Wow Place #284: Fremont Street, Las Vegas, Nevada
There’s a scene early in the movie Avatar (2009) when our protagonist, Jake Sully, encounters the planet, Pandora, for the first time. As he walks through a beguiling, technicolor forest, goggling at the glowing, neon colors, the strange, fairy-like flora, we can feel his sense of awe, fear and wonder. This is truly an alien place, where the rules of engagement might be different from anywhere he’s been to before.
That’s exactly my feeling as I wander through the “Fremont Experience” in downtown Las Vegas!
Above me, a giant canopy displays fluctuating video images, from under the sea to across the stars. Spaced out evenly within the 4-block area are three stages showcasing musicians, DJs and dancers. Pulsating music throbs all around me while dazzling neon flashes from casinos, shops and restaurants. Zip liners soar by overhead. And every so often, standing within their own painted circles, are a variety of street “performers” – sometimes a musician, a juggler or a contortionist, but just as often a pair of half-naked women with whips, or a duo of Chippendale gentleman with bare chests and chaps.
This is truly one of the strangest, most alien, most Pandora-like places I’ve ever been to.
Occupying the westernmost five blocks of Fremont Street, including the area known for years as “Glitter Gulch,” the Fremont Street Experience (FSE) is a pedestrian mall and attraction in downtown Las Vegas. A major tourist attraction drawing visitors away from the more-famous “Strip,” the area’s central attraction is its barrel vault canopy, 90-feet high at its peak and 1,300 or so feet in length. Not only does it feature the SlotZilla zip line, it’s also home to the city’s annual New Year’s Eve party.
It wasn’t always this way.
Fremont street boasts a number of Las Vegas firsts: the first hotel (the Hotel Nevada, 1906), the first telephone (1907), the first paved street (1925), the first Nevada gaming license, the first traffic light and the first high-rise (The Fremont Hotel, 1956). By 1992, however, 80 percent of the Las Vegas casino market had moved on to the Las Vegas Strip, forcing the downtown hotels and casinos to do something to lure visitors back to the downtown. And hence the Fremont Experience was born.
(Fun fact: a previous proposal to build a live-sized Starship Enterprise on Fremont Street was nixed by Paramount Pictures…alas.)
A quick note on the canopy: titled “Viva Vision, the canopy boasts 130,000 square feet of display space making it the world’s largest video screen. It includes 49 million energy-efficient LEDs, allowing it operate shows even during daylight hours. Within the canopy are 220 speakers powered by 550,000 watts of amplification. Light and sound shows are presented daily from 6:00pm through 2:00am.
Although I wasn’t able to actually do it myself, I can’t help but admire the SlotZilla zip line – a 12-story, slot-machine inspired zip line attraction. Offering two levels of lines (the lower “Zipline” at 77 feet up, the upper “Zoomline” at 114 feet up), SlotZilla is truly a sight to behold. Guests on the Zoomline fly “superhero-style,” head first, launched from a tower with over-sized dice, a martini glass, a pink flamingo, simulated video reels and two 37-foot-tall showgirls. Like everything in Vegas, it’s garish, it’s over the top—and I kind of love it.
The FSE is truly an assault on the senses. I cannot recommend staying there, as I did – in the Apache, a so-called “haunted” hotel, home to Las Vegas’ first elevator. The blare of the amped-up music outside my room’s overly-thin walls, thumping away until well after midnight, is still giving me PTSD. But I definitely suggest giving Fremont Street a visit. I mean, where else can you get a photo with Chucky (from the horror films), watch an acrobat pose on a stack of 30 chairs, or watch a giant, 10-foot tall gorilla dance with a stunned tourist from Seoul, Korea, as his family excitedly posts the videos to Instagram!
Welcome to Pandora.
(I once read an article quite-seriously suggesting that we should all refrain from traveling. Wouldn’t it be better, the author suggests, to just stay home and enjoy travel videos – if you must – from the safety of your living room couch, sparing yourself upset tummies, exhausting jet lag and the emotional discomfort of being in disturbing situations? For an enthusiastic world traveler like me, you can imagine my response. “C’mon man, what are you talking about!” I consider travel to be like going to high school. Yeah, the social dynamics can be stressful. There are cliques. There’s teasing. But we need to experience difficult things. We need challenges. We need alien situations that build resilience. Living in a safety bubble weakens our emotional “immunity.” And this continues throughout our lives, especially as we age and fall into comfortable routines.
What have you done recently that challenged your perceptions? What can you do this week to take you out of your comfort zone? What can be your Pandora?)
365 Wow Places:
If you like these posts, click here to subscribe. (It don’t cost nuthin’.) And feel free to pass them along to your friends, family and colleagues!]