Leaving Las Vegas
So the BF and I sold the Seattle homestead back in March and flipped a coin as to where we would head next. Las Vegas came up the winner.
Lucky us, or so we thought.
After ditching a few years worth of accumulated, and yet somehow absolutely unnecessary, possessions, then packing the rest off in a moving van, we headed out on the open road, taking a much needed road trip that took us past Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Denver, Colorado as we made our way down into desert territory. The last Seattle winter had taken a serious toll on our nerves, what with more than 100 days of continuous rain, and the best remedy seemed to be somewhere hot, bright and dry.
I think the choice of Las Vegas may have been somewhat of an overcompensation on our part, however. Shortly after we arrived in late March, the temps began to climb . . . and climb . . . and climb, and we soon found ourselves imprisoned by the heat in our rented condo overlooking the strip, where we stood behind firmly fastened windows and watched in pity as the poor tourists straggled down the sidewalks, limp and sun-dazed, towards any darkened doorway that suggested an air-conditioned interior.
No wonder the casinos make so much money, I thought to myself. The tourists have nowhere else to go in this heat.
We also discovered, much to our collective chagrin, that due to Vegas' nature as an almost completely transient city, the level of service that we'd simply taken for granted in Seattle was next to non-existent in Sin City. Dry Cleaning? Ruined. Car detailing? Scratched. House cleaning? Late and sloppy. Fed-Ex? When it arrived (if it arrived), items were often damaged if not outright destroyed. Mind you, the shopping is great, but only if you don't mind that your new shirts fall to pieces after the first wash, or that your jeweler scratches your watch when you take it in to be cleaned.
A man can die of a thousand strategically placed paper cuts.
The last (and biggest) straw was the building we live in: brand new construction, finished at the beginning of this year, and yet it's like an ancient edifice full of hauntings and spiteful old ghosts -- the plumbing system for the entire building backed up right before we moved in and flooded two entire lower floors; the hallways stink of sewage and gas on alternating days; the floor-to-ceiling windows bang and rattle whenever there's a strong wind; the air-conditioning system has already conked out twice, and it's been in operation for less than four months; the carpeting rips up under the vacuum cleaner; the baseboards are coming loose; the drains in all the bathrooms gurgle and burble like a country brook at all hours of the day and night; we have near toxic fumes emanating from one of the interior storage areas, which no amount of air-filtration can lessen. The swimming pool that was promised for the building has never materialized, and the building's owners are fighting with the insurance company over the cost to fix the flooding, so repairs to the damaged floors have ceased altogether, leaving the building's exercise facilities inoperable, the common balcony and party room out of commission, and the condos on those floors unlivable (not to mention impossible to sell -- "What? The ripped up floors and walls and plastic sheeting? Oh, don't mind those, just a few minor repairs!") Lawsuits are flying back and forth between the condo owners and the building's developers, and a local building inspector told us privately that he wouldn't be surprised if the entire building didn't come down with a bad case of mold in the floors and walls due to the previous flooding.
Ay yi yi.
Needless to say, we're leaving. Thank god we weren't foolish enough to buy one of the units in the building, and we can only feel pity for the real-estate speculators and wannabe property-flippers that rushed in and bought several units apiece, thinking they were going to cash in on the big Vegas real-estate boom that just as quickly went bust and left them all hanging onto worthless condos that they would have had a hard enough time selling even in a bustling market. There are over 70 condos in the building, and over half of them are unoccupied and/or up for resale. The speculator/residents that we do meet in the elevators have a haunted, nervous quality to their tight smiles as they clutch the latest bundle of mortgage payments due -- but that may just be the three martinis they downed before lunch.
Us? We scoured the internet and found a great place in Los Angeles, looking out over the ocean with cool breezes at night and construction that wasn't slapped together by surly crews cursing the heat. We'll be out of this quagmire we call home by the month's end. So let me be the one to tell you -- Vegas is a great place to visit, with terrific bars, nice restaurants, unusual shows and lots of places to spend your tourist dollars . . . but for god's sake, unless you absolutely have to, don't live there!
I'm looking forward to my first morning coffee in California as I lean on the balcony railing with the salt-wind in my hair and face, the palm trees swaying and the thermometer registering a balmy 75 degrees.
You see, I'm a sucker for happy endings.