Columnist Susan Snyder: The Strip is really a scene

Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2000 | 9:14 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

The Indianapolis visitor obviously was waiting for the punch line.

So I asked her again whether she thought of the Las Vegas Strip as a national scenic byway. She glanced at the Bellagio fountain dancing on the other side of the street and carefully weighed her response.

"Weeeell," she finally said, "not exactly."

"When I think of 'scenic' I think of natural," one of her traveling companions said. "This isn't natural."

Well that's never stopped us. Even if you squint your eyes and do blurry vision you won't see anything natural about the Strip. Still, it has become the nation's 83rd scenic byway. It only took two years of cajoling to get the U.S. Department of Transportation officials to do it, too.

Evidently they finally bought into the idea -- or they got sick of hearing from the Las Vegas Follies. Hard to tell.

Our 4.3-mile stretch of scenic byway starts at Sahara Avenue and ends at Russell Road. The Stratosphere, the World's Largest Gift Shop and a tattoo parlor lie just outside the boundary. But that dusty, litter-strewn eyesore of a vacant lot between Sahara Avenue and Circus Circus made the cut.

Local spin docs say the Strip qualified because it fits the scenic byway characteristics of being scenic, historic, recreational, cultural or natural.

A Maryland visitor -- funny, none of these people wanted to give their names -- laughed outright at the historic part.

"They're tearing down all the historic ones (casinos)," she said.

However, she said there is little doubt that Las Vegas Boulevard has a history of being recreational.

"I can remember when they were chasing the hookers off the street," she said. "But there's still some cleaning up to do. You still have guys standing out there handing out those strip-club things at night. I don't think of that as scenic."

Maybe that depends on the type of scenery one prefers.

"And I think of 'scenic' as a natural setting," she added.

Maybe we're more natural than we think. The Strip does have eight waterfalls and three lakes -- never mind that a pirate ship is floating in one and a fake volcano rises from another. And those pedestrian overpasses kind of look like natural bridges if you can ignore the Plexiglas and 15 escalators.

And you want trees? We'll give you trees. Heck, there are at least 80 of them planted in front of the Desert Passage mall alone. Oh, all right. So they're Mexican fan palms that probably came from Arizona. Picky, picky.

We have a mini Grand Canyon (along with escalator No. 16), and the Mirage has a whole tropical rain forest. Who cares that it's inside?

"This is something you have to see, but it's not scenic," the Maryland woman finally said as her bus pulled up to the curb. "This is too contrived."

Well, plastering "scenic byway" on the Strip wouldn't be the first thing we bent to fit. Our talent for creating illusion is legendary -- even if we are the only ones we're fooling.

So roll out that public relations wagon and keep posting those byway signs. A fake by any other name may still be a fake.

At least for us, it comes naturally.