The Much Improved State of Vegas' 9/11 Memorial

What a difference a few days and a blog post can make. Here's what Las Vegas' 9/11 Memorial at the corner of the Strip and Tropicana looked like on 9/8.


It was shameful, given the proximity to the anniversary of 9/11. New York-New York maintenance folks were responsible for managing it, a deed the property voluntarily took on when they created this monument in 2002. Artifacts -- T-shirts, messages, notes, etc. -- that were left at the base of our Statue of Liberty for months after the 9/11 attacks were collected and archived at UNLV. They are to be presented in these display cases regularly, rotated as needed.

But when I was there a couple days before 9/11, nine of the boxes were empty and most of the other items were so faded as to be unreadable.

Well, as of Thursday, look:


All filled, all new stuff!

I asked MGM Resorts why the monument had been allowed to fall into such disrepair in the first place. Yvette Monet, a corporate spokeswoman, answered:

At the time the photos were taken on Wednesday night, we were in the middle of our routine maintenance process where we replace plexiglass and the memento items, thus the empty cases. The cases get very high exposure to sunlight and so the items fade quickly, and we switch them out frequently. The lighting in the cases is currently being evaluated.

I guess I don't understand why they would remove some items if they didn't have others to replace them with. That seems inefficient. We're talking about a bunch of T-shirts, not some big, hard-to-carry items. Bring out the new stuff when you take the screwdriver to the boxes and remove the old ones, right? Also, I had been there on July 8 when those gay activists shut down the Strip with banners and I noticed several boxes empty then, too, although not nearly as many. So this is an on-going thing.

Anyhow, glad it's fixed. Let's hope they don't let it go again, even for a few days.