In an interview on Las Vegas

Let’s talk about today’s Las Vegas as captured by Beth Raymer in her 2010 memoir, Lay the Favorite. What is it about?

It’s about a young girl who moves out here with her boyfriend. Then they break up and she’s in need of work and unsure what to do, and she comes across a job opportunity as an assistant to a sports bettor. It’s about her experiences in this male dominated sports betting world.

Is sports betting an important part of the overall gambling industry in Nevada? I know it’s one of the few American states where sports betting is legal.

It’s not considered one of the main types of gambling out here. A lot of money is made off baccarat, roulette, slots, craps, and blackjack. A sports book is a side attraction for tourists. The books do pretty well but not nearly as well as the slots and table games.

Raymer tells such a crackerjack of a story that her memoir has already been turned into a film by Stephen Frears. What recommends the written account over waiting to see the story in theatres?

You’re getting a female take on a male-dominated world. Raymer writes with a great sense of humour – there are tons of memorable one-liners.

Your two books about Vegas take readers far from the glitz of the Strip into the storm drains and the trailer parks where the underclass lives. Tell us about this side of Las Vegas that few visitors see.

I got bored with the Strip casinos and the strip malls out here pretty quickly and started working for Las Vegas City Life, where part of the mission was to find stories that weren’t covered by the mainstream media. Part of the challenge of being a writer out here is that the city is so overexposed. You have to really try to find a subject that hasn’t been covered before.

In the spring of 2002 I read about a murderer who had used the extensive underground flood channels – there are around 200 miles of them – beneath the city to evade the police. That got me really curious about what this guy may have experienced down in the tunnels. I took a flashlight, a tape recorder and an expandable baton for self-defence and explored the storm drains beneath the city.

When I first came up with the idea to explore them I thought maybe I would find some debris and graffiti. What I found was hundreds of men and women, from teenagers to senior citizens, living and hanging out in these underground flood channels. That was not common knowledge at the time.

My adventures down there are the basis of my first book, Beneath the Neon. The people I encountered shared their stories. Much of the history of Vegas is told by the “winners” – casino CEOs and real estate moguls. I wanted to get the perspective of the “losers” – people who moved here for that American dream that Thompson talked about and ended up addicted and living beneath the hotel-casinos that lured them to Las Vegas in the first place.

I know the bursting of the housing bubble and the financial crisis of 2008 and recession was particularly damaging to Las Vegas. How is the city adjusting to the challenges of the 21st century?

That’s the big question. I have pessimistic friends who say Nevada has a history of ghost towns – mining towns where all the minerals ran out and companies pulled up stakes and left. They say Vegas could be a ghost town in 20, 30, 40 years. Others are much more optimistic. They say things will be back to normal within the next five or six years. I don’t think the city will ever again experience the sort of boom it underwent in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But I think there will be more controlled growth.

You might be pulling up stakes yourself soon.

Like a lot of people, I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with Las Vegas. I like working here and writing here but I don’t always like living here so I may be leaving. It’s probably time. Like a lot of people, I came out here assuming I’d stay a year or two and move on. That was in 1997, back when you could work your way up pretty quickly at a newspaper if you were good and reliable. I think Vegas is still a city of opportunity and second chances – maybe just not as much as it was before.