The story of Las Vegas is one of survival, renewal, and the American spirit. In fact, in many ways, the story of Las Vegas is the story of America told in its most extreme. Luck becomes loss; industry becomes service; hope presages the inevitable crash. And yet, like the country in which it resides, it carries on, more powerful than before, growing from each setback to become increasingly resilient and consequential.

The story of Las Vegas is also, for your author, a personal one. That’s why, as I prepare to leave Las Vegas to return to my home of Washington, DC, I wanted to offer an atypically personal reflection on the Silver City in two parts. This is the second part, which encapsulates what the city means and where it is going; while the first part explores how Las Vegas came to be. Part love letter, part history, part tribute, and – inevitably – part autobiography. I hope you’ll indulge because there are so many things people overlook about this scorned, scorched, and sacreligious city in the Mojave. 

What Happens in Vegas

The story of Las Vegas in the 21st century is one of stark contrasts. While the metro has added 1.5 million people – more than doubling in size – in the last 22 years, it has become an example of American hubris and miscalculation. It is getting hotter as climate change threatens the planet, it is running out of water, and it is over reliant on the entertainment industry, which has left it disproportionately devastated by the trends of the new millennium. 

In the 2010s, the tourism industry continued to limp by. Many of the low-education, high paying Strip jobs never returned. But the recovery forced Las Vegas to diversify. Tech, green energy, health, logistics, and public sector jobs now make up large shares of southern Nevada’s economy. Even the mainstay casino’s emphasis went to service and experience over consumption and smut. Gone were the monotonous, ugly casino floors. Here were the Instagramable scenes, festive cocktails, and entertainers worth seeing. The online clothing store Zappos relocated to downtown Las Vegas and invested heavily in its revitalization, transforming a formerly lewd and crime-ridden area into one that appealed to the accendant Millennial generation. Gentrification began downtown and, broadly, people began moving to the Silver City again. Row after row of neighborhoods now fill almost the entire valley. 

Years ago I bookmarked a 2015 piece from The Economist titled “Viva again” which I religiously read every few months. The piece characterizes this revival and sums up in its concluding paragraph why, after seeking my calling in Washington, I kept an eye on the city:

“Sin City’s recovery shows the enduring ability of America to make improbable ideas work. Some 2m people live in a glittering, sprawling city deep in the desert and hardly think that this is strange. And with its mix of tech-obsessed yuppies, ageing baby-boomer gamblers and thrusting Hispanics, its demography resembles America’s future. That future might not be as bright as it seemed a decade ago, but it is a little more stable. Perhaps what happens in Las Vegas, far from staying there, spreads to the rest of America.”

With those words in my mind for years, in 2018 I returned to Las Vegas for the first time as an adult. Enjoying a drink on the top of the Rio with my father, who lived in Vegas for decades until the end of the 1990s, I confessed that I wanted to live there. And after a week in the Nevada desert, a walk through the Hoover Dam, my first game of blackjack, and a coerced drive right up to the gate of Area 51, I knew someday I would.

After Vegas’ recovery, and before my return, the Silver City would face its most recent earth-shattering obstacle: a global pandemic. The city was ill-equipped to face the economic realities that COVID-19 and future viruses portend. Even after diversification, Nevada has a much higher share of employees in personal care and services-related occupations such as dealers, ticket takers, theater workers, concierges, and other positions that require direct interaction with tourists from all over the world who could be unwitting spreaders of the virus themselves. 16% of the state’s GDP is thanks to tourism, a higher rate than even Hawaii, for whom tourism makes up 10%. The nature of Nevada’s economy makes it particularly vulnerable to both economic and pandemic-related shocks, as a significant portion of it rests on entertainment, travel, and face-to-face interaction; all things that people, especially leisure consumers as we’ve noted, often cut entirely during recessions and – now – pandemics. For these reasons, Nevada received the second-worst score in terms of how it has fared against the pandemic in Politico’s analysis. 

Sin(cere) City

As has been the case for so many people, the last three years have been some of the darkest in my life. I left behind my friends and the only city in which I’ve ever felt truly myself. I suffered a breakup, a pet’s death, a layoff, and isolation from those I cared for the most as we all tried to find our own new way in the post-2020 world. The day I finally arrived in Las Vegas was the day friends, colleagues, and my own memories of years working and roaming the halls were violated by an attack on the United States Capitol. I never felt further away from where I should be. But despite these arduous three years, I am left with nothing but the feeling of appreciation that I got to spend half of them in Las Vegas.

I came to love Vegas’ downtown. With coffee shops, breweries, record stores, a bustling art scene, and the only walkable neighborhood in the city big enough to satisfy a sidewalk-spoiled Washingtonian, it reminded me of so much of what I missed about DC. Most nights I’d spend minutes just staring out my window as the dusk gave way to the enthrall of the Strip lighting up for another night. And every day I woke up to look out at the red, black, and sepia mountains backdropping the Stratosphere, I smiled. 

Sin City even revealed itself to be remarkably sincere. My first friend in town was the owner of a local brewery who happened to overhear me talking to a friend visiting from out of town, and shamelessly invited me to his weekly board game nights. He’d come to tell me about his small business’ story, opening just before the pandemic began, and scraping by waiting for the area to rebound. After years in which I was too shy to strike up a conversation with strangers, a confidence emerged as I got to know the owners or servers all over downtown Las Vegas. The number of bartenders, business owners, and servers who I got to know on a first name basis in a year quickly surpassed similar acquaintances I made in seven years in Washington. 

There is the ever-evolving craft beer assortment at Neon Desert Brewing, an unfailing selection of pizza at Good Pie, and the chronically underrated fare and service of Main Street Provisions. There’s the motel-turned-storefront collection of diverse and inclusive stores at Fergusons, the most delicious Thai food I have ever had (and I eat a lot of Thai food) at Lotus of Siam, and the craft cocktails at the suave Velveteen Rabbit. I never regretted walking through the dingy range of Fremont Street’s classic old Vegas casinos so long as I ended up in the stark quality of Circa Resort & Casino. Nor did I regret a single dollar I lost playing Fortune Cup, a slot machine that doubles as a mechanical horse race. But, I would be committing a grave error if I didn’t include my favorite place in Las Vegas: the atmosphere, aesthetic, variety, and familiarity of the Silver Stamp, the best beer bar I’ve ever been to.Ask for the off-the-menu pickle shot, which will leave you pleasantly surprised.

And, even with all that to offer in terms of entertainment, Las Vegas still contained outlets to fan the flames of my true passion: politics. I spent weeks conducting research, interviews, and writing this piece on a fringe candidate in Nevada’s upcoming congressional race and the response to these sorts of candidates by local venues. I stepped into writing an investigative piece on a secretive Colorado-based megadonor’s misreported contribution to that same candidate. I looked at why Nevada kept its mask mandate through the Omicron surge despite being a relatively purple state, while many blue states declined to do so. I contrasted a longshot Nevada gubernatorial candidate with the campaign of now-Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. In capping off a series on the Democratic Party in the Midwest, I pointed to the opportunities that Nevada and states like it offer to the party in the future. And thanks in part to this on-the-ground understanding and evaluation, we were ahead of the curve in noting that 2022’s Senate race in Nevada is far more competitive than it first seemed. 

Nevada is one of the most critical states in America’s political future – a perennial swing state, the only one to ever have a majority-female legislature, and one that may soon hold the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. It’s a close state whose electoral, legislative, and political power is dominated by one metro area, whose vote can uniquely determine the outcomes of who controls the Senate, and therefore the Supreme Court, and possibly now even the House of Representatives. That makes Las Vegas a uniquely powerful city, possibly the most important urban area in determining control of the federal government, a far cry from its modern origin as a train stop with a couple thousand settlers.

Viva Las Vegas

Las Vegas is named for what it once looked like: a true oasis brought into existence by a natural spring where wild grasses grew – “the meadows.” Having supported Native Americans, western travelers, and Mormons who sought refuge in an inhospitable and often barren desert, the spring is now long gone after decades of colonization. But in many ways, Las Vegas remains an oasis. 

Even after a dozen drives down to Las Vegas from Colorado, Utah, or northern Nevada, there is a moment driving towards the city that never ceases to light up the imagination. It’s a stunning reveal coming south at night on Interstate 15 after hours of empty American landscapes and small desert towns, where you crest over Apex and the entire valley below you is suddenly full of every color of light you can imagine. 

In it is every strip mall, casino, tacky gift shop, litigator’s billboard, and pawn store you can imagine, but there’s something undeniably magic about it from afar. Therein lies a city constantly at work, always awake. Truly a metropolitan, electrified, exuberant, and persevering oasis in the desert. 

Looking to the future, Las Vegas faces stiff competition as more forms of gambling are legalized nationally. Why fly to Vegas when there’s a casino down the street? Despite competition, what has often given the city a lift – because it knows it increasingly cannot compete on cost – is its service. There’s something very classic about that ethos, like the glitzy airlines of the 1950s, and for decades Las Vegas has remained one of the most comfortable and accommodating cities in the entertainment and tourism industries. It competes with other cities by offering more hotels than any other, providing endless free entertainment, by relentlessly catering free drinks to gamblers, and by making itself a place that makes you want to come back. Las Vegas is the odd place that will rob you blind and leave you convinced you’ve had the time of your life.

And yet, to continue to maintain its prowess and allure, it must do as it has done decade after decade: it must adapt. The city faces long odds as it copes with climate change, economic stagnation, and competition. But, if history is a guide, you should take that bet. The city has demonstrated itself to be remarkably resilient through diversification. So what if Americans are drinking less? Nevada legalized marijuana in 2017 and the city has already established itself as a haven for weed enthusiasts. Forget gambling, the state now proudly advertises the opportunities it offers in recreation, natural parks, and some of the best restaurants in the world. And yes, the city was over-reliant on tourism… but now it’s home to almost 3 million people! In what used to be home to the dregs of culture, a bustling local scene has sprung up with a distinctive home-grown flavor. The city’s ethos of and obsession with schmaltz have given way to passion and sincerity – a place where strip clubs provided coronavirus vaccines, where you can find a museum of yesteryear’s neon signs, and a chocolate factory whose garden is dedicated exclusively to the world’s cactuses. This is the Las Vegas you should bet on.

After every crash, the Silver City rebuilds itself as a new city in the same place. Like America, it is built on the lessons of its mistakes and ultimately strives to be better. After each setback, I’m compelled to do the same. I hesitate to hold on to memories of many of the places and parts of Las Vegas, because as history shows, they’re apt to be – in their own way – lost to the sand. One restaurant becomes another, one hotel becomes a casino, a city block will become a new stadium or store. 

Counterintuitively for a finale in a piece dedicated to this city I hold so dear, what Vegas affirmed for me is that it never really was about one place or one thing, but about the memory itself and who you shared it with. My favorite thing about Las Vegas wasn’t a place or an idea, any money I won or anything I bought, nor anything I saw or ate. It was having the people I cared about visit so that I could show them the side of Vegas they didn’t expect in the hope that they might find something to love about it too.