Vegas to the 5th

"Of course sinful places never look their best in the daylight. I remember thinking that Las Vegas looked rather endearingly pathetic when viewed over a cup of coffee and a doughnut. All that noise and electric energy that is loosed at dusk vanishes with the desert sun and everything suddenly seems as thin and one-dimensional as a film set."
- Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There

I have watched the sun come up over the Strip the past two days. Bill Bryson nailed it. At 5:00 AM, looking out the window from the 29th floor at the Cosmopolitan onto the Bellagio Fountains, a line-up of the best hotels in the city - Caesar's, The Venetian, Palazzo, Wynn and Encore, and then onto the mountains in the distance, Las Vegas is illuminated, brilliant, rich, textured, and alive. At 6:30 AM, it is entirely different - like the endless, flat film set that Bryson describes.

What he didn't capture in his dead-on description of Vegas' dichotomy, is how terribly boring the city is, not only during the daytime, but in the evening and into the wee hours of the morning, after you've been here five times in a year - how predictable, scripted, and lackluster it is when you've experienced it time and time (and time and time and time again.)

• The confident Crew-enhanced, Aqua di Gio saturated guys ogling the biggest boobs at the bar are five times skeezier.
• The second hand smoke is staler, stuffier, and smellier than you can possibly imagine.
• The life progression of a woman from hot, hopeful hostess with a platinum bob, to disappointed cocktail server with bags under her eyes, to disgruntled, over-the-hill, cigarette sales lady in the too-tight dress, to homeless person looking for a down payment on her next bottle of moonshine seems transparently apparent.
• The crowds and their lack of spatial awareness are particularly stupefying.
• The blinking lights and siren-like sounds of the casino floor penetrate five times deeper into your already established headache from your desert-induced dehydration.
• The food, though good, doesn't taste nearly as sumptuous as it should because the service staff at just about every celebrity chef-owned restaurant in town is snootier than the next.
• The exponential growth of reflective surfaces and mirrors in the city make it and its visitors vainer than ever.
• And the lines - for the buffet, the newest show, the hot Club du jour, the roller coaster, the chance to cross the street, or the privilege to stare at one of the many seedy pole dancers are five times more thoughtless. (Seriously, your wife is ten million times more attractive than the cracked-out import from overseas whose only move is bending over, jiggling, and showing off her fake boobs that the casino floor manager donated to her in exchange for an exotically wild night.)   

How do I know all of this? Because I have literally taken off from Chicago and touched down at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas FIVE times this year.That is three, four and five times too many. I'm here for a marketing conference, and although content-wise, it's a good one, I wonder why conference coordinators don't realize that Vegas is no longer the choice locale.We've all been here before!


On the plane ride, I was sitting next to a Vegas first-timer. Like the stinker I can be, and as the proud owner of the right to open and close the shutter whenever I saw fit, I shut it so I could read without the interference of blinding sunlight. Around the Rockies, the girl started leaning over me, halfway into my seat, totally disregarding my spatial boundaries to look through the crevice that I had left open. Seriously, it's just a bunch of mountains, girl.

But after considering my first time, back in 2004, right after graduating from college, and all the excitement and fun that went with it, I thought better of my decision and granted her a full view. She didn't stop staring until we landed, and although annoying, I gained a little bit of her perspective.

I saw her rush off the plane and into a cab so she could meet up with her best friends; the itinerary for the night starting with a primping party in the room; their strut four-abreast down the strip to Caesar's for drinks, a light dinner, and dancing; the hope that the guy she had baited and captured at the VIP table could against all odds be Prince Charming; the realization after he called her "babe" that the past three hours were nice, but not worthy of her full time; and the hangover nursed with laughter about last night's antics with her girls.

That's the Vegas that I loved. But as I sit here missing Prince Charming at home in Naperville this evening, I know I'm no longer in the market for those kind of nights.

The lights are back on all along the Strip and the magic that Bryson describes is back. And I hope tonight is just that, magical, for the girl that sat next to me on the plane and for all the other first or second timers out there.On my last night of 2011 and perhaps of this entire decade in Las Vegas, I'll be toasting 702, the Ellis Girls, TnT, my wedding party, and all the conference attendees past that have made this city so much fun.

Viva Las Vegas!
Lo.