I’d like to write a little more about my experience viewing the Stardust implosion. Before I get to that, check out some videos of the implosion (thx, alina) – as I mentioned before, my video did not come out because they turned off the lights right before the building went down. Evidently, I’m not the only one annoyed about that.

On Monday night, I had almost forgot about the implosion, but at 8pm or so I got a comment encouraging me to go (thx, slater). I remembered my regret after missing the Boardwalk implosion last year, so I resolved to not miss the Stardust’s. But I was concerned about finding a good spot to view the event – the Stardust is right on the Strip, and I didn’t want to deal with parking my car, navigating crowds and construction fences, and potentially not finding a good spot.

My first thought was that I should find a nearby parking garage with an open roof. I looked at a Google map for reference:

The Circus Circus casino would clearly be the best bet, but I was concerned that it was so close that they would shut down the open parking area. (I was wrong – the photographer in the link above was there.) Still, I thought my best bet was to find a spot behind the casino, off the Strip, where tourists would be less of a problem. Checking out Google, there was an obvious area behind the train tracks running nearly parallel to the Strip. I wasn’t sure if I would find a good spot to hang out, but the view would be unblocked.

At 12:30am, we headed up in that direction. After navigating to my chosen street, I saw a car pull into a big parking lot. There was a bar there, but behind that, right next to the tracks, there was a large and empty lot. As soon as we pulled in, it was obvious that this was the perfect place. Not only did we have a clear view of the Stardust, but we could just sit in our parked car and wait for the moment. The picture below shows where we were, indicated by the red rectangle:

This is what we saw:

We waited there for about 90 minutes. During that time, a total of around 30 vehicles, mostly Nevada plates and including some off-duty cab drivers, showed up for the implosion. All we could see were some lights swirling around the building creating some odd psychedelic impressions, unaware of the party taking place on the other side.

At about 2:15am, two large fireworks were set off near the building. They seemed official, and our guess was that it was a 10 minute warning, which would correspond to the 2:30am time I had been hearing through the rumor mill. About ten minutes later, I saw large streams of water shooting into the air towards the Stardust. Flea told me that it was some sort of dust containment system.

A few minutes later, they began the fireworks show. I wasn’t expecting such a flashy show, but it was actually an entertaining set of fireworks that lasted several minutes. At the time, I was unaware of the small private party taking place on the other side of the building. After the last firework was set off, the various floors of the building started flashing. I thought this was a visual effect of the explosives, but I later learned we were merely seeing the rear lighting of the numeral countdown that was being displayed on the building’s front end. (See the videos I linked to above.) It just served to confuse us.

Then the building went entirely dark. A few short seconds, and then an extremely loud boom overtook us. The 32-story Stardust imploded, all of it collapsing straight down, except for one edge, which tipped over on top of the rest of the building. A huge cloud of dust spread to the north, missing us entirely. The whole time my jaw was agape – it was an awesome sight: a historical landmark obliterated in one fell swoop. (Not including the months of preparation time that preceded the implosion, and the weeks of cleanup to follow.)

Yesterday was a groggy day, but I can now say that my time in Las Vegas included an implosion. And it was worth it: