Vegas Baby, Vegas…

When Bugsy Siegel first envisioned the oasis of Las Vegas, he pictured a classy city that allowed vacationing men of industry to enjoy the other side of legitimacy. They could get their broads, drink their booze, and gamble their money with no worry of backlash from the law. No ski masks or tommy guns were necessary – just a nice suit and a few extra dollars for tipping the service.

Of course, Bugsy got sawed down by a hail of gunfire and Vegas turned from that honorable vision into a carnival of degenerates and lowlifes. Social workers blamed gambling for turning a once sleepy desert town into a haven for crime, drugs, and prostitutes. The pressure of the outcries eventually got to the fat pocketed city officials and an effort was made to clean things up and somehow legitimize the city of sin. They began to market Las Vegas as a family destination that it could never become.

Even so, the marketing worked well enough to keep a lot of the swine with money away. Tax dollars plummeted, bribable city officials saw their “extra” cash dwindle, and growth slowed. Someone high-up put an end to it all with a new marketing campaign aimed to reverse:

“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

Old historic hotels and casinos were knocked down in favor of the latest flavor. The bigger the better. The more grandiose the more potential. Sell. Sell. Sell. Sex, drugs, and gambling. Fear & Loathing in neon lights.

Vegas now calls to the greedy, the lazy, and the voyeurs. It’s a playground for those who want to masquerade around as if they are something that they were never meant to be and a chance to make it so. A salesman can hit the city after a convention and pretend that he is more than just a pusher of shower curtain rings. Hell, for a grand he can be the biggest fish at the five dollar table and talk to the mobile massage girl anyway he likes. In a place like Vegas where everyone is guilty, the only crime is getting caught.

And, it works. I’ve never seen a taxi line as long as the one I saw this week at the Vegas airport. From casino to casino, from game to game, from restaurant to restaurant… people are ushered through the city in roped off lines like cattle to a slaughter. It’s like an assembly line built to separate money from desperate souls.

And then, there’s SEMA. There could be no better setting for a convention like SEMA than a town like Las Vegas. Imagine the largest convention center you have ever seen. Now, double it in your mind’s eye and line the tops with glass encased offices where the men of power can watch over those that scramble for deals below them. It’s a place where the whores of this industry go to seduce their johns, where the johns go to cautiously pick their goods, and where the miscreant journalists like myself go to cover it all.

But lets reset here for a bit. AutoWeek’s PR agency gave me a call a few weeks ago. Apparently, AutoWeek wanted to meet me at SEMA, hang out, and shoot the shit. My prior experience with other huge publishers made me instantly suspicious. I could only imagine what these guys planned to do to me once they had me in their grasps – a shallow grave in the desert, perhaps?

My impression of the magazine always brings me back to my youth. I can remember being 12 years old and going to work with my old man. I’d sit in his office for hours and read nothing but AutoWeek magazine looking for zero-to-60 times and pitting the latest Porsche 928 against whatever mid-engine V8 Ferrari was offering at the time. I liked to crunch numbers and dream. Never in those wildest dreams did I figure to someday be meeting with the folks that produced the magazine, but there I was and I had no idea why.

I figured it would be in some kind of pressured capacity. I figured I’d be bullshitting my way through internet logistics or methods to monetize web traffic. Instead, they pitted me with their best editor, Dutch Mandel, and had the two of us walk the floor together to converse about cars, what makes us each tick, and how we get along as car guys in general. Dutch rapped about the harmony of the Mercedes’ S-class AMG car, while I talked about the finer points of Dan Webb’s new So-Cal streamliner recreation – which, by the way, is nothing short of breathtaking in person.

We naturally ran into mutual pals too… And it’s about at this time that I broke down mentally from sensory overload. Here I am, a schmuck kid from Texas that does his best at running a small internet network, rubbing elbows with the likes of Jay Ward, Dutch Mandel, Bruce Meyer, Edsel Ford, Mario Andretti, Corky Coker and others that have no reason to kneel down to shake my hand or even pinch my cheeks like a sprouting little child.

Take in mind that Dutch and I were also mic’ed while a camera crew followed our every move. Even so, everyone spoke with their natural tongue. Nobody was playing a political edge or trying to be something they’re not for the sake of audio and video. We were all car guys and while some were there to network or to buy or to sell, in that moment in time all of us put those efforts to the side to do what we all love best – look at and talk about cars – all kinds of them.

I’m sure the video captured is worthless. Nobody seemed to mind.

Later in the day, I grabbed a meal with Hadi Kadri – AutoWeek’s social media manager. At no point did he ask for any kind of coverage or mention on The Jalopy Journal. This meeting wasn’t about that. It was simply about hanging out with like minds of different disciplines, enjoying the company, and learning from it all. It took me a while to accept that. I now have a refreshed interest in AutoWeek and consider all of those guys pals. Who in the hell would have thought? Certainly not me.

I guess the irony of it all is that it went down in Vegas – a place where neon signs promote dreams that are backed by odds in the house’s favor. In my case, I got lucky and won. No fear. No loathing.

Editor’s Note: Of course, there is still that AutoWeek video to contend with along with some images a few of us took. I’ll see if I can’t talk Jay into posting and covering those next week.

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