Wondrous signs

Leggy showgirls with boa feathers snaked around their lithe frame. Slot machines with a tempting jackpot. Fountains that dance like a pro. Billion neon lights that challenge the monopoly of an inky night. Entertainment shows that can have you super-glued to the seat. Buffets so large that it can feed a hungry nation.

A High Roller — the world’s largest observation wheel. Grand Canyon, Nature’s masterpiece, sitting coquettishly close. The perennial onomatopoeic sound of 3,00,000 footfalls every day. All this in less than a four-mile desert strip. Las Vegas can send even a saint into a tizzy. I am no saint and this was not my first time in the Sin City. I had seen the usual Vegas. This time in Las Vegas, I shunned the usual. It was the turn of the unusual.

And guess where I started? In a graveyard. Yes, a boneyard. Not a human graveyard with epitaphs etched on tombstones. No flowers in memory. But a boneyard where all neon signs come to die. In Downtown Las Vegas there is a graveyard for neon signs, an outdoor collection, perhaps the only one of its kind in the world. There are nearly 150 of those gleaming, blinking historic signs that were once synonymous with the city until the 1980s. Introduced in Las Vegas in 1929 at the Oasis Café on Fremont Street, neon signs were everywhere. Every hotel, motel, cafe, shop, just about everything had neon signs. Some arty. Others nondescript. The most famous being the iconic ‘Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas’ sign designed by Bette Willis and standing tall since 1959.

However, with the arrival of LED and LCD, many old neon signs were removed. They all came to Neon Sign Boneyard & Museum (770 Las Vegas Boulevard North) to spend the rest of their metallic-life. The graveyard is home to some of the most treasured and world-famous signs of Las Vegas — Caesars Palace, Binion’s Horseshoe, the Golden Nugget and the Stardust.

Rest in peace

Spread over two acres in the away-from-buzz area of Las Vegas, the neon museum is not only home to signs from old casinos and businesses, but it also chronicles the city’s history in its own way. The museum officially opened with the installation of its first restored sign, the Hacienda Horse and Rider, at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Fremont Street. Because of the nature of the artefacts, entry is only permitted with guided tours. That’s where one hears stories of how aviation baron Howard Hughes bought the hotel Desert Inn because he and his entourage were asked to vacate after a long stay in the hotel.

Then, one day, he bought another hotel across the street. There’s the sign with Cocktails that hastily popped up after the end of Prohibition in the US.

The signs also depict the changes and trends in design and technology that range from the 1930s to the present day. At night, the Museum harks back to the neon heyday. A few restored signs are lit exactly like the original. At the museum, it is almost like living yesterday again!

Soon after I had walked out of the boneyard, I saw a gargantuan praying mantis spitting fire into the blue sky and a heart cluttered with locks. I was outside the Container Park where shipping containers are stacked into an open-air shopping hub for an assortment of small boutiques, galleries, bars, eateries and outdoor spaces. Part of the Downtown Project, the Park incubates artists and entrepreneurs. And it is outside this park that the metal mantis welcomes visitors. The large heart stands on a pedestal with lovers locking their love with a lock and sticking messages for eternal togetherness.

Art corner

The Downtown Project is spending millions to create a different Las Vegas that lives on the bustling strip. And it is in Downtown Las Vegas that life gets beautiful. The ‘Life is Beautiful’ festival in downtown has music piping through the streets, but it is the wonder walls that stay on to enthral an aesthete.

There is no fixed dimension for the murals. No definite theme. No prescribed medium. No shackle of size. The walls turn into canvas for artists from across the world. On one wall is a man with a black eye with a call-out that reads: I gave her my heart but she left me for... It is painted by D’Face, one of the most prolific contemporary urban artists. Using dysfunctional characters to satirise, this British artist has collaborated with the Queen of England, painted a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI and created the artwork for Christina Aguilera’s best-selling album, ‘Bionic’.

Story on walls

Then, there’s Vhils, a Portuguese artist whose signature style is dramatic oversized portraits made by carving directly into the walls. On El Cortez parking garage is Vhils’s common man staring blankly into space. On another wall tribal art by San Francisco-based Ziegler (Zio) who relies heavily on repetitions, gigantism and distortion to create a surreal effect.

Two adjacent walls turn into a canvas for Australian Fintan Magee who has painted a man and a woman lazing on a beach with umbrellas over their head and breezers in hand. So many drab walls turned into pieces of art.

Whoever called Las Vegas a Sin City sure has never been to Downtown Las Vegas, where art is growing on walls and where neon signs rest in peace in their own boneyard. Perhaps it calls for a Sin City name change!