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1 L as Vegas is one of the world’s most recognizable cities. People all over the world seem to have some notion of what this place is like. Frank Simon, a longtime Las Vegan, told of his visit deep into the “outback of the Outback ” in Australia. He and a friend went into a hotel where he wrote down his address at check-in. The woman behind the desk asked him repeatedly: “You’re from the Las Vegas?” When Frank replied in the affirmative, she disappeared into the back room and told a friend, who let out a blood-curdling shriek. Shocked, Frank listened as she explained that meeting him was “probably as close to Las Vegas as I will ever get.” She asked him: “Do you know George? Do you know Brad?” Frank gave me a wry look, “you connect the dots.” I laughed and replied, “as in Ocean’s Eleven George [Clooney] and Brad [Pitt]?” Such an episode underscores two important elements of the city’s character . On the one hand, the woman’s reaction stems from the “Vegas image” in popular culture. She was enamored with the glitz, glamour, and twenty-fourhour entertainment. This is the image captured in the Strip’s iconic skyline and presented in movies, TV shows, and worldwide advertising campaigns, such as the award-winning “What happens here, stays here” commercials. It is the image that made the “Las Vegas brand” America’s second-most popular in the Newsmaker Brands Survey in 2006, right after Google and ahead of iPod and YouTube. And pollsters expected this ranking to hold in later years.1 Her perception of Las Vegas was propped up by tales and pictures brought back home by the more than thirty-five million visitors to the city per year for the past decade.2 And the impressions carried by these visitors—the Strip and its giant themed hotels, glittering lights, gambling, elaborate Cirque du Soleil shows, adult entertainment, fine dining, and endless buffets—are representative of what is understood of Las Vegas by most people. On the other hand, the derisive manner in which Frank told the story points to misconceptions about the life of residents of this city. Las Vegans commonly meet strange reactions when explaining where they are from. The Local’s Las Vegas I N T R O D U C T I O N 2 e v e r y d a y l a s v e g a s Many residents can recount similar questioning responses from outsiders: “Which hotel do you live in?” “Is your father a dealer and your mother a showgirl?” “Wow! I didn’t know people actually lived in Vegas. What’s that like?” Las Vegans often chuckle and consider such perceptions outlandish, even unbelievable. Some respond sarcastically: “Yes, I do live in a hotel, and when my dad is off with the mob boss and my mother goes off to work in the show, I curl up under a blanket in a dark corner of the poker room.” Others try to counter the misconceptions by claiming that life is as normal here as it would be anywhere. Regardless of the response, that a rejoinder is even necessary illustrates how living in Las Vegas is a unique experience. Even though Las Vegans go to work, attend church, or visit a city library, just like Americans across the country, they do all this in the shadow of a flashy tourist destination known far and wide. Some locals are directly involved in the tourist realm, through employment or lifestyle, while others have a more implicit relationship with the “Vegas image,” if only because they have to affirm that they do live in Las Vegas. In other words, Las Vegas residents dwell in an entangled separation with the Vegas of popular imagination. Such varied perceptions of Las Vegas epitomize the bifurcated nature of the city’s personality. It is a town of insiders and outsiders, and the different perceptions are directly related to individual experience within it, whether from the local or tourist perspective. Such is the story of how humans interact with place. Even though Las Vegas may be an exaggerated case, it is nonetheless an example of how each of us sees our place—at the most basic level of an insider or an outsider—based on our own encounters in it. Most portrayals of Las Vegas give only scant acknowledgment of the people that live in the shadow of the...

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