Sin City

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LAS VEGAS-LIKE NEW YORK AND RUST-NEVER SLEEPS. From dusk till dawn, the sprawl of the city and its glittering neon jewelery enliven the desert landscape, competing with a million stars, all of them so tiny compared to Siegfried and Roy. From the fabled "Strip" of Las Vegas Boulevard to the world's tallest eyesore-the Stratosphere-Vegas throbs to its own 24/7 pulse, hammering into the wee-est of wee hours.

If such modern monuments as the Luxor and Bellagio indicate a certain triumph of man over nature, this shimmer of wholesome sin is nonetheless contained by a desert landscape, including mountains (almost) as green as money, as peaceful as the Strip is not. And a slumbering city-as normal as any urban sprawl, people living, working, loving, dying-exists in the reality of Vegas off the Strip, away from Fremont Street, a world where couples occasionally marry in a real chapel, as opposed to a neon-trimmed storefront where the pastor is Elvis, and "gambling" means getting to work five minutes late, or eating fried food, or cheating on your wife, or maybe trying to get away with murder, figurative or literal.

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