Las Vegas: The Red Piano, The Empty Pipe

A few years ago, Sir Elton John did a series of shows in Las Vegas called The Red Piano.  One poster for this presentation showed a nattily-clad John standing near said piano, situated in the mountains that border some of Vegas. The shot was taken at dusk, almost night, and the lights of The Strip glowed far below him.

That poster encapsulates, oddly enough, how I once felt as a pipe smoker in Vegas.

On my third trip to Vegas, in 2003, I packed some pipe tobacco in addition to my usual stash of cigars (sticks being of outrageous markup in Vegas). My pipes were left at home because I was afraid they would break in transit. But no problem; I’d buy a pipe when I got there.

After a few days of decadence, debauchery and smoking my Punch Chateau L double maduros, I missed the peace and reflection brought by smoking a pipe. My long-suffering wife and I went to the high-end cigar store in a neighboring hotel, knowing this well-known tobacconist would have a variety of pipes for sale. There, I found out that pipes weren’t carried at that location, only cigars.

Their loss! We simply trammed over to another hotel’s smokeshop, one whose name, happily, was synonymous with fine pipes.

Which they did not have.

The next day, my long-suffering wife consented to go with me on a pipe hunt. And I finally did find one briar for sale on The Strip--one, as in the number of lifeboats that came back for Rose in Titanic. The retailer that offered it mostly sold cigars and a few pipe tobaccos; the solitary briar was a couple hundred dollars, and had an oxidized stem. I passed on it, then took my last shot, a sure bet: I went to the Walgreeen’s across the street to buy a corn cob pipe.

They were sold out of corn cobs.

I could have gone further off The Strip to a genuine smokeshop; but as a tourist, The Strip was Las Vegas to me. So I went without a pipe the entire trip.

The reason for the pipeless Strip, I’ve been told, had to do with the concern of casinos regarding gamblers using mirrored pipes to cheat at cards, or some such piffle. The real reason, I think, is more complicated. I love going to Vegas; it’s an adult playground, and I feel a real sense of freedom and possibility (as a tourist is supposed to). The constant activity and variety, while exciting, does not really inspire reflection and thought at the time. A smoking pipe is built for thought, nuance and reflection--unlike Las Vegas. Maybe, as Wordsworth would have noted, Vegas is best reflected on after a trip there, in solace and quiet, with a pipe.

And that is how I once felt like Elton John in that poster: isolated but surrounded, outside the city but part of it. And the next time I went to Vegas, I made sure to bring along a pipe. And more cigars.

Las Vegas is not a pipe smoking town;

Cigarettes and cigars spin wheels around;

Instead of briars, different thorns abound.

Las Vegas is not a pipe smoking town.