Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Dropping in to land at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid International Airport from 30,000’ above the desert floor is always an out-of-body experience for me. The sheer improbability of it all is the first thing that confounds me (where does all the water come from and is it even morally right for a city to exist here?). Meanwhile, the real estate writer in me is usually just trying to make sense of The Strip from the air (did anyone think how incoherent all of these buildings would look like massed together?) This time, though, I’m locked in on South Las Vegas Boulevard during our approach.
My eyes dart up and down its roughly 4-mile length, trying to pinpoint the spiraling, planetary disco ball that is The Sphere — the city’s newest entertainment venue — amid a molten mass of a million other lights winking out across the Mojave valley. After a few futile minutes of scanning, the pilot suddenly dips his wings right, banks our plane parallel to the runway, and there it is: a 366-foot by 516-foot Grateful Dead skull and lightening bolt illuminated by 1.2 million red, white, and blue LEDs twirling back out into space.
The Grateful Dead 'Steal Your Face' logo is displayed across The Sphere on opening night of Dead & Company's Las Vegas residency This story is neither logical nor conventional for me to write. For starters, I’m not a huge Las Vegas fan. I generally try to avoid large crowds, have never really gambled (at leas.