Las Vegas

I went to Las Vegas once and spent the whole time aware of two different cities existing at the same time. The lights, the casinos, the money—that part is real. But one wrong turn and you’re somewhere completely different. Same place, same city, but a different world. The casinos still glow over the rooftops even from the parts where nobody’s winning anything.

Brooke Olimpieri grew up there and made a photo book about that exact split. It’s called Lost Vegas, and it’s not another book about the Strip. She was interested in the motels with their turquoise bathrooms, the quick weddings, the people and bodies in the spaces between the big lights. There’s something about that approach that feels more honest to me than any amount of glamour shots. She mentioned loving Vegas for its endless possibilities, and I don’t doubt that for someone like her. But the book is more specific. It’s about what those possibilities look like when you’re not the one they’re working out for.

What I couldn’t shake was the proximity of the two Vegases. You can see both from almost anywhere in the city. The height of difference between them, and how close they are, and how normal both of them manage to feel when you’re actually there. That’s the real Vegas—not the lights, not the poverty, but the fact that both exist on the same grid and neither one is hiding. Vegas doesn’t apologize. It just compartmentalizes.