Of Vice and Men

Memorial Day brought the chance to embark upon Las Vegas, the city where all vice is not only acceptable, but actually mandated. As I had mentioned before, this Vegas trip was attributable to my girlfriend's bachelorette party. All six of the girls in the party were split between rooms at Ballys and Paris. I arrived a bit earlier than everyone else, so checked and rushed over to the Wynn, where a friend of mine was staying, for a quick lunch and some craps. The Wynn is amazing, and the craps were even better... in a matter of 5 minutes I had managed to make $200 after just putting down $100. In true Vegas fashion, easy come, easy go… and I forced myself to walk away from the table up $85. (Hey, I had to stay... I couldn't desert my friend during his roll, and then it was my roll, so I couldn't not bet on myself!)

I came back to Ballys/ Paris and met up with the other girls. We got ready to head out to dinner at Firefly. The food was good... really to my liking, but if you really like authentic Spanish tapas, it's a great place to go. After that, we met our limo and arrived at Pure. Now, I have never, ever used a club VIP service to go to a club before, but http://www.clubvivalasvegas.com/, was 100% worth it. The queue at Pure was absolutely ridiculous and we were inside in about 5 minutes -- just the time it took to get through the monstrous sea of people tugging at the velvet ropes. Once inside, we heard rumors that Jessica Simpson was there (we didn't see her). The club was nice, especially the terrace upstairs, but it was just too crowded for my taste. After having about 20 drinks spilled on me, and getting my feet trampled on twice, we retreated to a quieter corner of the club to talk and hang out for a while before we went back to our hotel.

By far, the most interesting thing about Vegas, is that it's club scene has extremely interesting attributes. We regularly had a hard time telling apart normal girls that chose to dress scandalously from prostitutes. Even in the middle of the day, it seems like some sort of scary competition, who can wear the least amount of clothing and still walk through the streets without looking like they are for sale? Unlike most cities, which have similarly priced drinks, men seem to embrace table service over anything else. We had a hard time even getting guys at Pure to buy drinks for our main bachelorette girl! Often times, any guy you met wanted to buy a drink for just you and not the whole group, if they wanted to buy a drink at all! The only way to secure drinks for all was to cozy up to guys with tables, and not all of them were the types you want to cozy up against.

The second night we went to the Thunder Down Under show at Excaliber, which was interesting, as I had never been to a male strip show before. We got our main girl to go on stage. She seemed to have a good time. After that, one of the girls had a hook up for all of us to go to Tao at the Venetian for the Madonna after party. We arrived to great another massive sea of people. Luckily, the girl with the contact at Tao pushed her way to the front and got us all in. Inside was another crazy mass of people. We didn't even get to see Madonna, she must have been off in a VIP room by the time we got there.

In hindsight, I still know that I love Vegas, the rush it has, and what it means, but I don't think I will go there again for another holiday weekend. The prices are ridiculous, the crowds are insane, and the taxi lines are long. It's also hard to coordinate when you have six girls that all want to do different things. On my way back home, my flight was overbooked, so I agreed to give up my seat and take the free voucher from United. I visited the airport book store where the author of STRIPPED (http://www.strippedbook.com/) was autographing copies of his book for purchasers. Fairly interesting and a good read... especially when waiting in the airport. And now, it's back to work.