Description
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Armed with a flashlight, tape recorder, and expandable baton, author Matt O’Brien explored the Las Vegas flood-control system for four years.
Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas chronicles O’Brien’s adventures. He follows in the footsteps of a psycho killer. He braces against a raging flood. He parties with naked crackheads. He learns that art is most beautiful where it’s least expected in many ways he prefers the underground to aboveground Las Vegas, and that there are no pots of gold under the neon rainbow.
Under Las Vegas: Tunnels Stretch for Miles: abcNews’ “Nightline” follows Matt O’Brien into the tunnels beneath the Las Vegas Strip to meet the people who live beneath the neon.
In 2002, as managing editor of the alternative weekly, Las Vegas CityLife, O’Brien was intrigued when a murderer eluded police by vanishing into the Vegas flood-control system. After O’Brien and CityLife contributor Josh Ellis explored half a dozen storm drains, their adventures attracted such attention on the Internet that the publication’s website scored a million hits in a day. By then, O’Brien was convinced “there were secrets to be discovered beneath the neon.” His first discovery was that, despite the dangers, homeless men and women were living in the tunnels. How did they wind up there? Returning with a tape recorder and flashlight, he interviewed the storm-drain denizens … The photos capture the inhabitants of these bleak encampments. Continually contrasting the sparkling casinos above with the dank cobwebbed catacombs below, the observant O’Brien writes with a noirish flair, but his compassion is also evident as he illuminates the lives of these shadowy subterranean dwellers. —Publishers Weekly
“Beneath the Neon accomplishes something most books about Las Vegas do not: It tells us something we didn’t know.” —Las Vegas Review-Journal
Click to read a Beneath the Neon excerpt.
About The Authors
| Matthew O’Brien is an author and journalist who’s lived in Las Vegas since 1997. His first book, Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas, chronicles his adventures in the city’s underground flood channels, which he explored for more than four years with a flashlight, tape recorder, and expandable baton for protection. My Week at the Blue Angel: And Other Stories from the Storm Drains, Strip Clubs, and Trailer Parks of Las Vegas is his second book.
Danny Mollohan moved to Las Vegas in 2000 to pursue his dream of becoming a professional photographer. With $300 in his pocket and a Lieca M3 in hand, he made his mark working for several weekly newspapers, showing in local galleries, moonlighting in nightclubs, and roaming the countryside. He’s from a small town in South Carolina and has recently relocated to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Danny can be reached at [email protected] (don’t ask). |
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