Here are a few photos of Las Vegas's "Neonopolis", a recent but mostly derelict shopping center just east of the canopied part of Fremont St., downtown. A recent Las Vegas Weekly article speculates about what's going on with the place and why it tanked so badly. I'm not familiar enough with the situation to know for sure, but I have a sorta-paradoxical theory: It may have been just too fake to succeed in Vegas. Or too much of the wrong kind of fake. It is, or was, essentially a generic suburban mall with a neon theme, with a few Cancun-esque fratboy bars on the ground floor to liven it up a bit. I haven't the remotest clue who the target demographic for this kind of thing would be. Probably the same people who were supposed to (and didn't) flock to Portland's Rose Quarter entertainment complex.
On a semi-related tangent, if you like these photos -- or you like the idea of these photos and wish they were better -- you might also enjoy Bill Beebe's photos of derelict buildings and such in Orlando.
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