Buzz’s Pandemic Trip III: The Real Secret Las Vegas Doesn’t Want you to Know

I’ve been recapping my recent trip to Vegas. It’s my first “real” vacation in two years and my first trip to Las Vegas in 3 years. Check out part one and part two. Here’s the rest of my travelogue…

I’ve visited Sin City about a dozen times and I FINALLY figured out something about Vegas that I think they’re hoping we won’t notice. It’s this: Vegas doesn’t really have that much to do.

For a town that has hundreds of hotels, nearly a hundred casinos and almost as many marijuana dispensaries, Las Vegas doesn’t really have all that much to do. Yes, there’s a lot going on but when you really get down to it, it’s all kind of repetitive. Let’s break it down.

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Gambling

For all the casinos in Vegas, there are only about a dozen or so different games. 95% of all Vegas gamblers ONLY play the slot machines. The machines in every casino are very similar both in theme and pay odds. Really, the slot game is all about rewarding your brain’s pleasure center with flashing lights and exciting sounds while distracting you from the fact that you are losing your money. Of the other games, Blackjack is most popular then roulette and craps. Who the hell knows what Pai Gow Poker even is? Pai Gow Poker dealer has got to be the easiest job in Nevada: stand at an empty table for an hour until your “relief” comes to take over.

Entertainment

Vegas is home to thousands and thousands of professional entertainers. But, all the shows in Vegas fall into one of four categories. Music, Magic, Comedy and Acrobatics. Has anybody ever paid to see a magic show that WASN’T in Vegas? The bigger the venue, the less impressive the magic, in my opinion. When a trick is performed in a 4,000 seat hall I’m not as impressed as when somebody does a card trick at a party. As far as music, I’d rather go see a great band in a more interesting city or just wait until they come to my town. That leaves comedy and acrobatics. The acrobatics are Cirque du Soliel, Absinthe, Zoomanity and I will never understand why people enjoy watching that stuff, much less paying hundreds of dollars to see it. At least with a circus there’s at least a chance that you’ll see somebody get mauled by a ferocious animal but since Siegfried and Roy quit/got partially eaten, Vegas doesn’t even offer that anymore.

Shopping

Here’s the scoop on shopping in Vegas: there are only about 20 different stores. All the fancy casinos are going to have the same high-end, OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive stores. Caesar’s has Fendi and Louis Vuitton and Armani. If you go right next door to Bellagio, you see the exact same stores. Across the street at Venetian, the exact…same…stores. Notice that you never see a SALE going on at any of these places. That’s because they’re not competing with each other. They’re all part of the same hydra-like monster trying to convince you that 9 grand is a reasonable price to pay for a g-ddamned purse.

Out on the street are the souvenir shops. Every souvenir shop sells the exact same crap that every other souvenir shop sells: magnets, snow-globes and novelty socks. Walking through either the high-end stores or the low-end shops you really start to get the feeling of deja-vu. Shopping in Vegas is like when Fred Flintstone would run:

He’s moving, but the scenery never changes. Fred and Barney running past the same potted plant over and over again is the perfect analogy for trying to find something unique in Las Vegas.

However, somebody could make a billion dollars if they opened a small air-conditioned space where tourists from non-legal states can smoke their weed without being hassled while watching TVs showing nothing but reruns of Tom and Jerry.