Drop the Trop

Posted: October 10, 2024 | Author: helytimes | Filed under: America Since 1945, archaeology, architecture |Leave a comment

They imploded The Tropicana in Las Vegas, clearing room for a potential future stadium for the former Oakland As.

The strangeness of The Tropicana had my fascination.

Doomed for a long time, it was near vacant inside, adding to the odd effect.

On a visit to Las Vegas a couple years ago for Badlani’s birthday I took a walk through there. I was certain I’d taken a set of photos of the place, but today I couldn’t find them. The problems of archiving and curating remain, maybe even more challenging, in the age of infinite photos. What happened to them? Did I delete them as unsatisfactory? Are they lost in the cloud?

I can reconstruct some of the atmosphere from found pieces. Those above are from UK site Freedom Destinations. Here’s one from Oyster.com:

Those strange white couches. The Tropicana seemed like it had given up years ago, and yet the whites were kept close to spotless. A bleached aesthetic. The place was like a 1960s idea of the 1990s, or a 1990s idea of the 1960s. A coherent incoherence.

I find a fine set of photos of the lost Tropicana at, of course, reddit/r/LiminalSpaces:

The most times I ever heard the word “liminal” was in a debate between two professors that broke out during Sue Bell’s masters’ presentation in public art.

Strangely, for whatever reason the one photo of The Tropicana my phone seems to have preserved is this one:

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