Formula 1 has two houses, one in London and one in Paris, but it has many tourist apartments. Two, shiny and bombastic, have been found in a territory that is not hostile but neither is Oregon. Despite everything, Miami and Las Vegas are two incredible places.
Cultural heritage in North America is inescapable. Miami, in the state of (La) Florida and Las Vegas betray their Spanish origin of the two new destinations bring us closer to a known place, but unknown at the same time. The remoteness of space, with the second largest puddle on the planet in between, is avoidable thanks to Airbus and whoever makes the jump, the two places can make them have a good time.
So we are going to offer you a little Lonely Planet guide to F1 so you don’t miss anything. That is why in this first chapter, so that you can prepare your excursion to the Sin City well in advance, we are going to propose a viruguía and don’t get lost in the farmhouse patrolled by Gill Grissom.
Las Vegas
The Formula 1 is not new to the field of CSI entomologist, the Rat Pack and Celine Dion. Aside from being the amusement park for adults in America, and the stage for all its little singers, the fact that Formula 1 leaves rubber shavings is no longer a novelty, but instead follows the most basic commercial logic: go where people are already . Let’s do some memory.
In the 80s Nelson Piquet already left his mark on the history of speed, and not only because of the bad pipe with which he sometimes drove with people, but also because he was champion in the casinos. If you’re not flying directly into Las Vegas, you’ll most likely be driving from Los Angeles. Pick up a Dodge or a Chrysler in the rent car and you point its nose towards the 400 meters of desert that separates the two cities. In recent seasons life on this road has grown a lot, but until not so long ago there was only one gas station along the entire route; none more than 200 km before, nor for 200 km after. If you stopped there, you would notice that the soup cost 50% more than in other places. If you asked, the answer was “If it seems expensive, don’t take it”. You looked around, you looked at the guy, you looked at your bag, and you assumed your reality… loosening the fly.
They were t-shirts, they were free and they were at the hand of the first one who passed. No one touched one in years
When you approach Las Vegas, one of the first things you see if you do it at sunset is a huge building similar to the functional and Bauhasian Cortes Ingleses, but upholstered in neon green. you tell yourself: «Well, how they spend them with the casinos». The surprise is capitalized when you get close and you are aware that it is not a casino. Not even bad bingo. There’s a sign that says “MGM Grand Employee Parking.” That emerald-colored tome is a parking lot for blokes that belongs to a hotel-casino, famous for hosting boxing matches. Inside, if you go to the reception, suddenly the floor shakes and you expect the worst. An earthquake, an invasion of North Korea, or a nearby nuclear test. Well, no, it’s a monorail train that takes you inside the complex to the amusement park they have… in the backyard. Your stop is behind the glass wall of reception; they literally give you the keys to your room in a train station.
The acronym MGM belongs to Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and honoring the lion that opens its jaws in his films, they put on a gigantic feline head as an entrance. In this way you accessed the interior through a mouth that could well be six or eight meters wide, so imagine the caliber of the cat. But they realized that something was wrong: their colorful clientele was made up of white Caucasians, retirees, bachelor party sluts, clueless Europeans, couples on a dirty weekend, congressional representatives in suits and cheap sneakers… but there were no Orientals. Neither Japs, nor Chinese, nor anyone with slanted eyes. Not one. That fraction of the increasingly onerous market escaped them. Until someone hit the key. In the Far East, the one at the far end, they are extremely superstitious and being devoured by a feline is the worst thing that can happen to you, it brings the worst of luck, and the anecdotal becomes a curse for them. The Orientals did not enter because they believe that going through that leonine door brings them a horrible bad luck. They had to remove it.
Directly opposite is the “New York, New York”, and it is not a building but a single one formed by a stack of interconnected buildings that emulate the silhouette of The Big Apple. Seeing the result, you think that the architectural plans could have been drawn by Satan himself. Just ahead, and attached to the sidewalk, there is a scale statue of liberty, a fire truck, and a reproduction of the fountains in New York’s Washington Square. After 9/11, people spontaneously and as a tribute wore T-shirts from police and fire departments from all over the country. They left them on the metal fence that acts as a barrier to the fountain in gratitude to those who sacrificed their lives to save those of others. They were t-shirts, they were free, and they were at the hand of the first one who passed. No one touched one in years. Not even one. Over time they deteriorated a lot and had to be removed, but the gesture remained, typical of noble and grateful people.
If you stand in front of that fountain, to your left you have three major casinos lined up in order of appearance: the Excalibur, the pyramid-shaped Luxor that emits a laser beam into the sky at night, and the Mandalay Bay. The first and the last are owned by them, and to make it easier for visitors they have put up an elevated train, another monorail, which takes you for free from one to the other passing in front of the pyramid. If you stand in front of the Luxor right behind you is McCarran International Airport. How do you go to the airport? Well, walking, it is enough to cross the street, because it is little less than in the city center. You can see it in the movie ‘Ocean’s 11’. Every day several 737s from an unknown airline called Janet Airlines take off from its runways. Civilian employees fly in them, mostly engineers, who go by air to Area 51, located about 120 kilometers to the north. Would you like to sneak into one of their thirteen gadgets, huh? Well, it won’t be easy for you. However, it will be much easier to enter the Tropicana, which is attached and where, if you enter, a Ferrari greets you upon arrival. And it is that a Ferrari is one of the star prizes. If you pass, play and it’s your turn, you can enter in shorts and leave mounted on a son of Maranello.
In that sports red, you could get on the casino avenue, where its buildings are not arranged facing the street but obliquely, so that you can see its face as you approach as you advance along the avenue. On your walk you will come across the Bellagio, whose fountain performs several times a day; The ground moves when shot and dances to the music. If you go inside the casino, don’t look at the floor, but at the ceiling. You will find the two thousand glass flowers blown one by one by the artist Dale Chihuly that make up a lamp valued at three million dollars. A little further on, a few meters away, is Caesar’s Palace, in whose car park the 1981 and 1982 Grand Prix were held. In a parking lot? Er… well, part of the base that is so big that it has its own bus line, so that customers don’t get tired of walking from their car to the casino, which is not about the Olympic Games. Like everything in Las Vegas, it is usually themed and with the game in between. If in Excalibur they have knights in armor at the entrance, or clowns in Circus Circus, in the Palace of Caesar you are served by waitresses dressed as Roman patricians with tunics and flip-flops, the security guards are dressed as legionnaires, and on the corners you can bet on machines with Chariot races that run on Scalextric tracks.
The Strip is dotted with colourful, extremely cheap places to eat with ten-dollar menus thrown in for good measure. That is the hook because the business is inside. There are other baits, like being able to see Earth, Wind & Fire, Julio Iglesias, Barbra Streisand or Mariah Carey sing at the same time just across the street and at ridiculous prices. It is the only place in the world where The circus of the sun It has permanent headquarters, and for nothing in the world do you miss the performance of the Blue Man Group, some street musicians who ended up in the Olympus of performances.
There is something wrong with Las Vegas: everything is carpeted. what and what? That you will be permanently charged with static electricity and you will hit sparks everywhere every time you touch something. On the other hand, there are things that are very well resolved, such as the framework of each show, including those that can be seen on the street, such as the one at the Treasure Island hotel. The Treasure Island is themed, as its name suggests, pirates. Your claim is at the door and it is es-pec-ta-cu-lar. Every hour and a half there is a pass, and so many people milled before its entrance that they had to put a stepped platform on the sidewalk with those contraptions that spray water and refresh, because you are in the middle of the desert.
The hotel is made up of two buildings that form a concave vee on its floor, and in that space, instead of having a garden, what they have is a kind of triangular pool. The show is that there is a life-size pirate ship, from behind the hostel another one arrives sailing through that pool, they get into a fight, they fight, they rob each other, and one catches fire and sinks… right under your nose. Instead of a leaflet on the door they offer you a free naval battle! And all so that you stay there for a while and decide to enter, of course, and there you will leave your dollars in any machine, game table, or more private poker games.
Everything converges in that your money enters through the door and does not leave it. And of course, when they tell you that the economic impact of the Las Vegas Grand Prix is estimated at 500 million dollars you understand that it will be an absolute success, at least economically. Business, marketing, entertainment, the magical triad that Americans handle like no one else. That’s why this race is going to be a hit. Oh, what cars run? That’s something else… a handsome addition.