Hasta La Ideas

On to a lighter topic now and one we’ve been itching to talk about all morning. Thanks to a link from the wonderful Cynical-C, we were pointed to the violent, angry, high-stakes world of Las Vegas. Or rather, what happens to that world when the area’s most iconic sign gets vandalized. Although not located within the boundaries of the city itself, the 60 year old, Betty Willis-designed sign has come to be the first thing people think of when “Vegas” comes to mind (doesn’t hurt that it has the name of the city right there, we’re thinking). So when someone took a red sharpie and scribbled on some unintelligible babble onto the bottom of the sign, the locals went nuts. Las Vegas’ mayor called for the offing of heads (albeit in a very tongue and cheek way), people wrote in letters to the LA Times‘s Las Vegas blog (we love the fact that they do, but why does this newspaper have a Las Vegas blog?) complaining about no good kids and “street art” in general, and the comments following the stories in the local papers were often filled with seething, fist-shaking rage. While we certainly don’t condone what was done and would gladly smack whoever did it on the backs of their stupid heads, the outcry for something that was quickly remedied was a bit much and calling juvenile vandalism “street art” is just embarrassing for everyone. But we cannot comment on this whole batch of nonsense anywhere near as well as the Las Vegas Sun, who beautifully describes and discusses all of this much-ado in full.