Dave Hickney's 'At Home with the Neon'

This week I have read ‘At home with the neon’ from the book ‘Air Guitar’ by Dave Hickney.

Before reading this, my opinion on Las Vegas was probably the same as most of the people in the class (I’d imagine). I felt that it was tacky, tasteless, and a place that exploited peoples’ greed. I now feel slightly bad about feeling that way, although I can’t say that I suddenly really want to go there now.

Hickney writes how Las Vegas has become the only place where he feels at home. He raises a lot of positives about the place – Vegas presents a flat-line social hierarchy. Money is just money. Vegas is about stakes, not status. It is about real action, not connections. All of these points made me re-think my attitude to the place. Las Vegas actually sounds quite appealing when you look at this way. Nowhere else has this level-headed attitude to society. To be in a place that treats everybody as equals, and escapes the pretentious nature of our culture must be amazing! Of course, there will still be people there who are making judgments on status, and turning their nose up at appearances, but I suppose those are the people that are not really experiencing Vegas. When you go to Vegas, you leave that behind, you escape the real world, where sadly everyone is judged by everyone.

One of the things that bugs me about Vegas is the exploitation of the people that go there to risk their money on the possibility of winning more. Hickney writes that it is essentially their own fault, which in reality is true! People are so un-used to regulating their own behaviour, that when they visit Las Vegas they go too far and end up broke and in jail. However, I still feel that even though everyone is responsible for their own behaviour, the Casino’s obviously do know peoples’ weaknesses, and they do exploit them. I really am being swayed both ways with this one, hopefully tomorrow’s lecture will help again.

Finally, I do feel that in accepting that I find the décor of Vegas tacky, I am accepting that I am pretentious, and see myself as ‘having better taste’, and therefore ‘above’ those who do not find it tacky. I obviously don’t want to think of myself as pretentious!

Maybe I need to accept Vegas as being what it is, and stop comparing it to what I see as better places. It is a one-off, which gives hope and pleasure to a lot of people. I think we could all do with adopting a more laid back, open, Vegas attitude. We are so caught up in our materialistic society, which pushes us into doing things that we feel we simply have to do, that we don’t even realise what it is that we want to do. This wacky place could in some respects keep us more level headed that anywhere else!