LANDMARK IMPLOSION. Self-destructive! In every way! Even the way the Landmark Hotel and Casino cleaved down the middle screams of Vegas’ ubiquitous duality. Implosion and reinvention define the city’s zeitgeist. History loses to the future. The future here relies on luck and greed more than anything resembling economic planning. But as an aficionado of self-destruction, I’m betting — and have been for years — that it’s a bit more interesting than Wichita. Do I watch the implosion of the past because I’m optimistic about the future, or curious what might go horribly wrong? Yes. Also, some pop culture cred: This 1995 image appeared in the 1996 movie Mars Attacks! Jack Nicholson’s character says, “Gentleman, there is no way that we can lose!” as the building crumbles around him, assuring their loss — and further solidifying this as a quintessential Vegas image. — Stacy J. Willis
THE DUNES SULTAN. Rarely have I loved as I loved this jaunty caricature of a Berber chieftain at the Dunes Hotel and Casino. Later, when he stood on the Dunes golf course overlooking I-15, I’d feel comforted seeing him from my parents’ car window. My heart broke when I discovered that the Sultan had been lost to fire in 1986.
Was he not merely an example of cultural appropriation?
This is a question for yesterday, and Vegas doesn’t consider yesterdays. The question today is, does love — does anything — last in Las Vegas? Will we ever be else but an ocean, changing at every instant, resistant to memory?
The Sultan, like the Dunes, is gone and forgotten, as with any ripple on the sea in our most sea-like desert city. — Richard Powell
POOL SLOTS. Las Vegas thrives on the absurd — even gambling on solid ground isn’t always strange enough. If this city can put a roller coaster on top of a skyscraper and build a replica of Venice in the desert, why stop at something as mundane as dry land? Capitalism doesn’t even bother with a snorkel.
Maybe you wished a little too hard at the Bellagio fountains, tossed in one coin too many. You probably didn’t wake up expecting you’d be playing slots at the bottom of a pool. The lack of oxygen can make you see things — flashing lights, spinning reels, a jackpot just out of reach. Or maybe that’s just Vegas. Either way, you might want to come up for air before the city takes your last breath. — Petra Molina Ohlinger
Photos selected from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s list of iconic Vegas photos.