Villa Inn Motel, a law firm, and “Wee Kirk o’ the Heather” wedding chapel in downtown Las Vegas. Maybe these businesses cross-promote each other? Opportunities exist. And by the way, I wasn’t drawing in the hot sun, but under a shady tree across the street.
While we had great fun visiting Vegas again with friends over the May long weekend, we decided we’ve now explored it enough and don’t have to go back anytime soon. But to anyone who hasn’t been there: go experience it if you get the chance.
I find Las Vegas fascinating which was a surprise to me the first time I went. I fully expected not to like it. But it may be as simple as this: I really do like drinking and gambling at the same time. I allow myself to play with $50 a day. I like talking and laughing with the dealer, friends, and strangers at the Black Jack table. I like observing my own and others’ strange superstitions about luck which seem to surface there. I dive into an immersive cultural experience. I enjoy the temporary suspension of critical thinking, or any thinking at all.
Plus, where else could I have done the following things, some stupid, some stupendous:
- visit weird versions of Paris, New York, and Venice in the same day;
- gaze at a giant ceiling of thousands of back-lit Chihuly glass flowers;
- ride a waterslide through a shark tank;
- marvel at both excess and elegance;
- see a woman slide down a volcano and land in a giant margarita pitcher;
- encounter the very rich and the very poor;
- get free drinks brought to me while I gamble;
- go bowling with drag queens;
- be suspended from a 900 ft tower in a spinning chair;
- have a bartender pour a drink into my mouth straight from the cocktail shaker;
- eat some of the best Italian food outside of Italy;
- explore the backside of casinos;
- spend some glorious hours photographing old neon signs rusting in the desert;
- and do a sketch of the humble part of Las Vegas Boulevard.
