Fauxville, USA
December 22, 2003 10:12 AM   Subscribe

"Although the Holtans had never visited Italy, they wanted a house that looked authentically Tuscan." Lake Las Vegas, NV may be even tackier, and more aesthetically insidious, than its famous namesake 17 miles to the west -- it's a planned village of million-dollar fake villas, indoor waterfalls, and elevator buttons for dogs. (NYT/RR)
posted by serafinapekkala (38 comments total)
 
Best line: "This is real stucco," said Ms. Lucini... "This is how they did it in Italy. It's not a faux finish." These people seem ripe for a Cohen Brothers script treatment, no?
posted by serafinapekkala at 10:13 AM on December 22, 2003


Too bad about that 1,000 foot high Godzilla model w/attached theme park that's planned for the adjoining parcel
posted by troutfishing at 10:26 AM on December 22, 2003


Uh-oh, I think I'm out of the fan club -- I meant "Coen" of course.
posted by serafinapekkala at 10:33 AM on December 22, 2003


There are four kitchens, although the house has only three bedrooms. "The ironic part is, I don't remember the last time we cooked," said Ms. Borsack
posted by anastasiav at 10:35 AM on December 22, 2003


also:

Water from nearby Lake Mead ... was pumped into the canyon, nearly 3.26 billion gallons of it. Although Lake Las Vegas would serve as a backup reservoir in a severe drought, it continues to draw 3,400 acre-feet, or 1.1 billion gallons, of water a year. Two-thirds of that is used to irrigate the three championship golf courses that carpet the lunar landscape.

Can someone please explain to me why people Americans seem so determined to move to the desert and then make it look like pasture land. Why can't they just move somewhere that grass grows naturally? The amount of water wasted by these sorts of projects makes me angry, and sick.
posted by anastasiav at 10:38 AM on December 22, 2003


Lake Las Vegas
posted by donovan at 10:46 AM on December 22, 2003


Is there still a MeFi login for NYT?
posted by Tubes at 10:54 AM on December 22, 2003


Viiiiivvvvvaaaaaa Las VEGAS!!!

What a town.
posted by Yossarian at 10:55 AM on December 22, 2003


"There are four kitchens, although the house has only three bedrooms. 'The ironic part is, I don't remember the last time we cooked,' said Ms. Borsack"

Yes, it's like rain on your wedding day, Ms. BallsackBorsack. Isn't that ironic?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:01 AM on December 22, 2003


Think Snowcrash. Bur-claves seem more and more plausible every day.
posted by Leonard at 11:04 AM on December 22, 2003


It's sad that they couldn't have made their resort using modern architecture and tried to push things forward, instead of creating something so false and tacky and horrid. I suppose that the sort of people who buy homes there, ie unsophisticated midwestern new money, wouldn't accept that though.

You could sense the reporter's contempt throughout the article.
posted by Spacelegoman at 11:08 AM on December 22, 2003


Is water actually wasted in this venture? Can't you look at the cycle of water as a closed system? Yes water is pumped from man made lake mead and used to water grass, but doesn't the water then eventually evaporate back into the atmosphere to fall back to the earth? I also don't understand droughts.
posted by Cool Alex at 11:18 AM on December 22, 2003


Compared to housing in Vegas itself, LLV is very appealing.
posted by rushmc at 11:22 AM on December 22, 2003


"Look, dear, it's just like Italy without those pesky natives!"
posted by fidelity at 12:05 PM on December 22, 2003


It's funny- I always thought that one of the good things about the US is the opportunity for economic mobility (however small). These people have shown me that it's very bad. Veblen tried to warn us about these types of atrocities and we didn't listen.
posted by Mayor Curley at 12:07 PM on December 22, 2003


What I find interesting is that the homes on the lakelasvegas.com look like any other southwestern community. I guess the fact that they're calling the look Italian makes it so, eh?

Also, I doubt the waste of water there is any worse than it is in the Phoenix area.
posted by SteveInMaine at 12:57 PM on December 22, 2003


...on the lakelasvegas.com site, that is.
posted by SteveInMaine at 12:58 PM on December 22, 2003


I wonder how much of this is snobby east coasters looking down on the nouveau riche of the west ... After all the NYTimes is not against conspicuous consumption as such (check their property listings), but seem to be against conspicuous consumption in what they consider to be 'bad taste.'
posted by carter at 1:14 PM on December 22, 2003


Tubes: not a mefi login, and also not mine, I think a bunch of librarians came up with it, but the following works:

user: mythofthe
pass: liberalmedia
posted by carter at 1:17 PM on December 22, 2003



on a sidenote, as somebody who knows quite well Lake Como and has spent most of his childhood/teenage summers in Tuscany, I must say that if on one hand the sight of strangers diving into all things Italian is certainly flattering and sometimes amusing, on the other it's clear that charm -- especially the charm of certain Italian locations -- is very hard to duplicate. Leaving room for "what's the point?" sorry "replicas" like the Bellagio Vegas thing or fun stuff like this Coen-bros couple's dream.
But some replicas are pretty well done -- like the Campiello at the Venetian in Vegas, which is not half bad if you consider how difficult it was to actually duplicate Venice, of all places

but Tuscany's beauty is almost impossible to bottle up. the light, for example, you can't duplicate it, and it's a very important part of the whole thing.
just like you can't replicate, say, the blue light of African nights


posted by matteo at 1:28 PM on December 22, 2003


and what Spacelegoman said ... missed that first time round
posted by carter at 1:29 PM on December 22, 2003


Its easy to criticize an aesthetic as a simulacrum, but it seems most everything is. Even modernists imitate other modernists.

I do think that making a lake in the desert is a huge energy waste though.
posted by alex3005 at 1:47 PM on December 22, 2003


It's when I read stories like this, and then compare them with the homeless I see on city streets and lineups at the foodbank, I get a little choked about the disparity between the rich and the poor in the West.
posted by five fresh fish at 2:07 PM on December 22, 2003


1.5 billion people on this planet live in abject poverty. More people live in poverty today then were alive in 1850. It is probably the biggest challenge we face, bigger than the great depression or WWII or the Cold War.
posted by stbalbach at 2:24 PM on December 22, 2003


Why don't they just get jobs?
posted by keswick at 2:41 PM on December 22, 2003


So many places to go with this, I find myself not only not knowing where to start but wondering where to end. Instead, I'll just skip it all except to wonder, once again, why we can not make new things (including the architecture of conspicuous consumption) great, within some semblance of an appropriate spirit of time and place?

That this is supposed to capture something of Italy is a farce: reading the article leaves me thinking that the comments are coming from people who have either a) never been to Italy, b) have no sense of what it is they wish to capture or c) can not even read a map of Italy.

The place mocks itself.
posted by Dick Paris at 3:21 PM on December 22, 2003


Howard Roark is spinning in his grave.
posted by spazzm at 4:01 PM on December 22, 2003


There are four kitchens, although the house has only three bedrooms. "The ironic part is, I don't remember the last time we cooked," said Ms. Borsack...

I cook quite a bit, and cannot fathom the point of having two kitchens, much less four. I'd spend all my time running back and forth between my many kitchens trying to remember which one I left the damn stick blender in.
posted by jennyb at 6:11 PM on December 22, 2003


You're thinking too small, jenny. You wouldn't have a damn stick blender: you'd have four damn stick blenders. Because, you know, having four blenders shows real class.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:06 PM on December 22, 2003


Something about the faux Ponte Vecchio makes me hyperventilate.
posted by swerve at 7:37 PM on December 22, 2003


Maybe they should replicate Venezia at Lake Las Vegas next seeing that the real thing is slipping beneath the ocean...
posted by gen at 8:41 PM on December 22, 2003


Why can't they just move somewhere that grass grows naturally? The amount of water wasted by these sorts of projects makes me angry, and sick.

Right on.
posted by dejah420 at 10:03 PM on December 22, 2003


Let's start a collection, right now, to finance the construction of a gigantic billboard next to the faux Italian fantasy world.

We'll advertise "The Matrix Reloaded" for the next ten years, unless something worse comes up.
posted by troutfishing at 10:04 PM on December 22, 2003


she can make the wall behind the living room retract like a pocket door, revealing panoramic views of volcanic peaks and the lake. "I have the best of both worlds," she said.

Not really lady.
This was the saddest quote to me. I actually pity these people , because they have no idea what they are missing. They think the charms of a village on the med can be reproduced with foam. Which means they don't understand those charms in the first place. Which is to be profoundly pitied.

If I had their money, I would just move to Capri.

cool pool though
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:51 AM on December 23, 2003


Or how about the "fictional town history"? That cracked me up just as much as the faux-everything feel about this place. Oh, but they have REAL stucco with REAL cracks in it.

I love the style of Tuscany as well, which probably played some small part when I chose to buy a Mediterranean style stucco house (yes, real stucco with REAL 30 year old cracks), but if I wanted to be surrounded by the charms of Tuscany ... I'd just move there rather than try to create a "fake" fishing village.

And after looking at the photos of the community and houses, I have to say ... it really looks nothing like Tuscany to me. Since when do fishermen live in sprawling mansions? (with 4 kitchens no less - something I find incredibly daft).
posted by Orb at 1:30 PM on December 23, 2003


The sad part is that the water levels in Lake Mead are dropping and you can actually see a ring around the lake. We got an offer in the mail from the Water District to change to desert landscaping and be paid by the square foot for each part of our yard we convert in order to help the drought. We are only allowed to water our grass on certain days and only during certain hours or else we face fines from the city.

Meanwhile, fake Italy continues to look so pretty. Go figure.
posted by monique at 2:11 PM on December 23, 2003


I kind of agree with Carter... the piece drips with contempt for these people, but are they really so different from the downtown loft-dweller who plunks down $3m to live in a white box surrounded by art he only pretends to understand?
posted by cell divide at 3:18 PM on December 23, 2003


are they really so different from the downtown loft-dweller who plunks down $3m to live in a white box surrounded by art he only pretends to understand?

In terms of size of environmental footprint? Yes. Yes, they're very different. And much much much worse. Leaving aside questions of aesthetics - in my experience Vegas has its own unique hyper-synthetic charms - Vegas is a staggeringly grandiose monument to the wholesale waste of natural resources. Never mind the four kitchens, never even mind the fake lake - people should've been appalled the moment someone first suggested building a golf course in the middle of the desert. (Which, I realize, happened well before Lake Las Vegas came along.)
posted by gompa at 6:00 PM on December 23, 2003


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