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When I was living in Nashville and planning my move to Las Vegas, I ordered a Las Vegas apartment guide so I could find a place to live. I remember sitting at my desk at the hobby shop and flipping through the glossy pages, in awe of the beautiful blue skies often featured in the ads. Yes, I looked at the pictures of the buildings and floor plans, the pools and clubhouses, but what really turned me on was the ever-present blue Las Vegas sky.
Were these ads edited to look better? Certainly the pictures of the apartment interiors were taken with a wide-angle lens to make the rooms look larger, but did they also make the skies more blue? Did they crank-up the saturation levels? Fortunately and thankfully, I don't think they did.
The only thing I miss from my days as a graveyard-shift Las Vegas bartender is the dawn—the moment the sun breaks over the horizon, and the dark regresses into long shadows. Every morning I would step outside the restaurant and greet the day, more often looking West rather than the East because the sunlight would creep down the rocky surface of the Spring Mountains, exposing their brilliant colours on a Las Vegas sky-blue canvas.
It wasn't until I read The Way You Wear Your Hat—Frank Sinatra and The Lost Art of Livin' by Bill Zehme that I discovered there was a name for that time of morning, and that Frank Sinatra had a thing for the crack of dawn too:
“He would break more dawns than most mortals. Each one was his triumph, the death of each night. He had survived yet another one. ‘He feels reborn in the morning light,’ his daughter Tina once attested. When horizons brightened, he exulted over the spoils of war. ‘Look at the colors!’ he would say, pointing bleary comrades toward thousands of sunrises. ‘What kind of blue would you call that?’ He called the tint of sky that offered him most peace Five O’Clock Vegas Blue. ‘You have to see it to know it,’ he dared disbelievers. Steve Lawrence, who saw his share of Vegas Blue, says, ‘I’ve told him he’s probably the last of the Italian vampires.’"
It's been a while since I've seen Five O'Clock Vegas Blue. I actually think it'll become a name of a paint colour offered by Home Depot sometime in the future, but if you ask me, Vegas Blue can't be replicated—like Sinatra said, you have to see it to know it.
One of these days I need to try and wake-up while it's still dark and get Fergus the Trek out on the road, just to see that Vegas Blue. Not being a morning person though, I'd be better-off staying awake all night, rather than trying to get myself out of bed that early.
I think Frank would whole-heartedly agree with my swell plan.
FiN.
