Las Vegas is Home

A CEO of a company who is an acquaintance of mine used the above phrase to describe the weather in Washington, DC, in the summertime, and many would apply it to Vegas.

I disagree: I like the weather here quite a bit.

(If you want to know all about the climate in Vegas, here’s a book about it from the NOAA. It’s everything you need to know if you’re moving here, visiting here, or are just a weather geek as I sometimes am.)

Vegas actually has four distinct seasons, unlike say LA or Miami. One writer, wish I could remember who so I could attribute, wrote that those seasons were “fall/spring, summer, hot as hell, summer again.” Not too far off.

It’s true that it is a dry heat, but for the sake of full disclosure, I will add that when it’s 115, it just doesn’t freakin’ matter that it’s dry anymore.

But I’ll take it over Boston winters. It’s 77 degrees and sunny right now. Tough to beat that.

I don’t mean to pick on Nevada, since I believe the driver’s license is useless in all 50 states given that it does not prove someone can drive well. It’s really just an ID card.

Newcomers to Vegas will immediately notice that drivers here are very aggresive, seemingly for no apparent reason - maybe competitive spirit. I’m from Boston which is famous for aggresive/crazy/inexplicable driving, so I know of what I speak.

But even big-city road warriors will be surprised at the sheer number of accidents listed in the evening radio traffic report. The announcers generally start just talking really fast, sounding like the disclaimer at the end of a used car ad or an auctioneer. “We’ve got an injury accident on the southbound I-15 at Sahara, a crash on the 215 at Warm Springs, and several crashes on the surface roads including Rainbow at Charleston, Lake Mead at Jones, Nellis at Las Vegas Blvd., Tropicana and Eastern, Hualapai at Sahara, Ann at 95 Craig at Rancho, DIatParadiseTwainatMarylandSunsetatPecosMLKatBonanzaflamingoat boulderhighway!!!

I kid, but seriously, it’s crazy out there. Defensive driving really is a necessity in Vegas. Be safe.

I’m rooting for the Las Vegas Monorail to succeed because it’s clear that the central strip area of town is getting more and more congested. I’m hoping for its expansion as well. Anyone who has seen the phlanx of cabs jumping from the red light at the corner of Swenson and Tropicana looking like the start of a Nascar race knows that there have to be other transit options from McCarran if growth is to be accomodated.

Plus, seeing the monorail above while driving down Paradise Road is just cool. It’s sleek and modern-looking, and the fact that we’ll be the first city in America to use a monorail as public transit says something. It’s a symbol of forward thinking which Vegas deserves to be known for but isn’t. Seattle has a monorail, but it’s really a tourist ride more than an effective public transit option there.

However, the monorail has had its problems. It has been shut down in the past, sometimes for months at a time, because of mechanical problems - problems which can prove scary since the trains run 50 feet above the street and are fully automated. That is, they have no driver in the car.

Ridership has been falling, causing the private company that runs it to raise prices in order to make up lost revenue. That compounds a problem: It was too expensive to begin with. Originally $3 to ride (making it more expensive than a New York City subway ride), the price has been bumped up to $5 for a single ticket. Four friends who want to go from say, MGM Grand to the Convention Center could share a cab for less than the $18 it would cost for four tickets (you can buy two tickets for $9). Public transit should never cost more than a cab!

Locals can buy a ticket for $1, but that often proves more hassle than it’s worth. You can’t do it at a machine; instead you have to buy from one of the manned booths provided at some stations at some times. The last time I did this, the guy working in the booth behaved just like a unionized public transit employee from New York or Boston: He acted as though I were inconveniencing him. Then, once I got inside the station, a surly security officer demanded to see my ID to prove I was a local. If the guards don’t have better things to do than make sure I’m not screwing the company out of $4, one wonders if they’re needed at all.

If the monorail is to be operated like a private company (with a profit motive), then it has to attract customers, not repel them. There is a limited customer base for trips behind the eastern side of the strip, and the monorail should do what it can to keep those people.

Having been a business journalist, I understand that the management of the monorail’s operating company has many constituencies to consider. But all become moot in the absence of customers.

I’d like to see the monorail go to the airport, expand to serve the west side of the strip, and perhaps even go downtown. That is several years away, though, giving it time to hopefully tighten up the operation that it currently has.

Everyone’s familiar with the saying “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” I have a proposal for another: “let’s keep Vegas Vegas.” I don’t intend for this blog to become political in nature, but what politics I will discuss have to do with Vegas’s growth, and the influx of people from many places and cultures.

When people move to a new home, they bring their values with them. That’s unavoidable and certainly not a bad thing. However, Las Vegas has a “live and let live” attitude, and laws (or lack thereof) to back it up.

Will the multidudes who come from more conservative or religious cultures try to inhibit the somewhat libertine culture of Vegas - less availablity of alcohol, a more “family friendly” Vegas? Will those from a more liberal or, say, environmentalist environ want to stop folks here from smoking so much, driving so much, or eating so much at the buffets?

Let’s hope not. I came here not to change Vegas but to embrace it. Not everyone agrees: A majority of Nevada voters passed a controversial smoking ordinance last November. Many establishments are flouting the law. I say good. There has to be one place in America where adults can make their own decisions, and if not Vegas, where?