Love and Loathing in Las Vegas

Tommy Fontenot’s typical day begins in the dead of night. The gay 36-year-old works the late shift as a blackjack dealer, handling $25,000 bets at one of Las Vegas’s most glamorous casinos. When noon rolls around, Fontenot gets in his truck and drives to his brand-new 1,800-square foot house in southwest Vegas. The Louisiana native and former paramedic has lived in Sin City for four years, and it’s finally starting to grow on him. “I didn’t like Vegas at first,” he says. “If you’re looking for a place just to be gay, this isn’t the place. But that’s not why I moved here.”

Thousands of gay people like Fontenot are escaping burned-out factory towns and priced-out megalopolises for a better life in America’s 21st-century boomtown. Some are scooping mashed potatoes at the Stratosphere buffet, others are squeezing Cher into a bustier for her upcoming show at Caesars Palace; all are helping fuel Las Vegas’s $80 billion economy and turning the formerly red state of Nevada purple.

Just like transplants proliferating in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, many people in Las Vegas are not from Las Vegas -- the city was only incorporated in 1911, when it had about 800 residents. But the gays streaming into southern Nevada have little in common with the urban pioneers who descended on the Castro or the Village 40 years ago. Seeking safety and freedom, young gays crashed these coastal cities, helping forge the identities of their neighborhoods, art scenes, and political dynasties. The gays moving to today’s Las Vegas arrive with less lofty but no less valid goals -- finding a job and enjoying a decent standard of living.

“People tended to move to these gay urban meccas in order to ‘become’ gay,” says Jay Groth, a 36-year-old Las Vegan. “It just seems the people I meet in Las Vegas are so beyond that.”

Groth, a flight attendant who’s lived in the city for 10 years, shares a spacious home with his partner in the Green Valley neighborhood. Groth loves his adopted city for its ethnic diversity, affordable housing, and shopping and dining options but holds no illusions about its gay community.

“People come here expecting the gay scene to be on the same level as San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, New York,” he says.

“They’re not going to get it. They’re just not. We don’t have the established community that those other cities have. It’s still very much in its infancy. But [residents] are becoming less transient and are a little more willing to invest in the community.”

Among U.S. cities, off-the-Strip Las Vegas most resembles Los Angeles or Phoenix -- it’s a sprawling suburban-style city built in the 20th century. But while Los Angeles and Phoenix have pockets of urbanity, Vegas—with a metropolitan-area population of over 2 million -- does not. Most residents live in enormous subdivisions and drive to work. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, according to author Richard Florida, who in his book The Rise of the Creative Class says successful cities are ones that attract a young, educated work force, including a healthy number of gays and lesbians. These people typically work in “creative” fields like architecture, theater, and engineering.

“A downtown core is not the key element of success in the creative economy,” Florida writes in an e-mail. “The most important factor in attracting and retaining quality young talent is creating a sense of place and community.”

As part of his urban studies, Florida rates American cities on indexes of creativity, tolerance, and gay-friendliness. Las Vegas scored among the lowest in creative positions but slightly better in tolerance and gay-friendliness.