Living Las Vegas

At Home in the City of Lights

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From Star to Dust: The Pulverization of a Legend

The folks at Boyd Gaming didn’t announce the time and date of the Stardust’s exit from the Las Vegas skyline, but that didn’t mean they weren’t planning a spectacle. When I arrived around 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday, there was no doubt that all the rumors flying around the Web (and my own discovery of a slightly cryptic sign on Industrial Road) had been accurate. A big white tent on the edge of the New Frontier’s parking lot was populated by nicely dressed people with special tags around their necks identifying them as VIPs. Near it, several television vans had cranked up their masts. A crowd of tourists, locals and drunks was building along a festoon of yellow caution tape, and policemen were preparing to stop the traffic flow on the Strip.

I took a spot between two Japanese businessmen with video cameras and a tourist from Pennsylvania, and we all watched as light cannons turned the doomed concrete skeleton a rainbow of gaudy colors. Boyd may not have issued invitations to the world at large, but there was no doubt they were planning to give the Stardust a sendoff commensurate with its “legendary” status.

At about 2:00, one big firework burst from the top of the tower. A few minutes later, water cannons started shooting giant salvos around the base of the building. I heard a siren or two. Around 2:30, the big show began. Fireworks erupted from the top of the tower, and that’s when I realized I wasn’t only going to observe the Stardust’s demise, I was going to feel it, too.

As if big starbursts and rockets shooting off the roof weren’t enough, the pyrotechnicians had engineered a countdown: big blazing numbers on the building’s side. The crowd yelled each one out as they descended from 10 to one. Then, at the final moment, the building went dark, 428 pounds of strategically-placed dynamite exploded in a series of ominous bangs, and 32 stories collapsed faster than my camera could freeze them. When the biggest mass of concrete hit the ground, the parking lot under my feet jumped.

It would be nice to say that the show was over at that point, but I knew from my attendance at one other building erasure that the fat lady had yet to sing. For implosions, the concluding aria is a big ol’ gnarly cloud of dust.

I thought I was ready for it. Armed with one of those masks that make people think you have SARS, I figured I could enjoy the Stardust’s journey into history and keep my lungs pristine at the same time. I was wrong. The dust from the ‘Dust was scarier, nastier, and so thick that I couldn’t help thinking about a certain September morning in Manhattan. I heard people saying “nuclear winter” in between coughs, and visibility was near zero. I tried to console myself with the thought that the Stardust tower was built in 1991, well past the time any asbestos should have been used in its construction. Even so, I wasn’t happy to contemplate what carcinogenic particulate matter was taking up residence in my bronchial tubes.

This morning’s newspaper claimed that the dust settled within twenty minutes, but I’m not sure that’s accurate. I spent twenty minutes navigating my way through it to get to my car, which I had left near the Guardian Angel Cathedral just east of the Strip. It took another twenty minutes to emerge into relatively clear air at the Convention Center. It’s possible that “ground zero” was clear twenty minutes after the blast, but that big old cloud was on a roll. I could still see it half an hour later as I drove by on Interstate 15.

I took my clothes off in the garage, and I took a shower before I climbed into bed. In the morning, the smell of immolated hotel was still lingering in my nostrils, a slightly unsettling post script to all my other Stardust memories.

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