In May Oscar Goodman was elected mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada on a platform of attracting new business, reinvigorating the moribund downtown area, improving education and bringing major-league baseball to Las Vegas; all typical political promises. What makes Oscar Goodman unique is that he has combined devout Judaism with an enthusiastic adoption of the mores of his most prominent clients; the Mob. Goodman once said he would rather his daughter go out with Tony Spilotro than an FBI agent; Tony Spilotro is believed to have committed at least twenty-murders (one of which achieved immortality of sorts via the film "Casino" where the victim's head was placed in a vice and his eyeball's popped out) before being found dead in an Indiana cornfield two months after the Chicago mob put a contract out on him. Spilotro was described by Goodman as "kind and sweet and gentle as a human being can be."
Goodman's election was ring the kitsch alarm bells ringing; the hoary old clich� "only in America" and its subcliche, "only in Las Vegas" prepare to be trundled out. In actual fact the election marked another step in Las Vegas' transformation from wild mob town to a sort of more heterogeneous Disneyland with gambling and the odd strip joint. The term "gentrification" is often used to describe Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's transformation of New York; Travis Bickle said "someday a real rain will wash the scum off the streets", and his words found their apotheosis in the perpetually choleric figure of Giuliani. A similar process has happened in Las Vegas; a new chapter in one of the most extraordinary American stories; that of Las Vegas, a place where so many American myths (organised crime, Howard Hughes, Elvis, Sinatra, boxing) have their nexus.
Las Vegas (Spanish for "the meadows") was sparsely settled by Mormons (who would play a vital role in the commercial life of the city in the future) before 1928, when the US Government selected it as the site for the Hoover Dam, a forty-million cubic yards of concrete marvel. In 1931 the State of Nevada legalised gambling, and allied with the influx of construction workers and later local military presence (Nellis Air Force base, test-base for the Stealth Fighters and Bombers and Thunderbirds, and nuclear testing 50 miles north), modern Las Vegas was born. And Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was ready to make it in his own image. Or at least the official myth would have Siegel single-handedly creating Las Vegas, ignoring the fact that two hotels were booming beforehand.
When Siegel came from the East Coast in the 1940s, Western imagery and d�cor was rampant in Las Vegas. He took over the Flamingo Hotel, and restyled it in the direction of modern Hollywood glamour. Six months after its opening, he was assassinated. The link between the hotels and indubitably dodgy characters was set; Caesar's' Palace, the first of the demented theme hotels, was entirely funded by Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters Pension Fund; the Sands, legendary haunt of the Rat Pack and controlled when it opened by more different mobs than any other casino in Las Vegas. These years saw the evolution of the famed Las Vegas signage, which would lead Tom Wolfe to declare "such colors! All the new electrochemical pastels of the Florida littoral: tangerine, broiling magenta, livid pink, incarnadine, fuchsia, demure, Congo ruby, methyl green, viridian, aquamarine, phenosafranine, incandescent orange, scarlet-fever purple, cyanic blue, tesselated bronze, hospital fruit-basket orange �" Many of these classic signs now reside in a lot dubbed the Boneyard; the embers of once-seductive, mouldering American dreams.
At 4:15 am, November 27th 1966, Howard Hughes was stretchered off his private train, clad in blue pyjamas, and brought to the top floor of the Desert Inn. At this time the Chicago mob, headed by Sam Giacana (who shared a mistress with JFK) still wielded most power in Vegas. No one individual had ever wholly owned a resort-casino in Vegas before; Hughes intended to own them all. From his base at the top floor of the Desert Inn, Hughes bought the Desert Inn , the Sands, the Silver Slipper � casino after casino. He bought KLAS, the Las Vegas TV station, after complaining that the station went off the air late at night; after his purchase, his favourite movies were shown all night. He cut off Frank Sinatra's credit at the Sands, sending Sinatra to Caesar's Palace.
In all this time, Hughes was never seen publicly. Eventually political pressure on the Governor of Nevada to ensure that the state's biggest property owner actually existed led him to call on the FBI, who concluded that they "could not guarantee that Howard Hughes is alive or that he is the man on the ninth floor of the Desert Inn." Hughes' aides then took him off codeine and valium long enough for him to endure a scripted phone call with the Governor. Many of Hughes aides were Mormons; members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints had a special role in Vegas commercial life, as their religion simultaneously ensured their probity and did not forbid them involvement in the gambling industry.
Vegas mythology encompasses so many other figures: Elvis, Hunter S Thompson, Siegfried and Roy, Don King, brain surgeon to the pugilists Lonny Hammargren (whose house has been described as "the architectural equivalent of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas") Vegas' glamour has seduced a new generation, as evinced from the Doug Liman films "Swingers" and "Go." The New Vegas still has the excess of the old - the billion-dollar MGM Grand, the knockoff of Manhattan that is New York New York. The father of New Las Vegas is Steve Wynn, chairman of Mirage Resorts (and supporter of Oscar Goodman) who has transformed Vegas from the X-rated capital of gambling, prostitution and five-minute marriage into a family destination resort. The Mirage features a volcano which erupts every fifteen minutes, just the tip of the iceberg of gimmickry that has made the Las Vegas strip a sort of Nirvana of gimmickry. Oscar Goodman puts it best : "Move to Las Vegas and you never have to leave! You want New York, we have New York. You want Venice, we have Venice. You want Paris, in September, we'll have Paris." Mirage Resorts have now built the Bellagio, inspired by idealised Tuscan gentility and featuring the works of van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse advertised outside like the Rat Pack would be.
One of the ironies of Las Vegas, often seen as the epitome of some sort of urban American philistinism, is that it has resurrected the concept of street life, missing from most American cities. The Strip, an eight-lane boulevard, is constantly thronged with pedestrians. The Strip is actually in Las Vegas County as opposed to the City, and Fremont Street, the epicentre of downtown, has tried to mount a comeback in latter years as an urban "experience"; covering over the street to make it a sort of indoor urban theme park. Las Vegas is the ultimate private-enterprise town, yet public space is thriving here. As Las Vegas strives to become respectable, one hopes it never loses its manic edge, its intoxication with spectacle, its strange beauty.
