New To Las Vegas

Alien Cathouse Vegas Brothel, Amargosa Valley, Nev.

By itself, the Las Vegas Strip is almost other-worldly, brimming as it does with neon lights, volcanoes, pyramids, towers and other strange shapes all jumbled together. So maybe it’s not all that surprising that Las Vegas and its environs revel in–or at least profit from–that enduring category of human curiosity called unidentified flying objects.

Strip souvenir stores have lots of UFO knickknacks–T-shirts sporting triangular heads of supposed extraterrestrial aliens and coffee mugs referencing Area 51. That’s the top-secret U.S. military base 90 miles north of town said to be involved, if you believe the gossip, in UFO body-storage (but far more likely, development of military aircraft like the U-2 spy plane and testing of captured foreign war planes). The minor league baseball team, the Triple A affiliate of the New York Mets, is called the Las Vegas 51s. Cashman Field, the team’s home stadium, is festooned with images of ETs.

At about $200 a pop, tour operators run all-day trips from Las Vegas to the very edge of Area 51, where the tiny town of Rachel, Nev. (population 54) sits on State Route 375. The utterly desolate road is officially named (I kid you not) the Extraterrestrial Highway, due to both the proximity of Area 51 and the number of UFO sightings reported thereabouts over the years. In Rachel, an “alien burger” is on the menu at the Little A’Le’Inn.

For a different kind of trip, one can visit the Alien Cathouse Vegas Brothel in Amargosa Valley, Nev., 60 miles northwest of Las Vegas, along U.S. 95 on the south side of the vast Nevada Test and Training Range off which Area 51 sits on the northeast side. That’s a house of legal prostitution and, I suppose, a destination if a UFO lands nearby and the pilot says, “Take me to your breeder.” Continue reading →