Viva Las Excess!

In Vegas, nothing is ever enough. Glitzier shows, more opulent casinos, more exquisite dining. 

And I wonder, will it ever be enough?

Fountains at Bellagio front the

Eiffel Tower at Paris on the Vegas Strip

I just returned from a four day jaunt to Sin City (my wife and I took my 85 year-old mom, who loves it). I ate like a king, at restaurants run by renown chefs (I even ate something called bone marrow flan. Bone marrow! And it was delicious).

We stayed at a replica of Paris (an Americanized version, I am certain), replete with indoor cobblestone streets and cafes and flanked outdoors by the half-sized Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe.

For some, they can't gamble (or desperately hope) enough. I saw a jittery twenty-something at an ATM denied five hundred dollars because of insufficient funds.

People gave tips to an extremely large woman posing along the street in a bikini.

I paid the bill for the meal we consumed, of which bone marrow was just a very small part.

And when will enough be enough?

Our hotel was detailed and interesting, but it's twenty years old. I'd imagine its useful entertainment life will expire in another decade or so and it will make way for something fresher. As will be the eventual fate of the dozens upon dozens of hotels sporting thousands upon thousands of rooms.

And the people still will come. Nearly 38 million visited last year alone. 

A few decades ago, no one visited Las Vegas except on the way to somewhere else. It was incredibly hot (side note: the average high temp for our visit was 107 degrees), incredibly arid. Truly a desert.

It still is. It pulls an increasing amount of drinking water from the dammed-up (and incredibly put-upon) Colorado River, thirty miles away at Hoover Dam. It pulls more and more water from its depleting aquifers for its cleaning and greenery and fountains and faux-waterfalls omnipresent along the Strip.

90+% of Las Vegas drinking water comes 

from the Hoover Dam's Lake Mead

And I wonder how long it will be before those millions upon millions of visitors will use up this naturally arid land's dwindling water supply?

Here, I start writing about the excess in Vegas, and I end up writing--well, I guess about the excess in Vegas, after all.

But, really, then what, right?

Maybe then for Vegas, that will be, finally, enough.

But, sadly, I wouldn't bet on it.