Leaving Lost Vegas

It’s almost midnight when I get off the plane in Las Vegas and quiet, because McCarran International Airport is deserted.

I catch a LYFT to the Bellagio and arrive a little before 1 a.m. Saturday morning, March 14, 2020. There’s no line at the check-in counter so I make conversation with a cheery receptionist named Michelle and ask how things have been, having heard on the news that MGM Resorts might lay off a few thousand employees sometime after this weekend. She tells me she’s one of them, out of work on Monday. She just graduated college and only finished her training in January.

“They’ll hire you back though, right?” I ask, feeling bad.

“Yeah! Hopefully. Not for at least three weeks though,” she says, her big grin fading. I knew what she was really saying: Not while people are thinking they’ll get sick. Not while everyone is still scared as hell. I wish her the best, not knowing what to say.

This was not the Vegas vibe I was anticipating in Hawai‘i. Less than 12 hours ago, I was sitting in the Makai Plantation Bar at Honolulu International Airport, drinking a piña colada and an old fashioned simultaneously to save time. I am a nervous flyer. Those airplane seats are always cramped and nasty and, for some reason in recent years, turbulence of any kind has begun to scare the hell out of me. Not to mention it was the second week of March 2020, and we were all seemingly in the grips of a deadly plague ready to descend at any given moment in violent waves across America, as it had in China and Italy.

Even just a few days ago, this was not as big of an issue. Globally, it was. But here in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hadn’t issued restrictions or even advisories for travel within the country.

“We have to dispel the notion that coronavirus is a travel-related illness,” Johns Hopkins University infectious diseases scholar Dr. Amesh Adalja told Forbes in early March, even as the virus had now nearly reached all 50 states.

This was weighing on my mind as the talkative bartender at the plantation bar tried to engage me in conversation. She promised that each of their $18 cocktails were double pours but I wasn’t feeling the buzz, even after two. And I couldn’t bring myself to blow $60 on boozeless drinks so I cashed out, cursing the bartender and myself as I headed to the gate. The place was packed, despite the rest of the airport being empty. The “ninth island” must be busy these days, what with the coronavirus having finally hit the actual Hawaiian Islands for the first time a couple weeks ago.

But I was reminded that Nevada had its share of infections as I overhear the murmured conversations of nervous-looking people sitting around me in the waiting area. When I got onto the plane, I spotted my seat in the middle of the 4-person center row, between three guys who were visibly dismayed at my arrival, hoping for an empty chair between them. One was a dentist from Honolulu. The other two were dudes from Wai‘anae who recently joined the Army Reserve. The dentist had tickets to Disney World but when the theme park shut down, he opted to stay with his family in Vegas, which was initially just a layover stop.

“I can’t stay away too long, though, because when I’m not working, it means my front desk people are out of work, and the dental technicians are out of work.” The dentist doesn’t want his people without cash, especially now that they’ll probably need to stock up on survival supplies. The Wai‘anae Reservists were on vacation and kept taking selfies of themselves, mugging with their best Vegas faces.

I was on my way to Nevada to cover a story for the Los Angeles Weekly—a review of “Lost Vegas,” a retrospective exhibition of the works of Tim Burton at the Neon Museum. (If you remember Mars Attacks!, the museum is where Danny DeVito gets zapped by aliens.) My plan was simple: Get through this article, catch up on other writing, hit a crab leg buffet, and soak in all the terrible sights and sounds of Vegas. What I know now, that I didn’t know then, is that my arrival would coincide with the biggest downturn that Nevada had ever seen. By the time of my departure in three days’ time, I can honestly say—Proudly? Shamefully? Remorsefully?—they would have to shut down Sin City.

I

Strange Memories, Nervous Nights

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I had only been to Las Vegas twice before. The first was a family trip in 2009, when the city was barely hobbling along thanks to the recession, though I didn’t realize what was happening at the time. I was 19 years old and didn’t have the streetsmarts to break away to procure either drinks or drugs (or even the interest, honestly) and I wasn’t gambling for fear of somehow actually winning big and having it confiscated on a technicality because some asshole in charge found out I was underage. I didn’t want to blow my luck.

That trip was all sightseeing. Walking through the hotels, collecting $1 gambling chips from each different casino as souvenirs which I placed into a little collector’s book that I bought from a hotel gift shop for twenty bucks. Back then, my only knowledge of Vegas had been from movies: Steven Soderbergh’s remake of Ocean’s Eleven and Terry Gilliam’s surreal adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (I hadn’t seen Casino yet.)

In my mind, these were the two personalities of Las Vegas. Like Jackie or Marilyn, Sinatra or Elvis, left-leaning or right-wing, you were either George Clooney, wearing suits and dropping money all over town but scoring heaps of cash too, getting into all the VIP lounges and becoming friends with the high-rollers and supermodels. Or you were Hunter S. Thompson, looking shabby in a bucket hat and golf shorts, mostly broke, ambling around like a sloppy drunk embarrassment. These characters—Danny Ocean and Raoul Duke—were the two ends of the spectrum and anywhere you went in the city, these were the footsteps you walked in. I still think this is accurate.

The second time I visited Vegas, I was 27, in the city for the wedding of two friends that ended up getting married on my birthday. There was supposed to be a big group gathering but only a few people could make the trip. So the couple invited me to all the wedding activities they had scheduled: having single malts at Whiskey Down at the MGM Grand, going on a limo ride around Vegas after the ceremony, hitting the casinos. But the wedding happened early in the morning and, after a 12-hour day, any lingering excitement was replaced by exhaustion. We had one drink at the whiskey lounge. Then a mellow ride in the limo, where I faced the couple in the stretch and we all stared out the windows. I stayed at the Golden Nugget that year. At 3 a.m., I wandered outside to roam Fremont Street, wondering what I was doing out there in the middle of the desert.

Now, I was back. Definitely closer to being Raoul Duke than Danny Ocean. But this time, with purpose. And a story too.

It’s impossible to tell how rough the Vegas situation is by the looks of the Bellagio. The casino floor is packed with all the usual sights: people strolling with liquor in big plastic cups, yelling at craps tables, staring at slot machines and tapping buttons like Capuchin monkeys in some demented, neon lab experiment. I take the elevator up, locate my room down one of three practically football field-length hallways, and dump my bags. Browsing Google for a place to eat, I settle on the Peppermill, the oldest bar on the Strip. It’s a mile away but I don’t mind the walk. I want to see the city.

Although Las Vegas Boulevard is quick to remind me that I cannot just walk through normally, I’ll need to navigate across walkway bridges and through shopping plazas. Specifically, Bellagio to Caesars Palace to the Flamingo. Beyond that, I’m still stuck having to weave through cut-rate newer casinos to avoid panhandlers and homeless people coughing and strolling around on the sidewalk. These loud nondescript joints all smell the same. Vaguely like fruit juice and vomit, with deep stains in the carpet.

It takes me an hour to get to the Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge at the north end of the Strip, a couple blocks from Circus Circus. In the movie Casino, this is where Robert DeNiro seduces Sharon Stone, giving her a brooch and nuzzling at the fire pit. They’re not here tonight. Instead, there’s a trio of middle-aged women bickering angrily. One of them muttered something that got misinterpreted and now they’re all yelling over the fire and bubbling water. But it’s better than the tropical dance music blasting over the speakers in the otherwise empty lounge. I finish my eggs benedict and strawberry daiquiri and hail a LYFT.

“I am unsure but the sign out front promises ‘Exotic Foods, Cocktails, Gaming,’ so I figure, why not.”

A good taxi driver can make all the difference. Before rideshare apps, the vast majority of cabbies were quiet pros that operated with the efficiency of hitmen: they’d pick you up, drop you off, no questions asked. Now, everybody—single moms, bartenders, college professors—had seemingly become a part-time cabbie. And half of them wanted to chat it up about where you were from and where you were going. Two weeks ago, I was on a different assignment in Portland, Oregon, when I found cheap flights online for Anchorage. Alaska was the last state I had never before visited and figured if I could arrive before my birthday, it’d make for a nifty “bucket list”-type accomplishment, if you believe in that stuff. So I bought a ticket, having no clue what to do there once I arrived.

Luckily, my LYFT driver Tristan was overflowing with indecipherable suggestions. He was a talkative man with a terrible, unplaceable accent. As we drove through downtown Anchorage, Tristan gestured wildly, calling out must-visit hotspots like Roscoe’s Catfish and Barbecue (“tassdee saddern fuud”), Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse (“suburp king crap”), and the happy hour menu at “Seaman Seahorse,” which was actually a restaurant called Simon and Seafort’s.

It was there at Seafort’s—which does have a remarkably good happy hour; calamari for $11 and $7 liquor all night—where I met Shelli, who works for the Anchorage Tourism Authority. She invited me to watch the start of the Iditarod race, which was, to my astonishment, apparently happening the following morning. Shelli’s office was located on Fourth Avenue in downtown Anchorage, where the teams assemble and parade through town each year before taking off on their nearly 1,000-mile trek across the state. The tourism authority’s second-floor windows offered clear views of the sleds and eager dogs waiting to race, all their pent-up energy manifesting itself through barks and whines and tugging at their leashes. From there, I could also see the thousands of people who had gathered on the sidelines at 9 a.m. on a zero-degree morning in March to cheer and take photos. One guy from PETA held up signs protesting the cruelty of dog sledding, while another man in a bear pelt shouted over the PETA guy, saying instead that the dogs were fine and for PETA to stop ruining a beloved American pastime. That weekend, I made fast friends with Shelli’s boyfriend, Wesley, a setup coordinator for one of the biggest live events companies in America, who shared stories about wardrobe malfunctions and “whoopsie” moments on makeshift scaffolds. And later, even got myself invited to join a group of marketing VIPs who were also visiting from all across the country (hosted by the tourism authority) on an all-you-can-eat-and-drink train through Alaska’s arctic tundra.

Needless to say, I had high hopes for the LYFT drivers I might encounter in Vegas. When this one arrives, the guy is in his early 20s, his name is Timothy, and he looks a little like actor John David Washington with a thick set of dreads. I ask Timothy to take me to his favorite bar between here and the Bellagio. Also, I point to the construction site across from Circus Circus and ask what’s being built. “Resorts World,” he says, glancing over. “Shopping, dining, all that stuff.”

I say it sounds like every other place in this town and he says it definitely does. I look to the other street. “What’s the dark building across from the Peppermill?”

He stares wistfully at the unfinished monolith. “Used to be Fontainebleau, but that one fell apart over ten years ago. Now the convention center is absorbing it or some shit. Hard to keep up with the latest on that one.” So it goes, I guess.

“Do more developments mean more business? More people calling for cabs?” I ask. He thinks about it.

“LYFT says it does. It’s pretty consistent here anyway and driving is supposed to be a good opportunity. But more people also means more drivers. And more cops. It’s always only the big guys making money: LYFT, the hotels, the casinos. As usual.”

Timothy’s not having a great night, or even a great year. “2020 has generally been trash,” he adds. “And man, it’s only March.”

Five minutes later, he pulls into a strip mall in Chinatown. I peer out the window at a low building with red plastic artichoke leaf roofing. “The Golden Tiki,” Timothy says. “Open 24 hours, good atmosphere. Fun drinks.” I am unsure but the sign out front promises “Exotic Foods, Cocktails, Gaming,” so I figure, why not. I thank Timothy and get out of the car.

Truth is, I love Tiki bars. Yes, they’re the byproduct of a deeply troubling legacy of colonial occupation throughout the Pacific. Not even a month ago, I finished an article for HAWAI‘I Magazine exploring the tension between what has been dubbed “Polynesian Pop,” the design movement of mid-century Americana nostalgia, versus the real damage inflicted on native populations by explorers over the centuries. It’s bad. But when it comes to bars, all I’m usually after is an unusual-looking place to drink with a sense of whimsy and adventure and mystery. Why does it have to be “Tiki?” Aren’t there any pirate themed bars? There are issues there too, no doubt, between the East India Trading Company and those no-good, pillaging, rapey pirate bastards. But goddamn it, can’t I just enjoy blended fruity drinks in a funky grotto without inadvertently steamrolling another culture?

Maybe not. It’s a tragedy I ponder while passing through the entrance of the Golden Tiki into a dank, pitch dark room with a small trickling waterfall and the sounds of pirates singing old timey ship tunes. Not too rapey at all. But through the next door is the real jackpot—a big glorious cave with a bamboo bar in the middle. Glowing glass fishing floats and wooden barrels with XXX on the sides are suspended from rope sacks. While overhead, “stars” twinkle on the black painted ceiling. This entire kitschy swamp looks like some abandoned set from Pirates of the Caribbean (the soggy amusement park ride, not the movie) or the ‘90s Nickelodeon television show, Legends of the Hidden Temple. Indiana Jones’ coveted Peruvian idol of the fertility god Pachamama stares at me behind a beefy bald bouncer who eyeballs my passport before he’ll let me inside.

“Shut ya brown eye when you talk to me, woman!” A male bartender yells to a customer, laughing like a madman. Meanwhile, a dance remix of Sade’s “Smooth Operator” is echoing over the speakers and a small TV mounted above the bar plays a video supercut: people in loincloths running out of the jungle to frolic on tropical beaches in vintage clips from the 1930s, and monster movie creatures emerging from swamps and attacking screaming white women. I sit down and stare at the screen. Are these two ideas interchangeable for Americans imagining Tiki culture? Are indigenous cultures on the same spectrum as spooky monsters? On the speakers, the music keeps the beat but the song shifts to a horrifying techno remix of The Doors. “Into this house we’re born, into this world we’re thrown…” an autotuned Jim Morrison wails overhead.

I gaze at the menu. Every beverage can be served in a Tiki mug you can keep for $24, which does nothing for me. But I do like that you can add a flaming shot of Bacardi 151 to any cocktail for just a buck. I order “Hemingway’s Ruin,” a twist on Hemingway’s Daiquiri with cinnamon and syrup, and a $6 shrimp cocktail that ends up being delicious. Six big prawns.

A perky twentysomething in an ill-fitting dress slides onto the stool next to mine and adjusts her breasts. She asks me what I’m drinking. When I tell her, she asks me who Hemingway is. I get up to go to the bathroom—apparently the music is the result of a struggling DJ situated near the toilets—and when I come back, the girl has found another seat. “I’m halfway to 50 now!” I hear the girl yelling to the new guy next to her, offering an excuse for the stranger to buy her a drink. Meanwhile, the bartender inexplicably cranks up a recording of Peggy Lee singing “The Girl from Ipanema,” which completely drowns out the DJ’s set. An unspoken warning, perhaps, for the music man to play better jams.

“You want another?” a different bartender asks me, pointing at my empty glass.

“Not the Hemingway. Mai Tai. And let’s do two more shrimp cocktails.”

What a louse. Me, I mean. Drinking like a maniac in the middle of the desert while the world is on lockdown and every other post I scroll past on Facebook is about people hoarding toilet paper at Costco or being too scared to leave their house. God’s probably saving the worst coronavirus of them all for me. Or I’ll just be the carrier for some nightmare disease that I will inadvertently bring back to Hawai‘i in three days time. Another white man, delivering disease to the locals. The circle is unbroken.

I glance back to The Girl and The Stranger. He’s maybe in his mid-thirties with wavy hair, wearing a Harley-Davidson bomber jacket and nursing a whiskey, the ice long since melted. She’s still prodding him for a drink. The Stranger looks interested in her but dejected in general. He whispers to Drunk Girl, raises his half-empty glass and a folded $10 bill he’s using as a coaster. It’s an indication, I believe, that he only has ten bucks total. Drunk Girl groans and wanders off. The Stranger looks down at his drink. Maybe he had a crummy night at the slots, I wonder. Or maybe he’s already blown his paycheck this month. Maybe he hasn’t had money for a long time, still recovering from being broke for a decade.

The United States in the 2010s was a very shitty time and place to be a part of. Some people hadn’t been affected too badly by the global recession. Or maybe they took a big hit but had enough money to cover their losses. Meanwhile something like 30 million people lost their jobs. By 2012, more than 46 million people, or 1 in 7 Americans, were living below the poverty line. Most people didn’t even realize the full extent of what happened and how exactly everyone got screwed until celebrities like Selena Gomez and Anthony Bourdain could slowly explain it directly to audiences in 2015’s The Big Short. The Guardian called Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis the “heist of the century.” It was a billion dollar score that would make the Ocean’s Eleven guys proud, if only it had been pulled on some fatcat casino owner instead of the American people. An entire generation that graduated high school or college around 2008 had to contend with zero job prospects on top of crushing student loan debt and the insane cost of living in whichever bustling U.S. cities might actually be offering work. If you were unlucky enough to come of age during this era, you were a Millennial, which quickly became a Bad Word. This was the nefarious generation that was single-handedly killing the housing market (because Millennials can’t afford homes), the automotive industry (because they can’t afford cars), and even casual dining chains (because they can’t afford to go out to eat).

Recession aside, isn’t the frustration always cyclical? 30 years ago, the same types of people complaining about Millennials would’ve been the ones complaining about the grungy, counterculture youth of the 1990s. 30 years before that, they would’ve been yelling at beatniks and hippies. More than a century ago before that, in Britain, they would’ve been the aristocracy, taking issue with the romantic Dandys. Doesn’t the old guard always seem to hate the latest generation of teens-and-twenty somethings who will inherit the Earth? “Maybe every generation thinks the next one is the end of it all. I bet there were people in the Bible walking around complaining about kids today,” Roger Sterling says on Mad Men, set in 1960.

In response, the youth looks back at the previous generation with disdain for everything their parents got wrong or couldn’t accomplish. Some sins we recognize immediately, like unnecessary wars or loser presidents. Other lessons take time. The majority of Baby Boomers were no more concerned with preventing global warming when they were in their 20s than most Millennials today are concerned about whether their own kids will have enough avocados to spread on toast. Or whether all the trillions of gigabytes we’re constantly streaming (the worldwide collection of data allegedly doubles every two years) is going to catch up with us in some terrible, unknowable way. Technology may tell us about our problems sooner—if we can wade through all the fake news to get there—but it doesn’t give us easy ways of solving them. The world knew about the coronavirus in January but the damn stuff still spread everywhere. Maybe generations past were also unable to easily fix global catastrophes, though it seemed easier back then to tune out and be willfully ignorant.

Half a century ago, Hunter Thompson remembered a general vibe in the mid-1960s that whatever people were doing, they were winning. “Our energy would simply prevail … We had all the momentum,” he wrote in Fear and Loathing’s famous “wave” passage. And yet, his generation would still end up losing—to Nixon in ‘72 and Vietnam in ‘75. And before that, to Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, and Lee Harvey Oswald. The beats and hippies may have been filled with “a fantastic universal sense” that they were defeating old evils. But now, 50 years later and during an equally turbulent time in America, any lingering optimism was long gone. What hope does this generation have? And are we destined to become the frustrated Boomers of tomorrow, venting about failure to the indifferent kids of Generation Z?

II

Running Through My Veins, An American Masquerade

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The next day, I’m up and out of the hotel, bright and early at 2 p.m. As I walk down the Strip, I skim a troubling article on USAToday.com:

MGM RESORTS BUFFETS ON THE LAS VEGAS STRIP TO CLOSE TEMPORARILY DUE TO CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS

Las Vegas – As coronavirus continues to spread across the country, one of Sin City’s most popular stops is getting shut down along the Strip: buffets.

On March 15, MGM Resorts International will temporarily close buffets at the company’s seven Strip properties: ARIA, Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, The Mirage, Luxor and Excalibur.

“These changes are temporary and will be evaluated on a weekly basis,” the company said in a statement to the USA TODAY Network.

I suddenly felt like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes, staring up at the face of a half-sunken Statue of Liberty. “You finally really did it! You maniacs! You blew it up!” Though heartbroken, at least I understood the decision. It was clear that the mayor of Las Vegas did not:

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said she respects MGM Resorts’ efforts to keep the public safe from coronavirus – but she would not have closed the buffets.

Goodman referenced the use of glass on cruise ships to keep patrons from breathing on buffet food as a better solution.

“As long as people don’t put a spoon in their mouth and then put it back in the food under the glass,” she said. “Good comes from everything that’s bad, but I just think that’s totally wrong. Put bigger glass out there. For MGM to buy in and have the fear – that’s not the right direction.”

Las Vegas is a place where tourists come to forget their worries – not find more, the mayor said.

Creeping Jesus, I thought. If it wasn’t for coronavirus, are the buffetgoers of Vegas normally allowed to pop a spoon in their mouth and then stuff it back into the food? If Sin City has an original sin, that has to be it. Anyway, the Mayor’s last quote settles it. Nearly 50 years since Hunter Thompson and Oscar Zeta-Acosta got the Fear while on their drug-addled romp through this city, now the establishment itself was finally getting the Fear too, threatened by a different beast they couldn’t understand, let alone mitigate.

Those in power couldn’t even organize a convention to try and discuss their options, like the National Conference of District Attorneys had attempted in 1971 with a narcotics seminar that Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo would later make (in)famous during their Vegas trip. A coronavirus convention, the International Nidovirus Symposium, scheduled for May 10 in the Netherlands, had been cancelled just a few days prior...due to coronavirus.

The article says one of the last places offering crab legs is the Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars Palace and I decide to risk it. When I arrive, I ask Caryl, the tired-looking woman ringing me up for this $65 all-you-can-eat extravaganza, how her day has been so far and she says, not great.

“This buffet is closing down for at least 30 days beginning Monday. And here we all thought we were gonna be the only ones okay.”

She hands me a receipt and directs me to stand on a short line for a table. Nearby, the restaurant photographer, who is supposed to take a commemorative photo of you and your loved ones in front of a Caesars step-and-repeat for possible purchase later at some ridiculous price, doesn’t even bother taking the shot.

“Sheeeet, I been here a long time and never seen anything like this,” the photographer says, to the guy behind me in line. He surveys the half-empty restaurant. “It wasn’t even this bad after September 11. At least people were pulling together after that…” The guy behind me nods. But he’s a tourist, on a poorly timed vacation with his girlfriend. He doesn’t want to hear this stuff.

I do. But everyone's too busy eating or serving food at the buffet to talk. So I scroll through more articles on my cell phone while I tear through four plates of crab legs in quick succession. All the stories have troubling titles:

PANICKED SHOPPERS EMPTY SHELVES AS CORONAVIRUS ANXIETY RISES

LOW-WAGE WORKERS STRUGGLE AS CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS SPREAD

TWO WOMEN FELL SICK FROM THE CORONAVIRUS. ONE SURVIVED.

Returning to the line, I pile on more food as a culinary calamine. Big plates of pork scarpariello, chiles toreados, cedar-plank grilled salmon, spicy Washington mussels, flaky spanakopita, smoked brisket, brown slices of Wagyu beef, and prime rib roast. All of it, delicious. While on the other side of the line, cooks have eyes locked on their cell phones. Murmuring to each other. Shaking their heads. All of them, likely out in two days’ time. Nobody eating seems to notice. Over the speakers, “Days Go By” by Dirty Vegas is playing at full blast: “You leave me when I’m at my worst… Feeling as if I’ve been cursed…”

An hour later, I’ve eaten at least two plates too many and need to walk off this sinking feeling. So I hit the Strip and head south. Past the Bellagio. Past the Cosmopolitan. I get to New York-New York, the cramped, carnival version of my hometown, and stop for a drink at the second floor bar where I can look down on the gamblers in the bullpen. When the bartender approaches, his name is Paul and I ask Paul how it’s going.

“Today’s the slowest it’s been all week. I won’t know after Monday because they’re laying me off.”

I order a diet coke and two whiskies, one for me and one in honor of Paul. He fills my rocks glass to the rim.

“Fuck,” I say. “Are they laying everybody off?”

“Here, there’ll be a skeleton crew. Only that ground floor bar will be open,” he says, pointing behind me. “And even then, it’s just four people working the day, five people on swing, and three at night. But who knows? The way things are going, they’ll tell you one thing at 5 p.m., then by 9, it’ll be completely different.”

I raise my glass. Salut. He nods. I tell him what the photographer at Caesars said about Vegas after 9/11 compared to now.

“He’s right,” Paul says. “I’ve been in Vegas for 45 years. I was here through Y2K, and #VegasStrong after the shooting. Everyone came together. Now? It’s every man for himself.”

As we talk, what sounds like an air horn goes off. Not a winning machine, but a fire alarm. An automated voice tells everybody to get the hell out. I’m looking around, mid-drink. “Do we gotta go?”

“Nah. Security would be yelling at us if it was serious. They always warn us if it’s a real threat,” Paul said, gesturing to a uniformed muscleman in the corner, who is scanning the room with arms crossed. I order another double.

By 5 p.m., I’m back on the Strip and feeling pretty good. I asked Paul where the best place was to catch a cab to the Bellagio because I’m tired of walking but he says no need: there’s a tram that goes from the Park MGM directly over. So I head there—in the wrong direction, arriving instead at the MGM Grand. After making my way all the way down to the basement, a sympathetic looking guest services clerk tells me I’m half a mile in the wrong direction. Now it’s more walking, back up through MGM, back through New York-New York, to the Park MGM. Luckily, I find Best Friend, a Korean street food restaurant that a buddy in Hawai‘i recommended, and I sit down for a drink. I don’t remember what I ordered but it was too sour and the rest of the menu was too rich. The same kind of barbecue beef that I could get for $11 in Hawai‘i is $24 here. And I’m not hungry anyway. I buy some novelty buttons and leave. When I finally get back to my room, I finish a few glasses of Bulleit bourbon from a bottle I grabbed last night at CVS and charge my phone for twenty minutes before I’m back out the door.

I’m meeting Cass, the only guy I know in Nevada. We used to work together at a bigbox computer store in Honolulu back in 2008, a million years ago. After the place closed, Cass had a stint at Best Buy for a few years before Google hired him; first sending him to D.C., then Nevada. We meet for dinner and even after Cass spends 15 minutes explaining his job to me, I still don’t know what he does. Something with computers. We’re at a vegan barbecue restaurant east of the Strip; I suggested the Golden Steer, one of Sinatra’s old hangouts, but the guy doesn’t eat meat. That’s fine. Cass doesn’t drink either, but he does gamble. After dinner, the two of us head to El Cortez downtown (“You’ll never forget the smell,” promises my favorite 3-star review on TripAdvisor), where Cass studies the roulette tables before he plunks down $20. I do the same. 90 minutes later, we’re both up about $50.

“I didn’t think we’d last this long,” he says.

“What, with the virus?” I ask. Cassidy shakes his head.

“$20.”

“What can I say? We’re just a couple of pros,” I tell him, accidentally dropping a roulette chip into my cocktail. Damn. Embarrassed, I eventually cash out, and me and Cass slink out of there.

Downtown Vegas is quiet tonight. So was the Cortez, with half the machines shut off to keep players at least six feet away from each other, the new recommended minimum distance between everybody. As Cass and I walk down Fremont, I glance in at the Golden Nugget, Four Queens, Golden Gate. Their machines are all half-off too. Nothing but a neon blue message on-screen, begging to be fixed.

“God, I’m bored,” Cass says.

“You look bored,” I say.

“Feels like it all this just came out of nowhere,” my friend muses, looking around.

“It did. Three weeks ago, I was on the East Coast and people were just anxious about not getting sick. But this has become some serious shit.”

January 20, I remember being in Hawai‘i, booking a flight to the mainland U.S. for February 7, and keeping my eye on the developing situation in China. If things didn’t get better by the first week of February, I’d postpone the trip. China didn’t get better, but the press got quiet. Those first two weeks of February made it seem like the madness was settling. Then, right around the time I got back and made plans for Vegas, the virus came back with a vengeance. It was suddenly everywhere, like a fart in a phone booth.

“Is this where you thought you’d end up?” I ask Cass, gesturing to the flashing lights around us. He frowns.

“Hell no. But I didn’t have a plan. Not bad for a guy who didn’t finish college.”

I stare at him. What? He shrugs. Tells me he got hired at one retail place and kept moving up, kept going through technical training, kept finding bigger work. Somewhere along the way, he got a diploma. Now he’s working for Google. It’s the most impressive thing I ever heard.

“That’s the goddamn American Dream in action! You made it,” I say. He shrugs again.

After Cass goes home, I amble over to White Castle, newly opened on Fremont Street. A raggedy woman out front tries to peddle me what looks like a box of Incan matrimonial headmasks, which I heard are worth boatloads of money but are too hard to move. Besides, I’m here for breakfast: six sliders with cheese and two boxes of fries. The vegan food did nothing for me and my body needs immediate grease to help neutralize the five whiskies and diet cokes I chugged at the Cortez. I think about the last one, the one I dropped a roulette chip into. “Sorry about that,” I muttered to the cocktail waitress at the time, handing her the ruined drink and another chip as thanks. I knew that I had one too many when I then said: “But hey, fish that chip out and now you’ve got two dollars,” and meant it, like I was doing her a favor. Christ.

I eat too many cheeseburgers and consider walking it off with another pass down Fremont but my phone’s battery is at one percent. I cab it back to the Bellagio and silently pray the water from my hotel room sink is clean enough to drink in an attempt to ward off tomorrow’s hangover.

III

A Little Less Conversation

---

Less than 12 hours later, I’m back downtown, baby. It’s high time I go see the show I’m actually supposed to be out here covering. Tim Burton’s Lost Vegas is at the Neon Museum, a nonprofit dedicated to the critical work of storing and preserving the literal signs of the times as the city’s hotels and casinos opened and closed over the decades. Here, in the museum’s neon boneyard, the oddball director has scattered characters, signage, and miniatures; some, inspired by movies he’s made, like Beetlejuice and Mars Attacks!. Others are bizarre illustrated creations, including Oyster Boy and a Starry-Eyed Girl who paralyzes men and Army tanks alike with her hypnotic stare.

“This is probably the most significant art exhibit in the history of Las Vegas. We’ve attracted about 350,000 people so far with this show,” Neon Museum CEO Rob McCoy tells me on the phone a few days later. “There are people who have never been to the museum and love the neon signs but also love the Tim Burton stuff. Then we’ve also had a small group of hardcore Burton fans who are actually disappointed that there isn’t more Tim Burton in the exhibit...”

Rob pauses, remembering that he’s talking to the press. He quickly recovers: “But really, the show has been overwhelmingly received.”

I know what he means. Tim’s works aren’t small and there are close to two dozen pieces in the exhibit. But the boneyard’s a big place and anything that wasn’t at least the size of a motorcycle was quickly going to be dwarfed by giant signs, like the 82-foot tall Hard Rock Cafe guitar or the panoramic, billboard-sized Stardust Resort and Casino letters, all 1,105 individual lamps of which were recently relit just a few days ago, according to the guide who walks me through the lot.

But Tim Burton’s goal wasn’t to show off his own art. He had already been doing that on-screen for 30 years. Instead, Tim wanted to show people the depraved and desolate town he visited as a bewildered child, and to recreate some semblance of the weird experiences that became the inspiration for his life’s work.

As the adage goes: if a tree falls in the forest but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If Las Vegas, a town that’s constantly shapeshifting, has no one to remember what it was like 40, 50, 60 years ago—amid renovation and demolition, construction and reconstruction—did the Las Vegas of yesterday even exist at all? The Neon Museum remembers old Vegas. So does Tim Burton, whose parents used to load the family in the car for weekend trips. Many of the filmmakers’ characters, a medley of freaks and outsiders, were inspired by his own feelings of insecurity growing up as well as his own strange jaunts to Vegas as a teenager.

All the people who came to the Neon Museum just for Tim were of course the same ones who were going to say there wasn’t enough “Tim Burton” in the exhibit. These were the people who missed the message. They just wanted to see Jack Skellington and Edward Scissorhands. Probably the same types of folks as Tim’s own parents, the ones who dragged their children along so they could be on vacation and go native while their son sat traumatized in the pool, staring up at giant metal seahorses.

I hang around for a bit, taking notes and photos, when I get an email from my editor at the L.A. Weekly. The subject line reads: “Worried about the Vegas story.” Basically, she’s wondering if I should be covering the Burton exhibit and encouraging people to visit the Neon Museum at a time when the entire city is closing down.

Probably not. But the Neon Museum’s CEO tells me there’s an online portal in the works for people to see the museum without needing to leave home, and some discussion about extending the Burton show for a few weeks after the lockdown. I tell my editor that maybe this piece can be more about the depressing but poetic idea that Burton was inspired by traumatic experiences in Vegas. The story can be about how the narrative has lapped itself and is playing out again. She tells me she’ll think about it.

Meanwhile, I realize the museum is probably an entirely different experience at night, when the neon signs are actually lit up. So I decide to leave and come back later. Tim can wait.

I LYFT it to a flat white building on Charleston Boulevard with “Frankie’s Tiki Room” written on three sides in green and black paint. It looks like the sign glows at night. But it’s only 4:30 p.m. and still sunny.

When I step inside Frankie’s, there’s no middle room for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, like at the Golden Tiki. It’s just straight into blackness. But I can vaguely make out some shapes ahead, plus a few crummy-looking souls in Hawaiian shirts lurking about, squinting at the light I’ve let in from outside. I approach the bar and a white guy who resembles the singer Meat Loaf comes up behind me and asks to see some ID. I hand him my passport and he spends a minute flipping through the pages, trying to find my face. He finally does, grunts, hands it back. I take a seat.

The menu promises “south seas exotica and modern primitivism,” but it looks like the characters hanging around this place are plenty primitive all by themselves. One table in the corner is packed with sunburnt tourists in loud conversation, half-joking, half-arguing. A lot of back-slapping. At the far end of the bar, a mustachioed man smokes quickly and sips a corona. I order a Kahiki Kai, filled with coconut rum, banana liqueur and pineapple juice. “The perfect escape to the perfect state of mind,” reads the menu. An older woman chopping lime chunks behind the bar asks me how it tastes.

Fruity! I say. She asks if I’ve ever been to Frankie’s before because she doesn’t recognize my face, but says I look like I could be a Vegas native. I tell her I’m from Hawai‘i. She laughs: “Then you’re a Hawai‘i native!”

I look down at my cocktail. “Actually, this drink reminds me of Hawai‘i. See, I live in Kahiki Kai,” I say. She puts a hand on her hip.

“You don’t say!” I nod.

“Got a pineapple tree right in my front yard. I should try and make these when I get back.” She stares at me, seemingly excited at the prospect of my being from Hawai‘i. But she’s also a little puzzled. “Which island did you say that was?”

“Kahiki? Oh, that’s on the island of Waikīkī. On the far side, near the zoo. And the astrodome,” I add.

“Is that near where they filmed Magnum P.I.?”

“Close. That was in a gated community called Cook’s Lookout. Ocean views, firing range, a petting zoo. Whites only.”

The woman looks shocked and glances around. Her smile disappears. “You mean it’s segregated?”

“Oh, certainly. You’ve got tourists, military, Hawaiians, Caucasians, amphibians. You can’t have all those races mingling. It’s too risky. What if they all got together? Who could stop them?”

She thinks about it, unsure. “Maybe you’re right,” she admits.

I could spend all evening dropping knowledge on the good people at Frankie’s, but there’s more damage for this explorer to commit elsewhere. I catch another ride two miles south, to a strip mall containing The Mint, a bar inspired by the former Mint Hotel on Fremont Street that’s supposed to be an homage to old Vegas; and the Golden Steer, for the steak I couldn’t get last night with Cass.

Hunter would be disappointed: The Mint is a bust. Just a hipster dive, some Googie lamps, and framed black-and-white stock photos of ‘70s casinos. But the Golden Steer is the real deal, with ‘70s-era brown wood walls and red leather circular booths. Sammy Davis Jr. first brought Frank Sinatra here in the 1960s. At a time when Black Americans weren’t allowed to eat in hotels, the Rat Pack dined here instead. The whole restaurant spills out across three giant rooms. I sit down at the mostly quiet bar and Tommy the bartender tells me I’ve got ten minutes left of “golden” hour if I want to score discount drinks and eats. Tommy, you read my mind.

“Can you believe this shit?” The woman sitting two seats down from me blurts out. She looks a little like a blonde, Arrested Development-era Liza Minnelli, and is holding a white wine spritzer in one hand and staring at her cell phone in the other. She looks up quickly, taken aback by the volume of her own voice, and notices me.

“Sorry for cursing,” she mumbles, embarrassed.

“What happened?” I ask.

“He’s not different, man, he’s just louder.”

“They’re shutting the whole goddamn city off! Have you seen the news?”

I pull out my own phone and scan the headlines while she summarizes: MGM has gone from closing down the buffets to closing down all their hotels beginning tomorrow, March 17.

“St. Patrick’s Day, for chrissakes,” the woman adds mournfully, shaking her head. I mention the string of suddenly unemployed employees I’ve been encountering my whole trip and she sympathetically nods her head in a floppy way that indicates she’s been sitting at the bar for some time.

Turns out, she’s also a bit of a badass: Her name is Nancy, she’s 70 years old, and she’s a retired electrical engineer from California. Tonight was supposed to be part of a girls’ weekend out with her and a friend coming in from Denver. But after Nancy got here, the friend backed out because she was too scared to travel.

“This whole trip’s gone south. I’m at the LINQ and the first two nights in the casino, I’m drinking whiskey and playing poker. The third night, they start giving me plastic cups. The fourth night, they start taking away the chairs from the bar. I’m like, what the hell is going on?” Nancy says.

“Shameful,” I add. After quickly skimming the happy hour menu, I order a $7 jumbo shrimp cocktail and a $7 martini—one of “Dino’s Long Pours”—made with Beefeater and Tito’s. When it arrives, I feel very sophisticated. A few more of these and with the right crew of pros, I could probably pull off a major con.

“What good is all my money if I can’t spend it on what I want? Screw it, I’m flying out tomorrow anyway,” says Nancy, giving up. “I guess that means we’re all leaving. Who ever thought that Vegas could die?”

Tommy asks Nancy if she wants another drink and she says she better not. She’s going to spend the rest of her night trying to gamble as much as possible before flying back to California before her boyfriend (he’s actually her second husband but they’ve only been married a year so she still considers him a boyfriend) gets back from racing sailboats or something.

“You gotta pack it in before the town goes dry,” she yells to me and Tommy as she gets out of her seat and stumbles out the door.

I order another martini. And for dinner, a medium rare porterhouse “Oscar-style,” with chunks of crab, asparagus, and béarnaise sauce. If this is the end, I’m going out with a bang. Behind me, a handful of diners remain in the restaurant and I wonder where they’ll go after tomorrow. How many people will be left? Can Vegas really close every hotel and gambling establishment in the city? Isn’t this the place where, if nowhere else, people can come and consume and revel in whatever they want, at any time of the day, diseases be damned?

On the big TV mounted in the corner of the bar, CNBC was replaying highlights from the Democratic debate recorded earlier this evening. It was the 11th debate, the first (and only) head-to-head between the two blue frontrunners: Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, who bumped elbows instead of shaking hands before they walked to their extra far apart podiums. No other candidates. Not even a live audience.

“Senator Sanders is calling for a political revolution,” Jake Tapper tells Joe.

“What’s a revolution going to do?” asks the former vice president. “Disrupt everything in the meantime?”

Bernie pushed his long-championed Medicare-for-all system, which Joe rebuked. Both men outlined what their “new normal” amid COVID might look like. Both condemned President Donald for spouting nonsense, not doing more to test Americans for the virus, and for generally being an embarrassing fuckup all the time. Joe promised to pick a female running mate. Bernie promised to support Joe if he became the nominee.

This was the first debate since the momentum had shifted—from surging energy for Bernie in February to Joe as the frontrunner. As of tonight, Joe has 922 delegates pledged compared to Bernie’s 769. 153 points is a big margin but not really, considering both candidates needed over 1,000 more delegates to become the nominee.

“Some medical experts are saying the only true way to control this virus is through a national quarantine, requiring every American other than essential personnel to stay home. Would you take that unprecedented step of a national lockdown?” Dana Bash asks Joe.

“With all due respect to Medicare for all, you have a single-payer system now in Italy. It doesn’t work there,” Joe responds. In just under a month from now, the United States will overtake Italy—and the rest of the world—for the highest number of coronavirus deaths total. Granted, the United States has a population five times greater than Italy. But we also had over two months of advance notice to prepare. Spoiler alert: we didn’t.

“You watching this?” A passing busboy asks me, gesturing to the television. The bartender went to the bathroom and now I’m sitting alone with my mostly demolished steak.

“Not really,” I say. The waiter picks up the remote and turns off the TV.

“Sorry, man. It’s been too long a day and that’s too depressing,” he says.

“Which one are you voting for?”

“Nobody,” he says. “They all suck. The Republicans are trash and the Democrats are pathetic. No other party has a chance of winning so everybody else is useless.”

He looks at me, looks at the food in front of me, and realizes that we’re not just two guys at a bar, I’m a paying customer. But I don’t mind. We are just two guys at a bar. And he’s right.

“Damn, I apologize,” he mutters quickly. “Didn’t mean to say that stuff—”

I wave him off, don’t worry about it. He scratches his head.

“It’s just, like, nothing ever changes. It’s always the same issues and all the same people get elected over and over. Even Grab Em By The Pussy. He’s not different, man, he’s just louder.” The busboy shrugs, then scuttles back to the kitchen.

Weird as it was, I understood the Republicans in Washington who supported our orange-faced president: You don’t get off a winning horse. And these people knew how to win. At least, they knew how to win more than the Democrats, who were so concerned with challenging every assertion, every lie, every tweet that Donald pumped out that they could never get ahead of the narrative as a whole.

As usual, my mind goes to lessons from movies and TV shows because stories make more sense than real life. In Thank You For Smoking, when Aaron Eckhart’s glib Big Tobacco spokesperson Nick Naylor has a mock debate with his son about whether chocolate or vanilla is the “best” ice cream flavor, he never convinces the kid. Instead, Nick goes off on a tangent about how having choices is more important than having either flavor.

“That’s not what we’re talking about,” his son says.

“Ah! But that’s what I’m talking about,” Nick says. “I proved that you’re wrong, and if you’re wrong, I’m right.”

“But you still didn’t convince me.”

“I’m not after you. I’m after them,” says Nick, gesturing to the invisible audience.

I think about a line of dialogue from the show Boss, Starz’s short-lived political predecessor to House of Cards: “This is how things work. Wins accumulate on top of wins and form streaks … it doesn’t matter what the vote is about. Streaks give you capital. When you’re winning, that’s when you can do everything else. Spend your capital on the other things that matter.”

In Boss, Kelsey Grammar played the mayor of Chicago, who was trying to build two new runways at O’Hare. But for Donald in real life, there was nothing to build. Not even his impossible wall. Nothing to achieve—but more winning. This is why the campaign rallies never stopped.

I can’t afford to stop either. I leave a wad of cash at the bar and return to the Neon Museum for round two of Tim Burton. The Boneyard does look different at night but I’m glad I came through earlier. Everything now is either garishly lit up or too dark to see detail. In the daytime, you could appreciate the show. But at night, you get the spectacle. As a matter of fact, I can hear the spectacle happening now not too far away, as other guests elsewhere in the boneyard watched “Brilliant!,” a 25-minute show where the museum played Vegas lounge music and projected light displays to illuminate yet-unrestored signs. It was a Vegas extravaganza, like the dancing water fountain show in front of the Bellagio (temporarily suspended beginning March 17 due to COVID-19) or the rotating acrobats and aerialists who perform stunts above the casino floor in Circus Circus (temporarily suspended as of March 7 until further notice).

For older audience members, seeing the signs and hearing the music at the Neon Museum show would no doubt conjure images of Vegas at its prime. For younger guests, the memories had to come from the stories of parents or grandparents, or from pop culture. A copy of a copy of a copy. Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of Ocean’s Eleven, which is itself a remake. The events of Fear and Loathing occurred 50 years ago and much of its recent longevity can probably be attributed to the 1994 film adaptation with Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. In 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, Frank Sinatra makes a cameo performing as a digital hologram in a long abandoned Las Vegas.

Who knows what this town will look like in 2049. Who even knows what Las Vegas will look like tomorrow?

IV

Ohhhhh, Mama, Can This Really Be the End?

---

It’s my last night in Vegas and I want to go downtown one more time. A LYFT from the Neon Museum drops me off at Atomic Liquors, Vegas’ oldest freestanding bar where the original owners, Joe and Stella Sobchik, famously used to invite their patrons to the roof for drinks and to watch mushroom clouds blooming on the horizon, the result of nuclear tests happening 50 or so miles away. There are less than a dozen people inside when I arrive, just the professional drinkers, sitting in front of tall boys and big cups of brown liquor, commiserating over the recent closures.

“The Strip closing is gonna be all the better for mom ‘n’ pop places. The small casinos and what-not. When the big places close, the people gotta come here,” a fleshy guy in a stretched out tank top says, to no one in particular. A tattooed chick behind the bar nods.

“So long as it stops there,” warns a middle-aged woman with big hair. “The whole city works for MGM. If they close up shop, all Vegas is following right after. You watch.”

Tank Top Man turns to stare at Big Hair Woman in shock. “I’d like to see them kick me out of Fremont! No way…” He repeats “no way” several more times, and starts shaking his head, as if to somehow ward off the hideousness of the idea that someone—anyone—could pry him away from his beloved street.

Two drinks later, I amble out of Atomic Liquors and head north, pondering Tank Top Man’s words and admiring his pride. At the gaudy Fremont Street Experience, I take stock of the regulars milling about: the bouncers and the break dancers, the magic men, plastic drum drummers, feathery showgirls, homeless vets. I wonder if they all have the same level of protectiveness for their adopted hometown. If this virus got worse and Las Vegas Metro PD tried to forcibly close this sticky, 24-hour outdoor spectacle, would these ragtag denizens band together and square off with police for their right to hustle strangers on the street? Doubtful. But I do notice a pair of guys dressed as Pennywise the Dancing Clown who affably agree to take a photo with a group of Asian tourists that don’t seem to understand these clowns from IT are supposed to be scary looking. So maybe there’s hope for camaraderie here after all.

I reach Main Street at the top of Fremont and gaze up at The Plaza Hotel & Casino. In the 1994 television adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand, this is where half the survivors—the seedy ones—gather after the end of the world to build a new society. (In the book, it’s the MGM Grand.) Tonight, it’s not even a temporary reprieve from a real virus; there are more than a few families piling their luggage into cars out front, getting ready to take off.

“It’s not the news we get that I’m worried about. It’s what they’re not telling us.”

Looking around, I spot the red neon crown of the California Hotel and Casino down the street, and wonder how things are going there. If Hawai‘i’s “ninth island” has a capitol, it’s the California, where casino developer and cowboy hat enthusiast Sam Boyd found a niche audience among island residents for his gold rush-themed hotel in the late 1970s. One in 10 Hawai‘i residents visits Las Vegas every year and most of them usually end up here. There’s a steady stream of retirees in slippers constantly arriving to the California, thanks to package deals courtesy of Vacations Hawai‘i—owned by Boyd Gaming, of course.

How were the Hawai‘i seniors handling COVID? According to the news, older folks were especially susceptible to the effects of the disease, which should make them even more cautious than your average partygoer. But these were also the prestige gamblers, the ones who wore visors and fanny packs during their 12-plus hour shifts on the casino floor, the ones who booked their next trip to Vegas immediately after returning from their last trip to Vegas. They would not be easily dissuaded.

When I get inside the California, I see that I am correct: the retirees are out and about. Still standing six feet apart from each other at tables, and only sitting every other seat amid the dozens of rows of gambling machines, though every other machine is turned off anyway. Having entered from Ogden and First Street due to construction outside the main entrance, I take the long way around. Under the sign that says “Aloha Spoken Here,” and past the pair of dome-protected dice once used by Stanley Fujitake, who held a 20-year record for longest craps roll in history: 118 rolls over three hours on one lucky night in 1989 here at the California.

I creep to the back, where I am surprised to see no one on line at the 24-hour Market Street Cafe, known for diner favorites like liver and onions and fried pork chops, plus the featured attractions on rotation: prime rib in the afternoon, butterfish until 10 p.m., then the highly coveted oxtail soup from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. When I visited Vegas in 2017, I once consumed two bowls of oxtail soup in a single sitting and did not regret it.

Might as well do at least one bowl now. Why not? I approach a seat near the front, where two guys are chatting it up. The waitress behind the bar is a lanky, frowning woman with a long nose and intense browline who reminds me of an old bald eagle. As soon as I sit down, she says she doesn’t want to have to walk up and down the bar to take my order, drop off my food, “and deliver cups of water and all that,” so she tells me to come closer. She points to a seat between the two guys. I glance around. Nearly every seat in the place is empty, save for these two men who are arguing, and I gotta sit between them.

“Braddah, all I’m saying is they not gonna close everywhere,” says one of the guys, who is maybe in his mid-50s. “How they gonna empty every hotel room in every place all ova da city?”

“It’s people like you who aren’t taking this virus seriously that got us into this mess!” the other guy says. He’s younger, maybe in his late 30s. Both men have to lean forward or lean back to see each other around me.

“Eh, I never start dis! I not Chinese. I’m Filipino-Hawaiian-Portagee,” the older guy says, straightening.

“I’m not Chinese either,” says the younger guy, who appears to be Japanese.

“Then why you say I start dis? I never been to China,” says the older guy. He looks at me, the guy in the literal middle of the conversation. “You been to China?” the older guy asks me. I shake my head. “He never been to China,” he says to the younger guy, jerking a thumb at me. “I think we OK.”

“We’re not okay! We need to close everything now so we can get rid of this virus. We’ll lose April but we can probably be back up by May,” the younger guy says. The older guy waves him off. “If it’s as bad as you say,” the older guy says, “we not getting rid of this virus for one long, long time.”

They continue squabbling. Both men are local guys visiting from Hawai‘i. The older guy is Wendell, a construction foreman in Vegas on vacation. The younger guy is Russell, an attorney, here to meet with clients who recently moved from Hawai‘i to Henderson.

“What ya want?” the waitress, Jolene, asks me. Oxtail soup. She nods and walks away.

“Hooo, you local boy or what?” Wendell yells, excited that I might be another Hawai‘i compatriot. “I wuz hoping for get oysters but no can. Is aight. Watchu doin’ out here. Vacation?” I nod.

“Good luck with that,” Russell mutters.

“Don’t mind dat guy,” Wendell tells me. “He grumbling cause he nervous, dats all. Watching too much news.”

“One week after Nevada gets its first case of coronavirus, the governor declares a state of emergency. Yesterday, all the big resorts shut down. And today, this place had its first death,” Russell says gravely. “It’s not the news we get that I’m worried about. It’s what they’re not telling us.”

“What place had the first death?” Jolene asks, overhearing us and looking concerned. She sets down my oxtail soup, plus a side dish of grated ginger and cilantro. “Here, at the California?”

“No, in Las Vegas,” Russell says.

“We’re in Las Vegas,” Jolene says, thinking. Russell stares at her, confused.

“RELAX is what I’m saying,” Wendell says. “Some people don’t wanna hear this kine stuff. Nuff already.”

“Well you’re gonna hear about it. If not from me, then back home,” says Russell, deeply troubled by the situation at hand, his face firmly locked in grimace. “If things keep up, we’re gonna be out of work. Everything’s gonna stop.”

“Hawai‘i not going to stop building buildings, I tell you that. Guarans.” Wendell says.

“Tourism isn’t an essential business. What do you think is going to happen to your jobs?” Russell says. Wendell doesn’t say anything for a moment. Neither does Jolene, still listening in. The only sounds are the tense beats of “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” by Genesis on the radio, echoing through the empty cafe. And me, slurping oxtail.

“Eh, where you work in 2008?” Wendell finally says.

“I was in law school,” Russell replies.

“So not one lawyer, no kids or rent or whateva back den? How about 2001?”

“High school.”

“All dat time you was in school, I worked construction. I worked in da recession. I worked on 9/11. Ova 30 years, brah,” Wendell says. Russell stares hard at him.

“I seen some bad times, wuz tough. But we do ‘em. We gonna be OK.”

Russell looks away. “We’re not gonna be okay.”

Back at the Bellagio, the janitors are outnumbering the gamblers two-to-one, wiping down slot machines instead of sticking money into them. At Petrossian Bar looking out over the casino floor, a frail man who appears to be over 100 years old slowly plays “Clair de Lune” on a Steinway Grand piano to an audience of three.

I go up to my room, finish the remaining third of my bottle of bourbon, charge my phone for half an hour, then decide to venture back out and take stock of what’s left. I walk to the intersection of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard at 1 a.m. A lone taxi makes an illegal U-turn. Nothing else but empty sidewalks and dark streets. Everywhere is deserted. Even the homeless people are gone. The only sounds are the tinkling of music from speakers further down somewhere on the Strip and the chiming of pedestrian walk/don’t walk signs at each corner.

A decade ago, on a whim, a buddy and I spent a good chunk of Christmas Day exploring the world’s biggest open-air shopping mall, Ala Moana Center. It was one of the few days in the year that the gigantic complex was closed. We spent hours roaming through deserted plazas and walkways and even found our way to the network of service corridors and loading depots that ran behind every shop in the mall. Ala Moana Center is nearly two-and-a-half million square feet, which is the size of more than 40 football fields and covers more acreage than Grand Central Station. We walked for three straight hours without crossing the same passageway twice.

This was nothing compared to this night on the Las Vegas Strip.

When I enter the Cosmopolitan, I go down two floors, pass the main chandelier, pass the high limit games tables, the concierge and front desk, then out to the valet. The entire time, I encounter nobody. I cross the pedestrian bridge to the Miracle Mile Shops. There’s no one here either. Then back down to Las Vegas Boulevard, where a digital billboard tells me the national debt equals $71,146 for each person in the U.S.

I head back to the MGM Grand. At every casino, the doors are still open and the machines are technically on. But all the screens are blue and quietly buzzing with white noise. Everywhere you enter, you expect to see gamblers. If not them, then gruff security guards telling any lingering people to get lost. At the very least, the occasional janitor driving an industrial floor buffer. Instead, you’re the only one here. You’re a little nervous and you’re very tipsy. At the MGM Grand, the virtual reality registration desk is empty. So is the Rainforest Cafe, the circular centrifuge bar in the middle of the west wing, and the entire damn casino.

I cut across to the Tropicana, which is also empty. Back at Excalibur, I run into the first guy I’ve seen since the Bellagio, who is a drunk tourist watching YouTube on his cell phone and walking the wrong way on a moving sidewalk. Serious Westworld vibes. I find a couple other stragglers next door at New York, New York, but can’t tell if they’re burned out tourists or homeless people.

All these horrible realities began to dawn on me. There I was. Alone, in Las Vegas. How would Hunter have handled this situation?

“God almighty!” I imagined him yelling to the deviants still roaming around the casinos, looking around anywhere for a good time. “You people voted for Hillary Clinton, and you killed Jesus!”

I voted for Hillary. Not by choice, but seeming obligation. I remember having drinks with a few friends in the weeks leading to the 2016 presidential election. They offered their picks: Jill Stein. Gary Johnson. One wanted to write in Bernie Sanders. When it was my turn, I said Hillary, and I might as well have said Donald. Instant outrage. Not the least of which because of her infamous emails, which hadn’t yet resurfaced.

“We’re way beyond choosing favorites,” I told them. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

No one seemed to understand this, in the same way they didn’t understand how Donald beat out 16 other candidates to become the Republic nominee, or why he was never officially censured despite all the offensive crap he said, or how he managed to survive controversy after controversy.

Four years later and it’s another election. The Democrats, who promised they wouldn’t let political in-fighting divide the party again like it had with Hillary and Bernie in 2016, was back to fighting. Earlier this year, it was between the die-hard factions supporting Bernie, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren. The prevailing notion of the past few weeks was that Joe seemingly can’t win against Donald because he doesn’t have the same invigorated fanbase. Bernie has the fanbase, but he would never receive the Democratic nomination because he’s too progressive, too radical. And yet, a radical Republican will beat a moderate Democrat every time.

Hunter would’ve understood. He knew better than anyone: In December 1971, Hunter spent a year on the campaign trail documenting South Dakota senator George McGovern’s efforts to secure the Democratic nomination for president. The goal was to win—not only against the incumbent Richard Nixon, but also against Democratic primary hopefuls former vice president Hubert Humphrey, Alabama governor George Wallace, and Maine senator Edmund Muskie, who was the presumed nominee.

“There is a sense of muted desperation in Democratic ranks at the prospect of getting stuck—and beaten once again—with some tried and half-true hack like Humphrey, Jackson, or Muskie,” Hunter wrote, in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72. “George McGovern, the only candidate in either party worth voting for, is hung in a frustrated limbo created mainly by the gross cynicism of the Washington Press Corps. ‘He’d be a fine President,’ they say, ‘but of course he can’t possibly win.’”

Incredibly, George McGovern would go on to secure the Democratic nomination. But he couldn’t secure a moderate vice presidential candidate like Ted Kennedy, so George instead picked the Missouri senator Thomas Eagleton, who was later publicly revealed to have undergone electroshock therapy to treat bouts of depression in the ‘60s. Eagleton dropped out before the election, which Richard Nixon won with an overwhelming majority: 520 electoral votes from 49 states and more than 60% of the popular vote. George didn’t even win his home state, South Dakota.

America got Tricky Dick for another four years. Though, due to Watergate, he would only serve less than two. At least once Richard was impeached, he had the dignity to resign. Donald was too far gone for that.

You don’t get off a winning horse. Even if the horse took you to places you didn’t want to go, like a Russian hacking scandal or allegedly watching prostitutes pee the bed. Every crazy thing the orange man shouted or was involved in only solidified his base. Because there was no going halfway as a true Donald Trump supporter. You either peeled back when he talked about grabbing pussies, or when he mocked America’s prisoners of war, or when it was revealed that he eats steak cooked well-done and with ketchup.

Or you were with him all the way. Going up the river and splitting with the program like Colonel Kurtz, except with maybe a little more hair. Just another blowhard spouting nonsense about what he believed was right, but who was so disconnected from humanity and reality that it seems impossible to believe this was a real human being.

“Even with close friends, I don’t believe in letting your hair down, confiding this and that and the other thing … Some people think it’s good therapy to sit with a close friend and, you know, just spill your guts … [to] reveal their inner psyche—whether they were breast-fed or bottle-fed. Not me. No way,” Richard Nixon once said. Like another president we know, Richard was that not-so-rare breed who was both cunning and impotent. An opportunist who sought to be judged by his accomplishments, but who was instead remembered for his blundering, ineptitude, and inevitable deceit.

V

We Need Help, the Poet Reckoned.

---

My phone tells me it’s after 5 a.m. and the thought of still roaming out here when the sun rises is too damn sad to imagine, so I make my way back to the Bellagio. When I get there, I lower the air conditioning in my room down to the coldest it’ll go, draw a bath, and fall asleep in the tub.

Five hours later, the alarm on my phone goes off and I wake up hungover in freezing cold bathwater. This was not well-planned. I take a hot shower, then quickly pack up, dreading the pandemonium waiting downstairs on the casino floor. Today’s the day everyone was to be out of all MGM casinos.

The night before, I had briefly encountered Michelle, the front desk receptionist who checked me in just three nights earlier. I asked if MGM meant it when they said everyone had to be out on Tuesday. Or if it just meant no new reservations after Tuesday, but people who had previous reservations could stay. “Out means out,” Michelle said flatly. “If you’re not out by Tuesday, security will escort you from the premises.” Her winning grin was gone, replaced by the same type of deep frown I recognized from the waitress at the California.

“I wonder if he’s sizing me up. I was a fare, sure. But to him, maybe I was also just another fair-weather visitor who was jettisoning now that all the Las Vegas action was over.”

Today was Tuesday. I imagined the lobby filled with fuming, half-dressed hotel guests, and dozens of security guards shoving them out the door. When the elevator opens, I hesitantly step outside. I pass through the casino, which is just as empty as last night, with the machines all still blue.

The lobby’s empty too, which makes no sense. Checkout at the Bellagio is 11 a.m. and it’s currently a quarter to noon. The only faces I see are two employees engrossed in a quiet conversation near the front desk and, beyond that, a sleepy looking guy wearing headphones and driving a floor buffing machine through the Bellagio’s botanical garden. I drop my room key in the express checkout box at the front of the lobby and pass through the electronic revolving door.

The voice of Frank Sinatra booms overhead on the speakers, offering a final farewell: “This town… Is a quiet town... For a riot town… Like this town…”

Did everyone leave sometime during the night? Or when the buffets announced their closure? Was Las Vegas more or less empty this whole time and had I just imagined all these wild scenarios? 

I ordered a LYFT in the elevator a few minutes ago and the app said Oscar the driver was due to arrive any moment. I go downstairs to the Bellagio’s shared ride pickup area, where a dozen men are hanging around a dozen cars with dome lights on top. They’re all cab drivers, who I guess moonlight for LYFT, so I start checking license plates against my app. Oscar drives a black Escalade. I look up and realize nearly all the cars here are Escalades.

“Where you going?” asks the nearest cabbie, a hefty white guy.

“Are you Oscar?” I ask.

“Nah man, I’m Oscar,” another driver says, walking up.

Just then, another Escalade comes down the ramp and pulls up. My phone chimes, indicating that my driver has arrived.

“I’ll take you where you need to go. C’mon,” says the first driver, Hefty White, who reaches for my bag.

I take a step back. “I gotta go with the app,” I say, feeling weirded out. “LYFT will charge me if I cancel or catch another cab.”

My driver—the real Oscar—is a twentysomething Spanish guy, who gets out of the car and immediately confronts Hefty White: “Why you stealing my fare, man?”

“Why you moving on our fucking industry?” asks Fake Oscar, who walks up. Behind him, the other cabbies start closing the gap, curious about the developing situation.

“Get in, man. I gotchu,” Real Oscar tells me. I open the door and toss in my bags as Hefty White yells something about needing this fare and how no one’s calling cabs anymore. I climb inside the Escalade just in time to see Fake Oscar swing a punch at Real Oscar. Goddamn! Real Oscar shoves Fake Oscar back and hightails it into the drivers’ seat. The Escalade floors it out of there, past Hefty White and the other cabbies hitting our windows and grabbing at door handles.

“Hot damn!” I yell, no clue knowing what to say.

“Fuck those guys,” Real Oscar says, shaking it off. “Tired of this shit. You good? Sorry about that, man.”

“Yeah. I’m good,” I say, unsure if I’m really good, but happy to be out of there. “What do you mean, ‘tired of this shit?’ You run into those guys before?”

“Not them but cabbies. They have their own damn pickup spots. They’re not supposed to be where we are. If they need rides so bad, they should just drive for the apps like everybody else.”

“Why don’t they?”

“Who knows, man. Dumbass boomers can’t figure out the technology. Whatever.” Real Oscar says, glancing at the road behind us in his rearview mirror every few seconds.

“Aren’t there enough rides today? I thought everybody would’ve been leaving because of the casino closures,” I say.

“They’ve been leaving all week. Since the virus got to Nevada, then when the buffets started closing. And after today, who knows how many people will be calling for rides at all. Or if they’ll even let us drive, if LYFT is an essential business or whatever.”

Real Oscar glances at me in the rearview mirror and I wonder if he’s sizing me up. I was a fare, sure. But to him, maybe I was also just another fair-weather visitor who was jettisoning now that all the Las Vegas action was over. Damn it! I was here from the start of it, I wanted to say. I arrived when everything began and stayed because of the madness. I’ve been documenting this horrible nightmare as a witness on the ground.

But this hadn’t been the start of it. Maybe Real Oscar was like Paul at New York, New York, who had been in Vegas during the awful shooting in 2017. Maybe Oscar also worked here through the recession in 2009. Maybe his parents remembered when Frank Sinatra used to headline at Caesars Palace in the early ‘80s, or maybe his grandparents sipped cocktails while watching bomb tests on the roof of Atomic Liquors in the 50s.

I’ll never know because I didn’t ask. By this point, Real Oscar had pulled up to the departure curb at McCarran and it was time for me to leave Las Vegas. I was not an essential employee.

In my mind, McCarran International Airport is one of the few places where Hunter Thompson and George Clooney can converge. There’s Raoul Duke by the men’s room, sweaty and trying to slip the noose of a dozen hotel tabs. Meanwhile, Danny Ocean, suave as ever, waits for the getaway plane after his latest score. I am also waiting for a plane, but the only available seat in the packed airport terminal is next to the bathrooms.

An hour later, I’m on my phone, skimming more news articles as my plane begins taxing out. One in particular stands out, because I’m headed to San Francisco on a layover flight:

IS THE BAY AREA’S ‘UNPRECEDENTED’ LOCKDOWN THE FIRST OF MANY?

Life came to a grinding halt for millions of San Francisco Bay Area residents as the most stringent isolation orders in the country took effect Tuesday.

To stem the spread of the new coronavirus, roughly 7 million people in seven counties were instructed to “shelter in place” and were prohibited from leaving their homes except for “essential” activities such as purchasing food, medicine and other necessities.

The article went on to explain what constituted an essential business and that the lockdown would last until April 7, unless health officials changed their minds.

For many people in the famously unaffordable Bay Area, the orders could well mean lost wages and jobs, as customers disappear and businesses struggle to pay their bills.

“It’s unprecedented in modern times to have this level of quarantine-like measures,” said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, deputy director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University in New York City.

…

“We have been operating under a veil of ignorance because we do not have a sense of the truth,” Schlegelmilch said. “Rather than having more specific measures aimed at containment, we have to have much more aggressive and widespread social distancing measures over the entire population to prevent this from completely overwhelming our health care system.”

…

But such stringent orders cannot last forever, even with government aid.

“How long can that go on before you start to see detrimental effects on people?” asked Schlegelmilch of Columbia.

The article mentioned a proposed economic stimulus plan that would involve sending tax payments to Americans though no official word yet. There was no official word on anything yet. Not this lockdown, not this president, not this generation.

One day, the situation will change and things will get better. But not today.

---

Originally published October 31, 2020.

Images by Michael Förtsch, Kelly Sikkema, Keem Ibarra, Jean-Philippe Delberghe, Marcos Rivas, and Antonio Janeski.