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In Vegas, Wynn actually gets a little defensive about his nudity-free shows ("Hey, I'm not afraid of boobies"), the streets are hookerless, and the best-known Vegas strip club, the Palomino, lies discreetly beyond the city limits. Meanwhile, at 116 Hooters restaurants in 30 states, the whole point is the battalion of bosomy young waitresses in tight-fitting tank tops who exist as fantasy objects for a clientele of high-testosterone frat boys and young bubbas. No wonder middle Americans find the idea of bringing kids along to Vegas perfectly appropriate. How ironic that two decades after Hunter Thompson's book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, countercultural ripple effects have so raised the American prudishness threshold that Las Vegas is considered no more unseemly than any other big city.
Sixteen years ago, Nevada was the only place in America where one could legally go to a casino, and there were just fourteen state lotteries. As recently as 1990, there were just three states with casinos, not counting those on Indian reservations; now there are nine. Lotteries have spread to 37 states. Indiana and five Mississippi River states have talked themselves into allowing gambling on riverboats -- hey, it's not immoral, it's, you know, historical -- and such floating casinos may soon be moored off Boston and in Philadelphia as well. Sensible, upright Minnesota, of all places, now has more casinos than Atlantic City. With only one state, Hawaii, retaining a ban on gambling, and with cable-TV oligarch John Malone interested in offering gambling on the information superhighway, Vegas doesn't seem sinful, just more entertaining and shameless.
And fortunate, especially in this age of taxophobia and budget freezes. The state of Nevada now derives half its public funds from gaming-related revenues -- from voluntary consumption taxes, nearly all paid by out-of-staters. Nevadans pay no state income or inheritance tax. To craven political leaders elsewhere, this looks pretty irresistible: no pain, all gain, vigorish as fiscal policy. A new report from the Center for the Study of the States concluded, however, that "gambling cannot generally produce enough tax revenue to significantly reduce reliance on other taxes or to solve a serious state fiscal problem."
One of the defining features of Las Vegas has been its 24-hour commercial culture, which arose as a corollary to 24-hour casinos. Along with the University of Nevada's basketball team, it is the great source of civic pride. It is the salient urban feature first mentioned by Harvard-educated physician Mindy Shapiro about her adopted city: "You can buy a Cuisinart or drop off your dry cleaning at 4 in the morning!" The comic magician Penn Jillette, who was performing at Bally's last week, marvels, "There are no good restaurants, but at least they're open at 3 in the morning."
But Las Vegas' retail ceaselessness is no longer singular. These days around-the-clock restaurants and supermarkets are unremarkable in hyperconvenient America, and the information superhighway, even in its current embryonic state, permits people everywhere to consume saucy entertainment -- whether pay-per-view pornography or dating by modem with strangers -- at any time of the day or night.