“I heard for years from other Elvises who lived here that there was no work,” McArthur told me. In 2008, McArthur began visiting Las Vegas to attend look-alike conventions. Underneath, his scraggly brown hair was soaked. When the couples were gone, he ripped off his black wig. McArthur was done for the day and needed to get home to interview a potential cat-sitter. At his request, the men told their wives, while lassoing their right arms suggestively, “I’ll always be your hunka hunka burning love.” The women chanted, “I’ll never step on your blue-suède shoes.”Īfter he sang a truncated a-cappella rendition of “Love Me Tender,” and a Little Chapel of Hearts employee took a flurry of photos with a cell phone, the ceremony ended. In a suave baritone voice, he sped through his Elvis-themed script. They won eight hundred and seventy-five dollars.ĭespite the relative coolness of the evening, McArthur was still hot. Before the vow-renewal ceremony, they played roulette at the Aria Resort and Casino and bet on the number twenty-eight, which they hit on the third spin. 28 Years Later,” to commemorate the number of years since their weddings, which were six months apart. They wore matching outfits: the men in light-teal Hawaiian shirts and white shorts the sisters in white summer dresses and sashes reading “I Still Do . . . The sisters, Barbara Reno and Lynne Pellecchia, arrived in a limo with their husbands, Thomas and Giuseppe. Miraculously, despite the previous week’s tempestuous and extreme weather (a hundred and eight degrees one day, severe monsoon flooding the next), the couples who’d arranged to have their joint vow renewals at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign lucked out: it was only eighty-five degrees that evening. At one chapel, whose break room is stuffy, he brings his own standup fan. He knows which wedding chapels have the best air-conditioning. ![]() For McArthur, who wears a tight-fitting polyester suit and an oppressive wig, even working inside chapels can be a drag during the height of the summer. A singer said that the city’s heat gives her a rough, dry cough in the beginning of the summer, and she keeps two humidifiers running in her apartment on a regular basis. told me that he always brings backup thumb drives of music files in case his computer system overheats and the signal chops up. People wear gloves to hold steering wheels, try to remain indoors, and avoid touching metal benches and doorknobs.įor performers, who are at the heart of Las Vegas’s tourist-based economy, the heat shapes their work in subtle, uncomfortable ways. The heat causes spikes in emergency-room visits and temperature-related fatalities, and it also permeates the quotidian. McArthur, who is fifty-five, has lived in Las Vegas only for a year and a half, but during that time he has worked as an Elvis impersonator through the wettest monsoon in decades, a rare tropical storm, and the city’s hottest month ever-July, 2023. ![]() Kent Ripley, another Elvis impersonator posing for photos in the parking lot, told me that he’d lost five pounds in the heat. ![]() During July’s record-breaking heat wave, when temperatures in Las Vegas reached a hundred and sixteen degrees, McArthur officiated a wedding on an outdoor terrace-and was relieved when it lasted only a few minutes. The sun was lowering, and it was warm out but not terrible. He circled twice to find a parking spot and, in the privacy of his Jeep Cherokee, sprayed Febreze over his bejewelled, white full-body suit, which he’d affixed with underarm sweat pads and had been wearing since 9:45 A.M., for his first of eleven ceremonies that day. on Labor Day, McArthur drove to the sign to renew vows for two Staten Island couples: two sisters and their husbands. Each year, hundreds of couples tie the knot at the sign.Īt 7 P.M. “It’s, like, the least romantic place,” Bob McArthur, an Elvis Presley impersonator who officiates weddings there, said. During the day, there is no shade in the summer, Las Vegas temperatures regularly top a hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit. It is a loud and chaotic spot: cars rush by on both sides of the sign, planes rev their engines at the nearby Harry Reid International Airport runway, and selfie-stick-toting tourists line up, next to venders hawking bracelets and aguas frescas, to take photos. The fluorescent “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign juts out from a small turf lawn in the middle of the road at the southern edge of the Strip.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |