impossible to describe and probably even harder to photograph convincingly, so I can only suggest going to see it yourself. The only downside to visiting all these desolate places was the irritating habit Americans have of leaving their car engines running while getting out to look at views (or in extreme circumstances, just sitting in the car park with the engine running and looking at the view through the windscreen). Yes, I know it's nice to keep the air conditioning running, but your SUV sitting there belching out fumes and noise doesn't exactly add to the sense of isolation, guys.

At Zabriskie Point I pulled the car into a parking space next to another Mustang convertible, silver this time, which to my surprise turned out to have the registration number just before mine - while my hire car is -323, this one was -322. I guess that's another one on hire from Hertz. The car had gone after I had a quick run up to the Point to ogle the view, so I didn't have a chance to find the driver and ask.

Back on the main road I re-entered Nevada and stopped to fill the car up in the fantasically-named Pahrump, a town with the most offended-sounding name I've ever heard. From there it's a fairly short hop to Las Vegas, and an extremely lengthy crawl up the terminal gridlock off the Strip to get to the motel with only one burst of abuse from someone who thought I'd somehow be able to move the car forward and out of his way so he could cross behind despite another car being right in front of me. Welcome to Vegas, I thought..

Posted by mpk at April 5, 2004 5:15 AM | TrackBack