“Walking on the Vegas Strip, I was struck by the smell of sewage wafting between two of the fabulously opulent hotels, and I wondered whether this might be taken figuratively as a kind of miasma for a city going the way of Ozymandias.” — David Archer in The American.
Since I pass it every day on the bus, I know exactly which two-hotel nexus Archer is referencing. It’s the diagonal between Treasure Island and Wynn Las Vegas (or between the pirate place and The Palazzo, if you prefer). He’s not exaggerating about the cloacal stench: It’s a sulfuric fragrance that suggests that either Treasure Island had a side entrance by way of Hell or that thousands of toilets are simultaneously backed up.
What’s remarkable is that this problem has festered (and believe me, that’s the operative verb) for months on end and nothing ever seems to get done about it. It’s the olfactory equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes and it’s high time somebody (namely Mr. Archer) said something about it … unless there’s another intersection on the Strip that smells totally like ass, too. One is more than enough, please.
Hm, tried to post about this from my iPhone, but it didn’t work, so I’ll try try again.
This doesn’t just happen at Sands, it also happens at LVB/Trop. And directly in front of Caesars. And it used to happen at LVB/Flamingo, but a lane of the Strip was shut down in front of Bellagio for a few hours some time in 2008 to cut it out.
Why does this happen? My best guess is that this is another result of our hands off, laissez-faire regional government that doesn’t plan ahead in regards to the Strip’s infrastructure. The County heads are fine to sit by until utilities and roads are overloaded by the thousands of hotel rooms they brainlessly rubber-stamp.
If Nevada Power took the same approach as Clark County does for the Strip’s utilities, we’d have rolling blackouts every time a new resort was built.
The only thing worse than smelling ass is losing it gaming in one of them places!