Jack Sheehan weighs pros, cons and misconceptions about our fair desert city

Sunday, Sept. 10, 2006 | 7:39 a.m.

If there's one common notion that most Americans have about Las Vegas, it's that we have a vibrant economy. To be precise, many think we are the land of milk and honey.

The general assumption is that car parkers here make $80,000 a year and cocktail waitresses knock down six figures and declare far less to our friends at the IRS. And that even a bloke with a fourth-grade education should be able to come here and take down serious lucre and absolve some of the debt that has accrued from previous life missteps.

But beyond that harebrained idea, there's an ocean of confusion out there about what really goes on in our beloved city and how we Las Vegans get from one day to the next.

Through a fair amount of traveling in the last year and a number of interviews I've done with radio deejays and print folk looking for a hot Las Vegas story, I've come to realize that: a) most of the images of our city either come from the shows "Las Vegas" or "CSI" or from the saturation of our "What Happens Here " campaign; or b) the average dude in his Barcalounger sipping a Colt 45 assumes this is the place where every wanted man in America over the last four decades has come to hide out, from Dick Hickox and Perry Smith of "In Cold Blood" infamy to "The Marrying Man" Warren Jeffs.

Outsiders who haven't been paying close attention sometimes expose their ignorance by revealing that they think Las Vegas in 2006 is still marketing itself to families and that there are a lot of things for kids to do here.

I feel obligated to explain to them that their information is outdated by at least a decade and that we have in fact become one of the most adult-oriented cities since Caligula ruled ancient Rome. A drive up and down the Strip would convince an outsider that we are allergic not to pollen and olive trees, but to clothing.

In Colorado recently I was introduced to a woman who, when she heard I was a writer asked, "Have you ever interviewed Wayne Newton?" Her implicit assumption was that bagging a Q/A with the Midnight Idol was probably the hottest story a scribbler here could find. I calmly answered "no" and looked for an escape route. It would have been a long night had I not pretended to recognize an old friend across the room.

I remember in the late 1970s the esteemed travel writer Jan Morris - who before gender surgery was a British explorer and military man named John Morris - telling me she was intrigued by Las Vegas but detected a strong undercurrent of evil running through the city.

Her instincts at that time were correct. Most of the large hotels were indebted to loans from shady organizations like the Teamsters Union pension funds, and more than a few of the motley characters who ran the joints had rap sheets that could wallpaper your rec room. Today we are now fully controlled by Wall Street: buttoned-down shirts, yellow ties, two showers a day and subtle cologne.

The most frequently asked questions I heard as a writer 25 to 30 years ago were about how I could tolerate living and writing in a city that was totally devoid of any sense of culture or history. I don't get those anymore. Folks willing to pay their local cable company know through the Travel Channel that we have imported all the cultural amenities a modern city could hope to have, with fine art, hip chefs, Broadway plays, and a bevy of talented plastic surgeons to make us look youthful when we go out on the town.

These days the questions I get are more about details concerning the Las Vegas Strip: who's building what, whether the proliferation of high rises is a boom or a bust, whether Macau is going to be bigger than Las Vegas, who's a bigger deal here between Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn. Stuff like that.

I can fake convincing-sounding responses with the best of them, and so rather than just admit that I don't know the answers to all of these questions I tend to blather on in an attempt to pass myself off as an expert on all things Las Vegas. (I recognize that this is a dysfunctional personality trait, but when you get to my age you tend to forgive yourself for deeply embedded flaws and just move forward.)

There are, however, a few things I know for certain about our city, with absolute clarity, devoid of bias or geographical prejudice. I know that:

Las Vegas is clearly not for everyone, but if you dig in your heels and give it a chance you might find it to be the least boring place on the planet. And boredom bores the hell out of me.