Reader Response: Fear and Loathing

I found the book to be an incredible adventure, it was truly a drug filled journey to find...something. My biggest problem with the book was that, these men sought the American dream in Las Vegas. I was given the amazing opportunity to go to Vegas to play in an elite basketball tourney known as the Adidas Super 64. We stayed at the 4 Queens hotel on the old strip. I am here to tell you that the city known as "sin city" is in no way a microcosm of the US or a place to search for the American dream. Vegas represents the far fetched extremes in both directions. On one hand you have those who have pursued the American dream and failed. Miserably. Those down and out on their luck. No money to support the addictions they picked up. But places that look worthy to rest at the right hand of God the Father, rest on the other hand. Vegas should be its own country. All the huge hotels on the strip are immaculate! Nothing else on Earth can compare to the proportion you will see in Vegas. I even saw slot machines in the McDonald's. From sexual gift shops to trucks with glass walls displaying strippers dancing on poles in the back of the trucks to men wearing billboards on their backs giving out numbers to call girls, Vegas is no representation of the US as a whole. Due to the massive tax revenue every single school in Vegas and the surrounding area makes our newest, state of the art schools in the Midwest look like run down hell holes. My friend who moved to Vegas saw where I was gonna play, a school called "Ranchero." He goes oh thats the worst school in Vegas on the far west end, only the Mexicans go there. We get there and they had 4 gyms and TVs on the walls and a community college and tech school built onto them as satellite campuses and marble staircases etc etc and it was just unbelievable! When reading Fear and Loathing I loved to read of their "high times" but was disturbed that these men thought that this Mecca of Extremes would hold the American dream. Vegas represents the farthest extreme possible to a microcosm of America. The American dream is found in the heart of its citizens not at the heart of "sin city."