Post-9/11 collection from Ground Zero West kept safe in the least Las Vegas spot: a library

LAS VEGAS – Our first lesson, at our first stop, is solid and true:

New York-New York isn’t New York.

But 25 years ago this month, when terrorists forced passenger jets to fly into the Twin Towers, the New York-New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas was Ground Zero West.

True, the place on the Strip with the faux Statue of Liberty and the fake Ellis Island and the desert version of the New York building that has a Civil War memorial (including a statue of a soldier getting what has to be one of the most powerful tans in the history of tanning) didn’t have much in the way of death and destruction, thank God.

But sadness? Yes, it had that.

Within hours of the attacks, a full-on parade of sad people – gamblers, card dealers, students, kids, dancers, guys dressed as cartoons, more dancers, tourists, locals – began showing up at the fake New York-New York to express real solidarity with the real people of real New York who had really died.

Solidarity, in this case, meant stuff. Lots of it. Flowers, sure, but c’mon, people were sadder than that; they brought many, many things besides flowers. Poems. Baby clothes. Gambling equipment. A plastic foot. T-shirts; thousands and thousands of T-shirts.

In a city where reality can be blurry and magic acts are advertised on cabs, the huge pile of seemingly pointless stuff in front of the fake Lady Liberty was one of the most real things around.

These days, all that stuff is in 491 boxes kept in the special collections room at the Lied Library at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

As curator David Schwartz explained, while handling some baby toys and a rosary, “All of these things have meaning to somebody…For some, the meaning is more obvious than others.”