I’m home, I’ve shaken the jetlag, and I finally feel like I’ve recovered from the sensory overload that is Las Vegas. So as promised, here’s the first of three posts about my experiences in the USA…
Las Vegas is a lot. Too much, probably. You want desert but your main course is about twice as big as the ones at home so you have no space left. You want to go to bed, but the walk back to your hotel takes you through three different casinos. And even once you reach your resort, you have to navigate your way through endless clusters of slot machines with their blinking lights and happy jingles to reach your room. Simply put, the place is exhausting, and after a week I couldn’t wait to get away and back to my own space.
At its best, Vegas is a unique experience. Where else am I going to have a cocktail served to me by a robot or spend a night wandering between casinos, gambling a little at each? Somewhere in the middle, Vegas is a sweltering, impassable sea of tourists not unlike the parts of London I deliberately avoid. And at its worst, Vegas feels almost sinister – never more so than when you notice the small details and tactics that help the place to maintain its Disneyland-like facade and convince people to part with their cash.
On balance, I’m glad I had the opportunity to visit Las Vegas. It’s certainly somewhere to say that you’ve been, and I picked up a few stories that I’m sure I’ll tell anyone who’s interested for a few years to come. But unless I decide to go back to Defcon (more on that in a future post), I think it’s definitely a one-time thing. I’m not sure I could take another week dodging the crowds and having my attention pulled in all directions 24/7.
Don’t worry, though, Americans – I’ll be back. I know the Strip isn’t representative of your country, and even then, one of the positives I can take from my time in Nevada is that all the locals I spoke to were very polite and friendly. But perhaps the biggest positive from my trip is that I managed to achieve something that few people do in Sin City: I walked away from the Las Vegas casinos’ slot machines with a $10 profit in my pocket.
This is post one of three on my recent trip to Las Vegas. The next one will cover the Black Hat USA conference, and the final entry will be on the hacker get-together Defcon.
Stack Stubs 