The downpour dulls to a tapping of fingertips, so I go back outside and walk across the border to the lottery store. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order. An emergency alert pushes through to all our phones, interrupting a Paula Abdul song. I take shelter in an aggressively air-conditioned McDonald’s where everyone is eager to be elsewhere. Later, I will ask an employee about the Desperado, and she will smile and say, “They don’t talk about that” before turning away. The empty tracks of the Desperado roller coaster loop around the darkened windows of Buffalo Bill’s. The monorail that was built to bring tourists across the highway no longer runs. I am on the other side of the 15, where Primm Valley Resort and Buffalo Bill’s are. The clouds are gathering, shrouding Pete’s castle in mist. Today, his cartoonish figure is perched among the building’s pinnacles and turrets, above the casino. About sixty years later, his body was inadvertently exhumed during construction. Whiskey Pete’s, which opened in 1977 as Primm’s first casino, is named after him. Primm is named after casino developer Ernest Primm (it was renamed this in 1996 after being called State Line for years), but spiritually, it belongs to Pete MacIntyre, a gas station owner who made whiskey in a cave during prohibition. The casino is open, but the hotel is closed. Whiskey Pete’s is a castle in the brown desert foothills. Because of this, I can easily imagine a life for myself here: everything I own in a room by the highway, every day meeting people I’ll never see again. I know what it’s like to be a fixed object in a place full of visitors, to be asked, “Where do you commute from?" when you are already home. To sell someone food for the road, to watch them drive away. I worked at resorts in the national parks, and now I live in Las Vegas. I’ve lived most of my life in tourist destinations, staying put while other people move on, and more and more I find myself chasing the pleasure of anonymity. Primm is a place you pass through and forget - that is, if you even noticed it in the first place. Primm is where the little Google Maps voice says Welcome to California. Primm contains three gas stations, three casino resorts (one is open, one is half-open, and one is closed), a golf course, a lottery store, a few fast-food restaurants, and a dying outlet mall. Check-in isn’t until 3, but I arrive early. I’ve been getting the We look forward to greeting you emails and imagining myself 40 minutes outside of Las Vegas, three and a half hours from Los Angeles. I booked a room at Primm Valley Resort and Casino a week in advance. I want to be in Primm because I want to vanish, too. It appears from the highway, and then it vanishes. It is an in-between place: too close to be a stopping point on the drive to Los Angeles, too far to be its own destination. Primm is on the border of California and Nevada, but it doesn’t seem to exist in either. I am here because I have passed by it many times and I want to know what it feels like to stop and stay. Everyone will assume I’m trapped in Primm because of the flooded roadway.īut I am here on purpose. In a few hours, it will rain so hard that the 15 will close.
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