Frustration. Too much to do and the blog withers on the vine as I attend to other matters. I need an Army of Me’s to get through my lists of to-do’s. Seems like a month has gone by since we got back from Vegas. Has it only been a week?
Vegas delivered in big ways again. Yet, it was a different experience then some of my previous adventures to Sin City. This time it was all about the people and less about the city. John and Allison’s wedding was a blast. John was looking handsome in his custom pinstripe suit from Nates Clothing. Allison was beautiful in red. Flamenco musicians provided a nice sonic backdrop to the ceremony which was held in the somewhat gothic ambiance of the wedding chapel at the Artisan hotel.
Before the ceremony, John and I went out to get haircuts and straight razor shaves from a celebrity barber located in the bowels of Harrah’s Casino. We decided to walk from the Artisan Hotel which is located a few blocks off the strip. Walking out of the Artisan we could see Harrah’s off in the distance and didn’t think it would be a problem finding a cut-through street to the strip. Of course, we were wrong about that. What should have been an easy 15 minute walk turned into an epic one hour journey through the dirty and dusty back streets of Vegas. With the temperature in the mid 90’s, and with the wedding looming only hours away, our walk took on this apocalyptic, ‘Paris, Texas’ kind of quest. The thing about Vegas is, it’s all about “the strip”. The strip is kept very clean and pumped full of fresh oxygen. If it were up to the hotels, I’m sure they’d rather you never strayed from Las Vegas Blvd. Once, you do stray however, it’s all garbage, power grids, and depression era housing for the millions of people who open doors, drive cabs, and clean ashtrays. Luckily, one good pull on the Wheel of Fortune progressive slots can erase your memory banks in a New York (hotel) minute.
The Artiian Hotel supplied a number of interesting guests that we met over the weekend. One morning, Kelly and I had were waiting out front of the hotel for a cab. This women in her early 40’s walked out of the hotel and after a brief conversation offered us a ride to the strip in her rented white PT Cruiser convertible. I wish I could have taken a picture of this lady cause she was “Miss Las Vegas 2007”. To say that she was ‘done up’ at 9:30 in the morning would be a huge understatement. She was tall and slim with gold and diamonds everywhere, leather pants, a lace shirt, big blond hair, and four inch heels. She talked fast about her love for Vegas and of the quarterly trips she makes from Hawaii every year. After dropping us off she zoomed away running over two large orange traffic cones. Kelly and I just looked at each other with speechless amazement.
We also met a lovely Dutch couple, Jacquelien & Pascal, who were staying at our hotel. They’ve been living in New York for the past three months and are on assignment from a dutch daily to write about the American Experience. What better place than Vegas, huh? I told them that if they want to see the true American Experience they’ll find it gorging itself on breakfast steaks at the Sunday morning buffet in Ballys Hotel. It was fun to hang out with them and see Vegas through the eyes of European travelers. Pascal summed up Vegas nicely when he said, “Vegas is a fake city, wrapped in a fake city”. Word.