“The entire point of that city is just to confuse enough that it’s easy to take your money.” 
—JJ Fiddler 

From Denver, we had a decision to make: north through Utah, where we would try and sell our belongings in order to afford a scalped ticket to Game 6 of the Lakers/Jazz series, or south through Vegas, where we’d spend a night and then have breakfast with my wife’s father (in town for a high school reunion) before heading north to Monterey for a friend’s birthday party.  Since we preferred to make it home without having hocked all our clothes, we opted for Vegas, hoping to have as good a time as two broke people who don’t drink could possibly have in Sin City.

I’d been a few times, but mostly as a kid, tagging along with my grandparents to make sure nobody was dipping into their nickel buckets, so I didn’t really know what to expect, especially since we were arriving on a Friday night, on the weekend when a lot of area schools were finishing up for the year.  The throngs of people, after driving across Utah and Nevada nothingness, were a shock to say the least, and not made easier by the fact that we were staying at the Tropicana, on the corner of Las Vegas Blvd. and Tropicana Ave, the busiest intersection in the world.  We saw more cars go through there in thirty seconds than we’d seen probably for the previous week combined. 

Still, I had a mission: I was going to go into a Sports Book.  I am an inexperienced but successful amateur sports better, with the highest spread picks percentage of anyone I knew during the last NFL season.  I had a little swagger in my step as I waded through the penny slots and video poker machines on the Trop floor.  Finally I found the Book, tucked away in a back corner, down a flight of stairs.  Walking in, I was met by 23 empty armchairs, and one guy sitting with a Bud in one hand and a pen in the other, watching the Lakers game intensely.  Behind the counter was an enormous white board, with an infinite number of undecipherable scribbles in different colors all over it.  In front of the board stood a gruff, overweight, bearded man in his mid-fifties, wearing an ill-fitting ref’s jersey and a white trucker hat.  “Help yew?” he asked angrily, saliva in his throat.  I stared at him for fifteen seconds, looked back at the board to see if there was any way in hell this was going to be a good idea, decided no, checked the Lakers score, and walked out.

I called JJ, and he gave me some sage advice, which led me on a wander across the walkway to the MGM Grand.  It was like leaving Hell for Purgatory.  Yes, the system barely made sense, but at least the Grand had an electronic board so I could read what the lines were.  I wanted to bet, but there were a few hundred Lakers fans smashed around the expensive counter, so I decided to relax and enjoy the game, in the presence of my fellow fans for the first time in months.  These weren’t Atlanta fans I was cheering with, or Seattle fans I had sympathy for: these were my people.  The gasp that rippled through the crowd when D. Fish missed the second free throw with just seconds left, giving the Jazz the ball back only down by three was heartwarming (though not as heartwarming as the cheers that went up seconds later when Deron Williams missed his desperation shot to send the Lake Show to the Western Conference Finals).  Vegas was confusing and intimidating (especially on a Friday with only about three hours to spare), but it felt more like home to me than anywhere I’d been in a long time.  Of course, I already couldn’t wait to leave, because home was so close—and nothing feels more like home than home.  I think.