Worlds of Las Vegas
What does the future hold? It feels as if everyone’s trying to figure that out. But sometimes it’s best to sit back and let it materialize in front of you.
On our drive back to LA from Las Vegas, Corey read me the backstory of Omega Mart, the Meow Wolf installation that we’d explored over the weekend. She told of multiple worlds straddling each other as if by some cosmic fluke. That got me thinking of the multiple worlds we’d just experienced in the Mojave Desert.
Vegas is different things to different people. It’s nightclubs, it’s pool parties, it’s concerts, it’s sporting events. It’s triumphant wins, it’s crushing losses. It’s drinking alcoholic slurpees while people-watching along the crowded strip.
There are so many ways to experience that place. Here are five ways that we experienced it, five worlds that we visited.
Sandy Oasis
The day we arrived, we passed a fish tank and a lush green atrium en route to our room in The Mirage. The place made us feel relaxed, as if there’s no rush in the world and we’d found our verdant retreat.
One afternoon, while I played cards, Corey hung out by the pool. Strong winds gusted, toppling an umbrella onto a woman’s head and sending a sign smack into a man’s belly. An alert on Corey’s phone pinged that a dust storm was making its way through Vegas.
The woman next to Corey sat smoking a cigarette, the smoke drifting into Corey’s face, so Corey asked her to switch hands. She willingly complied and the two got to talking — about the conference the woman would be attending the next day, about growing up on the East Coast, about why it’s a terrible idea to bring kids to Vegas, as a few parents at the pool had. As Corey and the woman were about to order drinks together, a voice came over the intercom: “due to the ongoing dust storm, the pool will be closing in ten minutes.” Corey’s afternoon in the sun ended before 4pm; she never learned the woman’s name.
Aquatic Luxe
Corey experienced one major disappointment on her first trip to Vegas: “No one gets dressed up! I came out dressed to the nines, thinking it’d be like James Bond, and there were all these guys in tank tops.” So you might be able to imagine her pleasure walking into the Wynn, past its flower carousel and butterfly tiles, down a curving escalator to the Aft cocktail deck, where our server brought me a smoked rum cocktail while we gazed off at the wall of water across the Lake of Dreams.
The following night, as the sun set and the lights came on, we watched the Bellagio fountain show from our table at Spago, the Paris Casino’s Eiffel Tower sparkling behind. Walking out post-dessert, we met with a massive crowd at the door. “What are you all waiting for?” “Canelo Álvarez!” Apparently he’d lost a fight just the night before and was nursing his wounds with some fine dining.
At Cirque du Soleil that evening, we watched acrobats jump high into the sky before splashing down into the watery stage.
Card Room
Sometimes you get dealt the best possible card. At the Wynn poker room, my pocket 6’s became three-of-a-kind when the flop came 2-3-6, and I won a $900 pot, my biggest ever. That session completed a massive upswing for me, as, for the first time in my life, I broke positive in career net earnings at the poker table.
Sometimes you get dealt the worst possible card. At the Bellagio poker room, an ace on the river gave me another three-of-a-kind, but this time I lost to a slow-played straight to dip from the black back into the red. It was a déjà vu of my last session at the Bellagio, where I’d also lost all my chips late on a Sunday night thanks to a bad river card.
Luck is going to have its ebbs and flows though. While it was only briefly, I did financially break positive in my poker playing. And because of that I’m motivated — I believe I’ve made progress, that I have the ability to become a long-term winning player. And I’m especially motivated to return to the Bellagio and get my revenge.
Futuristic Playground
When we arrived at AREA15, I was struck by the rusty Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign that evoked a post-apocalyptic world à la Fallout: New Vegas or Blade Runner 2049.
Inside, we entered another world, futuristic in a (debatably) more optimistic sense, with a bizarro supermarket, a flashing tree, and a creatively-presented burger & fries. Even Emack & Bolio’s adhered to the blacklight theme.
At the gift shop we bought a stuffed animal alien, which we later named Wynn after Corey’s favorite casino. It kept us entertained on the drive home.
Behind the Scenes
It takes an army of performers to keep Vegas going — DJs & acrobats, dealers & waiters. What’s it like behind the scenes? What are their lives like? Their aspirations? How did they get here?
In the Lost Spirits Distillery we met a snake charmer that grew up near San Diego. Since childhood she’d spent a ton of time outside, becoming comfortable with animals that others would think of as wild.
Like any city, Vegas has its underbelly. Walking past Treasure Island on our way back to our hotel, a homeless man lurched towards us, yelling and heckling before veering away, as we continued walking and tried to act blasé. What had got him to that point? Addiction to gambling? To substances? To neither? Both?
What would it take to help him move on, to change his life?
Time is funny, how it can seem to take two parallel paths in its hand and then twist and reverse them. Both Corey and my first trip to Vegas, nearly one year before, had been on the same weekend. We’d both even been in Resorts World on its opening night, perhaps at the exact same time.
And just days before that, we’d overlapped in Santa Fe, she there for her brother’s wedding and I on just another stop along my cross-country roadtrip. One year later, the weekend after this Vegas trip together, we visited Santa Fe together for her brother’s graduation. That’s synchronicity for ya.
On that night in Resorts World one year ago, I could never have predicted this.
