Nau speak: Vegas: People of the night

As the illumination of the sun wanes and fades away into the dimly lit blinking of neon tubes, the freaks, geeks, and weirdos come out to play, crowding the boulevard and streets in a staggering array of shapes, sizes, and styles in various stages of dress and inebriation. Well, to really be fair, night time is primetime when almost everyone in Vegas comes out to play, at least during the summer when the unrelenting sunshine is more of a curse than a blessing, baking all the pleasure out of the daylight hours. Like most things in life, though, the heat is only a transient discomfort, loosening it's grip and allowing a cooler, more reasonable temperature to settle into the shadows of the valley at night. Take advantage of the drop in temperature and hit the pavement, like all the rest of us strange people here, and enjoy the splashy display of humanity.

After all, there are few places quite like Las Vegas in terms of the sheer diversity of human beings it brings together in the name of making poor decisions for fun. Practically any language spoken in the world could almost certainly be found being spoken by someone, somewhere, here in the valley. People are constantly coming and going, a near ceaseless flood of potential customers and friends, depending on your approach and goals. While there are invariably tourist-friendly locations to be found the whole world over, few revels in the sheer excess and hedonism that Vegas has to offer, with copious quantities of alcohol flowing through the veins of most visitors to liven up the proceedings. Naturally, there's plenty of drama unfolding at almost any given time, and ample cops profligating around the periphery to try to account for any issues that arise... Suffice to say, after what happened at Mandalay Bay last year the city is taking as many precautions as they realistically can. #VegasStrong and all that. And there's something unifying in weathering the storms, being among the few to remain steadfast and standing against torrents of short-term visitors, weekenders, transients. When you're wandering the street with the rest, it's hard to tell which is which, and in the end, does it matter? We're all just visitors to this planet for a short stint, anyway.