Letters & Opinion
A Woman's Intuition: A week In Sin City
The Pointer
ssuch489@uwsp.edu
Las Vegas is, quite literally, a city with no soul. I really don’t mean to sound cynical, but it’s true. It’s a city that is built upon the assumption that the people that populate it have no problem throwing away their money. It sounds ridiculous to you and me of course. We rational people would never be lured into the trap that casinos lay for us in the form of scantly clad women serving us drinks while we throw down more and more money holding on to the faint but resilient hope that the next pull, the next roll, the next hand will make us rich, or at least allow us to break even.
As I walked around the strip one night, I stood in awe of the amazing buildings that lay before me: a replica of the Eiffel Tower outside the Paris hotel, a huge bronze lion guarding the doors of the MGM Grand, Lady Liberty welcoming her visitors, or more specifically, her visitor’s money. The most impressive to me was the massive pyramid and sphinx I saw from the plane.
But a thought occurred to me as I marveled at a giant pirate ship outside the Treasure Island hotel; these casinos could not be as large and grand as they were if people took more money out of Vegas than they put in. It is a city that is literally built on the dashed dreams and lost money of the scores of pilgrims who come there to strike it rich.
Well, how’s that for cynical? Of course, that’s not to say I didn’t have a good time. I love sharing a tiny room at the Motel 6 with four lovely guys from UW-SP’s own 90 FM radio station. Those guys are troopers! Trivia ended at midnight on Sunday night and they were on a plane to Sin City by 11:00 am on Monday morning.
It’s a very exciting time for us at the Pointer. We have just launched a brand new edition of The Pointer online. We’ve had a number of people working very, very hard on this project, and we can’t wait to show it off to you. Check it out online at http://pointeronline.uwsp.edu/ and come to our launch party on April 29. It’ll be a mouse-clicking good time!
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