BART. Bay Area Rapid Transit. You might recognize the upholstered seats and streamlined feel of 1978. It takes travelers directly to Terminal One at SFO, the international airport.
This is the start of a road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Reno back to S.F. A large circle ringing desert and mountains, a lot of land that I have no name for, that exists in the American consciousness as Death Valley, a sense of barrenness, four of the most sinful cities in our country. San Francisco with it’s Gay Pride, Hollywood’s glorification of vanity and violence, Las Vegas’s reputation for gambling and whoring, and Reno, the battered stepchild who has all the same problems, but the poverty compounds them, turns them dirtier than the same manifestation in the rich.
The point of this trip is to better understand the latter two cities, Vegas and Reno. Vegas is growing every day, it’s a dream city, built on stolen water and shifting sand, the promise of riches luring church groups and farmers to the million watt Strip where they can drink and gamble 24 hours a day.
Reno on the other hand, who goes there? Old timers who ride in on a pack mule with a gold pan in their knapsack. A stray busload of elderly gamblers who rode up the 80 on a chartered tour. There aren’t amusement parks in Reno. It isn’t billed as kid friendly. It’s up in the mountains, like a citadel, not far from Donner Pass where good folks turned to cannibalism not so long ago. And you think you can resist the tempation of a one armed bandit? No, the pull of sin is too strong in Neveda, be it Reno, Vegas, or anywhere in between.
Did the unfortunate Bandit get his arm eaten at Donner pass ?
Comment by Poll — August 31, 2008 @ 9:55 am