So I set out from Los Angeles last Wednesday in order to meet up with my friends Harley, Chloe and her boyfriend Hank. Harley's friend Etta from Washington also came down for a few days of vacation to hang with us in Coronado. For those of you who have never been to Coronado, it's an amazing little island/cove right off of San Diego that you can get to via bridge. It feels a bit too white upper class planned community, but it's also a really nice place to live. So Hank and Chloe invited us to come and help them pack for moving out/just hang out in SD before heading to Vegas on Friday morning. It was a fun couple of days helping Chloe to finish school assignments, sushi eating, packing, and playing card games--nothing too riveting since we all wanted to be prepared for Vegas.
Friday morning we set out in Chloe's car at around 10am so we could get to Vegas by check in at 3. Chloe's car is super nice, but also completely ridiculous for road trips. A two door sporty little thing, the 5 of us packed in there like sardines with all of our luggage pushed into every possible crevice. I'm pretty sure purgatory could be equated towards the feeling of being in that back seat with one midget (Harley) and one over 6 foot tall albino (Cole). You could feel every breath that the person next to you took with your arms pressed against their ribs, your shoulders hunched inward in a way that promoted scoliosis and cracked collarbones. Combine that with the occasional overheating of the car which required us to turn off the air conditioning while driving through 113 degree weather, and Chloe and Hank's hilarious game of "lets roll down the window and suffocate/burn the prisoners in the back" and you've summed up our journey from SD to Vegas. Thank God it was only 5 hours.
Us girls get our sexy on (basically an hour or so of Miley Cyrus's "We Can't Stop" on repeat--guilty pleasure) and the boys return. In natural male standards of dress, they're ready to go so we start drinking. Hank's two friends from Reno come up to party with us so it's a grand old time of getting to know everyone and getting psyched out for Vegas. Danger juice (otherwise known as jungle juice) is flowing freely, with Cole and I trying to match each other drink for drink because we're poor and want to be as ready to go as possible before we leave. It should also be noted that we were consuming said beverage from an old gas container which only solidified its sketchy nature.
After we are thoroughly pre-gamed we venture out onto the casino floor, and straight to Fat Tuesdays for a yard slushie. I'm pretty good at this point, but hey--it's my 21st birthday. Good isn't good enough, apparently that means trashy. So Hank generously buys me my first yard and I couldn't even really tell you what was in it it but it was delicious and it was a lot of alcohol and sugary deliciousness. We didn't really have a game plan for the night, so we just start walking around the maze that is our casino/hotel looking at everyone playing and stopping here and there at the slot machines. Also happen to hook up with some friends from Washington, Reed and Omar who came to get away as well for the weekend. I'd like to say this is the point at where I went to some crazy bar/dance club and started going Coyote Ugly on everyone's ass, but being the old grandma that I am and being a tad worried that my only form of identification was my passport, I wasn't trying to get too too rowdy in unfamiliar/far places. So we walked around...a lot. And with so many people navigating the casino floor, you could basically call it a dance. It was crazy.
Next day we woke up and I had no idea who was in which bed. Luckily we all ended up back at the hotel, including Reed and Omar who had paid for and yet not slept at their room at the Stratosphere way farther down on the strip. Said goodbye to them, freshened up, and went down for the breakfast buffet. Words cannot describe the delicious food that we consumed at that meal--anything you could ever possibly want, there. And we ate it all. Harley and Hank decided mimosas were a better hangover cure than anything else, but I abstained. All I saw was bacon and creamed cheese bagels with smoked salmon. My life was complete.
With still very little energy, we peeled ourselves from our post-breakfast food coma to go lounge by the pool and float in the lazy river. It was the first time I had ventured outside of the MGM grand in almost 24 hours, and it was hot. You come out of the water and within 5 minutes you are burning and completely dried from the sun, so naturally Cole the Albino stayed inside to sleep off his hangover. Sleep off, die. We weren't really sure, but he looked comfortable so we let him lie like a vegetable upstairs while the rest of us admired all the sexy bodies at the pool.
Finally after the pool we actually ventured off of the property and went about exploring the strip--the Luxor, Venetian, Caesars, Paris--the lot. And they were super cool themed, when I was in the Paris one I was legitimately surprised at how authentic it was aesthetic wise. Made me miss it. The only thing that sucked about these hotels was that, although the strip isn't very long, you don't want to be oustide in Vegas ever. It's so unbelievably hot (109, when we were out) and so you say to yourself "that hotel isn't too far--lets just walk there" and you want to kill yourself 20 feet later. For fellow fat girls like me, don't walk the strip without spanks. Chaffing is real, don't do it. And on top of the heat? You'll thank me later.
Finally we make it all the way down to Caesars and fall heavy into a booth at Planet Hollywood. Delicious grub, cool atmosphere, and we move onto the Stratosphere for the ride Hank has been looking forward to all day that I refuse to go on because 1) I'm afraid of heights 2) It's expensive and 3) I don't want to die of a heart attack. Despite my resolved stubborn nature, Hank insists he will make me go. And like a sign from the gods, we get there and it's closed for about an hour. Exhausted, but looking to make the most of the situation we settle on playing a bit of 21 and blackjack which is my favorite. You don't win every time, but you also don't lose every time. I played for about 20 minutes, gaining and losing money before I walked away and we headed back towards the hotel for the night--exhausted from the heat.
Here is where happy Vegas trip ends. The next morning's entire mission I swear was to elevate my blood pressure.
So I'm supposed to take a greyhound bus from Vegas to Salt Lake to meet up with my friend Anson. Get there an hour early from my 7:55am bus and get in line. When there is about 20-30 of us left they close the door and tell us that there are too many people, we will have to wait until the 10pm bus going to Salt Lake City. That's right, they overbooked us by that many people. And didn't apologize, offer alternatives, or even refund our money. They. were. assholes.
So I'm fuming, thinking I'm about to go to jail for arson or murder when I meet two other passengers in my situation and we decide we need some food. The girl is from Argentina, traveling the US for 6 months while the other guy is Tongan from SLC. They're super nice, and we have some great conversation about interculturalism and stereotypes before heading back to the bus station. To wait. For over 12 hours.
3 hours in and I'm looking for sharp objects to "fall" on. The bus station is hot, stinky, and I'm pretty sure filled with sketchy alcoholic homeless people. Since I've made friends, I feel comfortable enough going to the bathroom knowing someone is watching my stuff, but even so. Not where I wanted to be stranded.
About 1 o'clock is when things really start blowing up. So this black girl about my age comes in and starts charging her phone, no big thing. No one notices anything crazy about the girl. A half hour later two white male cops come in and start talking to the girl. I'm in my usual computer addicted state and not paying enough attention, though when I start hearing her yell "I didn't do anything violent!" and I look up to see the cop twisting her arm at an ungodly angle, I perk up. Next thing I know, they push her down into the floor face down and one is straddling her while the other keeps her arm twisted and she's not letting them pry her other hand from her armpit. She keeps screaming "I didn't do anything violent!" and they keep yelling at her to remove her hand, part of which is resistance but part of which is also the angle at which they've pinned her down and she can't move.
A circle of us have now formed watching this happening in shock and a few get out their phones to start recording. Next, the police officer not straddling cups the back of her neck and pushes down, popping her head back like a sick pez container. It's getting way out of hand and I start screaming at the police officers to get the fuck off of her and that I'm calling the cops on them, grabbing my phone to make the call. While the girl is still not being violent but wriggling trying to breath from the officer pushing down on her neck, the police officer gets out his mace and shakes it as if he is about to shoot her in the face. This is completely where I lost my shit and start yelling even louder, at which point he looks up and sees the circle of us angrily recording and shouting and puts it aside, barely letting up. They finally pry her hand away with a baton and cuff her, taking her away to the police car.
I'd already called the police to report the unnecessary brutal force with which they treated the girl, and soon the sergeant was on the scene questioning the girl, officers, and the rest of us. It becomes pretty apparent pretty fast whose side they are on with issues of race, gender, and general corruption come into play. She takes my statement and listens to stories and watches video, but still she is wary. Others don't even bother writing down a statement, so disillusioned by past experiences to believe any justice will be served. They say they are releasing the girl, but by the time they left I didn't see her walk free. Meanwhile the police who arrested her however are laughing and looking at shit on their iphones while she sits shaking in the back of the police car hyperventilating. Fucked. up. shit.
I'm going to be honest, it was that moment that race became real to me. Not in a theoretical intellectual way, but as a straight up honest truth. As the sergeant went around taking statements, visibly disregarding statements by the black bystanders I finally internalized their frustration, seeing my own very real privilege as a white woman. Shaking myself, I was very doubtful that anything productive was going to come from these conversations and even more enraged by the lack of awareness of the officer's privilege and the way these issues of gender, race, and class played into this whole scene. Their mind was made up, she was obviously in the wrong.
As I kept talking with the sergeant, she kept on telling me "If I told you she assaulted a cab driver before coming here, would that change your perception of the events?" to which I was horrified. I wanted to respond with "Would the officers have acted to violently if the woman was white?" but knew from other similar statements made by others in the station that she was not willing to see it as a factor in this arrest and I don't think anyone deserves that kind of retaliatory violence. And that's only going along with the "hypothetical" situation they gave me of her first act of violence. Who even knows if the girl did anything? She looked just as scared as the rest of us by the officers sudden arrival.
Needless to say, after that I knew I had to get the hell out of Vegas. Within 6 hours my friend Anson had driven all the way down from Salt Lake to pick me up, and I said adios to the most bittersweet weekend of my life in Vegas. Once in a lifetime trip--can't see it repeating itself any time soon or wanting to, and I'm ok with that. Pretty sure these stories are enough to last a lifetime.
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