While Las Vegas Sleeps…

It’s so hot in the desert! And the other, slightly less popular - It’s so cold in the desert! Right now, it’s anything but hot. The fountain in the entrance to my neighborhood looked like a chandelier made of ice! Really neat-looking… Last night it was said to be 29 degrees. Tonight it should best that temperature by at least another degree or so.

The desert is an amazing place, for it’s extremes and it’s unique beauty. I love being in this environment, even though, being polar-oriented in nature, myself (or so my friends & lovers have told me when visiting and freezing to death in my house,) I actually have been running the heater the last few nights. Peculiar, that. Now if we could only get some snow going, I’ll put the ski racks on my car…

Tags: Around Las Vegas, desert, global warming, Las Vegas, Las Vegas weather, Nevada, NV, Sin City, skiing, snow, Viva Las Vegas, winter

The following story was relayed to me by my friend and player-partner, Christopher. Damn it, I wish I’d gone to the club on this night last week…

So near the front of the club, right near the dance floor this older guy gets a booth and bottle service for his group. Big shocker, right? Yeah, well, you don’t see this kind of bottle service every day….

The guy comes into the club and opens his tab with an American Express Card. Not just any American Express Card - The American Express Card. The black card. The one whose minimum line of credit is $100,000. Well, usually in clubs in Las Vegas bottle service goes something like two or three bottles minimum and something on the order of a bottle for every four people. This guy had quite a group of people with him. It was him… and a gaggle of gorgeous girls - straight-up models - sixteen of them, all dressed in the same outfit, is what I was told. Well, they’d probably require at least four bottles for such a party, interesting as it was on the face of it, but he wasn’t ordering like your average patron at Victor Drai’s Tryst Nightclub (inside the Wynn Resort.) The guy orders up sixteen bottles of Dom Pérignon right away.. one for each girl!

Now, for the uninitiated who might be reading my blog here, with bottle service you pay through the fucking nose: the mark-up is scandalously high. Most bottles of alcohol of decent quality range between $275 on the low end and $475 on the high end, with $350 about average. The good champagne? Uhm… it goes way up. I was told Dom is like $950 a bottle at Tryst. I’m not sure about that number, but with an obligatory 20% tip on roughly $15,000, he’s easily over 18 g’s, and he hasn’t even paid for the ladies yet! (oh come on, who is that nice of a guy??)

So they bring all this out.. set it up. The guy gets all the girls’ attention and says - making it clear that this was planned far in advance - “Alright girls! Now!” And upon Big Daddy’s command, these modelesque girls grab their champagne bottles, march right off onto the dance floor, pop the corks, shake the bottles really hard with their thumbs on the hole, and start spraying the crowd like they just won the fucking Superbowl.

Christopher said it damn near turned into a riot. All these people were freaking out, covered in seriously expensive champagne.. totally pissed off, of course, all while this guy watches this unfold… just because he can.

So I’m hearing the story and someone else standing there asked Christopher “oh my god! did they get kicked out???” And I just grinned really big because I knew the answer. “Are you kidding me? No way in hell!” Las Vegas knows how to take care of the people with the most money to burn… Everybody else without a black AmEx can take a fucking shower. Man, I love this damned town!

Tags: bottle service, gambling, table service, VIP service

It has to be the holidays. Last night was a total wash, money-wise. Unlike last year at this time, there are people here. Lots of them. They are not, however, spending much money at all… at least not gambling. I couple of dancer friends of mine said they went on several calls earlier on and the people didn’t want to spend any money… like any. Like “glad you’re here, now do your job for free!” hehe Some people have some funny expectations. So yeah, whenever it’s like this, people aren’t making those wonderful little systematic deposits at the poker tables either. If it stays like this the next couple of weeks I might leave on Christmas vacation early, but I haven’t lost faith yet. The rodeo is coming to town! weee dawgy!

Tags: gambling, lap dance, National Finals Rodeo, poker, strip club

Man I hope this isn’t the beginning of the way of things for the next month.. December is notoriously slow in Las Vegas, but from the way I’m getting emails and text messages with invites to free seats at shows around town that are normally pretty much filled, I’d say people must have shopping and Christmas on their minds, not Las Vegas, gambling, drinking and carousing… alas.

Poor Carrot Top. For two days Las Vegas Seat Fillers has been trying to fill up tonight’s (Saturday) show at the Luxor. I suppose they finally got it filled a few moments ago, as I got a “no more seats left” text message. Even The Movable Buffet’s blog is commenting on how slow this weekend looks to be. One almost perfect barometer of traffic around Las Vegas, which I will sometimes use before hitting the poker tables… is a quick stroll past Cleopatra’s Barge and Bar in Caesar’s Palace. If you see a disproportionate number of “single ladies” slowly sipping drinks there, it’s likely to be a slow, less profitable evening for you at the poker tables or however you make your money (to say nothing of the ladies at the bar.) Furthermore, the number of “lonely ladies” sitting there is directly proportionate to the crappiness of the night at hand. Don’t believe me? Try it. It works, I’m telling you!

I just hope it’s the weekend and we have a few more weeks of good touristy, well-moneyed visitors to our fair city before I have to leave on Christmas sabbatical to Texas and Colorado.

Tags: poker