{"id":3823,"date":"2009-04-21T10:15:29","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T14:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=3823"},"modified":"2009-04-21T10:15:29","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T14:15:29","slug":"notes-from-vegas-white-stripes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/notes-from-vegas-white-stripes","title":{"rendered":"Notes from Vegas: White Stripes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, I took my car out to the In-N-Out Burger<\/a> on Tropicana Blvd. Rather than return via I-15, I decided to drive down the strip, starting around Circus Circus and the MGM Grand. My hotel is at the far end of the strip, near the Space Needle building, the Stratosphere, and my conference is nowhere near the strip, so this was likely the only opportunity I’d get to drive through and try to pick up some impressions. I’m still working on processing it all, but I’m having a tough time of it.<\/p>\n

I arrived in Vegas on a Saturday evening once, and the cab ride to my hotel was impossible due to strip-traffic. This time, there wasn’t much volume. I chalk it up to Monday night slowdown, rather than fiscalpocalypse.<\/p>\n

The funny thing about having a car on this trip is that I never drove in Vegas before, so I never noticed that the streets don’t have stripes painted to demarcate the lanes. They have little raised reflectors, but no white lines. (This made my drive in from the airport \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in which I had a blinding headache and the sun was just a few minutes from descending behind the mountains \u00e2\u20ac\u201d kinda frightening.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, the reason I’m writing is because I passed the City Center<\/a> project during this trip. It consists of a bunch of sleek towers and a big-ass mall. I saw it around 18 months earlier during this trip<\/a>. It’s been in the news lately<\/a> because of financing problems; a fund in Dubai doesn’t want to cover to giant cost overruns in order to finish a luxury hotel\/condo\/casino\/mall complex at a time when no one has money.<\/p>\n

After seeing the silly jagged multi-planar design for the front (mall) of the Center, I’m hoping they pulled out after developing taste. Here’s an interview with the architect of this grotesquerie, Daniel Liebeskind<\/a>, on how to rethink a mall or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, I took my car out to the In-N-Out Burger on Tropicana Blvd. Rather than return via I-15, I decided to drive down the strip, starting around Circus Circus and the MGM Grand. My hotel is at the far end of the strip, near the Space Needle building, the Stratosphere, and my conference is … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Notes from Vegas: White Stripes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,57,5],"tags":[653],"class_list":["post-3823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-las-vegas","category-travel","tag-daniel-liebeskind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-ZF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3928,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/notes-from-vegas-at-the-copa","url_meta":{"origin":3823,"position":0},"title":"Notes from Vegas: At the Copa","author":"Gil","date":"May 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"(Or just go to the slide show.) I was not in a good frame of mind for my trip to Las Vegas last month. I'm not the sort to hang out in a bar alone, I don't like gambling (except maybe for betting on football\u00c2\u00a0 or midseason basketball), most of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Las Vegas"","block_context":{"text":"Las Vegas","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/las-vegas"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":153,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/rock-the-house","url_meta":{"origin":3823,"position":1},"title":"Rock the House","author":"Gil","date":"February 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"From the NY Observer's new article on Chris Rock:A lot of Mr. Rock\u00c3\u00af\u00c2\u00bf\u00c2\u00bds show is dedicated to the U.S. as he knows it in 2004. Saying that he loves rap but has grown tired of defending it, Mr. Rock said that \"even the United States government hates rap. 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When I was in Vegas and wanted to take a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon, I decided to avoid the signs out on the strip that read, \"Discount Helicopter\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3821,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-42009","url_meta":{"origin":3823,"position":3},"title":"What It Is: 4\/20\/09","author":"Gil","date":"April 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: Finished Antony and Cleopatra, recaptured my comic-geek youth with the Ambush Bug reprint collection, and finished Plutarch's life of Lycurgus. What I'm listening to: A mix I made called Dropsical Meatwave. Because I'm like that. What I'm watching: Chocolate, which needed less buildup and more fight scenes.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a= 1904271014","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1692,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/stop-snitchin-the-comic-strip","url_meta":{"origin":3823,"position":4},"title":"Stop Snitchin’: the comic strip","author":"Gil","date":"October 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Is today's Housebroken the most racist (racistest?) comic strip ever? (Hey, CR readers! Stick around! Plumb the depths of the Unrequired Reading archives . . . if you dare!)","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":276,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/weekend-update","url_meta":{"origin":3823,"position":5},"title":"Weekend Update","author":"Gil","date":"June 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"It was a relatively quiet Memorial Day weekend, except for the part where the cop hinted that I might be a serial killer (or did he think I was a hitman?). My girlfriend and I were thinking of going to see David Byrne play on Saturday night, but I'd been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3823"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3826,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3823\/revisions\/3826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}