Vanity Fair: Dubai on Empty

[marmar]

Dubai on Empty
Its skyline erupting from the desert in just two decades, Dubai is a cautionary tale about what money can’t buy: a culture of its own. After gorging on the Viagra of easy credit, the emirate has the world’s tallest building, the world’s most expensive racetrack, and a financial crisis to match. From the Western mercenaries and Asian drones who maintain the gaudy show to 100-odd families who are impervious to any economic reality, A. A. Gill discovers that no one truly belongs in Dubai, where the legacy of oil has made everything worthless.

By A. A. Gill


The only way to make sense of Dubai is to never forget that it isn’t real. It’s a fable, a fairy tale, like The Arabian Nights. More correctly, it’s a cautionary tale. Dubai is the story of the three wishes, where, as every kid knows, with the third wish you demand three more wishes. And as every genie knows, more wishes lead to more greed, more misery, more bad credit, and much, much, much more bad taste. Dubai is Las Vegas without the showgirls, the gambling, or Elvis. Dubai is a financial Disneyland without the fun. It’s a holiday resort with the worst climate in the world. It boils. It’s humid. And the constant wind is full of sand. The first thing you see when you arrive is the airport, with its echoing marble halls. It’s big enough to be the hub of a continent. Dubai suffers from gigantism—a national inferiority complex that has to make everything bigger and biggest. This includes their financial crisis.

Outside, in the sodden heat, you pass hundreds and hundreds of regimented palm trees and you wonder who waters them and what with. The skyline, in the dusty haze, looks like the cover of a dystopian science-fiction novella. Clusters of skyscrapers lurch out at the gray desert accompanied by their moribund cranes, propped up with scaffolding, swagged in plastic sheeting. Dubai thought it was going to grow up to be the Arab Singapore—a commercial, banking, and insurance service port on the Gulf with hospitality and footballers’ time-shares, an oasis of R&R for the less well endowed. But it hasn’t quite worked out. The vertical streets of offices are empty. A derelict skyscraper looks exactly the same as one that’s teeming with commerce. They huddle around the current tallest building in the world—a monument to small-nation penis envy. This pylon erected with the Viagra of credit is now a big, naked exclamation of Dubai’s fiscal embarrassment. It was going to be called Burj Dubai, but as Dubai was unable to make their payments, they were forced to go to their Gulf neighbor, head towel in hand, to get a loan. So now it’s called Burj Khalifa, after Abu Dhabi’s ruler, who coughed up $10 billion to its over-extended neighbor.

Dubai has been built very fast. The plan was money. The architect was money. The designer was money and the builder was money. And if you ever wondered what money would look like if it were left to its own devices, it’s Dubai. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/dubai-201104?currentPage=all

[clyrc]

1. I can't help but think this article isn't completely fair

It trashes just about everyone in the country I live in- including, of course, me and my family and my friends. I won't say that some of it isn't accurate, but some of it just seems mean spirited. I live with my husband and kids, in a neighborhood full of people from all over the world, and I wouldn't call any of these people stupid mercenaries. I've met some amazing people here, but you wouldn't expect that if you had only read this article.

[sudopod]

2. The place is built on slave labor. It's an ecological disaster.

God forbid the one water treatment plant go down, it'll be worse than a zombie apocalypse.

[FSogol]

3. +1. Ever seen the photos of worker cleaning shit and TP off the beach there?

Not a vacation paradise in my book.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. There are laws and sanctions in Dubai making my kind of

person basically illegal. The stories of abuses are multiple. We are not even allowed to gather in Dubai. To each, as they say, their own. Mean spirited is putting people in prison for being who they are. That is how I see it.

[Blue_Tires]

5. stange how fast the worm has turned

five years ago it was the marvel of our era; the place that every business and investor wanted a piece of...the new exclusive conclave of the billionaire class for decades to come -- a place that would do nothing but rake in money for the forseeable future...

[Poll_Blind]

6. This piece should be read like Hunter S. Thompson's "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved"

It's a great piece but I was actually taken aback by what I considered the unnecessarily-offensive tone. But I kept reading. I'm not done with it yet but I think it's worth your time. However, I think it's going to rock a few back on their heels. It's very blunt. It's very judgmental. And its judgements are far, far from kind-hearted.

I started to detect a tone, a similar done, to many of the Hunter S. Thompson pieces I'd read. If you've read enough Thompson you know what I mean. Right now, it reads like a cross between "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" and anything he ever wrote about the Nixon administration. If you haven't read much Thompson, the piece is probably going to derail you at the phrase "head-towel in hand".

PB

[BB1]

8. Read it and liked it.

Although I never got round to reading Thompson, though. I actually had to laugh at that particular phrase.
It turned a bit nasty; friends of mine have worked there and had a great time. They all know it's temporary and well paying. They know what they're there for, so I wouldn't call them mercs stoopid.
Agree on all counts that's it's a decadent place. Still, we need it. To reflect on ;)

[qb]

7. Damn. I thought Dubai was built on oil wealth. Who knew they were just like

all of the wannabe-affluent Americans buying their toys on credit.

[Ninjaneer]

9. I had a layover in Dubai

a few years back. I remember going out, seeing some of the sites, and thinking these people are just looking for something to throw away their money on. Can't say I'm surprised.

[Blue_Tires]

10. kick

[thelordofhell]

11. It's Texas without the hats