This last weekend, I met up with some friends and friends of friends in Las Vegas to celebrate a buddy's 35th birthday and 5-year anniversary of his cancer remission. Two notable and worthy events for sure. This trip to Vegas took on a slightly different meaning as the group was made up of guys who are/were married and/or have kids, (with one notable exception, but we'll get to that later). In the past, trips to Vegas, and Reno for that matter, usually revolved around a rugby match, a bachelor party, and 6-7 guys crashed on the floor of some lower scale hotel. Not this time.
For some reason, we ended up staying at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay, having a host at Tryst (still not exactly sure where that is), and several rides in school buses that have been transformed into limos.
The trip definitely provided an different perspective on what Vegas has become. The following are some impressions from the trip, in roughly chronological order.
1- Bachelorette parties are train-wrecks waiting to happen. While waiting for my plane to board in the airport bar, 8 women walked in the bar, trying to strut what they once had to strut some years ago. I figured they had to be on the same plane, based on the presence of more than one feather boa. As fortune would have it, they sat right behind me on the plane. (I knew I should have paid the extra $39 for the seat with more legroom) It was pretty clear that the more liquored up these ladies became, the less they actually liked one another. That party was about 4 rounds away from a meltdown, and it was only 7pm. Should make for some interesting chatter at the reception.
2- Welcome to Vegas, but if you want to sit down anywhere, it's going to cost you. Saturday morning I decided that my hangover was going to require more blood circulation than sitting on the couch was going to provide. So I took a walk down the strip toward the north end where the old standards of Circus Circus, The Stardust, and Westward Ho still reside. After walking in and out of a few casinos, it struck me that there is no place to sit in the whole town. Unless you are at a gaming table, a slot machine, a bar, or a restaurant, or in a cab/limo, there is not a chair to be found. Sitting requires the exchange of funds. Granted, you can go to the sports book and hang out without being harassed, but that's about it.
3- When did LA move to Vegas? On Friday night we went to some place called Tryst. It is basically the 8th sign of the apocalypse. Because my friend has some loose association with a woman who either is or was a showgirl, we were hooked up with a "host" who got us VIP treatment which included "table service". Because we were "VIPs" we got a couple of little tables and a couch that we could call our own for a couple of hours. All we had to do for this service was drop $500 apiece on two bottles of vodka. There were mixers too, but I'm not entirely clear if they were included or cost extra. I'm always one to go to a human circus, and this was certainly one of them. We must have looked important, because several people walked by with that inquisitive, "who are these high rollers?" look. These tables are also quite the pick-up tool, every girl that my single buddies went to talk to was miraculously interested in having a conversation. Even when they decided to dispose of lines and went straight to pelting the young ladies with ice.
4- The model has definitely changed, Vegas has become it's own destination. Food, drinks, and rooms used to be afterthoughts. The hotels used to seem genuinely interested in getting you fueled up and on your way, so that you could spend more time at the tables. The model these days is much more focused on getting you to drop coin at every corner, and if you get to the tables, then that's ok too. The first glimpse of this change in model was the $6 bottle of Budweiser. The second look was the journey to the pool. Any pool with 3800 lounge chairs, a wave pool, a concrete river, a kiddie pool, its own food court, and 50-60 cabanas for rent at a thousand dollars a day is a business in and of itself. They didn't even have a blackjack table. Doesn't anyone gamble anymore?
5- Who would want to live in Vegas? Apparently, people want to get their own pad in this oasis in the desert. The owners of the Mandalay, Excalibur, Monte Calro, Luxor conglomerate are building residential towers. After talking to the real estate representative in the lobby of THE Hotel, 500 sq. ft. studio condominiums are going for ~$650K. 3200 sq. ft. penthouses can be had for anywhere between $4.5M and $10M. Maintenance fees are anywhere from a buck to a buck-and-a-half per foot. Yowsers.
Some things, however, have not changed:
1- Vegas is still really ugly in the daytime. It's like the morning after at a frat party.
2- It's still flippin' hot in the desert.
3- Never gamble with a bunch of guys who don't gamble. Nothing like a new guy who utters "seven" 8 or 9 times in a row as the shooter is getting ready for the next toss.
4- 48 hours is as much time as anyone should ever spend in Vegas. After this last sojourn, I'm looking at revising that rule to 36 hours.
5- If you want to gamble, go downtown. The strip has the nicer hotels and all, but they also come with a ton of overhead. If one place is not working for you, it's a much easier leap to go to another casino downtown.
Tight lines,
Dave
