Wheel Of Fortune

Jenny Southan reports on the transformation of Las Vegas

Dry ice is pouring out of the base of a stage that’s been set up in an empty car park, creating clouds of smoke in the late September sun. A crowd of people are casually hula hooping to Missy Elliott’s One Minute Man, their gyrating bodies casting long lilac shadows across the tarmac. Down the road, the smell of weed wafts by from the High Times Cannabis Village (marijuana is now legal in Nevada), girls pose for photos against day-glo murals and street bars mix up Fernet-Branca cocktails. Now in its fifth year, the Life is Beautiful festival, in Downtown, is in full swing.

Just one week later, tragedy strikes when a gunman opens fire on the Route 1 Harvest country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, killing dozens and injuring hundreds. It is later revealed that the assailant also booked a room overlooking Life is Beautiful but decided against attacking. Oblivious at the time, the event couldn’t have been more joyful and optimistic, but in hindsight it’s chilling.

Unlike California’s Coachella, which takes place at the Empire Polo Club near Palm Springs, or Nevada’s Burning Man, which sets up camp in the middle of the Black Rock desert, Life is Beautiful is an urban festival. It takes over 18 blocks of Las Vegas’s Downtown area, 9km from the Strip. This year’s line-up, which attracted more than 50,000 people each day, included Gorillaz, Muse, The xx and MGMT. With the help of 60 restaurants, bars and food trucks – and one giant fire-breathing metal UFO from Burning Man – the 72hour festival was expected to have generated US$125 million for the local economy.