An Invitation
This post was prompted by a thread Amba started concerning the seasons. Several of us wrote about the climate where we live or used to live. It was a little like a Travelog of personal views. So I am asking all who wish to write about a place in which they live or have lived. Mine will be posted as a comment.
Ambiance 
rodjean said,
September 7, 2009 at 5:57 pm
The thing about Las Vegas is that it is for many people the image of that mythical place we all sought to visit when we were teenagers: No, not Disneyland, but Where It’s At. That is mostly a cultivated image: somewhere the rules do not apply. You can feel it on a flight coming into Vegas on a Friday night – the feeling that the party has already started.
For most of us who live in Las Vegas, gambling has little appeal. It is simply part of the background of everyday life. It is our industry, much like software firms in Silicon Valley or movies in Hollywood. The Strip is just a place where many of us punch our time cards. Still, the iconic role the city plays in the imaginations of others cannot be denied.
Summers in Vegas are hot. Everybody who can has a pool. Even most cheap apartment complexes have pools. In the summer, we tend to do our grocery shopping at night because frozen foods start to thaw in the car in the daytime, which is easier since most supermarkets are open 24 hours per day.
There are a lot of churches in Las Vegas, and backyard barbeques. It is a far more normal place than most folks realize. It is just that the town is a little more up-front about human vices. Still, prostitutes and addicts get rousted by the cops, as in most big cities. We have a large Mexican community and a substantial Asian community. Our politics lean Democrat, probably because unions are strong. That is balanced by a very conservative population in the rest of the state. A weakness of the community is its transience. Unless you move into a new neighborhood with a lot of school aged kids, people mostly don’t get to know their neighbors. So, it can be a lonely place for some: a perpetual party to which they aren’t invited.
Right now, Las Vegas is really suffering from the national recession and the after effects of the subprime mortgager bust. Unemployment is above the national average. Casinos are offering amazing prices to entice tourists, and a lot of the hotels, which were over leveraged, are on the verge of bankruptcy.
amba12 said,
September 8, 2009 at 10:50 am
Vegas = Behind the Green Door!
Maxwell said,
September 8, 2009 at 5:04 pm
In Tucson there are two seasons: the pleasant season (between October and May) and the summer. Those who haven’t lived there can roughly approximate the summer by waking up in the morning, plugging in your clothes iron (without water) and proceeding to run it over your entire body once every hour.
Of course, the heat there is nothing compared to Phoenix.
Donna B. said,
September 8, 2009 at 7:03 pm
I helped my daughter move from Sierra Vista to Phoenix in July 2007. The movers got there early to unload, but still weren’t done before noon. The temp was 115 that day. I’ve never felt so sorry for three men in my life.
We set a big tub full of iced bottles of water out for them and I saw one guy drink one and pour another over his head. We offered them access to the pool when they were through, but they said they were in a hurry to get back to Sierra Vista. I didn’t blame them.
Here’s a blog post I wrote last year about visiting a place I lived as a child:
http://opiningonline.com/2008/08/18/growing-up-in-colorado/