Las Vegas-Just what is Britain letting itself in for?
For months and months the British public have been told to brace themselves for “Las Vegas style super Casinos”. But what do we know about Vegas in this country aside from the iconic images of Elvis and as a playground for the Rat pack?
Comedian Rich Hall once described Vegas as “The fastest growing city in the World and the last visible man-made thing an astronaut sees when speeding away from the planet. Two thousand years of civilisation and the planet’s most visible creation is a lit-up string of clip joints in the Mojave desert”.
Despite the promotion of its family image Las Vegas has always had links with crime from its association with the Mafia group La Casa Nostra to the present day. Today the most popular forms of crime remain money laundering, drugs and prostitution. Although the traditional Mafia have lost influence in the area it is thought that gangs from Israel are in charge. The gangs are said to control the lucrative supply of MDMA and Cocaine in the city.
Despite its unseemly undercurrent Vegas certainly does have attractions that cater to everyone. From scale models of the pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel Tower to the Museum of the American cocktail.
Of course the crux of Vegas is the gambling. That’s where the moneys made and the moneys lost. A room in the Egyptian themed Luxor can be as cheap as £37.50 per night and this includes a king sized bed and a luxury oversized shower. At these prices how do they make their money? As we all know the gambling industry is a worldwide multimillion pound phenomenon and Vegas is the crowning glory.
Once you set foot into a Casino all concept of space and time becomes alien and all the senses become overloaded. The first thing to notice is the lack of daylight; this is a deliberate ploy to coerce people into losing their sense of time and place according to gambling expert Dr Jan Wise who has also noticed the trend develop in Australian resorts. Technically speaking you could gamble all night without even knowing it.
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