Exploring Las Vegas’ criminal connections during the age of prohibition and beyond.
As curious as I’ve always been about gang activity, I’d never had much opportunity to learn about the mob. I should probably be thankful for that, since practical experience isn’t exactly desirable in this case, but I was still curious to learn more about the organization beyond its stereotypes. So of course, when I was looking at “Things to do in Las Vegas”, the Mob Museum caught my eye.
Las Vegas’ city roots in the prohibition era and the roaring twenties have fascinated me since I arrived. The flagrant disregard for rules, the wild clothes and wilder behavior, excess at every turn – I have seen less of these things than I expected, and more tourists aspiring to them on their vacation to Las Vegas. These tourists seem like kids standing on tiptoe to look through frosted store windows for a glimpse of the real thing. I’m convinced that real thing, if it ever existed, existed during the age of prohibition when the mob used proceeds from the sale of liquor to attain wealth, and with wealth, power.
Touring the Mob Museum, it’s obvious that the police were severely understaffed during this era. They lacked the resources to enforce the ban on illegal liquor, a habit that seems to have generally permeated American society during the early 1900s. The city of Las Vegas, with its wild-west ethos and stubborn defiance of its odds of survival in the desert, fostered anti-prohibition sentiment. It also fostered corruption and organized crime.
Eventually the government wised up and got the bad guys. The mob and organized crime is still around, of course, but nowhere near as prominently as it was during the twenties. Maybe that’s why the city’s seediness seems relatively lower than in some real or imagined past. Las Vegas is still a wild place with sheisters and shenanigans at every turn… but it’s also commercialized to a point the twenties couldn’t have imagined. The strip is branded with high-definition advertising that, while magnificent, also seems futuristic and sterile. And that isn’t what people go to Vegas for. They go to be immersed in another reality: one where anything goes, the dancing goes on all night, and it’s g-men vs. gangsters. These days, it just takes a little more imagination to get there.
~ The Dauntless Princess ~
