Wednesday 11th April

After an initial exploration of the strip where everything was new, exciting, inviting and loud, one thing struck me more than anything else and that was how Las Vegas tries to emulate other cities, predominately those from Europe with The Venetian being the most obvious example. However, there were more subtle imitations to be found particularly within the Bellagio. It had its own miniature Holland complete with clogs, windmills, upside down umbrellas and bicycles, a ‘Parisian’ café and other dining areas being named in a continental fashion such as Picasso. On the strip British telephone boxes and even buses could be spotted and within eating complexes the televisions were showing English football, not American. At first I thought that all of this copying could be equated to the relatively short lifespan of America, that it does not have such a long history as other countries and so it feels the need to compete to prove it can do just as well as Europe if not in fact better, because it can recreate such architectural feats with relative ease. However once I started to pay attention to the people around me I realised that there were relatively few tourists as I imagined tourists to be, the majority of people were Americans not foreigners. This therefore presented me with an alternative argument for the mimicry; many Americans do not travel abroad and so it is relatively easy to bring aspects of other cultures to Vegas for the Americans who would find international travel too expensive or difficult. It also provides a unique selling point to the city opposed to just rows and rows of identical casinos, which would not bring people back year after year.

A tiny piece of Europe found in The Bellagio