But in the end, my thoughts always come
back to the people-watching. You get to see the entire human social
strata in Las Vegas. You see people dressed to the nines stepping
out of limos bumping into others wearing tank tops and pulling a
cooler on wheels filled with Natural Lite behind them.
Several times during our stay, we saw a
man with well-groomed beard, smoking a long pipe sitting at various
card tables. In fact he looked a lot like this guy except without the hat.
Thereafter, I referred to him as “Captain.” And pipe smoke at a
blackjack table is highly underrated.
Various characters continued to
entrance us: one night we walked down to the newly remodeled Plaza,
which was nicely done, but it's still the Plaza. We sat at the bar
and played a little video poker while a group of guys in their early
twenties gathered nearby. One of them stood behind us for a while
yammering into his cell phone. I won't bore you with the entire
conversation but it went a lot like this.
(No, I didn't kill or even injure him.) After he hung up, he came
back to the bar to talk with his boys:
“My man's got a stack we got to burn
over at Bellagio. Then we'll get the limo and hit Hustler. We got
bottle service set up,” said the lead dork.
[My interpretation: his buddy had $100
in chips he wanted to lose at the Bellagio so he could look like a
big shot. Then they had reservations at the Hustler Gentleman's
Club. But I digress.]
“So can I come to Bellagio?” asked
dork #2.
“Nah, you guys hang here.”
[--insinuating his friends weren't cool enough to be seen with him at
the Bellagio.] We'll meet you at Hustler. We'll be the ones in the
limo. Did I mention we got bottle service? And a limo?”
Did I mention that this conversation
took place at the Plaza? These guys are talking up a big, classy,
expensive evening, but they're staying at the Plaza. Cabbies don't
even like to take people to the Plaza because they know that they'll
be too cheap to tip. (In the lead dork's defense, at least he was
going to pretend like he was staying at the Bellagio.)
To top it all off, the lead dork's
credit card got rejected for a $4 bar tab.
Confession: we actually stayed at the
Plaza once, a long, long, time ago. Yeah, that was a cheap trip.
But time and again, it's the senior
citizens who remind me why I love Las Vegas so much. One morning
about 9:00, St. Pauli Girl went downstairs to get coffee. She passed
by an older woman who had stopped a cocktail waitress and was
whispering, “I know it's kind of early, but do you think I could
get an amaretto sour?”
This next incident happened on a
previous trip. I was sitting at a bar playing video poker (do you see a
trend here?) while watching sports highlights on a big screen. Two
little old ladies, one with a walker, shuffled up behind me and
tapped me on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, young man,” said one
lady. “Did you happen to see if the Boston Bruins won?”
“Actually, they lost 5 to 2,” I
replied.
“G**d*** it!” the other lady said
loudly. “F***ing idiots!”
That was my number one reason
for loving Las Vegas until this next incident occurred on our most
recent trip:
We were standing in the middle of
Fremont Street one afternoon probably trying to figure out where to
gamble, eat, or drink next. We happened to be standing across from
the infamous Girls of Glitter Gulch strip club which normally has women like this standing outside trying to woo passersby inside. (Why is she
carrying a pen like that? Does she really get a lot of autograph
requests?) I've never actually seen anyone venture inside the strip
club.
Just to my left, I saw a well-dressed
couple in their early seventies. They stood staring at each other
for a minute, not talking, then the man took his wife by the hand and
they strode confidently into the strip club.
Recently I saw someone post on Twitter that an older couple still holding hands is the cutest thing. I think an older couple holding hands and walking into a strip club is much cuter. And that's why I love Las Vegas.
Recently I saw someone post on Twitter that an older couple still holding hands is the cutest thing. I think an older couple holding hands and walking into a strip club is much cuter. And that's why I love Las Vegas.