The Skepbitch

Bright light city or tourist trap?

I’ve just returned from the Las Vegas Paranormal Conference. This was a change for me, as January is usually TAM time (The Amaz!ng Meeting), the skeptical conference of James Randi and his minions.

I’ve no Vegas Virgin, this was my fifth visit, and the city has certainly changed. Long gone are the days of the Rat Pack, Elvis (but apparently he still haunts The Hilton…and you thought he was still alive!), and 79 cents for all-you-can-eat pancakes (although some places serve up pig-lips $1 hot dogs and $1 watery margaritas). Wayne Newton is still there, but who gives a shit about that?

Vegas today is an awkward convenience marriage of slum and slick. As you wander The Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard), passing the Flamingo, you might think you’re in Reno instead, Vegas’ poor cousin, with strip clubs, tacky hotels, smoky casinos, bombastic spruikers, ne’er-do-wells, tarts, a busy 24-hour Denny’s, and ‘undocumented workers’ lined up in their dozens - thigh slapping prostitute’s ‘business’ cards and thrusting them at tourists… bloated drunk men and hobbling elderly ladies alike.

Stroll further up and you’ll enter the ‘new’ Vegas. This Vegas is exclusive and expensive…expensive shows, expensive food, and expensive hotels. This is all about shopping, and high-end shopping at that: Prada, Gucci, Chanel, Dior and Ferrari, all hoping you’ll buy big with your ‘winnings’! But as all good skeptics know, gambling is for people who can’t do maths…

The newer hotels are about height, not light, and are monuments to the owners (e.g., Wynn and Trump) rather than the fantasy-themed casinos of the Mob days. Neon is replaced by enormous flat screens, but the raison d’etre, the pokies (slot machines to you Yanks, but did you know most of the machines are made in Australia anyway?) are still there. The tarts are still here too, but these whores wear haute couture.

Stroll further up still and you’ll see some Vegas archaeology, the remains of The Frontier and Stardust, and the living skeleton of Circus Circus (when will they ever tear that shithole down?). Keep on strolling and you can get a tattoo, get VD, or get mugged.

Basically, the locals never visit The Strip.

I was there for the prostitutes, I mean conference, and that is not as bizarre as it sounds. Vegas is one of the few cities in the country with venues large enough to host international conferences. But the Las Vegas Paranormal Conference was no international conference (unless you consider me as the ‘international’ bit). With about 40 attendees, there were often more organizers than audience members. Despite the hefty entrance fee of $150 and the promise of a ‘cocktail party’ (a cash bar), there were no snacks, no coffee, and not even an itinerary!

Needless to say, apart from a smidgeon of window shopping and $100 at the Parasol Down in the opulent Wynn, my time was more hard work than hedonism.

I wrote and interviewed extensively, so there’ll be a future report in the Skeptic, and a TANK episode filled with an Electronic Voice Phenomena ’specialist’,  a medium, a magician, a literal ghost writer, ghost hunters and a ghost hunt itself, where your skepbitch weilded a pendulum and divining/dowsing rods!