The Pac-12 Women's Basketball Tournament moved this year to Las Vegas so we flew there, arriving after dark. McCarran International Airport is just two miles from the Strip so we had a nice view as we came down.
We settled into New York New York hotel and casino and looked around. My first impression? Wretched, wretched excess, everywhere. The casino, in the center of the ground floor, took up an acre to perhaps an acre and a half, and around it, spread in all directions on the first two floors, shops of all kinds, sidewalk cafés, fast food outlets, restaurants, and bars. It was perhaps a half mile hike from one end to the other, all within the hotel.
At NY NY, at least, one-armed bandits no longer exist, replaced by devices that still take your money, but with flashes of entertaining electronic wizardry. The screen on one Deb played displayed figures in apparent 3-D, and when certain elements were achieved (no way to figure out how or why), the bench she sat on vibrated, simulating a fourth dimention.
Although there were traditional tables of blackjack, craps, and roulette, there were also electronic tables where all action took place under glass. We were there for basketball so before the first OSU game, we gathered at a NY NY venue with an outdoor pavilion for Beaver fan warmup.
The game went down to the wire. As G-T's sports editor Steve Gress later wrote:
"...a wild and crazy finish Friday night that saw seven points scored in the final 4.9 seconds...." Alas, the Beavs lost to Washington 68-67.
We went exploring. We took an open-top bus tour of downtown and among the many outrageous architectural monstrosities, perhaps the most appropriate was the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Frank Gehry, Architect.
We visited the Neon Museum, which is more junk yard than museum and most of the signs displayed are lit with incandescent bulbs, not neon, but it was still a fun tour of the detritus of old Las Vegas.
We walked the pedestrian bridge across Tropicana Avenue to Excalibur and found people crowded around two hustlers, one playing Three Card Monte, the other running a shell game.
We watched the shell game for a few minutes because, as we found, the minimum bet was a hundred-dollar bill. A shill won a hundred, which the hustler peeled off a wad in his hand, then took five hundreds from another player who picked the wrong shell. I felt all the players might object if I focused my camera, so─no photos.
We took the free elevated tram from Excalibur to Mandalay Bay to see Cirque du Soleil's "Michael Jackson ONE." Deb liked it. I thought it not as interesting as other Cirques we've seen, but lots of MJ music and holographic projection of MJ that dissolved into sparks and reappeared elsewhere on the stage, and too, a holographic white glove that danced around the stage. (Again, no photos.
Walking back─Mandalay Bay is as large and convoluted as NY NY─we missed the terminal and walked through Luxor, which was another adventure, before we managed to board the tram.
We spent several hours at Shark Reef Aquarium, the only accredited facility dedicated primarily to predatory sea creatures, although the Komodo dragon might not qualify.
It was very like the Newport Aquarium, including a tunnel through a tank with sharks, and a touch pool, although the creatures in the pool differed considerably from those in Newport.
We wandered through the Venetian on our way to Wolfgang Puck's "Cut" restaurant.
The grand hall might have come out of a Venetian palazzo, but Puck's "Cut" could only be in Vegas.
We went to Emeril Lagasse's "New Orleans Fish House," at least as much excess as Puck's,
but everywhere we ate, the food was yummy.
Our last evening in Vegas we went to the Stratosphere where the restaurant rotates and the view is as much a draw as the food.
When we were in Vegas some years ago, Deb rode every roller coaster in the city, including three at the top of the Stratosphere but this trip there was a new one: for about $120, one can strap on a harness and leap from the top of the restaurant 829 feet to the Strip below (a Guinness World Record for the highest commercial decelerator descent facility). For some reason, Deb decided against it, but while we ate, several tourists with too much money screamed past our window.
We took an Uber to "Antique Mall of America" but the driver typed "Mall of America" into her GPS guide and got directions to Minnesota, and then could not reprogram it. Fortunately, we knew how to get there, some 1500 fewer miles away.
In the end, I changed my mind a bit about Vegas. Still wretched excess and questionable taste everywhere, but the casinos allow the mathematically challenged to voluntarily pay taxes so that a hermetically sealed world can be created.
One never has to go outside, the indoor streets are clean, there is little crime, rain never falls, and the temperature is always balmy.
