Last thing Miami needs is to become Vegas

Last thing Miami needs is to become Vegas
By Fabiola Santiago

I hate Las Vegas.

I was there once and I never want to see the place again.

Everything about that city is a grand fake, a man-made mirage. From the moment you land to the second before you leave, with the addicted still gambling on the last machines by the boarding gate, everything turns into a manipulated experience aimed at evoking a cheap thrill, the kind that costs plenty, wanes quickly and leaves you empty.

The powerful gambling industry wants us to think Las Vegas is all glitter, a bubble of prosperity and employment that nothing can touch — fun in the Nevada sun. But the infamous Strip is surrounded by depressed neighborhoods, and these days, even the splendid contemporary condos and oversized pool homes are in foreclosure and short sales.

Despite the Hollywood spin, there’s nothing magic about what happens in Vegas, and now the big players’ eyes are turning to economically beleaguered Miami — easy prey, with the support of our short-sighted local leaders quickly aligning all the way to Tallahassee.

The threat that our city of refuge, a fledgling but celebrated arts and culture hub, a place where the homegrown and the newly arrived and the rich and poor rally with pride around the same sports teams — a young metropolis where the one good thing that grows is hope — would be turned by the machinations of city and state government into a Las Vegas-style destination sickens me.

There’s no magic in gambling as a solution to our economic woes.

Ever hear a parent say, “I want my kid to grow up to be a blackjack dealer?”

Gambling, like alcoholism, is an addiction that ruins lives, families, careers. The entire casino industry operates under one money-making premise: the gambler can’t stop gambling, and even the winners lose because they can seldom walk away from the table when they’re winning.

Las Vegas attracts broken people, addicted people, high and low rollers who flee for a weekend from bad marriages, lonely lives and broken hearts. They leave Vegas still married, still lonely, and a little more broken-hearted.

The city sells the opportunity to win easy: money, sex, endless entertainment, fine dining. But most people lose, the top-rated entertainment is expensive and sold out, and the second-tier acts are, at best, mediocre. The sex is as good as your partner, another gamble. The Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, monuments to the best of humanity, are degraded to cartoonish replicas that straddle and peddle massive casinos themed to make you forget that this isn’t Paris or New York.

The preferred style of dining is buffet — more excess, so you can get that sense that all is plentiful here, and falsely cheap. The fine-dining restaurants by acclaimed chefs seem to have more class, but the staff is trained to achieve the same results from the customers: overindulgence and a quick turnaround.

Even souvenir photographs are frauds – insert your face into someone else’s body – and cater to the ego, depicting the aging as young, beautiful and buff. Not too far from this peddler of fiction is another one selling magic creams that promise to turn your skin into the silky version in the fake photograph.

People buy because Vegas makes you act stupid and delusional, and for a little while, it staves off the pain of being you in your life. And that’s exactly what the Malaysian and Las Vegas casino operators pitching projects in South Florida — to the tune of $3 billion in a bad economy — are selling: fake gains and false promises to people struggling in a period of desperately high unemployment.

But see through the mirage and the short-term.

If you think your home or your real estate investments are vulnerable now, wait for construction of the monster on the bay by the Genting Group and see how their proposed mega casino-hotel-restaurant complex clutters a neighborhood already hosting a performing arts center, an arena and museums under construction. See how the traffic jams and the bad company dissuade the suburbanites from patronizing the nearby arts in Wynwood and the Design districts, once so promising.

Who wants to be in the midst of addicted gamblers, high-stakes prostitution and organized crime?

If you think the streets aren’t safe now, wait until easy money starts to flow, wait until the gamblers and the gangsters are fully in charge. Wait until the people most needing jobs stay jobless because last time I checked, there wasn’t a training school in town for wheelers and dealers. Wait until the crime rate soars so high your taxes have no way to go but up, up, and up to pay for the law enforcement.

Wait until we’re no longer the proud city that the spirit of pioneers and immigrants built and become a city owned by casinos.

There’s only one winner in Vegas: the gambling industry.

From the gambler’s perch, it’s a steep and painful fall.