Flashback - Episode 4. The Strip - Chief architect, Bob, says, "can we build it? Yes we can"
If you spend enough time in a hotel room, even a super-duper one in Vegas, it becomes much like any other hotel room, a box. No matter how many gadgets, how large the TV, or how much fake marble in the sparkling, mirror strewn bathroom, it all dissolves over time to leave four walls, a floor and a ceiling. After 2 days in my room I was down to the six basic surfaces.
There are only so many times you can flick through 105 television channels of relatively uninteresting, poorly acted, made for TV programmes, and only so many times you can read the local entertainment guide - although this being Vegas it's a tad more interesting than its Skegness equivalent.
My room since downgrading was obviously smaller, but actually now contained two queen sized beds instead of one. Now what's all that about? Are these rooms for swinging couples or has the size of the average American reached the point whereby single beds are no longer adequate?
I occupied the bed closest to the window to maximise my view of the Las Vegas sprawl outside. My previous room had had a westerly aspect and looked out across i15 and low-rise residential Las Vegas towards the mountains. My new room looked due east out onto the bright neon lights of the Strip and directly at the MGM Grand. Actually neon light is not strictly accurate anymore. Most of the illumination on the strip, for the large hotels at least, comes from video driven LED displays of the kind you find at most large rock concerts.
Thus 24 hours-a-day up and down the Strip run huge video trailers for the biggest acts in town; Elton John, Celine Dion, Penn and Teller, Rita Rudner, Cirque du Soleil, Siegfried & Roy (the one armed white tiger guys...well what the hell do you expect playing with tigers!), Engelbert Humperdinck, err, Clint Holmes...hmmm, David Cassidy and of course the legendary Flying Elvises, or Elvi as they are referred to here in the plural.
Coming back to Siegfried & Roy for a moment, and I know these boys have had more than a few knockers (not that knockers look like they would be of much interest to these boys), but I have to say I have never seen such intensive use of Photoshop in my life. They must have been running Photoshop CS with a full set of plug-ins on a supercomputer at MIT to get effects like that.
Either this or their plastic surgeon / chemist must have perfected a real life Photoshop look. These guys, with their fixed grins and painted orange faces (although Roy seems to have taken to a paler shade of matt emulsion to remind us of his near death tiger snack attack), are proof positive that many prominent humans are actually extra terrestrial lizards intent on world domination and hamming it up on stage.
Then again if you take a moment to study most of the bus-side and road-side posters, you could be forgiven for thinking that this town has been over run by extra terrestrial lizards. And what is the story behind this orange look? Clearly it's not confined to America, as Dale Winton and a host of other British show biz lovies attest. Is this the beginning of some new western caste system that has all entertainers as orange, academics as grey, politicians as yellow (as befits their inability to come forward with the truth), successful people as purple and the rest of us left the natural hue of subjugated consumers.
Of course it could also be that bowls of orange M&M's are de rigueur in the dressing rooms of the world's top entertainers. Or, in an effort to convince their respective publics that they work so hard and don't have time for holidays, they apply conspicuous amounts of fake tan. Whatever the reason it's clearly an international phenomenon and Vegas is where a large number of key exponents of the dark art are to be found.
Most things in this town have an extra terrestrial complexion or the feel of a parallel universe where things are just a tiny bit twisted. The approach here to building reminds me of the way Victorians built their great civic buildings and grand private houses, as testaments to their own power, wealth and influence - a form of architectural aggrandisement. In Las Vegas the detail and craftsmanship of the Victorians gives way to scale, colour and contrast. Here you are either taller, wider, stranger, more vivid or totally at odds with your surroundings. Whatever draws the eye goes and if that's a black pyramid, a Venetian palace or a 200 foot tall copper mirror that reflects the mountains that surround Las Vegas, then that will do.
A walk north up the Strip is a strange affair and is how you might imagine a theme park experience of the Twilight Zone to be. South of Tropicana Avenue you have the Four Seasons, Mandalay Bay, Luxor and Excalibur, which look pretty much as they sound apart from the Four Seasons which has gone in for a white Greco-Spanish hacienda style theme that is unique to Vegas, or more precisely to this one building. Thus within the first half a mile you pass through a Greco-Spanish-Indian-Egyptian-Arthurian landscape that would do credit to the bizarrest of dreams.
The more modern of these buildings contain more than just vague clues or token flourishes to suggest their respective themes, they are the full monty, the real deal, they are full blown pyramids, sphinxes - or sphinxi as they would say here - and turreted castles.
Things are equally as discombobulated north of Tropicana. My hotel for example, New York New York, recreates the Manhattan skyline with 12 one third scale skyscrapers, a 150 ft Statue of Liberty, a 300 ft Brooklyn Bridge and, of course my favorite, a Coney Island style rollercoaster.
Next door is Monte Carlo, a slightly older style hotel casino which, as with many hotel casinos of its period, crams all of the themed architecture into the street frontage, lower floors and pool areas. The Monte Carlo Hotel Casino was "modeled after the Place du Casino in Monte Carlo", with its striking neo classical roman arches, towering corinthian columns and lavish friezes.
Which is strange really considering that the last time I was in Monte Carlo the Place du Casino was awash with Baroque and French Renaissance architecture, with not a jot of the old neo classical roman, corinthian columned, lavish frieze stuff in sight. Perhaps they're referring to the parallel universe version of Place du Casino.
From highbrow the Strip then goes lowbrow with another slightly older hotel casino, The Boardwalk, a relatively plain building fronted by a spaghetti junction of funfair rides and amusement arcades. Nothing too strange here - Skegness meets Coney Island with a large chunk of Centrepoint.
What is strange but yet so Vegas, is the contrast between Skeggy/Coney/Centrepoint and Bellagio. Bellagio is the dogs bollocks of a hotel casino and has a five diamond rating from the AAA (in English that's AA Five Star, only here stars and two A's don't cut the mustard).
Where do you start with Bellagio? Perhaps with the PR blurb. "Bellagio was inspired by the beautiful villages of Europe and captures the romantic symbolism and classical imagery of Italian architecture; It represents the softer side of the human soul." Hmmmm, clearly why it hosts the quarter finals of the World K1 Ultimate Fighting Championships. This aside..."With its Tuscan architecture and mediterranean style, Bellagio is aimed to impress everyone, both the well traveled and the not so well traveled, without being pretentious." And that would be pretentious as in "marked by an extravagant outward show; ostentatious and/or making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction"?
Entering via the Porte Cochere (covered entrance to you and I) you are immediately struck by the coffer (ornamental ceiling panel to you and I) 18 feet above you, filled with the most extraordinary glass sculpture, a chandelier called Fiori di Como (flowers of Lake Como to you and I).
"Bellagio," they say, "must address its guests' higher sensibilities"...err, OK. And I guess that their understanding that "transfixing or compelling environmental experiences cannot occur without conflict", means that this "overwhelmingly attractive and delicious place" is a "successful competitor to London, Rome or Paris". Clearly.
Basically it's a big fancy hotel. Actually, big is not really adequate in the case of the Bellagio. It's monstrous, a leviathan amongst hotels, a city with a reception desk.
It has 3933 rooms of which the top room rate is $6,000. It has 100,000 sq ft of casino space, 100,000 sq ft of retail space, 125,000 sq ft of meeting space, a 13,500 sq ft botanical garden conservatory and 90,000 ft of greenhouses where they grow plants for display. It has an 8 acre manmade lake with 1,000 fountain jets, 5 swimming pools, a 65,000 sq ft salon and spa, 14 restaurants, 7 bars, 1 nightclub, 2 wedding chapels, a fine art gallery and a 1,600 seat theatre with a permanent Cirque du Soleil show. Oh, and it cost $1.6 billion to build and has 8,000 employees.
Across the road is Bally's hotel casino, a "spacious, classy wonder", marked by "elegant style and timeless glamour", which has a titty bar.
Bally's sits aside Paris, which although artificial is at least accurate - my favorite touch being the classic French black slate mansard roof line that sits atop its 50 floors. A stroll along its street frontage takes you from French Renaissance town houses to grand 1st Empire civic buildings, past baroque fountains and Art Nouveau metro station entrances. One moment Montmartre the next Place du Concorde. Add to this a half scale replica of the Eiffel Tower, a third size replica of the Arc de Triomphe and a life size Montgolfier balloon and you have, err...a bunch of French façades in the middle a desert. Nice!
South of Paris is Aladdin, a byzantinesque structure which is all Ali Baba, Sinbad and Aladdin bundled into one with a few minarets thrown in for good measure.
And lastly in this middle section of the Strip is the mother of all entertainment complexes, the MGM Grand. Having described the Bellagio as a city with a reception desk, I guess the Grand would be a capital city with a reception desk...a 17,000 seat arena, a 740 seat and 340 seat theatre, a 22,000 sq ft night club, 170,000 sq ft of casino space including 3,000 slot machines, 500,000 sq ft of meeting space...blah, blah, blah. Oh, and 5,000 rooms and a 5,000 sq ft lion preserve with lions directly descended from Leo, the original MGM lion.
This may well be the largest hotel in the world, but the trouble with the MGM Grand is, whilst most of the other properties on the Strip went to more than a little expense to visually excite and tease the imagination of potential guests, MGM, for some reason, decided that a big black shinny, neon green lit building would suffice. But then I guess if all you have to go on thematically is a roaring lion, then a 80 ft high, 50 ton bronze lion in front of a big black shinny, neon green lit building is about as good as it gets.
The next section of the strip, north of Flamingo Avenue, is split into three distinct camps - the old, the re-modeled and the new hotel casinos.
The old, such as Bourbon Street and Barbary Coast, have few rooms, rely heavily on passing trade and are marked out by their intricate flashing light displays, illuminating the Strip like huge glowing UFO's. They are just a building with a name and they have one other thing in common, their days are numbered. If you're not taking a visitor's accommodation dollars, dinning dollars, gambling dollars and leisure dollars, then you're not maximising dollar earnings per square foot. And if you don't, someone else will. This is not an overly sentimental city. Old gives way to new in a way that few Europeans could comprehend. They simply blow up the old, literally, and start again.
Then there are the remodeled, such as Flamingo, Imperial Palace, Hurrah's, New Frontier - previously called Frontier strangely enough and once owned by Howard Hughes - and Caesars Palace, which although extremely famous has been swamped by some of the newer hotel casinos on the block. These are neither quaint throwbacks to another Vegas era nor stunning flights of entertainment fantasy, and as such do not merit another word - probably a bit harsh in the case of Caesars, but they have Celine Dion on there and she plays with my head.
Of the new, or relatively new, the Venetian is the stand-out lookee-likee on this block. Complete with a Grand Canal and gondola rides, their very own Campanile Tower and Doge's Palace, a mini Guggenheim Museum and a Madame Tussaud's, this, I guess, is the cultural heart of Las Vegas. I particularly liked the Grand Canal Shoppes and the wonderful streetmosphere created by the shoppertainment. You can shoppe all day here and be shoppertained by an exquisite cast of Carnivale Characters and Street Performers.
Opposite the Venetian is the Mirage, which although not themed to the hilt, is notable as the first of the modern multi tasking, multi money-raking, mega mmmm...hotels. This is where the hotel casino became a resort. Where the name of the game became providing everything a guest could possibly need, under one roof.
Sitting in its shadow and an annex to the Mirage is Treasure Island - now called "TI" to appeal to a more mature market - which features a street front lake complete with pirate ship, singing pirates, skimpily dressed singing sirens trying to lure said singing pirates to their doom, fire, explosions, crashing masts, big splashes and flashing lights...with shows four times a night. They also have a casino.
From Desert Inn Road north west towards the older Downtown district, hotel casinos give way motels offering more visceral forms of entertainment. Of the few large hotel casinos in this direction only the Circus Circus and Stratosphere stand out. Circus Circus because it was the malevolent wonderland in Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and also one of the main backdrops for "Diamonds are Forever. Stratosphere because it has a 1,149 ft tower with a rollercoaster on top.
And what's all this jostling for share of eye all about? Claiming a slice of the $4.8 billion spent every year on gambling on the Strip, that's what. And that doesn't include dollars spent on accommodation, food, entertainment, trips to hospital, medication, etc. This figure is all the more staggering when you consider that around 60% of it is spent on slot machines...slot machines! That's over $2.4 billion a year spent on slot machines...slot machines! That's more than the combined gross domestic product of Liberia, Gambia, Djibouti, Burundi and Sierra Leone...spent on slot machines.
And what does this say about the average Vegas visitor? Not a lot really apart from the fact that they spend a lot of money on gambling? These same people however, would in some places be considered sinners. In some places they would be imprisoned and possibly even flogged. In places in America they could be fined.
Some would have them down as addicts or deluded individuals trying in vein to escape a life of grind. Wasteful, irresponsible, louche, idiotic. Gamblers really do run the gauntlet, and for what? The chance to lose money. The slots here pay out anything between 80% and 90%. So for every $100 to spend, you are likely to get $80 or perhaps $90 back. And the fun of it...sitting alone on a stool pressing a button. Strange behavior indeed.
Despite these odds I am a confirmed gambler and have two London casino memberships and a bunch of nearly-but-not-quite stories to prove it. I gamble with my friends. I ride a motorcycle and thus constantly gamble with my life. But for some inexplicable reason, during my entire stay in Las Vegas, I didn't put a one single quarter in a slot. Nor did I sit down and play at a table.
Why? I'm not sure. It wasn't because I was intimidated by sitting at a table with 7 strangers and losing my stack within three hands - I've done that often enough to be comfortable with it. It wasn't the whole casino mystique that renders some first time visitors incapable of joining a table due to fear of the unknown, fear of looking a fool or some other inexplicable fear. My medication wasn't of the hallucinogenic variety that could have turned slot machines into screaming, three eyed monsters from planet Tharg.
So why did my dollars stay in my pocket? I guess it was possibly something to do with the sheer scale of the operation that put me off. This was a cattle market. Actually this was a milking shed with guests fed drinks to keep them happy whilst the machines and tables milked them dry. And they didn't mind - just like cattle they kept coming back day after day.
In reality, I didn't get much of an opportunity to try my luck tucked away in my room. My Vegas was through my bedroom window, and having idled away a few minutes one afternoon comparing the tourist guide map with my view, one thing struck me...where was London?
They had a New York, a Paris, a Venice, a Monte Carlo and an early Rome, but no London. A London would be great. They could have a London Eye, replicas of the Tower of London, Big Ben and Nelson column. The hotel could be a scaled up Buckingham Palace or with a slight cheat, Windsor Castle.
Guests could be charged twice as much as elsewhere and conveyed around the complex in overcrowded and overheated tunnels. They could be charged an admission fee every time they went to the most popular central areas and they could be sold cheap nasty souvenirs by eastern Europeans dressed in authentic tatty clothes. What's more if they started planning it now it could be ready in time for the next London Olympics in 2012, err, or perhaps 2024...2032 possibly.
The other thing I noticed during my two days enforced bed rest was the sheer folly behind the call from nutritionist and other similar "ists", who clearly don't live in the real world, that we should all consume a minimum of two litres of water a day. Don't these people realise how much this makes you pee? I was averaging just over four liters of fluid per day but was spending 15 minutes of every hour peeing.
If the working population of Britain were to consume two litres of water a day, the amount of time in loo would see a return to productivity levels not seen since the early seventies. Even if I had wanted to, there was no way I could have set foot outside of my hotel room without the aid of a colostomy bag or 4 serfs and a sedan chair with built in commode.
Another problem with lying in bed for two days is the toll it seems to take on my back. Despite a seemingly well sprung bed, things just seemed to seize up and ache. This was particularly frustrating given that on my departure from Vegas I needed to make up for lost time and put in a few days knocking out some serious mileage - 500 miles a day on a bike can bring on a touch of back ache, the last thing you want to do is start out with one.
The solution...a massage...
[@ 03:08 AM GMT]
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