Las Vegas

Caro and I lost about $20 dollars to the slots in the five days we were there.  I don't think that paying $4 a day Pathetic Loser Tax is too much for the entertainment we derived from being in Las Vegas.  I was just relieved that Caro hadn't lost our life savings at the roulette table and traded me for $1 million to Robert Redford so that he could slake his vile lust.
 
And the entertainment is not only in the people-watching, or the shows.  The simple truth is that you can just walk down the Strip and get hugely entertained for free.  If we just walked down a few blocks we could see:

• The Excalibur:  A huge fairy-tale castle casino, with white towers and blue and red turrets.  Inside were medieval performers and huge dragons everywhere.  Outside, an animatronic Merlin battled a fire-breathing dragon every 30 minutes.
 
• The Luxor:  A gigantic black-tinted pyramind, with white lights strobing down the outside.  At the very top a huge spotlight pierces the sky.  Inside it's actually kind of dull. 

• New York, New York:  A casino, which resembles the New York skyline from outside, complete with Chrysler Building, Empire State, Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge.  Occasionally you hear an "AIEEEEEE!!" as another group of tourists hurtles around on a gigantic rollercoaster that circles the whole thing. 

• Caesar's Palace:  My favourite.  Terribly grand on the outside, complete with huge marble-type statues of Caesar, enormous Roman pillars and steps.  Inside, the motif is continued to grandiose heights, with statuary, fountains and painted ceilings which are not in fact painted AT ALL but instead are huge screens onto which changing images are PROJECTED.  The shopping area is a huge crossroads from which 4 Roman boulevards reach.  At the end of one, is an impressive fountain, which becomes even more impressive when it transforms itself via special effects into an animatronic, film and pyrotechnic display on the Fall of Atlantis. 

• The Bellagio:  The high-class casino, as far as we could see.  Very pretty in a mock-classical way, with a musical fountain display with lights and classical music every 15 minutes.  The show we went to see was particularly spectacular as it was interrupted by lightning forking the sky behind the water, and thunder punctuating the opera.  

• The Venetian:  You don’t have to go to Europe!  Now you too can have libidinous Italian gondoliers chat up your girlfriend RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!  Plus you have to tip him!  “Thees song is for da beeyoodeeful lai-dee.”  Hmph.

And I haven't even mentioned the casinos we didn't get to.  The Circus Circus, with performances going on inside the whole time.  The Treasure Island, with a pirate battle on full-size ships every half-hour.  The Mirage where a volcano erupts every half-half after dusk.  The Paris with it's model Eiffel Tower.  The Mandalay Bay with its Shark Reef.  The Monte Carlo, The Boardwalk, The Hilton...

I regret not having seen inside some of those places.  But just going through ONE casino is such an adventure, there simply wasn't time.  Also, and I should stress this, after about 5 days of the above, you're stressed out and hung-over on Sights and Sounds.  Unless you're 5 years old and/or strung out on cocaine, in which case you could probably stay there FOREVER.  Besides, we did these things because they were there and they were free.  But what Caro was really looking for in Las Vegas was Old Vegas.  The Vegas of Ol' Blue Eyes and The Sands and The Flamingo and Bugsy Siegel and Momo Giancana.  And so here's a bit of a history lesson for you...

A BIT OF A HISTORY LESSON FOR YOU
People think that Las Vegas started with Bugsy Siegel.  This is a myth.  Las Vegas began as a handy railway stop between the cities of the east and California.  The relaxed Nevadan rules on gambling made it a popular stop with rail workers and, as word began to spread, the casinos became ever more lavish, especially since their elaborate neon billboards could be powered cheaply due to the Hoover Dam.
 
The Mafia didn't move into Vegas until the war years, when Bugsy Siegel persuaded Mayer Lansky and the rest of the mob to loan him money to build a super-casino by the freeway.  Bugsy was an odd character - a mixture of smooth-talking psycho and control-freak megalomaniac, but with a Sense of Vision as they say.  He also had a Top Secret Plan to bump off Mussolini, although he never managed to pull it off before Il Duce took a swing on a lamp-post.  Unfortunately, his rampant perfectionism resulted in The Flamingo going wildly over-budget.  Worse, the casino opened before the hotel, so punters merely took their winnings at the end of the evening and went home instead of feeding it all back onto the gaming tables.  Lansky reluctantly sanctioned Bugsy’s assassination, and the same night Siegel was gunned down, a group of Concerned Italian Businessmen arrived at The Flamingo to announce the change of management.

In a couple of years the situation had turned around and The Flamingo was a major cash cow for the mob, leading to the establishment of that row of gambling temples known as The Strip.  What I (as an idiot tourist) didn’t know was that The Strip is not Las Vegas.  To find the original Vegas you have to go Downtown , where all the original casinos were based.  I considered making a trip to Downtown as My Helpful Tourist Guide magazine as provided by the hotel informed me that, "No trip to Las Vegas is complete without a visit to Downtown!!"  But we decided against this.  This is due to a conversation Caro and I had with a taxi driver in Palm Springs:
 
TAXI DRIVER: Where're ya goin' next?
CARO:                Las Vegas.
TAXI DRIVER:  That's a rough town.  I used to live there.
CARO:                Really???
TAXI DRIVER:  Don't step off The Strip.  They love tourists who stray off The Strip.  Heh-heh.
ME:                      Gulp.
TAXI DRIVER:  Cops shot a guy off my patio one time.
 
So we didn't step off The Strip.  Call me a coward if you will, but Las Vegas is known as the murder capital of the USA, and besides haven’t you people seen CSI?  I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy the idea of William Petersen poking about at me while I lie on a shelf in a morgue thank you so very much.