While Las Vegas Sleeps…

Outside of my taxi there’s a man screaming obscenities at his friends… or at least the ease with which he insults them implies a long and deep friendship with the group of assholes that just won’t get into the cab fast enough. When they finally get to the taxi it is immediately apparent that this is the most unusual group of people that I’ve ever driven around: the original yelling man looks kind of like Kyle McLachlan …if he was on a diet consisting entirely of cheese. The woman that he lets into the front seat between us looks exactly like Mama Fratelli from the Goonies, and the beefy, high-school football player-looking guy that gets into the back, is apparently her son. He is sitting on one side of a very cute girl with a broken leg and on the other side of her is the biker from Erin Brockovich. None of them can decide on a destination as I drive around aimlessly, but eventually, the extremely drunk “Kyle” convinces them to all go to his house and I modify my destination.

I’m barely five minutes into the journey when Mama Fratelli starts bad mouthing Kyle and telling him to stop what he’s doing. This is where things get strange because as far as I can tell Kyle is not doing anything. I can see him in my peripheral vision and he’s holding a beer in one hand and has the other one resting on the edge of the window. Mama Fratelli barks “Stop it!” in his direction one more time and he makes some comment along the lines of “maybe you’d like it better if I shoved my tongue down your throat?” - something that seems unrelated to anything that has come before. They are all so drunk that I rule out psychedelics even though things between them seem to be taking place on a level of reality that I have no way to access.

A couple more completely mysterious and confusing comments bounce back and forth between them, and a few more things float up from the back seat, and then, all of a sudden, I’m being directed to pull over at the next bar to let these people out. The vibe has completely changed during the drive and I’m more than happy to comply. It turns out that the cute girl and Kyle will be continuing the cab ride and all of the others will remain at the random location to fend for themselves.

As Mama Fratelli is sliding out of the seat she says something rude to Kyle who then wastes no time calling her a cunt. In the two seconds that follow this declaration the son somehow exits the taxi on my side and travels completely around the cab to sucker-punch Kyle in the side of the face. Then, reacting on what seems like instinct, Kyle lashes out with the beer bottle that he is still holding. The bottle breaks on the son’s head and I watch the beer pour out. The whole incident seems way more surreal than any comparable scene from a movie… I mean, he wasn’t even holding the bottle backwards like you’re supposed to when you get into a street fight.

The biker guys manages to break things up and then Kyle is back in the front seat and the doors have been locked. “Just get out of here” seems to be the unanimous verdict and I am once again on my way with a few less passengers than when I started. The entire bar detour lasted probably three minutes and we all seemed unable to process things at first, but after a block or two Kyle starts thinking that he should contact the police. The cute girl says “Forget about it… It’s over. Let’s just go home,” but Kyle can’t let it go. He decides to gather a posse of friends in order to extract some street justice because the call to the police doesn’t go exactly how he planned. The destination changes for what seems like the fifth or sixth time and it turns out that I’m taking them back within a block of where I originally picked them up. Unfortunately for Kyle, he can’t seem to handle the stress of the last stop light and he exits the cab without warning and wanders across the street leaving the cute broken-leg girl with the fare.

Unfortunately for her, she has no cash and has to get her friends to pay when I drop her off. I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned somewhere in this tale, but the only thing that stands out to me is “Try not to look like characters from movies.”

Tags: Las Vegas, Las Vegas fights, Las Vegas stories, Las Vegas taxis, taxicab confessions, The Goonies

Lately Las Vegas has turned into what seems like the damn pull-over capital of the West. I actually did hear that there was a police academy class that graduated recently.

I got pulled over - Liz did, actually, I was in the passenger seat - and this cop that was probably eight or ten years younger than I am asked every invasive, rude question he could think of that was irrelevant to why he claimed he pulled us over - a broken light on her license plate. He asked if either of us had ever been “in trouble,” where we were going, where we were coming from, how we know each other, why our driver’s license numbers are so similar, why our address is 7777 something - sounds fishy - what Liz’s vanity license plate meant??!

We were two free American citizens minding our own business, driving a legal car, and doing nothing wrong. It was ridiculous. When I answered him regarding having been “in trouble” a long, long time ago and that the charges were dropped he asked “how long ago?” I replied “1994.” “Yeah, that is quite awhile ago.” Yeah, pig, when you were in about 6th grade.

So after all this unnecessary, useless, intimidating harassment, he “let’s us go.” So at our next stop we got out to check out the license plate light he pulled us over for. It was working like the day she got it - not a single legitimate reason to pull us over - other than the fact that he wanted to and probably needed “practice” being a pig.

Since that night two weeks or so ago, I have seen an unbelievable rash of what seem like unnecessary stops by Las Vegas Metro - literally pulling people over and then letting them go without a ticket, in a lot of cases. They seem to be picking on smaller subcompact cars, oftentimes Hondas or Toyotas. If you’ve got the least little legal issue in your past I can imagine they’d give you unmitigated hell. This is Las Vegas, baby.. Most people have something in their past. Metro used to be the most laid-back police force in America, really not sweating the small stuff because they see some much crazy crap out here, but as far as I am concerned they are really ruining that reputation.

Tags: harrassment, Las Vegas, Las Vegas Metro, Nevada, police, The Strip

Okay, granted, I’m big on free food and even bigger on free liquor, but Light Group knows how to launch a new club, er, uh, bar… taqueria?!@#$? It’s more than just a Mexican food restaurant, for sure, but at the end of the day, it’s a restaurant and bar. You would have thought it was the next big thing - like Tao 2.0 or something - pretty funny, actually. For the record, I think all future openings in Las Vegas should also feature red devils on red carpets!

To be honest, we almost didn’t make it to the opening. Okay, to be precise we almost didn’t make into the opening - we made it there and for some reason the guest list which I’d been on for several days with a confirmation email didn’t have my name anywhere on it (or the other three people’s names who were in our party and were alleged to be on the list.) That’s always a bummer. I mean, I’ve stood in a line or two in my day. I’m not above it. I’m not used to it but I don’t mind waiting my turn. The thing was that there was no line to stand in. It was an either you’re on the list or you’re not going in sort of thing. Luckily the door guy got on the phone with someone and cooler heads prevailed (just as I was saying screw this noise and leaving - I might wait in line, but I don’t ever plan to deal with some backwards elitist weirdness at the opening to a Mexican restaurant and tequila bar. There is a limit, right? That would be mine, but I digress…)

After that little bit of awkwardness at the entrance it was all smiles and laughs. What a great little time! Like I had said previously, they had red devils on the red carpet, complete with a movie premiere-style backdrop. Everyone seemed to have a smile on their face, which - I have to say - is a refreshing change of pace from the tired, moody-acting security guys and girls who look like they are just waiting for some key moment when they can leave for some place they think might be hipper or more fun. As it should be, everybody was following my lead - having a great time! Okay, fine - maybe it was just the tequila in my head that made it seem like everyone was following my lead… Or was it??

Patron is a splendid beverage - a wonderful invention at any price. When that price is $0.00 it becomes not only like the nirvana of the adult beverage universe, it creates a lovely sense of chaos, intermingled with random waves of uncontrollable laughter. Great stuff, Patron. I remember trying to shoot some video in the hallway for our forthcoming podcast and having had trouble with the noise level in the hallway we were in. Well, it was mostly trouble with my lips and cheeks - the Patron had numbed them to a level that didn’t support the volume levels I needed to produce to get a decent level on tape, so that was a bit of a no-go. Although, in retrospect, it did give us a break from hanging out at the bar where Danielle was putting the hurt on me. I almost fell in love.

On the way back we found the rather large ice sculpture we had somehow overlooked that was laden with large, yummy shrimp. Those things were great! They kept bringing around all sorts of treats and snacks - mini cupcakes (Kelly has a “mini” fetish.) There was a live band. There was more liquor than even I could possibly drink. In a nutshell - it was done right. Hats off to the Light Group!

An open bar party full of Patron in a casino setting with Christopher in attendance is going to mean one of two things. Either I am going to get creamed on the way out of the casino to the cabstand or I am gonna kill ‘em at the blackjack or craps table. There’s not going to be a middle ground. Unfortunately for me I did not have a lot of cash on me for whatever reason Saturday night. I only had a little but I still managed to take them for a buck-fifty in less than five minutes playing twenty-one.

When I’m on auto-pilot my card sense and card memory is pretty intuitive, usually. I saw a lot of small cards drop right away and knew the deck was quite favorable, though I wasn’t counting cards. They fell the right way and I ended up doing what would normally be very bad plays - splitting 20’s, doubling down on a 7 because the dealer had a 3 showing and I knew she was very likely going to bust, et cetera. I was on fire! I actually got paid for the trouble at the door earlier. Karma loves me. I love Karma. We have a lovely working relationship.

Tags: blackjack, card counting, card sense, club scene, craps, Diablo's Cantina, drinking, food, gambling, gaming, liquor, memory, nightclubs, openings, seafood

Having been open for well over a month, last night I finally ventured out with my friend Christopher Nolan to LAX to take a look around Las Vegas’ newest superclub. I’ve heard good things, but I’ve been really busy as of late, and in general I tend to avoid club openings and the celebrity worshipping madness that takes place around such things. Most importantly, though, I really just enjoy partying at a club once it has a real solid weekly night of good music and dancing and has some recognizable faces in the crowd. These things take time, my friend…

So anyhow we ventured out for a bit. There is a lot of construction still taking place at the Luxor, which rumor has it, by the way, might not be the Luxor for very much longer. The more new bars and space redesigns they go through over there the more dated and gaudy the existing faux-’gyptian decor is looking. I’ve read about ongoing discussions in management at MGM Mirage renaming the place “The Pyramid” to go with it’s newer, hipper look. Okay, I’m all for remodeling. I’m all for rebranding if you think you can pull it off and not undermine the existing customer base in the name of being “hip.” ..But “The Pyramid??” Come on guys… MGM Mirage can afford the best brand consultants on planet Earth. Geometric shape descriptions are not good enough to be a new brand identity. What’s next? Renaming the MGM Grand “Green?” I think we can do a little better than that, but I digress…

Once we made it around the around the center construction area of the Luxor’s casino floor I saw the entrance to LAX and quite a line to go with it. That’s not surprising at all for Las Vegas, even for a Wednesday night, but still we had no trouble getting in due to some local love at the door. Up the stairs and through a red-lit hallway and into a round foyer, I admired the middle of the area. I’m assuming there was something in the structure of the hotel that required them want to build this big round structure to cover up some obtrusive thing, but I suppose it could have been just for random looks, as well. It’s a really large, leather, padded.. uhm round thing? Quite tall, difficult to describe in terms of purpose… Kelly was with us and says it smells good. “Leathery!” An apt description of smell for something that’s made of leather. Anyhow, whatever the purpose of it, it seemed catch our attention for a bit.

Around the other side of the thing is the entrance to the club. As you enter the main club area you are on the second floor of the entire place, looking out over the dance floor. It’s a great view.. I like the layout of the entire place. It’s shaped like a jogging track, with the DJ booth in the middle of one side and two levels of booths and balconies around the other three sides (essentially identical to Studio 54, layout-wise.) The lighting system was great. I heard sound system clipping a little, though, but it’s possible it was getting overloaded by the DJ and not really the house system’s fault. It definitely could have stood to be a little more powerful, particularly on the low end. The only other problem I really saw with LAX Las Vegas was lower level’s restroom hallway area. There is a major stagnant airflow issue there - smoke was hanging horribly in the air and I was hating it. I actually watched a security guy fanning the air in a feudal attempt to try and get it to move out of his face. I suspect they will be addressing this issue since the staff is already noticing it being a real problem.

All in all, the club is very well done. The decor - mostly in reds, with black glass chandeliers high in the ceiling and candlelight flourishes all above the DJ - creates a great environment. Like all such superclubs, though, it’s the music and people and the vibe inside that will ultimately determine the place’s fate. I’ll be back, but next time it’ll be when there’s a good weekly going on and I have the whole crew out with me. For now, LAX Las Vegas is off to a good start.

[Pardon the quality of the photos - I just had my little digital camera last night. There'll be more, better photos in the future...]

Tags: bars, bottle service, casino, club scene, dance music, dancing, design, Entertainment, LAX, Luxor Hotel, MGM Grand Hotel, nightclubs, table service