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Las Vegas – May 2009

The famous neon of Glitter Gulch, on the Fulmont Street Experience

A friend of mine recently moved from San Francisco back to her home town of Las Vegas, NV.  She was upset that whenever any friends visited, all they wanted was to drink and gamble.  ”Fine,” I told her.  ”I’m flying out there for a weekend, and you can show me the Nevada that you grew up in.”

The first night we hit the Strip, not to gamble, but to people watch.  The lights, the sounds, and everything else were overwhelming, and everywhere people were caught up in the heady illusion of instant gratification without apparent consequence (the next morning, of course, would be different).

The next day we drove two hours north to Beatty, which is five miles west of the ghost town Rhyolite.  Between 1905 and 1911,  the gold-rush town grew to a population of 5,000 and then dropped to nothing.  Financed largely by Charles Schwab, the town in its heyday was highly advanced and sophisticated.  Now, all that stands are a few empty shells of buildings.

The gold dried up in Rhyolite, but its sister town, Beatty, proved to have a much more abundant, important, and reliable resource:  water.  Beatty provided the water for the gold mining town, and when Rhyolite blew away on the sands of time, Beatty stuck around.  It’s still a lonely little town, but it’s full of incredible characters.

A ghost in Rhyolite

Stuck in Beatty with not much to do, we hit the town’s three bars, which had all sorts of locals who welcomed us with arms wide open.  They were a trip and a half, and we made some memories that won’t soon be forgotten:  climbing into an abandoned basement church, wearing a viking helmet, and the urinal whose flushing mechanism was the brake lever of wall-mounted motorcycle handlebars.

Bandelier National Monument

OK, think back to that volcanic ash scattering. Naturally, the vast majority of it wound up covering nearby territory, sometimes landing in drifts up to several hundred feet thick. When the ash settled and compacted, it became the soft volcanic rock known as tuffa, the very same material the Romans used as building blocks.

This material was soft enough that indigenous tribes were able to carve homes out of the rock. Bandelier National Monument is home to some fascinating cliff dwellings.

Kushal Marvels at the Weather

Labor day falls at the end of New Mexico’s “Monsoon Season,” where the weather is fickle and entirely unpredictable. We were cruising along with the windows down one minute, then the next we were kicking the wipers up to full blast to see through the cloudburst that was overtaking us.

The weather made for some great lighting, though. Would that I had a waterproof camera, I would have captured the shot of the sun illuminating each raindrop from behind as they poured down on the glistening pine forest.

The Valles Caldera

Continuing northwards, we find ourselves at the Valles Caldera. This was the site of the Toledo Eruption, many many millenia ago. This volcanic eruption, they say, had 600 times the explosive power of Mount Saint Helens. It blew the top off this mountain, leaving a crater over 13 miles wide and scattering volcanic ash as far as Lubbock, Texas.

The Red Rocks of Jemez

2005-09-04 – Bandelier, Caldera, Jemez

On Labor Day, I headed north of Albuquerque with my neighbor Kushal, who had just flown in from Calcutta and had not seen the US outside of Albuquerque. We took I-25 one hour north to Santa Fe, had a spicy Thai lunch that was as eye-watering as it was mouth-watering, and then cut west and south in a loop that would take us back to Albuquerque.

However, the chronology of our trip doesn’t serve the history of the geology, so I’m going to reverse it and start where we finished.

Route 550 winds through the Jemez Mountains, which sport some of the most breathtaking views I’ve found in New Mexico. The southern end of the Jemez has brilliant red rocks, ranging from a dull pottery orange to a deep, bloody red.

2005-07-23 – Snippets and Sightings

I’ve seen quite a bit in my last few days in New Mexico.

On the way home from work Tuesday evening, I pulled into the center of the road to avoid a family unpacking their car, and nearly rolled right over an awkward bird strutting across the roadway. After a few dings from the bell on my bike, the roadrunner gave a little hop and scampered away. And no, it didn’t go “meep meep,” and no, Wile E. Coyote was nowhere in sight.

Wednesday and Thursday – my first week at work – I was on a trip with John Petronis (the company president) and architect Susan Freed down to Las Cruces, 3 hours south of Albuquerque and the 2nd largest city in the state (yes, it’s larger than Santa Fe), although calling a little town like that a city seems strange to me; the tallest building is eight stories. Still, it beats Cleveland’s population by quite a bit.

On the way down I-25, we passed through Truth or Consequences, NM, named after the TV show from the 50′s. It’s a cool name for a town, to be sure, but it won’t fit on most street signs, so it’s abbreviated to “T or C.” Just east of that is a city called Elephant Butte; with a name like that, I’m sure they get razzed all the time.

The meetings in Las Cruces were long and exhausting, but thoroughly enjoyable. New Mexico State University is interested in constructing a Performing Arts Center on campus to showcase their arts, music, dance, and theater programs, and provide a place for community arts groups to perform. Considering the town has no real center or downtown (it’s even more of a suburb than Albuquerque!), this could be a new focal point for the city. ARC was called in to do what it does best – investigate the needs of the center and the requirements of those within it. Through a (LONG) series of one-on-one meetings, we met with all sorts of community arts groups and public figures, as well as many of NMSU’s deans and administrators, including the university’s President. I was thrilled to be working on such an exciting project, in addition to rubbing elbows with some rather important people.

Las Cruces sits, not really in a basin, but between two mountain ranges. Off to the west, some steep but rounded peaks overlook the city. On the east, the Organ mountain range rises up in a similar way, but aboutr halfway up the slope transforms into a craggy, violent series of spires, a burst of lava caught in midair, looking like a snapshot of a dynamite blast. From my hotel room, I watched as a thunderstorm built up over the horizon, lightning flashing as the dull cloud drifted over the western outskirts of the city. ((on a side note, it’s so dry and dusty here that when it rains, the water pulls the dust down out of the air, and cars actually look dirtier after the rain))

The drive home was spent chatting about architecture with John and Susan, but I still caught an eyeful of marvelous sights.

Dust devils, flitting about and tossing dull salmon-colored dust into the air.

The future home of the New Mexico Spaceport – if and when commercial space flight becomes realistic. (For now, it’s a semi trailer sitting in the middle of a huge expanse of flat land, populated by dry brush).

Three identical clouds, stacked atop one another like smoke signals.

A mirage at the base of a mountain range, reflecting the brilliant blue sky and making the hazy mountains appear to float off the horizon and join the clouds.

A mesa, severed perfectly flat and clean as if by some cosmic lawn mower that decided that one too many mountain peaks crowded the horizon.

A low mountain covered with curving lines of vegetation, that looked like someone took a comb and went willy-nilly around the slopes. It almost looked like a fingerprint, with tight rows of lines reflecting the changes in topography.

And of course, the sound of me saying “yes!” rather loudly as I woke up in the car… although neither John nor Susan had asked a question. Nothing like a good first impression!

03-21-05 Taormina (June 2-3)

Mountainous. Sicily thrusts up out of the Med magestically, rising hundreds of feet right at the shoreline. The taxi drivers love this, as the hotels, views, and sightseeing are all perched on the cliffs, while the beaches and sunbathing require descending on the roads that double back on each other over and over down to the sea.

As Sicily rises from the sea, so does Etna from its surrounding land. The volcano, steaming and smoldering, can be seen from almost everywhere in Sicily, as it is at least twice as high as anything else on the island.

06-20-04 – Persistence of Memory

With the regret of a child leaving its mother, I boarded the plane and left Rome. True, having secured a job at Renfro Design Group in New York City, I had plenty to look forward to, but on the lonely journey across the ocean, I experienced a homesickness for the wrong country. I was hesitant to return to a world of luxury, where all food was always in season, where the people pride themselves on the size of their automobiles, where you didn’t have to check your wallet before ordering another glass of water. I longed for the inefficiency, for the ancient buildings in decay, for the mysterious (but now more decipherable) language, for the portions that left you with just enough room for a gelato.

Granted, New York is probably one of the most “European” city in America, but looking around at the SUVs and the commercialism and the excess, it also feels very much like one of the most “American” cities as well. And now here I sit in my apartment across the street from DAAP in Cincinnati, and I have quite a bit to tell. So here are my final diary entries detailing my trip down to Sicily with my father at the end of one of the most fantastic times of my life.

06-06-04 – Sorrento, the Amalfi Coast, and Salerno (June 1)

My first time in Italy, I remembered Sorrento as a nice town. As the taxi ascended the hill from the port to the city, I realized I didn’t remember the city at all. Dad and I became quickly acquainted with the outskirts, however, as we tried to find our way to the Autostrada (highway). Roads disorient the driver by curving every which way, then abandon him, becoming narrow driveways without notice. After several kilometers of forks in the road (no intersections), we decide to turn around, and find ourselves behind a funeral procession. After many nasty looks from the mourners, we pull off to the side of the road (which entails moving about 3 centimeters) and wait it out.

Shortly afterwards, we chanced upon the Amalfi Drive (more appropriate words do not exist). Dad’s maneuvering of the tiny, silver Renault had me clenching my teeth in terror and holding on to the door as if that could save me from a wreck in the tin can. It wasn’t the hairpin turns nor the way Dad lurched around them. Even the several hundred foot drop didn’t scare me so much as the other drivers on the road. Motorini and giant tour buses alike veered left of center around the curves (were my father to abstain from the same activity, I would have been much calmer). Drivers randomly pull off without warning to take in the picturesque views, and to drown out the unhealthy sea air with car exhaust and the fresh, ubiquitous aroma of cigarette smoke. We stopped in Amalfi briefly for lunch at a restaurant over the water, and the clouds parted enough to blind us. After regaining our eyesight, the rest of the trip was harrowing, breathtaking, yet uneventful.

We pulled into Salerno in midafternoon. After the glory of Rome and ritzy Capri, I felt inclined to lock the doors. We cautiously (after Amalfi, everything seems cautious) zigzagged across town, trying to find the right combination of one-way streets to take us to the train station. Let’s Go had warned us that little was left to see of Salerno after Allied bombs left it in ruins in WWII. From the ashes rose hundreds of post-war high rise apartment buildings that sloppily swallowed the whole town.

Finally arriving at the train station, we parked the car and walked across the street to the Hertz dealer, still closed a half hour after opening time. Some kid in his 20′s, with spiked hair, a brown leather jacket, sunglasses, a menacing medallion around his neck and a half-chewed up cigarette hanging out of his mouth sopke to us in broken English: “You have car? Leave key with me. I am Hertz.” Pop and I exchanged incredulous looks, until his well-dressed, Hertz-ID-carrying colleagues approached. Luckily for us, his adherence to dress code carried through to his job: he failed to notice the many new scratches on the rear view mirror (I’m glad it was paint we left on Amalfi and not the skin of my fingers), nor the gash the hubcap suffered on the last turn into the station. Convinced the town was dangerous, we bought a few panini and prepared to bunker down in our hotel all day and night.

Of course, despite the danger of a strange town, I couldn’t be cooped up. While Dad napped, I resolved to brave the streets. Stepping out into the late day sun, I found something in that postwar town that ancient cities must envy: a broad, straight, tree-lined pedestrian-oriented corso. All of Salerno was walking the avenue, shopping, eating, meeting, talking, and of course smoking. Waking Dad, we threw the panini into the mini-bar for the train tomorrow and headed out for an early dinner (we were still a little hesitant about being out after dark).

At the end of the corso, people were gathering around a stage and waving plitical flags. Those who lived and worked over the piazza looked down from balconies, mingling with the paparazzi looking for a good angle. Through the speakers came the song “Imagine,” repetitive enough on its own, repeated constantly for about 45 minutes. Few people paid attention to the crew setting up the stage (although many offered suggestions to the poor bloke trying to fix a stage light). They chatted about the weather or their healthy, but rarely the upcoming parliamentary elections. Within the throng, one could identify pockets of friends, which moved like amoebas to absorb a new acquaintance with an abrazzo and a doppia boccia.

Just as I about hit my limit on the evening’s soundtrack, John Lennon gave way to a synthesized orchestra, blasting an energetic arrangement of power chords. As the determined sound of a tenor began to sing some sort of political message, the huge flags of green and red went up among the audience, a waving sea of supposed political might. AS the twenty or so politicians mounted the stage, the flash bulbs went nuts, and the paparazzi all clambered over each other trying to outshoot each other.

As the woman at the podium announced the speaker, the crowd seemed to feign enthusiasm (I believe they’re in it more for the spectacle than the content). The first speaker went at it for about 15 minutes, denouncing Berlusconi and expressing the need for a party that can take care of Salerno (insert many hand gestures here and throughout). I understood maybe 15-20%, which I translated to dad as best I could, which consisted mostly of useless snippets like “Thus we have to… uh…”

After the 1st speaker we decided to book it to dinner, seeing as half the town would be looking for a bite after the speeches. Just a block away was a well lit fountain sporting sculptures of leaping dolphins. In the circular piazza surrounding it, an energetic man in his early 3′s was directing his team of watiers like a ship captain overseeing hoisting of the sails (perhaps that simile comes from the canvas umbrellas suspended from wooden beams). In jeans, a blue-and-yellow Abercrombie-esque shirt, and a shaved head, he sat us down, then flung himself into a seat at our table. He seemed to sweat for a second while trying to peg our nationality: everyone thinks Dad’s German, but I look Mediterranean enough that he gave up and tried English. When I replied in Italian, he picked up my accent, spoke to me in Italian, then repeated in English for my dad (and also for me – hey, I’m not fluent yet). Instead of handing us a menu, he rattled off a list of dishes, and let me translate. This was followed up by a tour of his “salad bar,” a vast series of plates full of cooked vegetables, which he displayed proudly. We made our selections, sat back down, and observed something rarer and rarer in Italy: kids – droves of them – all playing in the piazza. As more women pursue careers and abandon the idea of marriage for a good job (with no strings attached to hinder the fun) the Italian population is on a steady decline. Somehow, the women in Salerno missed that seminar. Of course, as was the case in ancient Rome, when living quarters are cramped, life takes place in pulbic. When a stray ball narrowly missed our table, our personable proprietor seized it with a scowl, and disappeared inside. The pre-teens who owned it looked a little frustrated, but huddled together to come up with a plan to retrieve it.

The proprietor appared again to greet French and German diners in their native tongues. The bimbi sent an ambassador to smooth things over and recover the impounded goods. At first a little short with the envoy, the owner warmed up after a few visits, eventually leading the boy into the restaurant with his arm around his shoulders and a wide grin on his face. When he came out to sit down with the French gentlemen (likely students) as he did with us, he told me he spoke about eight languages. When he brought us the conto, it was so astonishingly low we left a hefty tip. It turns out Salerno wasn’t so bad after all.