Translated material
Fiery Las Vegas
Fiery island. Las Vegas is not only a gambling paradise where they go in a crazy thirst, if not to get rich, then experience fate. This is a holiday city, the personification of light, good luck, fun, carelessness for anyone-be you a billionaire, a schoolboy on vacation or a sautable loser, tired of gray everyday life. Everyone strives to visit a city where the new year is always in a life at least once in a life
Smiling at the whole mouth, the bartender approached me: "Where are you going, young man?" “In Las Vegas,” I answered. His smile became even wider: “The great city, this Vegas. He will bring you good luck; You have a suitable appearance. " - "I know. I am a triple scorpion. " He looked satisfied. “This is a great combination. You cannot lose. ”
Hunter Thompson. "Fear and hatred in Las Vegas"
Long live Las Vegas with his neon lighting, and with his one-armed bandits, with all unfulfilled hopes, Long live Las Vegas, which turns the day into night, the night turns a day if you saw it once- you can’t become the same.
Elvis Presley. "Viva Las Vegas!"
It is better to arrive in Las Vegas at night. Then you immediately fall into the picture, replicated by millions of posters and hundreds of films - a sea of lights of an endless holiday. Here everyone touches the American dream, moreover, the feeling is that this dream came true with you. You may have only a hundred in your pocket, you chew a cheesburger on the go, but you are in the epicenter of luxury and carefree. And most importantly, no one drives you from there. You are your own in this world. At least on a strip, at least at night, at least - while the lights shine.
Good America
Lights, lights, lights and a thousand times this word. And everything is ok. Yes, everything is always ok in this city. Even if you lost. Those who lose millions have billions, and who has seated a couple of thousand, will say to someone someday: once I lowered everything in Vegas, and “chic of such a phrase” (as the poet wrote) will more than pay off all the costs of roulette and one-armed bandits. And a possible annoying tear, spilled by someone, still hoping to tear the jackpot, will sparkle and drown in the sea of lights. The lights turned off only once - when King Vegas Frank Sinatra died. In his honor, the city plunged into impenetrable darkness for a minute, merging with the Mohava desert, in the center of which he stands. And you probably thought it happened when Ocean and his eleven friends robbed Bellagio casino?
In January of the year before last (the author happened to be here at that time), sorry for cynicism, added another fire-the upper floors of the Monte Carlo hotel shown in all the news around the world, and my friends called and asked if I did it, deciding to go through my own fear and hatred in Las Vegas. No, although the film of Hilliam, and Hunter Thompson’s book, where exquisite narcotic dishes each time opened the journalism doctor Raul Duke another Vegas, I love very much. 
But a small “fear” still happened here. On the eve of leaving Moscow, it was found that the driver’s license had been lost, and without a car, America was not America. Where ours did not disappear: knowing the great American kindness, instead of Driver License, his military ID showed. At the McCarran Airport Agency, the Red Book with a star, with a sickle and a hammer on the cover and with a semi -children's photo with seals and a record inside about indignation, handed the employee to the employee: “Mr., this is a fit -up is an army driver’s license, and I can drive not only cars, but also a tank.” "Oh, my gosh!" - the worker admired, and - here he is, the "Lincoln", which rushes you in the right direction.
Main street
Las Vegas, cinema and postcard, this is only one central street-Boulevard Las Vegas, a better name-strip. On it are all the largest casinos and hotels. This is not New York with Park Avenue, Madison, the fifth, Times, Broadway, etc. Except on a strip, there is nothing more to do in Vegas itself and there’s nothing to look at.
Here is Flamingo, where Martin Scorsese shot Casino with de Niro and Sharon Stone. The Luxor pyramid with a beam bursting from its sharp top, which goes to the stars. Potted by George Clooney and the delirium Pitt Bellagio and the dance of the fountains in front of him, whose water dust, demolished by the wind, covers cars crawling along the strip, and visitors to the restaurant located on the opposite side of the Paris hotel. New York New York with copies of the statue of freedom and Empire Steit Bilding outside and streets of never sleeping city inside. Stardust, the highest casino and the hotel of the city, on the top of which the broken Mickey Rurk and the beautiful Kira Knightley fought with the bad guys in the film "Domino". Caesar Palace, where the sky drawn on a tall ceiling at night is sunny and shrouded in darkness during the day, so you forget about the time of day on the street. The strip himself, according to which, in the insole is drunk, the desperate Nicholas Cage rushed about, “leaving Las Vegas”, for which he later received an Oscars.
Life is a game
I will make an assumption: exist such a city a century and a half ago, Alexei Ivanovich, the hero of the “player” Fedor Dostoevsky, and maybe Dostoevsky himself, would certainly come from German Rouletenburg here.
It often seems that the game here goes for the sake of the game itself. Although, of course, everyone wants to win. One -armed bandits meet you already at the airport near the luggage tape. Sun coin - you will get candy. Maybe not. Maybe yes. 
One -armed bandits are not at all as bad as their name characterizes: how many positive emotions they cause old women who are sitting opposite the machine guns with credit cards and five cents attached to them! Not everyone will decide to play in the casino - your author, for example, inspired himself that he was completely indifferent to roulette, and played one -armed bandits. And he always left in the plus, somewhere $ 150. There is nothing special about this, many people win along the little things. CSKA footballer Vasily Berezutsky in one of the recent interviews *** “SE”, on January 11, 2012 told, for example, how he won $ 1.5 thousand per poker. “The game there is very cautious and inexpensive, so at every opportunity it began to increase the rates. This partners on the table entered into a stupor - they are not used to acting like that. "
But Vegas, of course, is the gambling capital. The city was founded in May 1905 and for a long time served as a base for refueling trains. His real story began in the spring of 1931, when gambling was allowed on the territory of Nevada. The goal was the most remarkable - to build schools for the proceeds. They built not only schools.
A calm culture of money rules here. Culture, developed by all American history, read, the history of capitalism in its purest form. There is so much money that no one has been twitching about this for a long time. Here they will not wildly look at your Rolls-Royce and no one will look at you with contempt if you are lying on the bench, hiding behind the Las Vegas Tribune newspaper. There are millions - good. No - also not bad. Even without being a fan of the United States and agreeing with Schopenhauer, who called this world “worst of all possible worlds”, one cannot but admit that America is far from the worst place for humans.
Plum
Until recently, the casino brought the city and owners the main income, until a variety of shows became such a source. To see them, the audience goes from all over the country and the world, paying for tickets from $ 1000 and above.
Harrahs Hotel
It is such a show - Avenue Q, a musical, awarded the most prestigious Tony theater award, where dolls perform along with ordinary actors. There is Spamalot, a comedic musical based on the film “Monty Pyuton and the Holy Grail”, also Tony laureate. The action of La Rêve takes place in the pool into a million gallons of water, and the audience chairs are defended from it no further than ten meters, so that the audience themselves become participants in what is happening. Selin Dion appears again in Las Vegas, who once had a contract here almost $ 1 billion for a thousand performances.
All of the listed shows have a tremendous success. No, it seems that not a single bus in the city, on whose sides their advertisement would not have flaunted. All of them go to Wynn Las Vegas.
Once the most luxurious here was Bellagio. Until Steve Winn built Wynn. He understands luxury-Bellagio also belonged to him once. Steve received most of the land under Wynn Las Vegas by bought by the legendary Desert Inn and a golf-field adjacent to it. There was a construction of $ 2.7 billion, and this was the largest construction project in the United States financed from private sources. Wynn Las Vegas opened in April 2005, Steve first wanted to call him the French word Le Rool - “Dream”, but changed his mind and modestly dwell on his last name. 
These are the names: Paris, Caesar Palace, Bellagio ... The Trump has recently opened, the next skyscraper of the rich man and the great original Donald Trump. What is it, you ask? Casino, hotels? Yes, but not only. Inside there are boutiques, and restaurants, and bars, and car dealerships, and concert halls, and nightclubs. And all this under one roof. Real palaces. For example, Wynn contains ALEX, OKADA, BARTOLOTA, SW Steakhouse, Red 8, Cafe Sugar & Ice, Terrace Point Café, Night Clubs Tryst, Vanity, Dior, Cartier, Chanl, Louis Vutton, Manolo, Manolo Blahnik, Maseratti and Ferrari dealerships. Yes, and pink fish swim in special streams under the feet.
But from the point of view of spiritual values, everything is not so bad. At the Wynn art gallery, at different times, the works of Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguen, Cezanna, Picasso, in particular, his masterpiece Le Rool. So we return to the dream again.
Always with you *
On the other hand, it is impossible to stay in Las Vegas for more than a week: the permanent new year, which ultimately drives crazy with its bad infinity, a carnival without the finale, inevitable extravaganza, permanent apotheosis of fun. It is unlikely that representatives of the local population (in the city, by the way, more than half a million people live) frequent guests on a strip. 
But Vegas is a holiday that is always with you, as Hemingway wrote about Paris, and the city where you return, as Akhmatova said about Venice. Fortunately, there is a Paris with a copy of the famous tower and Venetian with channels that carry gondolas from Las Vegassian Boulevard under the bridges inside the dozh palaces. (By the way, the municipality of the city washed by the wild adriatic wanted to sue the city blown up by the winds of the desert: after the opening of Venetian, the influx of American tourists to Venice was sharply reduced - why fly for a distant land, when all the same, albeit in the form of a copy of the McCarran international airport, is almost a strip, almost next to him. If you are flying east, and besides at night, ask for a landing card at the porthole on the left side - a shining city will appear in all splendor. You will again see the casinos and hotels in which you played, in which they lived, past which you passed. And already at that moment you will begin to sort through the memories of Las Vegas, the fiery island in the middle of the desert, in the head, in the head.
Nevada, where Las Vegas is located, has a reputation as the “state of freedom”. For example, in Vegas to this day you can instantly and officially formalize the relationship: remember the ephemeral marriage of the NBA star Dannis Rodman and actress Carmen Electra, who divorced almost the next day.