Strip Search

On the way to the elevator I passed a glass case with a sign that advertised the "world's largest gold nugget on public display." The nugget had been found in 1980 in Wedderburn, Australia, and it was about the size of a spit of meat in a gyro shop. Two men were standing solemnly in front of the case, their hands clasped behind their backs.

"Can you imagine how he felt when he discovered that?" one asked the other. "In that first moment?" The nugget gleamed against its proscenium of black velvet. Arranged around the base of its stand were other, lesser nuggets, including a watch fob strung, decadently, with chunks of gold the size of Oreos, which was once owned by a wealthy railroad tycoon. A placard next to it pointed out that the nuggets were worn smooth from a lifetime of handling. The glass we peered through was as thick as a bank teller's, and smudged. People streamed past us on their way to the slots. The air rang with the brief trills of near-jackpots and, occasionally, the sustained vibrato of someone hitting it big. When the man walked away, his friend and I stayed behind, gazing silently into the case.

Las Vegas is the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States, a distinction it has held since the era of the mega-hotel began here in the early '90s. Its population of 1.6 million permanent residents increases each month by about 4,000. Many newcomers take jobs in the service sector as well as in construction -- growth industries which, though they fluctuate, have mostly been booming.

In real life, the city loses the seamless homogeneity it has in pictures. For a mile or so on the Strip, the development has transformed every square foot of available space, but toward the margins, the cartoon-like coherence of lights and facades pulls apart into a patchwork of old and new: vacant lots and arena-size complexes, whitewashed motels and flashing signs. It is a city that is continuously, vigorously recreating itself, and its growth has the feeling of something large and emphatic, but imprecise, like a series of lobbed grenades. Driving down Las Vegas Boulevard, I saw the sign for the Algiers hotel, a beloved old landmark (I had read), where I had tried to make a reservation online but couldn't find an available room. No wonder: The sign was standing in the middle of a cleared lot.

I had read about a store called Serge's Showgirl Wigs, the town's flagship purveyor of hairpieces for the entertainment industry, and on one of my first circuits around town I came across it. The wigs at Serge's are intricate and unsubtle. Many achieve a complexity of hair architecture rarely found on a human scalp. The house specialty seemed to be an amped-up version of the Florence Henderson 'do, with a high tornado of hair at the crown, elfish points over the ears and long streamers in back. At a mirror, a young woman with Pucci stilettos and a well-engineered bosom inspected her reflection in a honey-and-caramel cascade of ringlets. She looked remarkable in the wig, like a human Barbie.

Most of Serge's wigs run in the hundreds of dollars. But there is a discount arm of the operation across the parking lot, and I spent some time there browsing among the Styrofoam heads. Trying on a wig is faintly humiliating. The woman assisting me pulled a tight, brownish skullcap over my regular hair as I sat in front of a salon-style mirror surrounded with lights. I looked like Marcel Marceau, doing his makeup backstage. But when she dropped a platinum-blond bob over the skullcap, the synthetic strands, pale as cornsilk, slipped around my face. My startled reflection stared back at me, simultaneously tawdry and high-toned, like a temptress assassin in an old Bond film. I wore the wig out of the store.

That night, in my room at the Golden Nugget, I caught part of a TV show about the history of Las Vegas, with footage from the days of Bugsy Siegel, the mobster who helped usher in the casino era. The Strip was unrecognizable, a low-tech carnival of twinkling neon signs and motor inns. I watched through the mid-'90s, when several of the big old hotels were imploded within a couple of years of one another. These implosions were grand affairs, often accompanied by fireworks, and tens of thousands of people would turn out to watch them. The spectacle was hyperbolic and vain, like a lot of things in Las Vegas, but there was something cathartic and celebratory about it, too, and in the way the camera lingered lovingly on the hotels as they came down one at a time, then imploded them in quick succession: bang, bang, bang; plumes of dust and debris mushrooming in slow motion while people applauded from the rooftops.

I was looking for a different Las Vegas, but I was becoming less sure where that was, if it existed at all. I decided to try to find a lounge to go to that evening, preferably one with a live act, but nobody famous, or imitating the famous. I chose a place in my guidebook called Pogo's Tavern, which supposedly had an old jazz drummer named Irv Kluger playing on Friday nights along with other vets of the Big Band days. I did a little research on Kluger, who had, since the '40s, played with musicians such as Artie Shaw and Dizzy Gillespie, and decided I ought to call to make sure he was still alive and on the bill. "He sure is, honey," said the woman who answered. "And tonight is our 35th anniversary, so you should come on over."

Pogo's Tavern is in a strip mall so distant from downtown that it was almost off the top of my map, but when I walked in, I had the feeling it was what I was looking for. It is a tiny place, with cavernous red booths, an old jukebox and a free-standing elliptical bar that takes up half of the room. The light in Pogo's is golden and warm, and it bathed the people who lined the bar. A middle-aged woman in a gold lamé top was playing video poker next to a lean old man with a big diamond ring. I was the youngest person in the room by about 30 years. As I crossed the bar, a short man of about 70 in big glasses and an open-necked shirt looked me up and down. He came up to me, carrying a trombone and walking a black poodle on a lead. "So what took you so long?" he said, out of one side of his mouth, like Humphrey Bogart.

Set into the far wall was a miniscule shoebox of a stage lined with gold foil streamers. Kluger, his drums, and an upright-bass player were crammed into it. Kluger looks a little like Einstein; he has a halo of snow-white hair and a slightly hang-dog air. He was wearing a turquoise mock turtleneck and a black jacket, and he spun his drumsticks expertly now and then, gazing gloomily around the room. At one point, in the middle of a song, he checked his watch. In front of the stage there was a keyboardist in suspenders who sang and did between-song patter, and the trombonist, who played standing in front of the door to the kitchen, backlit by fluorescent light.

Irv Kluger and his All Stars were terrific. Their jazzy music was loud and lively and seamless. It rolled robustly off the little stage in waves. People slow-danced between the tables. A woman celebrating her birthday got up after a few drinks and sang a couple numbers, forgetting the words, which the trombonist fed her in a stage whisper. "If it should rain," he hissed, and buzzed an accompaniment into his mouthpiece. The bartender, the woman whom I had talked to that morning, did a little boxstep behind the cash register.

When I finally got up to leave, the man with the diamond ring shook my hand. "Come back when you can," he said. Onstage, the band was twinkle-toeing it toward the big finale. Kluger tore around the skins in a frenzy, the bassist plunking along behind. The keyboardist drew out a tinkling flourish, sticking the landing. Kluger twirled a drumstick, caught it smartly between thumb and finger, and gave the room a private little smile.