The trip to Vegas starts off with some semblance of a budget. Noticing the low balance in our checking accounts and the high balance on our credit cards, we take careful measures to justify the trip to the strip. Sure, Vegas can be expensive, but if we are careful enough, we can make this an economically friendly vacation. To start with, we’ll drive, hit up a liquor store when we get there at 9PM and have a few drinks in our room before going out. We won’t gamble too much, except maybe the cheap gambling at Gold Coast, and we’ll replace expensive meals at Cut with fast food or something. I mean, lying by the pool costs nothing, which is what we’re doing all day anyhow, so how expensive could Vegas really be?
Right. One miserable 7-hour drive in Friday rush hour and “Vegas on a budget” becomes “It’s midnight, I’m starving and whatever restaurant we go to better serve cocktails and steak. Whatever it costs I’m sure we’ll make it up on the no limit poker tables.”
Vegas isn’t about smart economic decisions, anyway. Vegas is about taking all things shiny, tacky and trashy, overcharging for them, and packaging it with the promise that anything you do wrong within the city limits doesn’t count in the real world, so you’re paying for socially acceptable Hedonism. Bring it.
Every Vegas group has one gambling quasi-expert, usually the one who organizes the trip, and generally somebody who should be armed with at least a GA hotline number for when they are considering ante-ing up the car on a game of Black Jack. This person usually wanders off shortly after checking into the hotel, and no one really sees them until all the money is gone. The rest of the group has no idea what they are doing, and therefore tends to irritate all others at the craps table, roulette wheel, and really anything other than the vacuum of the slot machines. Casinos are for our grandparents anyway.
The days in Vegas are all about poolside cocktails and playing my favorite Vegas drinking game, I spy a cliché. It’s fairly easy and extremely effective: every time someone sees, hears or smells a Vegas cliché (and yes, the smell of Axe body spray counts), everybody drinks. You’ll be tipped over on the passing “What happens in Vegas,” comments alone, and after a day of gold bikinis, cougars on the prowl, parades of bachelorette parties and, of course, weekend wedding band removal, it will be a miracle if you can recover in time to go out that night.
Las Vegas: home of miracles and inexplicable recoveries. After a short group nap in the standard hotel room shared between a couple friends and the inevitable random acquaintances (“I know we don’t know each other too well, but can you be big spoon?”), it’s time to hit the Vegas night life.
Scratch that: it’s time to wait in line where all the bridges and all the tunnels in the US converge: the wrong side of the Vegas velvet rope. Never fear, being the resourceful and deceptive assistants we are, we’ve used the skills carefully honed getting our bosses a night-of 8:00 pm reservation at Osteria Mozza in 2007 to get ourselves the VIP fast track at every club that has ever hosted a birthday party for Kristen Cavallari. Sure, no one knows who we are in Vegas, but they also don’t know who we’re not, specifically really important agents who’s celebrity clients might be interested in stopping by the club next week, but not until we check it out tonight first. Though it might result in months of annoying follow up phone calls from club promoters, dropping our title-less business cards is oddly more effective than slipping the bouncer a hundy.
Once in the club, it becomes apparent that strobe lights and stripper poles still are, and probably always will be, the only décor accepted in Vegas, minus the occasional silver confetti shower. It’s cheesy and pretty class-less all around, but so are we in Vegas, so let’s dance as our glittery numbers catch the strobe light at just the right moment to flash the bat signal to..well, whoever really, so we can make out until the sun rises over the strip. Well hello, stranger, that cologne smells like a Vegas cliché to me, so let me come up for air just long enough to finish my overpriced Kettle Red Bull and then I’m all yours until the breakfast buffet opens.
Where: Las Vegas, NV
Cost: How bad is your gambling/drinking problem?
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