It’s 3am. I’m in Las Vegas. I am awake. And so is everybody else.
It’s been 20 years since I was last in Las Vegas and needless to say a lot has changed. For one, I can now enjoy the city how it is intended to be enjoyed. Twenty years ago I was restricted to the pool and wandering aimlessly about hoping to find a quarter or two on the floor. After all it is the Entertainment Capital of the World – just so long as you are an adult. From the amount of people wandering the Vegas Strip and the number of new casinos under construction, I am happy to report that economic downturn or not, Vegas is doing just fine.
One thing that hasn’t seemed to change are the waitresses. I’m sure I remember that my last visit was a 16year old male’s dream – cleavage, and short skirts on young beautiful girls parading around with drinks trays and a wink and smile. I have a feeling that sadly these waitresses from 20years ago are still here. There is still cleavage and short skirts, but something feels a bit grim when I am being offered a drink from someone of my Mum’s age. I was expecting to have one of them spit on a tissue and rub a grubby mark off my cheek before telling me to go easy on those machines young man and “isn’t it well past your bedtime?”
Vegas is all about girls and gambling and alcohol. As soon as you step off the plane you are greeted with the sound of slot machines inside the terminal. Or if you drive like I did, then as soon as you cross the state line you are met with your first casino – rising out of the desert like a giant dollar sign – offering you the temptation of amassing a small fortune that rarely any casino will actually allow. The Vegas strip itself is not exactly a clean place. The roads are littered with discarded flyers for every strip club imaginable – at night you can’t walk 10 feet without someone thrusting a card at you with a naked woman on it. Newspaper vending machines are filled with Escort magazines, and people take full advantage of the laws that allow you walk down the street drinking alcohol by downing their 99c margaritas. Drinking vessels come in all shapes and sizes – my favourite was the one that looked like a full size guitar. You hang it around your neck, fill it up with your beverage and sip it through a straw sticking out the top. As you can imagine this particular item was favoured by the young males. All night as I walked along the strip I kept thinking I was about to mugged by the Jonas Brothers.
That’s not all you need to get used to. For one thing smoking is permitted in all areas. Now I know it wasn’t that long ago that the rest of the world was in the same boat, but it suddenly now feels incredibly strange to have someone puffing away right next to you in a bar. There are no age restrictions, either, to be on the casino floor. Obviously to gamble you need to be 21 but it’s not uncommon to see kids inside the casino enjoying the smoky adult environment. It could be worse I guess. If there was an age restriction then parents would be forced to leave their kids locked in their rooms. Or their cars, if you’re in New Zealand.
But don’t think you can get away with coming to Vegas and not gambling. Everything is geared towards getting your hard earned cash one way or another. The amount of ‘offers’ and ‘redemptions’ is astonishing – whether to get you impaired enough to gamble everything away with $2 beer nights and 2for1 cocktail deals, or with coupon books and loyalty cards with offers of free slots or comping your room if you play a $25 dollar slot game for 4 hours. $25 slots! You do the math. Every time you hit the button you risk $25. For 4 hours. Considering that rooms are as cheap as $22 a night, a free night is not much of a draw card. Make no mistake – the business here is gambling and casinos will do whatever it takes to get inside with clever gimmicks or just plain lavishness. The great thing is that you can enter any casino you like and even park for free in their garage. So whether you are in Vegas to gamble or not – you can still start at one end of the strip and walk through every casino like you own the place.
Now I worked at a casino in Auckland for 6 years, where the dress code allows you to wear thongs (jandals, flip flops) but not frayed jeans. Figure that one out. But here in Vegas you can casually sit down at a gaming machine in the classy Bellagio wearing stubbies and a footie jersey. I did notice however that, in all these hotels, to get from reception to your room requires a walk across the casino floor with bags in hand. That’s what they want. For you to have to be constantly passing the flashing and beeping machines; it’s all designed to lure you into taking a seat and playing a while. In my hotel there are no mini bars in the rooms. Because the more time you spend in your room, the less time you are down on the casino floor. You will not see clocks and you hardly ever see windows – nothing to give away what time of day, so you have no reference point for how long you have been sitting at your machine. Supposedly oxygen is pumped through the air conditioning to keep you from getting sleepy. Every bar has machines built into the bar counter top to tempt you further while you wait to be served. In New York New York you can even get a massage whilst at your machine – and just quietly it was awesome.
Even the weather seems perfect for the casinos. This week every day has been around the 39 degree Celsius mark. I found myself lingering about inside, going from one casino to another through their connecting promenades so I didn’t have to feel the slap of a 40 degree day with a wind chill factor of plus 83. Personally it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if all the casinos had got together and erected huge poles at the four corners of Vegas and stretched a massive piece of Glad Wrap over the entire city just to make it that little bit hotter, to keep you from ever wanting to go outside.
Last night I went out on the town and found myself wandering back to my hotel room at 3am. Knowing I would be sleeping late, and not wanting to be disturbed by an overzealous maid, I searched for a privacy tag to put on the door handle but to no avail. So I trudged down to reception to ask for one and began to make my way back. Now somewhere between reception and my room something went astray and at 6.30am I was still yet to make it back to my room having decided to throw a couple of bucks in the slot machines. Six beers and two shots of Jack Daniels later I stumbled back to find the ‘do not disturb’ sign had been lovingly hung on my door. It was nice to know that had I actually been in my room I would have indeed not been disturbed – unfortunately I was downstairs making a small monetary sacrifice to the Gambling Gods. Welcome to Vegas.
The house always wins.
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Image credits
Vegas sign from certin.com
Paris, Las Vegas from http2007 on Flickr
