To compile Desert Companion’s “ 24 Hours in Las Vegas” feature — out now in our September issue — we sent a dream team of writers, artists and photographers to check out two dozen locations around the valley, one for every hour (starting at noon on Friday, July 31). Most of what we experienced is on the page, but we couldn’t fit everything.
• For example, this morsel from Andrew Kiraly, who spent the 9 a.m. hour on Saturday morning watching a charity at work:
“While wandering around the Salvation Army campus Saturday morning, this Easter egg caught my eye and begged for some snaps: The Salvation Army Hope chapel. Its sliding-block form is startlingly contemporary; but it also catches your eye because it looks like it’s moving — and a kinetic theme is fitting for a place devoted to changing lives. The cross is actually a translucent window, so inside, it glows a comforting blue from its central place behind the altar. The chapel was designed by JVC Architects.”
• At Brooklyn Bowl on Friday evening to take in a Danzig show, Greg Thilmont, perhaps spurred by the rebellious mojo of the metal he was about to imbibe, found himself on the wrong side of the law:
“Even though there were strict ‘no camera’ signs, I did sneak a blurry image of the stage backdrop before the show started. I put it on Facebook, saying, ‘Things are getting evil ...’ My mom ‘liked’ it right away. She has no idea who or what Danzig is, so that was kind of weird.” We love bringing families closer together.
• Kris Saknussemm, who braved the existential void of Walmart at 4 a.m., reports this enigmatic conversation while on assignment:
“My life is orange.”
Me: “How do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m a security guard who wears orange. The lights on my truck are orange. The streetlights all around here are sodium orange.”
Me: “Do you like orange?”
“I remember when orange was a fruit my mother gave me.”
• Judging from his dispatch from the 11 p.m. shift on Fremont Street, Scott Dickensheets found himself unmoored in a sort of proto-Blade Runner street scene, teaming with human oddity. So the very ordinariness of this fleeting moment stood out to him:
"It’s 11:22, and some corn cob from Iowa or wherever is trying very carefully — Lord only knows why — to frame a good cell cam shot of the Heart Attack Grill. A passing girl, late teens, hops up into his field of vision for a photobomb. I’m not sure the man even noticed, but she smiled a private smile, no doubt pleased at having imprinted her blurry face on a total stranger’s memory of Vegas."
• Poor Stacy J. Willis: We stationed her in Sunset Park at 4 p.m. for peak scorch. She gamely weathered the weather, chronicling the park’s kids and ducks and random ephemera for her listicle. Also, this happened:
“While I was wandering in Sunset Park that agonizingly hot afternoon, a man on a kid-size bike flew past me, in a hurry. He had a shopping bag over his wrist, and a receipt blew out of it. By the time I got to the receipt, he was out of sight. I picked it up to throw it in the trash, but decided to see what he’d bought first.
“It was from Walmart, and here’s what it said: 5 pounds of rice, 2 calzones, 2 pickles, and 1 “MC SS Choc” — whatever that is. I sat under a tree for a few seconds, trying like hell to put together that meal: rice, calzones, pickles and chocolate. I even took a pic of the receipt, for reasons I cannot explain any more than I can explain someone else’s urgent trip to Walmart for pickles.
“A big part of what I love about public parks is the randomness they host. Someone may be having the time of her little life — like the toddler chasing the ducks; someone else may be contemplating the Big Questions — like the lonely fisherman. Someone else may be cutting through on his way to a fine evening that simply would not be complete without two calzones, five pounds of rice, two pickles and something chocolate.”