Last time (and only time) I was in Vegas all I could see is decrepitude and sadness. One incident that stuck with me was how an old man had a heart attack ( I am guessing ) while playing coin slots. The ambulance came and took him away. Not sure why but that just seemed so sad to me.
I share your sentiment. I moved my first software company (now defunct) to Reno, NV from California in 2002, in what seemed like an unmitigated financial success. For the price of a decrepit office in the Bay Area, we could rent a huge McMansion with a view, offices upstairs, full kitchen, three bathrooms with showers, various rooms for meetings or storage or indoor ballgames, and ten minutes drive away from anything... What I failed to factor in was the profoundly depressing nature of every day seeing senior citizens in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks robotically pulling levers on slot machines or feeding money into video poker. Even if you avoid the casinos, you see it at the gas station, supermarket, etc... It's grotesque, but somehow when it's old people spending the last remaining days of their lives doing it, it becomes profoundly sad. Even more so to think that some poor old sucker spent literally the last day of his life that way.
