We wake to the blissful idea that there are 100 miles of this ahead of us before we have to encounter the mega aggression of what it is to drive in the city of Las Vegas. When I think of the horror of driving in Los Angeles, I should keep in mind that even on a Sunday morning in Vegas, the people in this place of broken dreams are driving with incredible contempt and regret for their poor decisions and, consequently, they care little about others who must die like they already have done inside.
In retrospect, as in when I actually got to writing this post, it would be these V-shaped electricity poles that would be the main attraction of the day. To get this photo, we had to walk about a half mile across raw desert, and the payoff was well worth it. It was fascinating to see that these poles that would be mostly out of eyeshot of us humans were wrapped in black steel as nothing more than a decorative element. Something else drew us in: while we simply assumed that guy-wires were stabilizing the V configuration of the towers, it was difficult to see them from the road; out here, it all became clear.
I could also now grab a shot of the mountains behind the powerlines that were obscured before.
We drove next to this desert art installation for miles before realizing that if we didn’t leave with photographic proof of their aesthetic qualities, we’d be forever disappointed in the lost opportunity to share this with others and prove to ourselves that such things really do exist.
We were about to drop into Las Vegas where we’ll visit Omega Mart from Meow Wolf before stopping for lunch at Chengdu Taste for Szechuan culinary treats. From big nature into the maelstrom that is Sin City is a jolt better left to those looking for riches, sex, drunken or stoned debauchery, and confirmation that they are living the American Dream.
The reality from my perspective is that this city is a nightmare of neon, DayGlo, fake body parts, lawyers, guns, 24-hour everything, weed, Barry Manilow, and a giant golden dildo of a hotel emblazoned with the word “Trump” across the top that for some is a Great Attractor while for me it acts as a megaphone blaring, “GTFO of here!” But we are not here to bash the place we’ve avoided visiting together since 2004; we are here for Omega Mart above all else.
After visiting Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we’ve been looking forward to visiting their other locations, the one over in Denver, Colorado, and this one right here. We were actually a little confused visiting this Meow Wolf location today because once you find the enclave pocketed next to the freeway, you are confronted with a parking lot aimed more at those arriving by something like Lyft, Uber, or taxi. You enter a giant warehouse-like building called Area 15, which is a blacked-out neon mall/nightclub and is probably hopping after dark, but here in the morning, it’s family time.
Knowing the drill from our summer visit to Santa Fe, we knew to check all doors and everything else that might act as a passage to somewhere else. With that in mind, we entered through a cooler and were genuinely excited to discover what lies beyond the cool passage.
Blam, Alex Grey type of projection-mapped irregularly shaped walls greet us in a great room. This is promising.
Oh, this is nice, an ornate skeleton in a glass coffin. We are intrigued, and our excitement is growing.
Should we pass back into reality? Not yet.
Hints of the Santa Fe location and the draw that there is yet a lot to be discovered.
But too quickly, we are again in the main room, and while the projection mapping is great, it seems like we circled back here far too quickly.
Okay, now we are on the right path, this hidden tunnel will certainly bring us to an area that is not obviously part of what we are able to see from various spots on the main floor.
I’m starting to get creeped out, not by the environment but by the number of observers/security personnel that are all over the place. What does this presence say about the visitors? Taking photos without them is no easy feat. At this point, we are still enjoying the ambiance and scale of things, and the tunnel stairs gave us hope that the space will be bigger and more intricate than our first observations have alluded to.
Color-pulsing flowers with shifting hues were nice, but a theme is becoming apparent; we are moving through large installation spaces in an almost traditional museum setup of walls and art pieces instead of feeling like we are in something immersive as we did in Santa Fe.
This should be the reminder, we are in Las Vegas. As much as I want to be at Meow Wolf as I first experienced it, we are in a city we abhor for the type of people it attracts. Ironically, back in the late 20th century, when we still were intrigued by this place, we despised the hell found in Laughlin, Nevada, popular with the elderly and bikers, but by now, well into the 21st century, I have the same disdain for the type of person Vegas attracts. Maybe when Earth forked 50,000 years ago, I landed in the highly discontiguous zone of grumpy assholes destined to despise the masses.
Too much of a reliance on video, in my opinion, which I can only figure appeals to the dim-witted who are more accustomed to being fed information via a screen with moving pictures than having to rely on deciphering what objects of art might mean. This particular part of the exhibit did allow Caroline and me to take a selfie that is well outside the ordinary of how we typically shoot them.
More video. There are a lot of videos and screens for people to feel comfortable with.
On the other hand, I want more of this.
This was a nice, albeit slightly confusing, use of technology: it appears a motion-sensitive detector sees that a person or people are in front of the display and triggers a light; a camera records a burst of video and then plays it back mixed with digital noise that has it looking like we are peering into a universe as overlords or gods.
And then we arrive in our favorite room of all of Mega Mart, a multi-layered glass and light sculpture that boxes in the walls. It’s always in movement with changes in the quality of the light on different panels within the layering, picking up the light and color giving the illusion that things are animated.
There’s something reminiscent of the Monterey Bay Aquarium we recently visited with allusions to the shapes being influenced by sea plants, jellyfish, sea stars, various membranes, eyes, and water bubbles flowing in and through things. While this exhibit is a favorite, it’s really being hammered on us that we are entering relatively empty spaces with art on the walls, and while it’s not like anything else we’ve ever seen, there seems to be something missing in comparison to our immersive experience just a couple of months prior at the House of Eternal Return.
We are back in the main shopping area of Mega Mart, and yes, those are purple tears of disappointment at having spent $118 to be here for only a bit more than an hour. While we enjoyed most of the things we saw, the place has the vibe of being here for drunken visitors who require larger spaces that are both easy to clean and facilitate larger groups moving through without damaging fragile art, such as what we saw in Santa Fe. There is a lack of intricate detail and too much of a reliance on video screens and projections; there are not enough hidden passages. There are half a dozen doors that have signs that say, “Nope” and appear to either be unfinished rooms, rooms under refurbishment, or simply closed as they proved incompatible with the type of people that visit this location. Whatever the circumstances, nothing was offered about why this experience was so expensive and so brief.
[It should also be noted that all of the Meow Wolf installations have storylines and clues that visitors can attempt to discover and decipher. However, unlike Santa Fe, Las Vegas offers visitors an “interactive experience” for an extra charge. Since it wasn’t obvious to us what the value of that would be, we decided against it (we didn’t try to “solve the puzzles” in Santa Fe either and had a fabulous time just roaming the exhibit rooms). I suspect that the cards allow visitors to interface with the various terminals to get “clues.” It looked as if most of the other visitors were clustering around every conceivable computer screen (instead of looking at the artwork) as if we were moving through a fancy internet cafe, and that was a bit of a turn-off. – Caroline]
In a sense, I feel like this display in Mega Mart is a comment about us visitors that says, “You are nothing more than ground meat for the purveyors of this attraction to carve fortunes out of the styrofoam package of you so we may contemplate how our own existence becomes more meaningful than yours. You are reduced to nothing more than building blocks of our wealth and happiness.”
The funny thing is, we are not so disappointed that we now want to forego a visit to Denver’s Convergence Station by Meow Wolf. We are trying to understand the reasoning behind the Vegas location and maybe a different demographic that is looking for quick experiences on their way through a whirlwind visit to a city that has countless other attractions all vying for the eyeballs and money of people trying to see it all as quick as possible.
Our fantastic lunch of authentic Chinese food at Chengdu Taste made up for the slightly bitter taste left after we so easily dropped $118, but so be it. As we head out of town, we are guessing this might have been our last ever visit to Las Vegas.