Fairwell Dear Western
Today I received a sad piece of news. No, no one is sick and no one has died. The news was simply that a certain place has now been officially filed away as a memory because it will soon no longer exist. Photo by Steve Marcus In a previous blog sometime back I recalled this place in Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas is an ever changing monster. Little is ever permanent yet what vanishes often leaves nostalgia in its wake. The city is like the shifting sands of the desert that surrounds it and if they don't figure out a way to get more water there the whole damn thing might disappear. Las Vegas is fascinating on so many levels but one of the things I find the most interesting is the fusion of local degeneracy and poverty with visitors from around the world and at times opulent wealth. Both coexist almost as if battle lines have been drawn around the city separating one from the other. There is a kind of invisible Berlin Wall. The old core of the city on Fremont stree