DAYVID FIGLER
Dayvid was interviewed September 6, 2000. As you=ll see here, Dayvid is not your typical lawyer. His discussion reminded me, at times, of a jazz solo, an extemporaneous, spell-binding combination of metaphors worthy of any Jack Kerouac novel.
Las Vegas is sort of a melting pot of a melting pot. It=s a strange place because there=s so many divergent interests here. People come from all over the country and all over the world and find it very easy to acclimate and relocate in Las Vegas. Everyone feels comfortable coming here. Maybe it=s the lack of being pushed into the pigeonhole of a community. Many of the things which they=ve left behind they don=t seek to recreate here. People tend to reinvent themselves here and lose whatever identity they brought. They can just be here and be. They live their lives and go to their strip malls and go to the restaurant and go gambling or go to nightclubs or go to movies and not worry about it. That=s always been kind of a frustrating thing about Las Vegas. There is a certain Las Vegas identity, a certain Las Vegas ethic, but it=s somewhat elusive.
It=s always fun talking to somebody who just moves to Las Vegas. Somebody with a little bit of steam, and says, AYou know what? I=m going to put together a photographic arts gallery, because this town doesn=t have one. How hard would it be? I=d be the only game in town.@ And six months later, there they are, still talking big dreams. Then a year later, they=re, AI got bored with that. I=m writing for City Life now.@
Put that up against the fact that Las Vegas is, above and beyond a lot of things right now, a replicant city. The face that we put forward is really a conglomeration of different ideas from different places: Paris; New York, New York; Mandalay Bay; Bellagio; the Venetian. It=s all an attempt to recreate, but only the artifice and the façade, you know, to put window dressing around the main crop here, gambling.
It=s a mythic city. It=s one where the dream of success, the Western ideal of coming out to the wide open space and making a stake for yourself is feasible here. Anyone who has an idea and can persevere can prevail. There=s a lot of barriers in your way and a lot of interesting juxtapositions as well as a lot of conflicting things that occur in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is a town of conflicting ideals. It=s touted as being a place where pleasure-seeking is at a premium, with the biggest and the most and the topless clubs and gambling and all these other things. But by the same token, we have the most stringent drug laws in the country. The smallest amount of marijuana is considered a felony in Las Vegas. We invite businesses to come here. We want businesses to expand and grow and be a part of our development, part of our master plans, yet it=s very difficult for a new business to get through the morass of bureaucracy with various licensures in the different jurisdictions.
It=s a place that at different stages has been viewed as family friendly. We have one of the largest school districts in the country, and there=s all these kids here. But by the same token, what real intellectual or life-affirming activities are created or designed that would not only intrigue the young people here but would, in fact, have a positive impact on them? There certainly doesn=t seem to be a concerted effort at tapping into that youth community that exists here. As a former member of it, I remember that it was not a fun town to be a kid in. Whether it was gambling, drugs, or alcohol, you essentially had to learn to do adult things to bide your time. I don=t say this all from personal experience; people around me and stuff. I had my own things, you know.
In contrast, it=s an easy life and a good cost of living. It has all the trappings of a pleasant place to be. Maybe that is the one overarching things of Las Vegas: it is easy to be here, and it=s easy to dream here. It=s easy to see people around here making wads of cash, which is an ideal in our modern society.
Las Vegas is what you make it. So what does that mean? You look for your entertainment, you look for enrichment, and like in any town, it exists. I think as many roadblocks as there are, as many pitfalls as exist, someone who has a plan and who=ll be unwavering in seeking that goal can, in fact, seek that goal here. There=s a million-plus rogue individuals clamoring for common goals or common ideals to have things, but without the support of a community.
It=s impossible to avoid the influence of gaming and gaming ethic in Las Vegas and talking about any type of goal or ideal without falling into a discourse of odds and chance and risk and all these other things that are gaming concepts. You can=t avoid that. In my poetry I talk about the sort of squabbling that occurs between power brokers and I think it=s just mass ennui. A lot of people have a lot of money and a lot of power, and they just don=t know what to do with it. They=re not focusing it into community building. Now and again you have an Andre Agassi putting stuff into the community to build the boys= center, or a Bob Stupak doing things. That=s nice, but still, probably more energy=s put into power brokering and things of that nature than making community, or enhancing communities. Maybe that=s because there=s no real community to embrace. Community is something that just exists. Maybe community is just a group of people living in a geographic area. Community is people that you interact with every day. But the subsets just don=t seem to emerge here as they do as readily in other places because other places have a history.
I=ve pontificated on the steadily erased history of Las Vegas. It=s a different town every few years. Darwin would be very confused if he were to try to track some things here in Las Vegas as far the evolution of the city itself, the sprawl, and how it changes and refolds upon itself, and redefines itself constantly. I mean, we are like the Madonna of cities. Constantly there on the top of the charts, but boy, we sure look different than we did five years ago. To somebody who=s been here a long time, it=s frustrating. On one hand, you don=t want to cling to a past that=s inefficient. You also have a degree that goes way beyond nostalgia. The critics of people who want to preserve history, people with foresight, like Wynn and crew, scoff saying, AYou want to preserve a history that has no place in our modern times.@ They say that Las Vegas only grows by moving forward, not by languishing in the past. They dismiss the critics so readily and so easily. Yet, beyond the nostalgia, there is a certain sense of purpose in having reminders of your past and having foundations to return to.