PBS Las Vegas An Unconventional History_2of2_American Mecca
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00:00:00At mid-century, Las Vegas was by far the strangest city in America, a city built in the middle
00:00:17of the desert, where the main commercial district was comprised not of offices or banks, but
00:00:23hotels, where businesses operated 24 hours a day, raking in enormous profits from gambling,
00:00:31an activity outlawed everywhere else in the nation, and where many of the leading citizens
00:00:37were neither politicians nor priests, but convicted criminals and professional racketeers,
00:00:43men with longstanding ties to the mob.
00:00:47Founded as a railroad town back in 1905, Las Vegas had made its mark as a place of
00:00:53illicit desire, a refuge from the laws and values that held sway in the rest of the country.
00:01:02But now, as social revolution swept the old rules aside, the forbidden allure of Sin City
00:01:09would begin to fade, and Las Vegas would lose its way.
00:01:15Amazingly, when it rose again, the city would no longer be at the fringes of American life,
00:01:22but at its very heart.
00:01:29Each period in our history has some city that embodies the spirit of America, whether it
00:01:34was Boston at the time of the American Revolution, or New York City at the times of the great
00:01:39immigration to America.
00:01:42And now in our culture that is marinated in electronic entertainment, where there is this
00:01:47kind of immediate appeal to the sensitive, to immediate satisfaction, to immediate experience,
00:01:54to sensation over thought, to the present over the past or the future, Las Vegas is
00:02:00the city of the eternal now.
00:02:03There's no place that better captures the spirit of the American culture, for better
00:02:08and for worse, than Las Vegas.
00:02:21You can explore many of the deadly sins here, but none more so than greed.
00:02:27In America, the ultimate expression of capitalism is that greed is good.
00:02:33Las Vegas shows you that greed is at least fun.
00:02:38Las Vegas is based on the commercialization of all your desires.
00:02:45No desire is taboo, it's only a question of how much does it cost?
00:02:51It's the feeling that you're so far removed from people that want to tell you what to
00:02:56do, that it just feels free.
00:03:03It is the licensing of fantasy.
00:03:08There is that opportunity, or the illusion of the opportunity, that you can change everything.
00:03:18Secrets mean nothing.
00:03:21This is not Wall Street that operates on an imbalance of information.
00:03:26Here is a place where if you've got a good idea, you've got to shout it out.
00:03:32The whole kind of oasis effect.
00:03:36It is this thing in the desert.
00:03:38It has no rational reason to exist.
00:03:44The wastefulness of it is very sexy.
00:03:48Okay, 60 seconds to queue.
00:04:01Okay, David, let's roll them.
00:04:04Roll the trucks.
00:04:05Okay, that's good.
00:04:06Keep going.
00:04:07Keep going.
00:04:08You're doing fine.
00:04:09So we're here to build the world's largest birthday cake, 130,000 pounds of cake and
00:04:14frosting.
00:04:15Happy birthday, Las Vegas.
00:04:16At midnight, we officially turn 100.
00:04:21Good morning, everybody.
00:04:23We turn 100 years old officially in 10 minutes.
00:04:26Okay, my name is Brian Averna.
00:04:28I'm one of the corporate executive chefs of Sara Lee.
00:04:31We provided the cake and the frosting tonight.
00:04:34Are you ready?
00:04:36It's going to come to you frozen, but it might not.
00:04:50We have 60 tables with two volunteers per table doing nothing but frosting.
00:04:54They're just going to stand there as if they're making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,
00:04:58and that will happen for the next 12 hours.
00:05:01This is a big community event, but it's also a pretty serious undertaking.
00:05:05Look at these people.
00:05:06I mean, it's 1 o'clock in the morning.
00:05:08Now it's Vegas.
00:05:09So 1 o'clock doesn't mean anything, but there's kids here.
00:05:12There's families that are here.
00:05:14What a great way to be involved in the centennial.
00:05:16It's just nice to see the community pulling together and doing this.
00:05:19This is awesome.
00:05:20It's been a long time since we've all pulled together to do something big like this.
00:05:24He's fourth generation Las Vegas.
00:05:26Wow.
00:05:29There's 130,000 eggs in the cake batter alone.
00:05:34There's 24,000 pounds of flour, 36,000 cups of sugar.
00:05:40I know that if you added all the calories together, we'd be around 23 million calories for the whole cake.
00:05:47We're close.
00:05:48We've got seven hours, and we'll probably do it in six hours and 59 minutes.
00:05:54Can you do a quick fix on this before it collapses on us?
00:05:57We have to get it done by 2 o'clock, isn't the time?
00:06:00We have a deadline.
00:06:01Kick it up a notch, people.
00:06:03Let's go.
00:06:0445 minutes.
00:06:05Can we do it?
00:06:07Let's finish that cake.
00:06:09People have been asking me, why such a big birthday cake?
00:06:11Well, you're only 100 once, 100 years old, and to have anything less than that would be very un-Las Vegas.
00:06:17This has to be the biggest, the best, the greatest, the most exciting, and that's what Vegas is.
00:06:22This is symbolic of us.
00:06:24Happy birthday!
00:06:26Happy birthday to you.
00:06:30Happy birthday to you.
00:06:34Happy birthday, dear Las Vegas.
00:06:39Happy birthday to you.
00:06:44Thank you.
00:06:50We think we went over by several thousand pounds.
00:06:53We went a little heavy on the frosting.
00:06:58Is that what you want, right?
00:07:04Oh, my God.
00:07:08Perfectly in place.
00:07:10Not way too much.
00:07:19Now we have this terrific birthday cake at the biggest party, the greatest party, for the greatest city in the history of the world.
00:07:27Ladies and gentlemen, here we go.
00:07:31Here we go.
00:08:01In 1960, Las Vegas enjoyed a national reputation as America's unofficial mobster metropolis.
00:08:16No other place in America boasted such a rogue's gallery of city fathers.
00:08:22And perhaps none had more clout than Moe Dalitz, a man sometimes known as Mr. Las Vegas.
00:08:31The one-time kingpin of Cleveland's bootleg whiskey racket, former operator of illegal gambling dens in Ohio and Kentucky,
00:08:40and a reputed player in the national crime organization known as the Syndicate,
00:08:45Dalitz possessed a pedigree tailor-made for a place like Las Vegas.
00:08:56At a time when no legitimate enterprise in America would have invested a dime in a casino,
00:09:02Dalitz had sunk some of his dirty money into a controlling stake in the Desert Inn,
00:09:08one of the very first mob-operated resorts to be built out on Highway 91, the road that ran southwest to Los Angeles.
00:09:17Other mobsters followed, and together they transformed the desolate desert highway into the famed Las Vegas Strip,
00:09:26the self-proclaimed entertainment capital of the world, the premier gambling center of the Western Hemisphere,
00:09:34and the undisputed hub of the place known to Americans as Sin City.
00:09:41It's as though you walk through a veil, said one local. You become a nonconformist.
00:09:49You enter an adult fairyland where a dollar is not a dollar, and five dollars is a chip.
00:09:57Thanks to Dalitz and his associates, what once had been a remote Western outpost now drew some eight million visitors a year.
00:10:08Remember, Las Vegas would not be here today but for these guys.
00:10:13Without Moe and those guys, there would have been no money. There would have been no expertise.
00:10:18You know, you could have all the money in the world, but if you don't know how to run the place, you get taken.
00:10:23They knew how to look for the guys who were going to take them.
00:10:26They knew how to deal with the guys who were going to take them,
00:10:29and they dealt a little differently than the people today who are worried about constitutional rights and all that other kind of stuff.
00:10:35They dealt in their own way.
00:10:40Over the years, Dalitz had also proved a committed city builder,
00:10:45spearheading countless civic projects and contributing thousands to local charities.
00:10:51As a journalist would later put it, in Cleveland, Moe Dalitz was a bootlegger,
00:10:57but in Las Vegas, he stands as an elder statesman.
00:11:02If Las Vegas has a forefather, in my opinion, the key player is Dalitz.
00:11:08He was a sharp operator and a tremendous guy with a pencil.
00:11:12I mean, he was a great accountant. He had diversified business.
00:11:16He understood at an early age that it couldn't always be about bootlegging and gambling.
00:11:21You have to diversify.
00:11:23Dalitz was spreading out, was buying real estate, was getting into other businesses.
00:11:27Now, were all the businesses legitimate? No, I don't think so.
00:11:30But the bottom line was that Dalitz was well ahead of the curve.
00:11:35Now, in the fall of 1960, Dalitz was looking to capitalize
00:11:40on what promised to be the city's biggest boom yet.
00:11:44That September, United Airlines had introduced non-stop jetliner service to Las Vegas,
00:11:50slashing travel time from the East Coast in half
00:11:54and instantly making Sin City accessible to millions of Americans
00:11:58who otherwise would never have made the trip.
00:12:01Suddenly, Dalitz needed more hotel rooms.
00:12:04And for that, he needed cash.
00:12:08Las Vegas gets so popular, gets so big,
00:12:11that the original people who put it together could no longer put it together.
00:12:15They didn't have the money to make it expand the way it wanted to expand.
00:12:20The men from Cleveland, the men from New York, they don't have that kind of money.
00:12:26Mobsters built hotels with what I call shoebox money.
00:12:29They went to each other and they said, I'm building a hotel in Las Vegas,
00:12:32do you want to buy a share? It's 50,000 bucks.
00:12:34And the other guy pulls the shoebox out from under the bed,
00:12:36opens it up and counts him out $50,000 in cash.
00:12:39Got to the point that hotels were too expensive to do that.
00:12:42You simply couldn't get enough guys with $50,000 to build a $12 million hotel.
00:12:46So they needed another source of capital.
00:12:50Dalitz knew just the person to tap.
00:12:53His longtime associate, Jimmy Hoffa,
00:12:56president of the notoriously corrupt Teamsters Union.
00:13:00The previous year, Dalitz had convinced Hoffa
00:13:03to invest the union's pension funds in a new hospital for Las Vegas.
00:13:08Now, he urged the union leader to make similar investments on the Strip.
00:13:14Now, he urged the union leader to make similar investments on the Strip.
00:13:19If Moe told the Teamsters to make the loan, said one observer,
00:13:23they made the loan.
00:13:27Over the next several years, Hoffa would draw on the pooled retirement savings
00:13:32of nearly 200,000 union truckers and longshoremen
00:13:36to finance a spate of hotel expansion projects,
00:13:39including a nine-story addition at the Desert Inn.
00:13:45Teamsters money would also underwrite construction
00:13:48of a Greco-Roman themed resort called Caesar's Palace,
00:13:52purposely spelled without an apostrophe
00:13:55to signal that the place belonged not to a single Caesar,
00:13:59but to anyone who wanted to spend a weekend living like a Roman emperor.
00:14:05More hotel rooms, more guests, more money dropped at the tables and slots.
00:14:11All of it would eventually add up to a dramatic spike in the skim,
00:14:15the undeclared and untaxed earnings that were collected in the counting rooms
00:14:20and then distributed among the scores of connected owners
00:14:23who held hidden interests in Las Vegas.
00:14:28Every city had its own guys, and that's the way they did it.
00:14:32You could see where the money came to each of those casinos.
00:14:36The Dunes was St. Louis.
00:14:40The Desert Inn was Cleveland. Stardust was Chicago.
00:14:43It was a town that had the front end guys, the smiling guys with the wild sport coats,
00:14:50and then it had the other folks who came to town,
00:14:53and of course anyone in the lobby on a Friday night might notice
00:14:57that a crew of New York mob guys came in and got all the penthouse suites
00:15:01and that they were treated very, very well.
00:15:03Now, were they just gambling? Of course not. They were watching their store.
00:15:09With Teamster's money at their disposal,
00:15:11it looked as though Dalitz and his underworld cronies had found a way to stay on top.
00:15:17And with hundreds of millions of dollars in gambling revenues at stake,
00:15:21Nevada authorities left them there.
00:15:24We have no gangsters here, a state assemblyman insisted.
00:15:28We have qualified businessmen who are in a recognized industry, gaming.
00:15:36Then, in early 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Bobby
00:15:42to the post of U.S. Attorney General.
00:15:47A shudder went through Nevada, one reporter remembered,
00:15:50at the prospect that the new administration might crack down on hoodlums.
00:15:56Las Vegans had good reason to fear Robert F. Kennedy.
00:16:00Just a few years earlier, Kennedy had served as chief counsel
00:16:04to a highly publicized Senate investigation
00:16:07into the alleged links between crime syndicates and American labor unions.
00:16:12And he had watched in disgust as all but a handful
00:16:15of the nation's most audacious racketeers got away.
00:16:20His loathing for Jimmy Hoffa in particular had since become legendary.
00:16:26Kennedy felt that unions had to be protecting people, not exploiting them.
00:16:30So I think he emotionally responded to that.
00:16:33The Teamsters union was very strongly influenced by wise guys from different cities.
00:16:39Influence that the mob guys had over that pension fund was enormous,
00:16:43and I think that outraged Kennedy.
00:16:46Now, as Attorney General, he vowed to collar those
00:16:50who had so far eluded the government's grasp.
00:16:54Organized crime syndicates, he told his staff,
00:16:57had become an insidious rot, infesting the nation's innermost core.
00:17:02And the putrid source was the casinos of Las Vegas,
00:17:06or as one Justice Department aide called them,
00:17:09the syndicates' Federal Reserve.
00:17:12The FBI and the IRS could never accept the fact
00:17:16that a man like Moe Dalitz, who was illegal in Cleveland,
00:17:20could get on a plane in Cleveland, come to Las Vegas and be legal.
00:17:24The FBI and the federal government, the U.S. Attorney's Office,
00:17:27they felt there was something wrong with that.
00:17:29You can't have one state where being illegal is legal.
00:17:32It just drove them nuts.
00:17:36Over the next two years, Kennedy's Justice Department,
00:17:39together with the FBI and the IRS,
00:17:42waged an all-out war on Las Vegas,
00:17:45plotting raids, planting illegal wiretaps,
00:17:48and scrutinizing the financial records of every casino in town.
00:17:53By 1963, they had succeeded
00:17:56where every other federal investigation of Sin City had failed,
00:18:00and had managed to publicly expose the skim.
00:18:03A lot of facts came out that linked the casino ownership
00:18:07to the five families of New York, to Chicago,
00:18:10to Cleveland, Kansas City, and other places.
00:18:13And the proof of history has shown
00:18:16that they indeed were taking money out of the casinos.
00:18:21For Las Vegas, it was a public relations disaster.
00:18:25All across the country, newspapers ran story after story
00:18:29All across the country, newspapers ran story after story
00:18:33about the pilfering of casino profits,
00:18:36estimated to be at least $10 million annually.
00:18:41A book-length exposé called The Green Felt Jungle
00:18:44blasted the nation's pleasure capital for its corruption,
00:18:48and became a runaway bestseller overnight.
00:18:53Meanwhile, the Justice Department handed out indictments like penny candy,
00:18:57hauling in some 600 organized crime figures in 1963 alone.
00:19:04Eventually, Jimmy Hoffa would find himself headed for the penitentiary
00:19:08with a jury tampering conviction on his head,
00:19:11and Moe Dalitz would be battling charges of tax evasion.
00:19:17To some longtime residents of Las Vegas,
00:19:20the boys, as Dalitz and his friends were known,
00:19:23may well have seemed beneficent city fathers.
00:19:27But in the face of relentless government scrutiny,
00:19:30the city's alliance with mobsters was also fast becoming a liability.
00:19:52Watching TV for about a year, all I seen was Vegas, Vegas, Vegas.
00:19:56Just wanted to come out here, become a blackjack dealer.
00:19:59I was weighing tables back home, got tired of it.
00:20:02So I decided to come out here and be a dealer, make a bunch of money.
00:20:13Image in my head was just that everyone was getting rich real quick.
00:20:16I came out here, I thought I was going to be a millionaire
00:20:19within my first ten minutes of me coming into Vegas.
00:20:22There's so much on TV that you can't help but come out here.
00:20:26It's a challenge. I don't know anybody out here.
00:20:29Back home, I knew a lot of people. I could get a job real easily.
00:20:32Out here, I had to actually use my resources, my skills to get a job.
00:20:37I got a job at O'Shea's, which is a break-in house
00:20:41for new dealers coming straight out of school.
00:20:43My shift is 8 o'clock at night till 4 in the morning.
00:20:47I don't mind, because I'm making money.
00:20:50I mean, it's not even really considered a job.
00:20:52I mean, it is, but I don't break a sweat, I don't do anything.
00:20:55I sit there and make sure everyone's playing all right,
00:20:58keep track of the money that's right there, and that's pretty much it.
00:21:07Vegas is unique. It's different than every other city.
00:21:10It's like its own little country. The laws here are so slack.
00:21:13It's not like anywhere else in the United States.
00:21:16You come out here, you can be a totally different person.
00:21:19You can be who you were back home.
00:21:21It's a transit town, so you meet someone, you see them for two days,
00:21:25and after that, they're gone. You don't ever see them again.
00:21:28That's why I kind of like it.
00:21:37I'm trying to move back home sometime next couple years, start a business.
00:21:41I don't want to be out in Vegas all my life.
00:21:44I mean, I like the town, but you can easily get trapped inside Vegas,
00:21:48and do all the things that you're not supposed to do.
00:21:51Stay focused, and then leave.
00:21:54Just take it Vegas like Vegas takes everyone else.
00:21:57Vegas, New York
00:22:14In the early hours of Thanksgiving morning, 1966,
00:22:18a private train rattled into a desolate crossing in North Las Vegas.
00:22:24From the trailing car emerged one of the wealthiest men in the world,
00:22:30the legendary billionaire recluse, Howard Robard Hughes.
00:22:35In his youth, Hughes had been a full-fledged American celebrity.
00:22:40The dashing movie producer,
00:22:43whose exploits had provided endless fodder for gossip columns.
00:22:47The record-breaking aviator,
00:22:50who had been honored with a hero's ticker tape parade.
00:22:55But though only a few people knew it, that man was long gone.
00:23:00Plagued by chronic back pain, and hopelessly addicted to narcotics,
00:23:05Hughes had spent much of the last three years in near total seclusion.
00:23:10His mind careening between rationality and full-blown dementia.
00:23:16Now he had come to Las Vegas, his old stomping ground,
00:23:21seeking tax shelter for his riches,
00:23:24and refuge from the hounding attention of the press.
00:23:27Accompanied by a phalanx of beefy Mormon caretakers,
00:23:31he took up residence at Moe Dalitz's place, the famed Desert Inn,
00:23:36where an old acquaintance, Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspan,
00:23:40had reserved the entire 8th and 9th floors for his personal use.
00:23:45One week passed, then two.
00:23:49But to Dalitz's dismay, Hughes and his entourage showed no signs of moving on.
00:23:56Never gambled. And his aides were all Mormon,
00:23:59so they didn't gamble and they didn't drink and they didn't tip
00:24:02because they didn't need any of the services.
00:24:04So it was a bust for the hotel.
00:24:07So around Christmas time, Moe called my dad and said,
00:24:10you've got to get this no-good bum out of here
00:24:12because my high rollers are coming in, I need those suites.
00:24:16And in the middle of that negotiation back and forth,
00:24:19over a period of a few days, either my dad or someone said,
00:24:22well, why don't you just buy the hotel?
00:24:28Hughes' bid for the Desert Inn could not have come at a better time.
00:24:34Although the Cold War defense boom had boosted employment
00:24:37at nearby Nellis Air Force Base
00:24:39and a sprawling atomic test site to the north of town,
00:24:43and Las Vegas' annual tourist tally was holding steady,
00:24:48the furor over the mob had begun to slow the city's roll.
00:24:54Hughes was precisely what Las Vegas needed.
00:24:58A well-respected entrepreneur
00:25:00with one of the biggest bank rolls on the planet
00:25:03and an image that could instantly redeem the city
00:25:06from the stigma of organized crime.
00:25:10Seizing the opportunity, Governor Paul Laxalt
00:25:13urged the Gaming Control Board to approve Hughes' license application
00:25:18in spite of the fact that he had failed to appear in person,
00:25:21had declined to submit to a financial background check,
00:25:24and had refused to be photographed or fingerprinted
00:25:27as required by Nevada law.
00:25:30It's not too bold a statement to say
00:25:32that if he did not own the governor's office
00:25:35during the Laxalt administration, he certainly leased it.
00:25:38He got favors that no one else got,
00:25:41and he was a guy with a past that probably should have been scrutinized,
00:25:45but his presence was so important
00:25:48that it superseded a background check.
00:25:53On April Fool's Day, 1967,
00:25:56official title to the Desert Inn
00:25:58passed from Moe Dalitz and his partners to Howard Hughes.
00:26:02I have decided this once and for all,
00:26:05Hughes declared in a memo to his aides.
00:26:07I want to acquire even more hotels
00:26:10and make Las Vegas as trustworthy and respectable
00:26:13as the New York Stock Exchange.
00:26:16Cloistered round the clock in his makeshift headquarters,
00:26:20the eccentric billionaire now began to collect strip hotels and casinos
00:26:24as if they were snow globes or stamps.
00:26:28The Frontier in the sands,
00:26:31and the castaways.
00:26:33The Silver Slipper, a small casino across from the Desert Inn,
00:26:37whose revolving marquee topper reportedly disturbed his sleep.
00:26:42And the massive Landmark Hotel,
00:26:45which officially opened in July 1969.
00:26:49Despite Hughes' reputation for shelling out without stepping out,
00:26:53many of his guests are still hoping for even a glimpse of their elusive host.
00:26:58But they won't find that billion-dollar baby
00:27:01in this five-and-ten-cent store.
00:27:04He was the Wizard of Oz.
00:27:07You never saw the man,
00:27:09and never heard the man.
00:27:11You saw his minions,
00:27:14and you weren't even sure if they saw the man.
00:27:18And it was a very weird, weird deal.
00:27:22What you felt was his money.
00:27:25The guys who created Las Vegas, the originals,
00:27:28they were powerful and rich, but they could never cash out.
00:27:32They could not walk away from that profit.
00:27:35They were now in their 60s and 70s.
00:27:37They wanted to leave some money to their grandkids and their families.
00:27:40Howard Hughes comes in with his accountants,
00:27:42and they could finally get rid of it.
00:27:44They could cash out.
00:27:46Hughes has, by buying out certain hotels,
00:27:49retired some of our more dubious characters,
00:27:52of which we're very grateful.
00:27:57To the outside world,
00:27:59it looked as though all of the mobsters were gone.
00:28:03But that was just another bit of Las Vegas' dazzling sleight of hand.
00:28:08Since no one in Hughes' organization
00:28:10had any idea how to run a gambling operation,
00:28:13they had kept most of the mobbed-up managers in place.
00:28:17Under their direction, the skim had continued just as before,
00:28:22only now Hughes was being defrauded along with the IRS.
00:28:27In casino parlance, it was known as cleaning out the sucker.
00:28:33By the time the extent of the plunder was finally made clear,
00:28:37Hughes' buying spree had hit a snag.
00:28:41Barred from further purchases by a pending antitrust suit
00:28:45and rapidly descending into madness,
00:28:47Hughes had his aides spirit him away from Las Vegas on Thanksgiving 1970,
00:28:53exactly four years to the day after his arrival.
00:28:58Mr. Hughes is on a delayed vacation.
00:29:01He's been delayed for 14 months,
00:29:03and he decided he was entitled to this vacation
00:29:05after four years in the 9th floor of the Desert Inn.
00:29:08We had personal confirmation from Mr. Hughes,
00:29:11personal confirmation he's going to return to Nevada
00:29:13because he's become a very valued and respected citizen of this state.
00:29:20Although many of his properties in town
00:29:22would remain in his company's possession for years to come,
00:29:26Hughes never did return.
00:29:29But his brief, bizarre sojourn had nevertheless changed Las Vegas forever.
00:29:36We needed a man like Mr. Hughes.
00:29:38We had some very bad, unfavorable national publicity.
00:29:42Since coming here, our national publicity has been far more favorable.
00:29:46It has given us what we deem to be almost instant respectability.
00:29:51I think Howard Hughes played an enormous role in the evolution of Las Vegas.
00:29:57His man, Bob Mayhew, says that Howard Hughes didn't make the new Las Vegas,
00:30:02but he got it ready.
00:30:04By bringing a brand name that was not Murder, Inc. into Las Vegas,
00:30:10Howard Hughes helped separate the community from its past.
00:30:24Vegas used to be mobsters, money, and movie stars.
00:30:29It's not like it used to be.
00:30:34Now it's corporate. It's a kiddie land.
00:30:38Everyone comes with their hundred-dollar bills,
00:30:40with their shorts and gym shoes and T-shirts,
00:30:42and they bring their children,
00:30:44and they go on roller coasters on top of the casinos.
00:30:47I came to Vegas in 1975.
00:30:50The disco days, the wonderful days.
00:30:53And, you know, I wish I could turn back the hands of time.
00:30:56I really do.
00:30:58When I first got here, I was a cocktail waitress,
00:31:02and now I deal a lot of the games.
00:31:06Not all of them, but most of them.
00:31:09But it's not a very good job anymore like it used to be.
00:31:13A friend of mine works in the VIP room at the Strip Tees,
00:31:17and they needed another house mom,
00:31:20so I said, I'm willing.
00:31:22I'm the then-mother.
00:31:24A lot of the girls are detached from their families.
00:31:28Some girls' families don't even know that they work there,
00:31:32that they're dancers.
00:31:34They say that they're cocktail waitresses somewhere.
00:31:37You know, I cook for them.
00:31:39That's one of the biggest things.
00:31:41They come in, and when they see me, their faces light up.
00:31:44They go, oh, food!
00:31:46That's a good cookie.
00:31:48Thank you.
00:31:50How's mom?
00:31:52They're not there to be touched and fondled.
00:31:55Most of the girls, they're dancers.
00:31:57They are not prostitutes.
00:31:59There are some that do their own little thing,
00:32:02but as a whole, there's a lot of good girls.
00:32:05Girl, I'm hungry.
00:32:07There are codes in the Strip Tees and in all the strip places.
00:32:11You cannot do grinding,
00:32:13you cannot let touching of any body parts.
00:32:16Vice comes in to check periodically.
00:32:18If they see something, the girl gets ticketed,
00:32:21the manager gets ticketed.
00:32:23They actually have to go to court.
00:32:25It's like a ticket.
00:32:27Now I can climb the pole even barefoot, no problem.
00:32:30It took me like a year to be able to do that.
00:32:33I tell everybody, it takes a year to learn how to dance.
00:32:36Just to even know how to move your hips and how to be set,
00:32:39how to look set, how to walk in these shoes sexy.
00:32:42They had to tell me, you had to put one foot
00:32:45right in front of the other one, they tell me.
00:32:47That's how you learn how to walk.
00:32:49I didn't know any of that.
00:32:51Now I'm addicted. I love it. It's bad.
00:32:53It's like a drug. Stripping is like a drug. It's addicting.
00:32:56Every time I try to find another job, I always come back.
00:32:59Oh yeah, the $8 an hour job?
00:33:01Yeah, you get your paycheck and you're like,
00:33:03I made this in one night.
00:33:05I made more than this in one night.
00:33:07I worked my butt off for 2 weeks and that's all I get?
00:33:10I have seen girls fall into the drugs, into the alcoholism.
00:33:16They're more interested in that.
00:33:19A lot of their money goes towards that.
00:33:21And you know what, your heart goes out to them the most.
00:33:26You know, you want to know sometimes
00:33:28what makes them go in that direction,
00:33:30what happens that they can't follow a straight line.
00:33:34I worry about most of them. I really do.
00:33:39¶¶
00:33:52You know, for me, the insane, brazen wildness of the whole thing
00:33:58is always very exhilarating when I first get there.
00:34:02And then, because it is sort of superficial
00:34:05and it is without real substance behind it,
00:34:09it wears thin very quickly.
00:34:11It's kind of as if you were force-fed chocolate mousse.
00:34:15First taste is really good, but then there comes a time
00:34:19when you actually want some nutrition.
00:34:22¶¶
00:34:28By the late 1960s, the primly conservative values
00:34:32of post-war America were folding faster
00:34:35than a poker player with a busted hand.
00:34:38Over the previous decade, the nation had been assailed
00:34:41by protests and assassinations and government lies,
00:34:45and millions of Americans were now turning their backs
00:34:49on the status quo.
00:34:51¶¶
00:34:53In Sin City, the turmoil barely registered.
00:34:58The 60s were about serious things,
00:35:00and Las Vegas was about escaping from serious things.
00:35:04And Las Vegas was much less on the map in the 60s.
00:35:09I don't think it's that Las Vegas was too busy
00:35:12to pay attention to the 60s.
00:35:14I think it was that the 60s were too busy
00:35:17to pay attention to Las Vegas,
00:35:19and so it kind of just went chugging along.
00:35:22¶¶
00:35:28¶¶
00:35:42Of course, the times were changing in Las Vegas, too,
00:35:46but they were headed in the opposite direction.
00:35:49In the rest of America,
00:35:51the goal was to get rid of the establishment.
00:35:54In Las Vegas, the establishment had only just arrived
00:35:58in the form of corporations like Ramada and Hilton,
00:36:01who had finally decided to take Howard Hughes's lead
00:36:04and cash in on the lucrative casino business.
00:36:08The Cultural Revolution kicked the doors open
00:36:11inadvertently for the mainstreaming of gambling.
00:36:15In a culture where Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor
00:36:20replace Bob Hope and George Burns,
00:36:23then you have a cultural opening,
00:36:26and people who make money off of culture say,
00:36:29hmm, maybe gambling and floor shows
00:36:33and even stuff that has a kind of sexual connotation to it,
00:36:38maybe we can put that on our commercial agenda.
00:36:41Maybe we can invest in that,
00:36:43and people aren't going to go running away
00:36:46with their hands over their eyes.
00:36:49The positive for Las Vegas was
00:36:52we finally were getting access to capital.
00:36:55It had been not the case here
00:36:58until the age of Howard Hughes and slightly thereafter.
00:37:02So it was very, again, another liberating move
00:37:06to be in Nevada at that time,
00:37:08because all of a sudden doors were opening.
00:37:12Now that Wall Street had come to Sodom and Gomorrah,
00:37:16there was no longer any reason to put up with the mob
00:37:20or their questionable business practices.
00:37:23The Justice Department today announced
00:37:25the indictment of 15 men,
00:37:27some said to be members of organized crime,
00:37:29for skimming more than $2 million
00:37:31from casinos in Las Vegas over 9 years.
00:37:34Over the next several years,
00:37:36Nevada authorities would investigate
00:37:38a half-dozen Las Vegas casinos,
00:37:40and working in concert with the U.S. Justice Department
00:37:44forcibly sever their ties to organized crime.
00:37:48By the mid-'80s, the last of the mobsters
00:37:51would be gone from the scene,
00:37:53and the keys to Sin City
00:37:55would have passed into the hands of corporate America.
00:38:07You'll find many people who will tell you when they look back
00:38:11that they liked Las Vegas better when the mob ran the city.
00:38:15People felt like agreements were always kept,
00:38:18a man's word was sacred.
00:38:21You knew where you stood.
00:38:23You didn't cross them, they didn't cross you.
00:38:28Las Vegas, we have to remember, was a smaller place.
00:38:31It was a place where you could walk in to a casino
00:38:34and people really could know your name.
00:38:37When people say,
00:38:40you know, it was smaller.
00:38:42I mean, it was a small town,
00:38:44and now Las Vegas is a big place,
00:38:46and that's the place where corporations work.
00:38:49I'm on the top of the world
00:38:52Down on creation
00:38:54And the only explanation I can find
00:38:59Is the love that I've found
00:39:02Ever since you've been around
00:39:05Your love's put me on the top of the world
00:39:12For more than two decades,
00:39:14Sin City had made the visitor number one.
00:39:18Now, that exalted position belonged to the stockholders,
00:39:22and Las Vegas' corporate managers
00:39:24were hell-bent on maximizing their returns.
00:39:28During the 70s,
00:39:30we entered into an era of corporate Las Vegas,
00:39:36anathema to Las Vegas.
00:39:39Now the bean counters are running the places.
00:39:44They are making it dry and dreary,
00:39:47and they have no imagination,
00:39:49and what happened to all of the inspirational people?
00:39:52Because now all they care about is the bottom line.
00:39:57The nearly 30,000 members of the local culinary union,
00:40:01the bellhops and maids,
00:40:03dishwashers, waiters, and cooks,
00:40:05were the first to feel the squeeze.
00:40:09In the face of layoffs and steadily eroding benefits,
00:40:12the culinary struggled mightily to hold its ground.
00:40:16Come on!
00:40:17I command you to dismiss this area.
00:40:211976 saw the first major citywide strike
00:40:25in the union locals' history.
00:40:28If it lasts a few days, a lot of heads are going to get hurt
00:40:32because people are broke.
00:40:34After 16 days, management grudgingly agreed
00:40:37to a wage increase and a no-lockout clause.
00:40:44But in retaliation for the heavy financial losses
00:40:47incurred during the strike,
00:40:49hundreds of union members lost their jobs.
00:40:55People don't want to come where they have to cross a picket line
00:40:58or they don't want to be reminded of reality
00:41:00when they're in a place like Las Vegas that's based on fantasy.
00:41:03And people who are picketing,
00:41:05that's about as real life as you can get.
00:41:09Returning visitors immediately discerned a difference
00:41:12in the newly corporate Las Vegas.
00:41:15The once world-class service was now notably subpar.
00:41:19Worse still, the buzzing energy of the old sin city
00:41:23seemed strangely muted.
00:41:25Glitzy had given way to bland.
00:41:29And the one-time pinnacle of nightclub cool
00:41:32had somehow become the last plateau
00:41:34on the downward slope to cultural obscurity.
00:41:37A place where the most cutting-edge entertainment
00:41:40was Elvis Presley's astonishing comeback at the International Hotel.
00:41:45We're talking about a community that had become out of step
00:41:49with what people thought was hip.
00:41:51Las Vegas, Las Vegas
00:41:54Sweet taste of life when you're there
00:41:57Las Vegas, Las Vegas
00:42:00You can feel the magic in the air
00:42:03When things got punk, Las Vegas pulled up its polyester leisure suit
00:42:07and went, gee whiz, fellas, you want to hit the blackjack table.
00:42:11Las Vegas, no one does it better
00:42:22However dowdy or sleazy or tame
00:42:25Las Vegas may have seemed to visitors,
00:42:28it was still the only big city in America outside of Reno
00:42:32where a person could legally sit down at a blackjack table
00:42:36and throw his life savings away.
00:42:40But now, even that distinction disappeared.
00:42:44The Monopoly Nevada has enjoyed since 1931
00:42:48as the only state to have legalized casino gambling
00:42:51ended at 10 a.m. today
00:42:53when the wheels spun, the cards dropped, and the dice rolled
00:42:56in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
00:42:59With some 37 million people living less than a gas tank away,
00:43:03Atlantic City easily won out
00:43:05against the four-and-a-half-hour airplane ride
00:43:08into the heart of the Mojave.
00:43:11Before long, the New Jersey Resort's 11 casinos
00:43:14would be drawing more than twice as many annual visitors as Las Vegas.
00:43:23Competition, combined with a national recession
00:43:26that slowed tourism everywhere, sapped Las Vegas' drawing power.
00:43:31By 1980, visitation was down,
00:43:34and Sin City was in the throes of a full-fledged identity crisis.
00:43:40The losing streak only continued.
00:43:44In November, the seven-year-old MGM Grand,
00:43:48the 26-story Hollywood-themed resort
00:43:51that had once drawn rapt attention as the largest hotel in the free world,
00:43:55made headlines yet again,
00:43:58this time as the site of a disastrous blaze
00:44:01in which 85 people died and some 700 others were injured.
00:44:07Three months later, the Las Vegas Hilton also went up in flames,
00:44:12cutting short the lives of eight hotel guests.
00:44:18The fires were an international news story
00:44:22that had a tremendous negative impact on Las Vegas
00:44:26that gave people a reason to doubt whether we had our game together,
00:44:31whether we could be a modern city
00:44:34or just some kind of island or backwater.
00:44:38Finally, in 1983,
00:44:41TWA canceled its nonstop service between Las Vegas and New York.
00:44:48With a total metropolitan population now of more than 450,000 people
00:44:53and an annual tourist tally that still topped 10 million,
00:44:58Las Vegas was in no danger of disappearing.
00:45:02But it was tempting to conclude
00:45:04that its spectacular rise had reached a natural limit.
00:45:08Like an aging showgirl,
00:45:10Sin City seemed an unlikely candidate for a second act.
00:45:17Those who were inclined to count the city out, however,
00:45:20didn't know a thing about Las Vegas.
00:45:25Whether it's gambling on the tables or in the slot machines,
00:45:29or whether it is this opportunity to start over,
00:45:33to better yourself, different from where you came from,
00:45:36everybody's looking for that next chance in life.
00:45:39And I think Las Vegas offers it.
00:45:44A chance to do something different.
00:45:47A chance to do something better.
00:45:50A chance, period.
00:45:52I was with my baby's dad,
00:45:54and one month he decided to fall apart,
00:45:57which left us with an eviction.
00:45:59So I thought I could come out here.
00:46:02My son's godfather lived out here.
00:46:04I said, why not give it a try?
00:46:06Our lives fell apart in California.
00:46:08I was living from friend to friend, week after week.
00:46:11When this hardship took place and we came out here,
00:46:15we didn't know what to do.
00:46:17We didn't know what to do.
00:46:19When this hardship took place and we came out here,
00:46:22we lived with my son's godfather.
00:46:24There was 14 people in a 3-bedroom apartment upstairs.
00:46:28It was okay for the first couple of days,
00:46:32but after a while it started playing in everybody's nerves.
00:46:36That's why I reached out for shelters,
00:46:39places that I could get help.
00:46:42Come on in.
00:46:44Two primary goals that we focus on
00:46:47have to do with your desire to find full-time work
00:46:51and permanent housing.
00:46:53Okay, you have already applied for TANF.
00:46:56Mm-hmm.
00:46:58How about food stamps?
00:47:00I'm just going to call back tomorrow morning.
00:47:02So they have given you your card, your food card?
00:47:05Yeah, I got the Nevada Quest card.
00:47:07Why out here in Vegas do you need all these cards to have a job?
00:47:11A health card, a TANF card, a sheriff's card?
00:47:15Many jobs in town are connected with the casinos,
00:47:19and people handle money and alcohol and things like that.
00:47:26And so in order to do that,
00:47:28they need to do background checks on people.
00:47:31Okay, because even working at McDonald's, you need some kind of card.
00:47:34Yeah, it's not a user-friendly town when it comes to, you know,
00:47:38people being able to just come to town and get a job.
00:47:42The most important thing for us is that you're not on the street.
00:47:46And if you continue to find people that would take you in,
00:47:50that doesn't last very long.
00:47:52We get about 200 calls a month.
00:48:06I came out here thinking a job was just going to fall into my lap.
00:48:12You see on TV, everybody's smiling, everybody's got a job,
00:48:17everybody seems like it works out.
00:48:19You come from California, you come out here
00:48:22thinking you're going to find a better life, a better way.
00:48:27That's not exactly what it's cut out to be.
00:48:32I guess I was naive.
00:48:42Las Vegas is probably the greatest example on the planet,
00:48:46including New York City,
00:48:48of 24-hour, seven-day-a-week,
00:48:51violent, hand-to-hand commercial combat.
00:48:55Here in this city,
00:48:57there's a lot going on.
00:48:59There's a lot going on.
00:49:01There's a lot going on.
00:49:03There's a lot going on.
00:49:05There's a lot going on.
00:49:07There's a lot going on.
00:49:09Here in this city,
00:49:11the players are lined up along the Rialto out there,
00:49:16teeth bared, lips curled back,
00:49:18fists clenched, saying,
00:49:20Stay in my place, don't go in that one.
00:49:23Look at what I've got for you.
00:49:26It's in this great Carnival Midway.
00:49:29Step right up, see the girl turn into a gorilla.
00:49:33See the chicken dance.
00:49:35Come in here.
00:49:40In 1988, after a 15-year construction slump,
00:49:45a highly anticipated new resort called the Mirage
00:49:49began to rise up on the Strip.
00:49:52Not since Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo,
00:49:55nearly half a century before,
00:49:57had a Las Vegas hotel-casino generated quite so much buzz.
00:50:03Local curiosity had been mounting
00:50:05ever since the man behind the project,
00:50:08longtime Las Vegas resident and casino owner Steve Wynn,
00:50:12had gone public with his somewhat mysterious plans.
00:50:16They don't need another casino in Las Vegas,
00:50:19Wynn had told one writer,
00:50:21but they sure as hell could use a major attraction.
00:50:25The Mirage, he promised, would be the Sin City equivalent
00:50:29of Disneyland.
00:50:31The business that had built Las Vegas
00:50:33and fueled its growth for more than half a century
00:50:36was about to be turned on its head.
00:50:40Historically, within the internal organization of a resort,
00:50:44the casino was king,
00:50:46and the showrooms, the rooms, the bars,
00:50:50they existed merely as appendages of the casino.
00:50:53It didn't matter if they made a profit or not.
00:50:56They were the lure to get people into the casino.
00:50:59Well, Steve Wynn changed all that,
00:51:01much to the detriment of the tourist's pocketbook.
00:51:05What that meant was that while it would cost the tourist a lot more
00:51:10because the day of the $20-a-night room was gone
00:51:13and the free meals were being phased out,
00:51:16he upgraded the level of luxury
00:51:20to a point where a middle-class person
00:51:23could come to Las Vegas
00:51:25and feel like he really was a millionaire.
00:51:28Pounding the pavement took on a new meaning today,
00:51:31especially at the Mirage Hotel
00:51:33where thousands of feet jockeyed for space
00:51:36to see the new playland.
00:51:38100,000 people had been expected to show up
00:51:41for the resort's grand opening in November 1989.
00:51:45200,000 actually came.
00:51:48Inside of a few weeks,
00:51:50the Mirage surpassed Hoover Dam
00:51:52as the leading tourist attraction in Nevada.
00:52:05With three separate wings, 29 stories,
00:52:08and a total of 3 million square feet,
00:52:11the Mirage was the largest resort casino
00:52:14on the face of the earth.
00:52:17A complex so sprawling
00:52:19that it resembled not a resort, but a city.
00:52:22So many service workers were needed to run the place,
00:52:26some 4,000 in all,
00:52:28that Wynn had had to cut a historic deal
00:52:31with the culinary union just to open his door.
00:52:34But it wasn't the size of the Mirage
00:52:37that really captured attention.
00:52:39It was the resort's exuberant celebration
00:52:42of sheer stupefying spectacle.
00:52:45A 20,000-gallon marine tank
00:52:48stocked with pygmy sharks, stingrays, and triggerfish,
00:52:52an ecologically authentic tropical rainforest,
00:52:56and a 54-foot man-made volcano
00:52:59that periodically spewed steam and flames
00:53:02into the night sky.
00:53:06He understood that how it looked is important.
00:53:09I would say the most admirable thing
00:53:12about all of Steve's projects
00:53:14is they really do detail.
00:53:16You know, they really do detail.
00:53:19The volcano in front of the Mirage is there
00:53:22because when they were setting it up,
00:53:24they were doing time-motion studies
00:53:26on how long did it take you to get your car on
00:53:29on the busiest night of the year.
00:53:31So 20 minutes to get your car, right?
00:53:33But if the volcano's going off every 15 minutes,
00:53:36you're not waiting for your car,
00:53:38you're hoping your car won't get here
00:53:41until the volcano goes off.
00:53:43See, this is very refined service economy thinking.
00:53:50Even the entertainment broke the mold.
00:53:53There was no run-of-the-mill headline act here.
00:53:57No second-rate celebrity
00:53:59backed by a row of scantily-clad dancers.
00:54:02Instead, the Mirage showroom
00:54:04featured a pair of flamboyant German illusionists
00:54:07named Siegfried and Roy.
00:54:09Their hand-raised pride of white tigers
00:54:12and a twice-nightly jaw-dropping magic show
00:54:15that would play to sold-out houses for years to come.
00:54:23Steve came and he realized
00:54:25that if you build it, and you build it better,
00:54:28and you create a little demand where maybe there wasn't demand,
00:54:32make it a little harder to get into,
00:54:34everyone will want to get into it
00:54:36and everyone will pay more to enjoy it.
00:54:39And he built these fantasy lands for adults,
00:54:43you know, with these volcanoes
00:54:45and the Siegfried and Roy show and the porpoises,
00:54:49everything that people would just love to be part of.
00:54:52Did they pay more for it?
00:54:54Sure, they were willing to pay more for it.
00:54:57He understood that.
00:54:58Give them something they can't get anywhere else.
00:55:01The Mirage had miraculously made Las Vegas new again,
00:55:06and it had done so just in time.
00:55:14By the 1990s, any residual stigma
00:55:17that still clung to gambling in America had dropped away.
00:55:21As early as 1994, there were lotteries in 37 states,
00:55:26legal casinos in 23,
00:55:28and nearly the same percentage of the gross national product
00:55:32was spent on gambling as on groceries.
00:55:36At decades' end, the most profitable casinos in the world
00:55:40would be located not on the Strip,
00:55:42but on Indian reservations all around the country.
00:55:47The implications of the trend
00:55:49were not lost on Las Vegas' resort owners,
00:55:53entrepreneurs like Bill Bennett and Kirk Kerkorian,
00:55:56who had spent years building bigger and better casinos.
00:56:00To survive as a tourist destination now,
00:56:03Sin City would have to up the ante.
00:56:07The Mirage opened a lot of financial doors
00:56:11for Las Vegas casinos.
00:56:13What it did also was spark a kind of
00:56:16Grapes of Wrath attraction about Las Vegas,
00:56:20that there were these people who needed the work
00:56:24were starting to come out here,
00:56:26not only from south of the border,
00:56:28not only from California, but from all over,
00:56:31and they were coming here,
00:56:33not simply because of the Mirage,
00:56:35but because Las Vegas was growing again.
00:56:39Kevin, who's finishing to bust this table,
00:56:41is sorting his china.
00:56:43Myra's setting up, she's covering everything
00:56:45so the food stays hot.
00:56:47Here we have our main kitchen.
00:56:49This is where you'll be putting in orders.
00:56:51The Culinary Training Academy's original design
00:56:54was to fill a labor need in the market.
00:56:57We train people entry-level, job-specific,
00:57:00for this industry.
00:57:02Uh-uh, uh-uh, that's gonna go in the dirty dishes.
00:57:05In Las Vegas, you can embark upon a career
00:57:07as a food server, which anywhere else in the country
00:57:10is not considered a good job.
00:57:12You can provide very well for your family
00:57:15in these positions that in other places
00:57:17are not considered good jobs.
00:57:19Pull the tray back behind his head.
00:57:21There we go. May I?
00:57:23May I?
00:57:25Clockwise.
00:57:28Okay, clockwise.
00:57:30Clockwise.
00:57:32There you go.
00:57:34We train people in the technical skills,
00:57:36how to carry a tray,
00:57:38how to say, may I take your plate,
00:57:40as opposed to, are you done?
00:57:42You know, how to correctly pour a cup of coffee
00:57:45so that it comes within a quarter inch of the top.
00:57:48You gotta announce, coffee?
00:57:50Coffee and pour, okay? Okay.
00:57:52Would you like more coffee?
00:57:54Our industry demands a level of customer service,
00:57:57of guest service that is so high
00:58:00that a large part of what we do,
00:58:02in addition to the technical skills,
00:58:04is train people on focused eye contact,
00:58:08how to relax, how to smile,
00:58:10how to communicate with the guests.
00:58:12Do we put the butter on the French toast?
00:58:14No.
00:58:15Do we put the syrup on the French toast?
00:58:17No.
00:58:18Do we put the powdered sugar on the French toast?
00:58:20No.
00:58:21We put a sprinkle of powdered sugar on the French toast.
00:58:25My goal, when I send people out into the industry,
00:58:29is that they communicate to the guest
00:58:31that each and every guest is important,
00:58:34not just to me, but that they're important to my hotel,
00:58:37to my restaurant, to my city.
00:58:40We are driven by tourism,
00:58:42and if the guest stops coming back,
00:58:44we stop having employment.
00:58:46The only difference between a plain omelet
00:58:49and scrambled eggs is shape.
00:58:51The guest service that should be communicated
00:58:54is that each and every guest is valuable,
00:58:57that you're valuable, that you're appreciated,
00:58:59that you're a wanted part of our day.
00:59:02You are the reason that we're here.
00:59:13Las Vegas is well known for reinventing itself.
00:59:17We are very good at adapting.
00:59:19I mean, how else could we have survived
00:59:21out here in the middle of this desert
00:59:23with nothing else around who would ever imagine
00:59:25it would become what it is today?
00:59:27So we reinvent ourselves to accommodate
00:59:30whatever comes along.
00:59:32In just about 15 hours, this building,
00:59:35the once grand Dunes Hotel and Casino,
00:59:37will be demolished in what's billed
00:59:39as America's most spectacular architectural implosion ever.
00:59:43Your decision to blow up the Dunes
00:59:46is it part of a larger effort
00:59:48to do away with the old Las Vegas
00:59:50and reshape Vegas as something else?
00:59:52It's part of Las Vegas doing what everybody else
00:59:55in the entertainment business is doing in the world today,
00:59:58and that is keeping up with the changing tastes of the public.
01:00:01Everybody has become more and more highly expectant,
01:00:04and things that would have gotten a wow or a jazz
01:00:0710 years ago draw a yawn today.
01:00:09And if Las Vegas doesn't move along,
01:00:11like the movie industry and everything else,
01:00:13Las Vegas is not going to be the exciting place
01:00:15that it has been in the past,
01:00:17and it is, as you can see, it's moving along.
01:00:27Oh, the good life
01:00:34Full of fun
01:00:36Seems to be the ideal
01:00:41Oh, the good life
01:00:47Let's you hide
01:00:49All the sadness you feel
01:00:57Between 1989 and 2005,
01:01:01many of the city's most iconic landmarks,
01:01:04the Dunes and Sands,
01:01:07the Hacienda, and even the Desert Inn,
01:01:10would be leveled,
01:01:12making way for what would come to be known
01:01:15as the new Las Vegas.
01:01:17It's the good life
01:01:21To be free
01:01:23And explore the unknown
01:01:31I think there's an impulse in the construction
01:01:34and reconstruction of the city
01:01:36that is very much something
01:01:38that comes from Hollywood sound studios,
01:01:41whereby you build a set,
01:01:44and Friday you're finished with it,
01:01:46Monday you want a new set.
01:01:48And the European sense of construction
01:01:50and the Eastern American sense of construction
01:01:53is that you build for the centuries.
01:01:56And in the West, but particularly in Las Vegas
01:02:00and Hollywood, I think,
01:02:02there is this notion that you build
01:02:05for what you want now.
01:02:08Las Vegas is a place built on the idea of escape.
01:02:14And if you believe you're about escape,
01:02:17then you can't be hemmed in by anything,
01:02:21including your own past.
01:02:23So I think Las Vegas treats its past
01:02:26the way it wants its visitors to treat their pasts,
01:02:30in effect, to forget them
01:02:32and to just have a good time.
01:02:34I mean, Vegas has done for architecture
01:02:36what, you know, what Renaissance painting did for painting.
01:02:40It rendered it mobile and ephemeral.
01:02:42I mean, you know, if it doesn't work here, it goes away.
01:02:45You know, if you build it and it doesn't work, it goes away.
01:02:48Buildings, nothing is presumed to be permanent.
01:02:54They seem to materialize almost overnight,
01:02:57like the outsized Lego creations
01:03:00of an unnaturally large child.
01:03:03The 1,000-room, Knights of the Round Table-inspired Excalibur,
01:03:07outfitted with cartoonish turrets, towers, and spires.
01:03:12And the pyramid-shaped Luxor,
01:03:14home to the world's largest atrium
01:03:16and a 40-billion-candlepower spotlight
01:03:19that astronauts reported as clearly visible from space.
01:03:25The pirate-themed Treasure Island,
01:03:27where a rousing maritime extravaganza
01:03:30was performed six times nightly
01:03:32and the 65-foot-deep man-made lagoon fronting the hotel.
01:03:37And the new MGM Grand,
01:03:40a massive hotel-casino-entertainment complex
01:03:43that drew as many as 10,000 visitors a day.
01:03:47These would soon be followed
01:03:49by dazzlingly elaborate replicas of New York City and Paris,
01:03:54Lake Como and Venice.
01:03:59In the end, there would be more hotel rooms
01:04:01on the corner of Flamingo Road and the Strip
01:04:04than in the entire city of San Francisco.
01:04:12Everything here is here to be seen.
01:04:16There's nothing here to be looked at.
01:04:19The architecture is not self-conscious about being architecture.
01:04:24And it just doesn't suffer from edifice wrecks.
01:04:27You know, when I first came here,
01:04:29you know, I had some friend from New York was here,
01:04:31and they said, looking at the Luxor,
01:04:34and he said, well, this is just a joke.
01:04:37And I just had to say, well, you get it, don't you?
01:04:40Do you think no one, you think everybody else
01:04:42thinks it's a real pyramid?
01:04:44Of course it's a fake pyramid.
01:04:54What Las Vegas does is make you feel special
01:04:57by not threatening you, by affirming who you are.
01:05:01If you walk into the Paris, and you say bonjour to somebody,
01:05:04and they say bonjour, and you say comment allez-vous,
01:05:06and they say, my name's Eric, I'm from Orange County,
01:05:08and that's all the French I speak.
01:05:10The difference between Venice and the Venetian is it's cleaner,
01:05:13it's a little bit less noisy, and it has all the amenities.
01:05:17So it takes the world the way it is
01:05:19and makes it the way you would have it if you were in charge.
01:05:22I think Las Vegas has done a great job
01:05:25of selling itself as acceptable mainstream experiences.
01:05:29You know, it's interesting, a generation ago,
01:05:32people defined Las Vegas in very moralistic terms.
01:05:35I mean, there were those who liked it
01:05:37because it was kind of cool and exciting,
01:05:39and then there were a whole lot of folks
01:05:41who cast dispersions on it.
01:05:46I think everybody in the world feels they ought to try to get here
01:05:50just to see what it's like.
01:05:52And a lot of people, if you were to say to them,
01:05:55what's your definition of the great life,
01:05:59would say without irony, without hesitation,
01:06:02well, a great weekend in Las Vegas, that's got the lot.
01:06:06That's the package.
01:06:09MUSIC
01:06:17By 1999, Las Vegas was drawing some 37 million tourists annually
01:06:23from all over the world,
01:06:25eclipsing even the holy city of Mecca
01:06:28as the most visited place on the planet.
01:06:32MUSIC
01:06:35At a time when cities are forced
01:06:39by certain economic and cultural pressures
01:06:42to look more and more alike,
01:06:45when it's getting harder and harder to figure out
01:06:48what differentiates Dallas from Atlanta, say,
01:06:52Las Vegas is one American city that still feels distinct,
01:06:57but reality will force it in another direction
01:07:00because as cities grow, they inevitably change.
01:07:03It is, in fact, becoming a more traditional city,
01:07:08more like other places,
01:07:10but it can't admit that to the world or it won't be Las Vegas.
01:07:15MUSIC
01:07:23Well, usually if I'm on an aeroplane
01:07:25and they ask me what I do in Las Vegas and I tell them a principle,
01:07:28they say, oh, there's not schools in Las Vegas,
01:07:30and I have to say, well, we are the 5th largest school district
01:07:33in the United States.
01:07:37We are not able to open schools fast enough
01:07:40to handle the amount of children that are coming into our city.
01:07:44Ready, set, go!
01:07:46Last year they opened, I believe, 12.
01:07:48I think this year it's anywhere between 10 and 11,
01:07:50and I know that they've said next year
01:07:52there might have to be up to 18 new schools open.
01:07:55But there's also a lot of turnover,
01:07:57and that makes stability for children
01:07:59and instructional programs more difficult, I think.
01:08:03I started this school year with 27 students,
01:08:07and probably 18 of them were here from day one
01:08:11and are still here today.
01:08:13The rest of them are all new, and several have moved on.
01:08:17Sometimes children will get new students
01:08:19who've been in four schools already in one year,
01:08:22so that's difficult as a teacher.
01:08:25You feel for those children
01:08:27that there's not more stability for them.
01:08:32Do you know what new school you're going to?
01:08:34Yeah, it's across my house,
01:08:36but my dad, he didn't tell me what the name is, but I saw it.
01:08:39Do you know what the, you saw it?
01:08:41Yeah, it's kind of, I don't like that.
01:08:43I just like this school.
01:08:46Okay, today for journal we're writing
01:08:49about what you would do
01:08:52Everyone in your family forgot your birthday.
01:08:55Everyone.
01:08:57I think a huge impact that 24 Hour City has on the children
01:09:01is in a lot of cases they go home after school and no one's there
01:09:05because that's when their parents are working.
01:09:07That impacts what I try to do with them,
01:09:10primarily with homework.
01:09:12They go home and they have a lot of other responsibilities,
01:09:15they're watching younger siblings,
01:09:17and so homework doesn't always take a priority.
01:09:21Jobs that are available here in Vegas
01:09:23are often decent paying jobs
01:09:26that one can acquire without very much education at all,
01:09:29and therefore I think education in the Valley
01:09:32is not really a high priority.
01:09:37And especially children when they get to high school,
01:09:39they know that they can go get a job valeting cars like Uncle Bill
01:09:44and make a decent living without finishing high school.
01:09:52I try to do what I can and I promote education with them.
01:09:57I often ask them, you know, who thinks they want to go to college
01:10:01and many hands are raised.
01:10:03So if we can just keep instilling that importance of education
01:10:08as they go through schooling, we'll reach a few of them.
01:10:22By the dawn of the 21st century,
01:10:25the phenomenal success of the new Las Vegas
01:10:28had transformed what was once a remote and exotic desert outpost
01:10:33into the fastest-growing city in the United States,
01:10:37a place where tens of thousands of jobs were created each year
01:10:42and 60 new streets named each month,
01:10:45and an average of more than 1,000 prospective residents
01:10:49moved into town each week.
01:10:53Improbably, the city that had long been a refuge
01:10:56for mainstream America had become all at once
01:11:00the last best place in the country to find it.
01:11:05I think in many ways Las Vegas is the most American of cities
01:11:09and it's a real irony.
01:11:11People used to come to Las Vegas to get away from America
01:11:15and all those jobs and all those careers
01:11:17that people thought were safe and secure
01:11:20in the heartland and the Rust Belt, etc., have disappeared.
01:11:24So history has had a good laugh
01:11:26because Las Vegas turns out to be one of the best places
01:11:30to come to work and to get a career
01:11:32and to get a union job and to get a living wage.
01:11:35So you actually come to Las Vegas the way you used to come to Detroit.
01:11:41You know, we've had the fastest-growing senior population,
01:11:44school-age population,
01:11:45Hispanic population,
01:11:46Asian population,
01:11:47fastest-growing city,
01:11:48fastest-growing small town,
01:11:50and fastest-growing rural community.
01:11:52That's a lot of fastest.
01:11:55Growth is good for many reasons.
01:11:57It brings lots of jobs.
01:11:58It brings diversity.
01:11:59It brings excitement.
01:12:00It brings money.
01:12:01But there are also downsides to that, of course.
01:12:04You know, the tail begins to wag the dog
01:12:07and the number of people outweigh the infrastructure that serves them.
01:12:11And so you get more traffic.
01:12:13You get more crime.
01:12:15You get bad air.
01:12:18The mindset is to get it quick, get it now,
01:12:22at any cost, with absolutely no regard for consequences.
01:12:28There's an awful lot of waste.
01:12:30And when you hear about the issues with water and homelessness
01:12:35and the lack of parent involvement in schools,
01:12:39it makes you stop and ask, where are the priorities?
01:12:44There isn't a lot of sympathy in Las Vegas.
01:12:46We can talk about how many philanthropists we have here
01:12:49on the Strip and downtown in the casino business.
01:12:52The fact is, this is a very tough community.
01:12:55We don't give more than most communities do.
01:12:58It's kind of the old libertarian ethic of the West.
01:13:02I mean, you are pretty much on your own.
01:13:04If you're looking for a well-knitted social model,
01:13:08a well-knitted social net, you're not going to find it here.
01:13:13There is a reckoning coming.
01:13:15I'm not smart enough to know the answer.
01:13:17I certainly know the question.
01:13:19But we're going to have to come up with an answer,
01:13:22a balance, if you will,
01:13:24between how much we are going to pay or be willing to pay
01:13:27to make this a grand and glorious place to live for people
01:13:31so that we can continue to make it a grand and glorious place
01:13:35for people to come visit.
01:13:38We've never had that problem before.
01:13:40It is coming to a head.
01:13:44What Las Vegas needs or doesn't need as a city
01:13:46depends on whether you live here or not.
01:13:49If you don't live here,
01:13:51then you don't need much more than the Las Vegas Strip, do you?
01:13:55You could literally pare away the rest of Las Vegas,
01:13:58and 95% of the tourists wouldn't care and wouldn't notice.
01:14:02Now, the other million and a half people who live here,
01:14:05that's a different story.
01:14:09Happy birthday, everybody!
01:14:12Happy birthday, Las Vegas!
01:14:17Happy birthday, everybody!
01:14:39I think Las Vegas always finds a way to succeed
01:14:42because I think people are eternal optimists.
01:14:46I think people need to believe
01:14:48that there has to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
01:14:52You just haven't found it yet,
01:14:54and Las Vegas encourages you to come here
01:14:56and see if you can find it.
01:14:59It's just promise, you know?
01:15:01And it has to do with the idea that you don't bet on the past.
01:15:05You know, you bet on the future.
01:15:07There is a kind of structural optimism
01:15:10built into gambling cultures.
01:15:12I mean, it's not like stupid optimism,
01:15:15like everything's going to be all right,
01:15:17but it's sort of practical optimism
01:15:20that you can't just bet on the future.
01:15:22You know, you can't just bet on the past.
01:15:25But it's sort of practical optimism,
01:15:28like, whatever happens, I can handicap it.
01:15:33And that's just part of the culture.
01:15:35I mean, you can't have gambling without optimism.
01:15:39I think there will always be a part of the American psyche and soul
01:15:44that is very much Las Vegas.
01:15:47Our country is headed more toward Las Vegas than away from it,
01:15:51but I think the people who run the town
01:15:54will always make sure that we're out ahead,
01:15:57banging the right drums and shaking the right tambourines
01:16:00to make this a wilder place than the nation as a whole.
01:16:21ORCHESTRA PLAYS
01:16:51ORCHESTRA FADES