First casinos, shows and champagne, then desert, wide open spaces and red rocks: Las Vegas is the perfect starting point for a road trip.
City of superlatives
Everything is a little absurd. Where else can you stroll through a fantasy Venetian quarter in the morning, lie by the pool at noon, eat a steak in the evening and later end up in a crazy show where acrobatics, magic, music and naked exaggeration all merge into one?
The Strip, with its hotel temples and casinos, is the runway. The Bellagio impresses with its fountains, the Paris Las Vegas plants the Eiffel Tower in the middle of the desert, The Sphere looks like a landed spaceship, and everywhere something is flashing, luring, promising. Nothing is real, but everything is impressive – it’s a parallel world. Las Vegas isn’t afraid of kitsch, either. On the contrary: the city has turned it into a business model.
Sometimes the boundaries blur completely. In a Walmart at Area 51, for instance, where rainbow souvenirs, pop culture and conspiracy fantasies become a small parallel world of their own. In this city, you can of course also beam yourself to another planet with a pair of 3D glasses. Take that, Elon – we don’t need your spaceships at all!
For a queer audience in particular, Vegas has a special energy. Because the city doesn’t judge much. Here it’s practically good form to put yourself on show, to be overdressed or seriously underdressed, to laugh loudly, to dine late, to go to bed early or not at all. Vegas isn’t subtle. And that is wonderfully liberating.
A report by Raphael Hadad · Photos: Edelweiss / Loren Bedeli
