How Las Vegas Became the Weirdest, Wildest City in America

On hot, cloudy nights, the artist and writer Brent Holmes will sometimes stand in the backyard of his house, near Las Vegas’s Chinatown, and look to the east. Behind a screen of clouds, he’ll see flashes of light and the desert -dweller in him will feel instinctive relief: A thunderstorm is on its way, something to cool off the intense, lingering heat of the day. Holmes will take a deep inhale but then frown. No smell of an impending storm. And then it will hit him:

“Oh. No. It’s the fucking Sphere.”