Surrealistic pillows and towels

Saturday 26 May 2018

     Big billboards tout the cannabis dispensaries, but who needs more mental alteration? Las Vegas is a Louis Carroll wonderland already.

     1. A hotel without hot water. Note on the dresser when we arrive at our room on the 21st floor of this Mirage of a lodging. It says hot is taking the night off. Back in the morning. The bathroom faucet seals it with a hiss.

     2. Salvador Dali, meet Hieronymus Bosch. That must happen on a constant basis in the head of Vladimir Kush, a Russian painter, sculptor and Las Vegas resident who is so successful he has his own spot in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, next door to the Mirage. An hour amid his “metaphorical realism” and we take some with us. Everything is at least four figures. Fortunately, our objet d’art – a calendar – has a decimal point in the middle.

     3. Cirque du Beetles. Real cars from the mid 1960s, plus a minivan with a padded top. They’re prominent props in “Love,” the Cirque du Soleil Beatles extravaganza in permanent residence at the Mirage. The Fab Four at their most psychedelic, seeding your head with song fragments and fantasy. An enduring high.

     4. Strip stakes. The Mirage has an erupting volcano, but it pales opposite the Venetian, which sits right across Las Vegas Boulevard with canals and the Campanile di San Marco. The shops are glitzier, the crowd is more stylish and the lobbies are much more majestic.    

     5. Night crawlers. The beverages at the Walgreens next to the Venetian are 33% less pricey than the convenience shops inside the Mirage. At 3 p.m., five cashiers flash the numbers above their stations to call up customers waiting in line. At 11 p.m., twice as long a line, twice as many cashiers.

     6. Reality doesn’t suck any more. The pressure drop is palpable when we escape the Strip. We unroll northward on Las Vegas Boulevard, beyond downtown to the pawn shops, the cut-rate wedding chapels and sleazy low-rise lodgings. Then at Charleston Avenue, the Arts District. They say it’s gentrifying.

    Our destination– Dona Maria’s Tamales Mexican Restaurant – needs no improvement. For me, the specialty of the house with homemade hot sauce. Good as I’ve ever had. Monica, bent on breakfast, gets what the waitress calls “divorced eggs,” one of them with green sauce, one of them with red sauce, rice and beans in the middle.

    Now we’re road ready. Five hours to Phoenix.