Leaving Las Vegas

You can’t go back.

Last week I found myself at a Global Marketing Summit for the cybersecurity company I work for. It was four glorious days and three nights of seminars, eating, lectures, eating, planning, eating, socializing with colleagues, and, say it with me, eating.

There also happened to be craps and blackjack involved, because the summit was held in this little desert rat-trap town that Bugsy Siegel started, Meyer Lansky financed, the Rat Pack sang in and Moe Green—who doesn’t have so much as a plaque—died in: Las Vegas.

As some of my loyal readers will recall (trying to stop laughing at the thought I have “loyal readers”), I’ve written here in the past about how much I used to love Vegas. “Used to” being the operative phrase.

For a lot of years, I’d go four and five times a year to visit the money I’d left behind and see how the Jeff wing of the Venetian was coming along. There was nothing like the adrenaline rush and excitement I used to feel once I landed and was on the way to my hotel. This time, my first Vegas trip in about eight years, that rush was replaced by sadness.

The Vegas strip still photographs well, but if you look closer you see the town, with its out of control development, sad faux showgirls hawking pictures of themselves with you, the mix of well-to-do visitors sidestepping the homeless, and the general low-rent traveling carnival vibe have made it all a lot less glamourous than the brochure.

It was a far cry from the town where I played $5 and $10 minimums at the tables, saw Tony Bennett at the Flamingo, Sigfried & Roy (before) at the Mirage, Danny Gans (RIP) at Caesar’s, Penn & Teller at the Rio, Jerry Seinfeld at the Thomas & Mack Center, Bruce Springsteen (I know, I’m as surprised as you are) at the MGM Grand Garden, and Cirque du Soleil everywhere.

This trip, with the exception of one outing, I was pretty much sequestered at my summit in the dark, unwelcoming, chemical fragrance infused Cosmopolitan Hotel & Casino. My room was on the 49th floor, which made me a little jittery. But then I realized there were still twelve floors above me, so in my head I was on a lower floor.

Having said all that, Vegas is still a town you should see once if you’ve never been.

But I think I’m good for another eight years. Unless they lower the table minimums.