I wasn’t expecting to be able to write a Red Corner post while in Las Vegas this weekend, but one evening while wandering through the Mandalay Bay Casino I came across Lenin himself-or at least I thought it was him.
A massive statue standing outside a bar named Red Square had all the characteristics of a Soviet-era Lenin statue except it was missing its head (which I later found out was stored inside the bar’s walk-in freezer).
Red Square is a vodka lover’s paradise. I stay away from the evil swill myself, having had too many bad experiences with Russia’s national drink while in the motherland, yet it was still fun to pop into the swanky commie-themed bar and gaze at the enormous selection of vodka, impressive array of caviar, and random menu items such as Siberian nachos.
Incidentally, unlike so much in Vegas, the Lenin statue standing outside the bar is not a fake; it was imported from the former Soviet Union shortly after the fall of communism. The bar’s owners, however, received complaints that the statue glorified Lenin and so they removed its head and splattered the statue with fake bird droppings – as if placing a statue of capitalism’s greatest enemy in an American casino wasn’t insulting enough.