Viva Las Vegas

I make no pretenses. I know pretty much anyone reading this could tell that I am aware of Vegas’s most famous chronicler, if not an outright degenerate worshipper of the man. So yes, I made my stop at Circus Circus, and the Flamingo with reason. But I make no claims of taking this trip to discover the American Dream.

This is a journey into the Southwest, a place none of us had ever been before and knew quite what to expect from. But Snake-Eyes, Tumbleweed, Butterscotch, and me, Blitzen were more than ready to see what it was about.

When we land, Viva Las Vegas is piping in over the speakers before we’ve even taxiied to the gate. Judging by the canned music we hear all over the airport on our way to the rental car counter, early rock and roll is alive and well in Las Vegas.

I’m outside my hotel room and I’m looking at the New York skyline, but I’m in Las Vegas. But a confusing jumble of that familiar skyline. Consisting of only landmarks, all misplaced. And I don’t remember the roller coaster being there before. Plus the Statue of Liberty has moved uptown. It was inevitable, we all know. No one with that kind of class can persist so close to Staten Island.

All joking aside, you know every movie you’ve seen about Vegas, where you’ve shrugged and thought, no way it’s that garish, lurid, mindboggling, decadent and neon strange. I thought that too. Then I rode down the strip.

Here’s the best analogy I can come up with for it. It’s like if you showed a Martian a slew of technicolor movies and then you had them design Earth Capital based entirely on that. Slam the Eiffel Tower on top of a bastardized Louvre, after you’ve made them all out of movie-set grade bland construction materials. Pyramids? People had those right, and they make them out of glass. Throw one up over there. Earthlings drink beer and enjoy naked women right? So put up signs for beer that is cheap and naked women that you can find with the phone number provided. Humans enjoy circuses? Put up a huge clown.

Even analogies don't really do it though. Like a lot of scenery we caught sight of out West it has to be experienced in person to be fully processed.

The first night after that drive on the strip we stayed nested at the casino in our hotel which was "Featured in The Hangover." Took us some figuring to realize that meant the scene where they find the apartment of the stripper that one has accidentally married.

We learned a few important lessons that night. 1) Slots are almost fun if you understand how they work (something I never quite figured out in Atlantic City) and also most handy for the rest of our time in Vegas 2) With dollar drafts and dollar drinks you get what you paid for, and you paid for faintly flavored water that just might have the alcohol content of near beer if you're lucky.

But considering the time zone we're lagging in is three hours later than the one that the rest of Vegas is in, and that tomorrow is the day we plan to really crack this town, we have an early night. It's only 3 am when we hit the sheets.

A leisurely morning, a snack run for when we really gun out onto the road the next day, and we get to Las Vegas's New York, New York in the early afternoon, and stroll on past the Bellagio to Caesars Palace (it is called Caesars instead of Caesar's, because every guest should feel like a Caesar. Wow.)

But smack across the street is a bonafide landmark, The Flamingo. The Flamingo is one of the first casinos built on the Strip, and one of the first to put on classy airs instead of the Wild West themed joints on Fremont Street, the original gambling district of Las Vegas. It also began the decades-long tradition of mob money building up the Strip.

The Strip isn't technically in Las Vegas you know. That certainly helped its early years along, being in a jurisdiction gray area.

Bugsy Siegel and those he represented were flush with money the profitable sale of a downtown Vegas hotel, and after their buyout offer was turned down by the Rancho Las Vegas, one of the first on the Strip, they went in with Bill Wilkerson, a man trying and failing to build a luxury hotel in that area.

While the Flamingo was being built, the construction crews and suppliers bilked the inexperienced Bugsy for as much as they could, claiming post-wartime shortages. His investors assumed that meant he was skimming. After a disasterous first opening when the hotel section wasn't open, the hotel closed for months, then reopened to better returns. Wasn't enough to save Bugsy though, he got murdered in Beverly Hills in 1947. But the cocktail of luxury, crime and Hollywood glamour that the Flamingo offered attracted more people to the strip.

Viva Las Vegas and the original Ocean's 11 were filmed here. Hunter S. Thompson stayed here while crashing the District Attorney's conference on Drugs and writing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I sip a dollar margarita and watch an impersonator whose dubbed himself Big Elvis. He's big alright.

A stop on over to the Casino Royale. The low-rollers joint. $3 Blackjack. $3 Craps. $1 drafts and margaritas that actually contain a fair amount of alcohol. We have at least 3 if not 4 rounds. Butterscotch wins 30 dollars at Black Jack. I lose 20 at a little bit of everything...black jack...roulette, and the trip favorite Spin to Win.

And from there it is a walk over to Circus Circus, one of my most anticipated spots. While flipping through my bible for this location that morning, I happened across "The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich."

The rotating bar in featured in Fear and Loathing is roped off, but still spinning, so I settle for having to play the rotating penny slots instead of getting a drink at the rotating bar. There are indeed circus acts upstairs on the midway, we see contortionists and magic tricks upstairs.

In the arcade room, there is air hockey and we win the whoopie cushion that is to become a constant companion. 2nd one. First one breaks instantly so the clerk gives us another. I had the broken one in my handbag for the rest of the trip for some reason.

On to the landmark that's been staring down at us the whole time. The Stratosphere. When we get up to the top, LasVegas stretches out before before us. Not as far as the eye can see though. There is abrupt black. That's because, as is easy to forget in this land of easy water and transplanted palm trees that we're right in the middle of the mountainous desert.

Also offered is bungee jumps off of this. Pay a wad to see the Strip hurtle up at you at incredible speed. People about to jump off it look like they're about to piss themselves.

On to the Sahara for dollar shots and buds and to grab a bite at the cafe. Steal a few shotglasses before finding out their souvenirs. Hear the karaoke that's going on, and people are so damn good they just must be ringers to draw people in, inspire them to buy up more liquid courage to go on themselves, or just inspire them to linger a little longer at the nearby craps table to catch the last few notes of I Will Survive.

These last few dollar shots, while more miniature, are not watered down. And with them being $1, their size is a problem cheaply solved. So the next few bits are kind of fuzzy. I remember getting an argument under the rail tracks outside that went something like this:

"Is that the monorail?"

"Nah, it's a rollercoaster."

"Bullshit, how many rails are there?"

"It goes in a circle, you ever see a monorail go in a - "

"HOW MANY RAILS ARE THERE?"

"One."

"So it's a monorail."

Walk down a more deserted section of the strip back towards the hotel. To the right of us, a derelict construction site. The high chain link fence above it is plastered with advertisements for the FontaineBleau. Coming soon in Fall 2009. Little off in the estimate there, fellas.

Snake Eyes sets off the whoopee cushion every few feet.

Emergency stocking surgery with a bottlecap outside a 7-11 at 2 am. Watching some unexplained fireworks in the distance, including a full on fireball. Sucking down MGDs. Desperately hunting bathrooms in department stores and casinos. Just miss the last Bellagio water show. Pee stop in the MGM Grand, and then crashlanding in our hotel beds and falling asleep.