We spent thanksgiving in Las Vegas, with tía Z and Im’a who had recently moved there. Im’a cooked us a feast in their apartment on thanksgiving evening, we strolled the Strip, and the kids eyes were wide as we walked the thick-carpeted ground floor of the hotel where we were staying, with its row upon row of slot machines. The second morning we spent a few hours away from the bright lights at Clark County Wetlands Park on the city’s edge. There wasn’t a lot of water, of course – some streams and damp patches surrounded by tall yellow grass, and beyond that, barren hills under a blue sky. But it was all the more beautiful for that. Temporal vulnerability in an ancient landscape.
The excellent museum was of the hands-on kind. CMH in particular loved it. You could stroke cut-out circles of local animal pelts, use a remote control to move a wildlife camera up and down a tree, match images of birds with their songs. Given my obsession with all things building-related, my highlight was the descriptions of rubble from demolished casinos being used as rip-rap along the Las Vegas Wash.
The Wash flows into Lake Mead, contributing about two percent of the water in the lake. The lake is reaching scarily low levels; the water-wars world of Paolo Bacigalupi's brilliant novel The Water Knife seems not that far away. The receding water-line is bringing up parts of the past as well: a rotting barrel containing a decomposed body turned up, thought to be the victim of a 70s or 80s casino-related mob hit.
Our last day involved the Las Vegas Tamale and Mariachi festival in downtown, a somewhat abortive trek I led us on to a warehouse-style museum in the Arts District where we flopped for a rest on sofas in an empty room, and tia Z’s much more successful suggestion of go-carting for the kids at the Mini Grand Prix Family Fun Center. And then, we decided, we should find a place for pizza. What followed was a bit like a car treasure-hunt as we found a likely-looking spot on Google maps, drove 10 or 15 minutes to get to it, and for one reason or another had to move on (the six of us in Z’s car – C hasn’t driven since his late teens, and I haven’t since moving to the US in 2007).
The first place was more of a cake-and-coffee spot than a pizza restaurant. The second was described as a speakeasy restaurant. We figured that was a theme thing, and kids would be welcome. It was a lonely box of a building in the middle of a parking lot. We walked around it a couple of times to try to find an entrance, which we did at the back, but on entering a gloomy reception area there was no-one to be seen, till a wooden slat high up in the wall slide back with a thump, a guy stuck his head out and told us that no under 18s were allowed, and closed the slat back again. The third place was take-out only. The fourth, as goldilocks would have said, was just right. We sat on stools around a high table eating wood-fired pizza and savoring one of those meals that mark time, when family members who see each other only occasionally (particularly during a global pandemic), are, for a moment, together.
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