Mafioso

Someone suggested that I visit the "Las Vegas History Museum." They meant the Mob Museum. The two are indistinguishable, for the history of Las Vegas is the mob.

Yeah, yeah, there are natives tied to the area, but they weren't dumb enough to settle a desert with few resources to provide for them. A Spanish patrol scouted the area in the 1820s and named the area "The Meadows" after the springs there that have long since dried up. Some Mormons tried to settle the area in 1855, but they were out of there in two years. It wasn't until 1905 when the railroad came to the place that people actually settled. The railroad workers brought with them gambling and prostitution, railroad corporations brought privatization and development, and vice brought the mafia. The desert settlement was the perfect place to run booze operations while the rest of the country was going through the insanity of Prohibition. The Hoover Dam was constructed in 1931, bringing more workers, more prostitutes, more gambling, and more booze. That's when Fremont Street opened, full of casinos and showgirls to keep the workers content.

Hoover Dam Souvenirs. No idea what they are.

Religious whackjobs always ruin everything.

On sale at the museum gift shop

When people think of "The Mafia," they usually think of Italians, partly because of The Godfather. But there were many ethnicities with their own version of mafia - Irish, Jewish, and Mexican, to name a few. They arose out of discrimination after immigrating to America, or in the Mexican case, the takeover of their land by the United States. They provided services to immigrants that weren't available to them because of prejudice.

The Mob Museum does an excellent job tracing the history of Las Vegas, but becomes a bit too much copaganda by the end. The glorification of cops in this country can be traced to the pursuit of the mob when Murder, Inc. was in full operation and the violence got out of hand. Americans rightly wanted those criminals off the streets. Today's cops would pee their pants if they had to confront mobsters like John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson. They're too busy shooting unarmed black men, harassing homeless people, beating their wives, and sexually assaulting children to go after real criminals.

Murder Inc was the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate operating during Prohibition until 1941. It was an alliance of the the Jewish and Italian mafias that was responsible for up to 1000 contract killings and claimed many more innocent victims caught in the crossfire. The syndicate dissolved after the 1941 trials that saw many mobsters convicted and executed after members turned against it and informed on them.

The mob began to find more legitimate ways to make money in the form of casinos and divorce. The 1940s saw the rise of a divorce industry in a country where it was difficult to get one. The so-called "dude ranches" you'll find in Nevada were more often than not once divorce ranches. People who wanted divorce would stay on these ranches so they could establish residency in the state of Nevada and get a divorce in only six weeks. The industry thrived. Celebrities were among those who benefited from the set up. Many people had their next partner lined up to marry once the divorce was final, which is how Vegas became the place of quickie weddings.

Some old slots:

As mobsters transitioned to legit businessmen, one has to wonder - were the mobsters becoming better people or were the businesses becoming worse? As I walked through the final part of the museum, I saw displays of organized crime today, particularly drug trafficking. I ask you why narcotics cartels are any worse than the Sacklers causing an opioid epidemic in America or the founder of the pharmaceutical company Insys bribing doctors and pharmacists to prescribe fentanyl or Martin Shkreli jacking up the prices of multiple pharmaceuticals or Pfizer tripling their price for the life saving drug Paxlovid or the Republican congress fighting to overturn the law capping insulin at $35 for seniors so the companies can go back to charging them $600?

It isn't worse. It's the same damn thing. At least the Insys guy was charged with racketeering, but he only served two years of a five and a half year sentence because rich guys have a different system of justice. Shkreli is out of prison, too, and still a millionaire. But those in prison for selling illegal drugs can spend decades behind bars.

I left the museum and headed downstairs to their "speakeasy" bar called The Underground, where I had a drink popular during Prohibition called "the bees knees." There I watched a jazz trio (which became a quartet) perform songs from the era as well as much more modern Halloween-themed songs. The bar's walls were lined with replicas of old political ads and other Prohibition era memorabilia, as well as some factoids about the era. The band was good - I ended up staying for their whole set before heading back, for the next day was Monday and there was work to be done...

Atomic City First Impressions

video

The plane descended onto an island of light after four and a half hours of traversing sunsets, stars, darkness, and xanax. The orb I had come to visit lit up the skyline as we taxied to a gate that would admit me to Atomic City to start a three week journey through the American desert. The early hours of Late Night had no effect on the city's infamous strip that night or any other, and I took a short stroll among the casinos and circuses with a frozen daiquiri in hand as soon as I was able. But there was work to be done in the morning, and I headed back for three days of labor, pools, and U2. (I will save my comments about the Sphere and the shows for another post.)

I wandered a bit each day I was in the city, my flip-flopped feet black with filth from streets unwashed by rain, the least pedestrian-friendly city I have ever walked. I found myself turning down dumpster drenched alleys or darkened parking garages, sometimes coming to dead ends, before I realized you were actually supposed to walk through the casinos to get anywhere. Marketing takes many forms...

The entire economy of Las Vegas is built on idleness, aside from the thousands of hardworking service industry folks that keep it running. (They are about to go on strike. Go labor!) The goal of the casino industry is to redistribute the wealth of the have nots, who gamble in the hopes of getting rich so they don't have to work, to the haves, who don't work and will never be rich enough to satisfy their own greed. I have no interest in that racket, except to watch it all as a curious observer.

The city is a show itself, with plots and subplots and sub-subplots. Casino owners, mobsters, and politicians are the main characters, many of whom belong to more than one of those groups at a time. Longtime figures, both living and dead (and some who may not quite be either) play prominent roles in the story. A pantheon of deities are still worshiped, with The King of the gods ever present. The shows are sometimes subplots, and sometimes part of the main story, almost religious services, even.

One night I ventured into The Venetian after looking at its fake canals in both disgust and wonder. It has been more than two decades since I've been to the real Venice, but the memory of it has been engraved in my brain. The fake version is terribly accurate. I went inside almost against my will, like something was pulling me in. What I saw was completely unexpected - a full canal running through a shopping mall, gondolas and all, under a fake blue sky dotted with fake fluffy clouds. I still don't understand why it exists, but it is...well, something to see since it's there. After I went home I looked up the cost of flights to the real Venice, Italy. They were cheaper than my flight to Vegas.

This being my first trip to a city I had never had a desire to visit (I was there as a small child but have no memories of it), I had not been prepared for the sheer tackiness of it all. I hated it but was fascinated at the same time. Later we had dinner in fake Paris (which was very good, btw), and then I started to appreciate the kitsch. I actually wanted to see fake Egypt and fake New York and fake Caribbean for the spectacle of it all.

But what I wanted to see most was the real Las Vegas, or at least the one that dwells in the nostalgic mind. I wanted to see the historical remnants of a city that shouldn't exist, for human civilizations weren't meant for deserts. A bunch of mobsters needed a base to operate, so what had been a tiny settlement for railworkers, miners, and courtesans became a major American city. I went downtown, first to the neon sign museum, a kind of graveyard for signs of old, many from casinos and motels that no longer exist. That was the first time I felt enthusiasm for what I was seeing, if only because it was from an era that preceded late capitalism's unbridled nihilism, even in a city that existed solely for money.

 

Then I walked down Fremont Street. Oh, what have they done to history? The famous street is covered with a massive screen flashing images of video games and ads for junk and seizure-inducing swirls of colors. Beneath it sounds a cacophony of idiocy, from the talentless rappers on fuzzy mics to death metal guitarists competing for highest decibel level to soundscan-inspired playlists blasting from every bar and store on the block. National junk food chains inhabit historic buildings alongside neo-drug stores with all manner of modern ways of killing yourself slowly.

I had to get out. So I wandered east, then I wandered some more, past the chic bars and the hip music venues to sketchy corners where people had lost more than a nickel in a slot machine. Then I found it - a part of old Las Vegas that still stood, a road with old motels who had their original signs and stories of millions of travellers who had passed through this desert town. An odd beauty wrapped itself around these old buildings as the October sun created a golden aura.

 

 

Sinking sun. I had to get back before the light faded into the darkness of poverty and the side effects that come to neighborhoods of human suffering.

So I went to the Mob Museum.

(To be continued...)

Here's what Fremont Street looked like in 1987:  

 

 

https://youtu.be/e3-5YC_oHjE?si=Jq3zB1UGYiM0gQMj