Incidents on Fremont Street

Everytime we come home from Las Vegas, I try to think of things and/or incidents that demonstrate why we think Las Vegas is the greatest place on earth. For example: the Las Vegas airport has a widely advertised liquor store. You can get the party started before you pick up your luggage. Ever wanted to flag down a taxi by waving a bottle of vodka? You can do that and then tip the driver with a shot.

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.