Rex's Las Vegas Lists

How To Spend Your Bachelor Weekend in Las Vegas (25 Do's and Don'ts)
March 2nd, 2010

30 Must Follow Rules For Any Las Vegas Casino Gambler - Part 2
February 24th, 2010

30 Must Follow Rules For Any Las Vegas Casino Gambler - Part 1
February 17th, 2010

Top 15: Las Vegas Spots Not Found on a Tourist Map
January 27th, 2010

Top 10: Epic Las Vegas Heists
January 12th, 2010

Top 10: Best Looking Las Vegas Cocktail Waitresses
January 4th, 2010

Top 10 Best Las Vegas Gaming Pits
December 8th, 2009

17 Things First Time Visitors Must Do in Las Vegas
November 23rd, 2009

15 Ways To Get Kicked Out of a Las Vegas Casino
November 9th, 2009

Rex's Las Vegas Blog

How Long Is Your Yardstick?
March 11th, 2010

The LVCVA reported average daily rates as $99.75 while a major hotel-booking site reported them to be $79.

For those of you keeping score at home, the LVCVA is being 26% more optimistic than the private company. The private company also says that rates dropped 18% in 6 months, and the LVCVA says they only fell 4% in an entire year.

Who's right? Who's wrong?

Who knows?

The thing about stats is ... they usually lie.

Numbers are easy to throw out, and since few people have the resources or initiative to double-check them, you can more or less make numbers up and still sound plausible. Even if you do know absolutes, there are a myriad of ways to manipulate them to show what you want to prove. For example, the Visitor's Authority may have used a smaller starting number (104 vs. 109) to make the decrease look less dramatic.

Read more ...

The Resurrexion
March 10th, 2010

I just got out of the hospital, and first let me say that I very much appreciate all of the well-wishes. I even appreciate some of the questionable-wishes, such as those opining that I had some venereal disease, and even the one person who took the time out of his day to email me a simple "I hope you die".

I'm sure the latter was not a unique sentiment, so kudos for having the courage to say what many others were surely thinking. And by courage, I mean "sending an unsigned email from an anonymous email account". It must have taken hours to work up the strength to do that.

Can you imagine Rosa Parks in 2010?

From: sweet_mama_chocolate87156@yahoo.com To: The Montgomery Transit Authority

I'm sick and tired of your discriminatory policies, and I'm not going to take it anymore. If you don't let black folks sit at the front of the bus, I'm gonna post all of your email addresses on alt.sex.bestiality and post pictures of your racist drivers on 4chan!"

The Black Panthers would probably coordinate wholly via Twitter, where uprisings would be routinely thwarted by "service unavailable" and "check out our latest deals!" messages. The 140 character limit would probably also lead to some confusion.

"We are sick and tired of the white devil keeping us down. If you are with us, fight the power and rally at the intersection of 181st Street and M..."

"Sorry, that last message was too long. We will be rallying at 181st Street and Market Avenue. We are mad as hell and will not take it anymore. Make sure you are there promptly at N..."

It's a good thing the civil rights movement happened 50 years ago.

Read more ...

The Blind Leading the Blind
March 6th, 2010

This is exactly why I don't read fiction.

The truth is so much more bizarre.

On Thursday, President O'Drama signed the "Travel Promotion Act" into law.

This particular act is designed to convince people from other countries to vacation in the Unites Sates. The act will be funded by a $10 fee on all tourists to the U.S.

That's right, we will begin luring people to our great nation by charging them more money before they even set foot on our soil.

So far, so bad.

That's nowhere near the worst part, however.

Read more ...

Life in the Slow Lane
March 4th, 2010

Earlier tonight, I engaged in a bit of ghetto gambling. This was not the "play at the Western" version of ghetto gambling, instead, it was the cheap person version. Ghetto gambling is gaming that has all the fun of gambling, without any of the risk or reward. My own personal rendition of ghetto gambling involves taking only $20 to a local casino (usually the Sahara or Stratosphere) without an ATM card or even a wallet. Then, I play along these lines: I start out with $20, and I begin playing at a $3 or $5 table. I play a few hands until I double up or lose 50%. Unfortunately, I do not tip during these minor sessions unless I go on a big streak, and even then it's no more than a couple of bucks. If I double up, I pocket $20, and then proceed to play with "free" money at whatever low-limit game I feel like playing. The worst I can do is break-even on the session. If I get dinged for 50% early, I go to the $1 BJ tables or nickel Video Poker machines. If I manage to double up at these tables or machines, I go back to a "higher" limit ($3-$5) BJ table and repeat the process. If I lose it all ... I stop playing. At times, I have been able to make a single $20 bill last two hours while ghetto gambling, while getting the occasional free drink in the process. Read more ...

Wackjack
March 2nd, 2010

"NASCAR Weekend" just wrapped up in Las Vegas, and following a new personal tradition, I spent a good part of the weekend at the Sahara.

Frankly, I've always found the Sahara's NASCAR theme to be somewhat unusual. It just doesn't seem to "fit" for some reason.

The Sahara is a desert-themed hotel with a rich and storied history (the Beatles stayed here during their first visit to Vegas), and I never really figured out how stock cars found their way into this paradigm. On any given day, you can stand outside and watch a race car roller coaster loop past the iconic neon camels. It's a very odd paring. Kind of like putting a gigantic poster of two Mormons facing the sinful Vegas Strip. As if that could happen.

Anyway, since the Sahara is ground zero for racing fans in Vegas, this is obviously one of the best places in town to spend a racing weekend ... second only to the track itself.

After walking to the casino and scoping out a prime Blackjack table on Saturday, I became slightly disillusioned with how the Sahara was conducting itself. While both $3 and $5 "real" Blackjack tables are standard offerings at the casino (which is part of why the property is endearing for me), the Sahara had converted at least half of their five dollar games to 6:5.

Given the loyal crowds, this seemed very opportunistic.

Look, I understand the laws of supply and demand, and I understand what most people consider to be "good business decisions". Americans think "capitalism" is synonymous with "greed", and they think that good capitalists need to "capitalize" on every customer.

Read more ...

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March 25th, 2009

Vegasploitation

I got up at 5am this morning, and did a quick scan of the local news.  Within the first page or so of my news feed, I saw a headline that drew my attention.

Las Vegas Travel Still Plummeting

Wow, it was posted yesterday so things must be getting worse fast.  Of course, I need to see just how bad it is getting.  So I clicked:

http://www.smartertravel.com/blogs/today-in-travel/las-vegas-travel-still-plummeting.html?id=2863155

I got some week-old bad travel news, followed by an infomercial.

… Las Vegas is struggling, it’s “when will it end?”

Good question. Recent trends suggest it will be a while …

Still, even Southwest is struggling in Las Vegas, a sure sign that interest in the city is low.

Which, of course, means great deals for anyone who wants to go. Our resident Deal Detective, Kate Hamman, has covered Vegas deals twice recently (check out her recent articles, 10 Best Las Vegas Deals of the Year and Top Five Las Vegas Reader Questions Answered), and she could probably write about Vegas deals every week if she wanted. So even though this horse has been … well, you know … I’ll say it once more: If Vegas is your thing, this is the time to go.

What the bloody hell was that?  And how on earth does this make the news feeds?

And what the hell is a “Deal Detective”?

Okay, Sherlock, I need some expertise.  Let me further plumb the depths of your expertise:

You know that old saying, “When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade”? Nobody does it better than the folks in Las Vegas. The sudden drop in tourism is translating into an outpouring of truly great deals. It’s enough to lure even the most cash-strapped visitors toward Sin City’s neon lights. And here, dear readers, are the very best of the best among those deals. Just promise you’ll remember me when you hit the jackpot, OK?

Teee heee heeee.  Fuck You!

There has been a massive proliferation of these types of “Vegasploitation” articles lately.

“Las Vegas is doing badly, nobody is coming, but that only means better deals for you!”

“Vegas may be going to hell, but click here to make sure us non-Vegas fakers keep getting paid anyway.  Direct some of that dwindling Vegas money to non-Vegas residents and businesses.  That’ll help Vegas!”

Assholes.

Codifying the massive recession/depression in such a gratuitous manner seems like just so much more exploitation of the city by outside people who don’t give a flying fuck about the town beyond what kickbacks they get.

This is why there is such a palpable “us vs. them” mentality fomenting in this town.  The economy is really fostering a bit of cohesion … the type that did not exist 4 years ago.

The article gushes:

“Kate Hamman has covered Vegas TWICE recently.”

Ohhhhhh …. a whole twice.  Well goddammit man, how could you not click that link because anyone who has been to Vegas twice “recently” just has to have their finger on the pulse of the city.  Based on her two “recent visits”, this law enforcement officer of deals is now answering “reader questions”?

Really?  Reader questions?  About Las Vegas?

This lady must really be a sponge, because I still couldn’t find Koval after my second visit to Las Vegas.

But wait, there’s more:

“she could probably write about Vegas deals every week if she wanted”

WTF?

What does that even mean?

I could probably write about the consistency of monkey feces every week if I wanted to.  That doesn’t mean I would have the slightest clue as to what the hell I was talking about.

These goddamn posers are shameless.

“Smarter Travel” is based in Massachusetts and is part of the Expedia network.  If you want to contribute to the tax coffers of Massachusetts, by all means, click frigging now.

However, If you want there to be a Las Vegas ten years from now, with competent service who personally haven’t all fled, please “click here to book now” through the website of a Las Vegas Resident.  For the record, this is not a gratuitous statement because I personally have no such links.  You couldn’t book something through me even if you wanted to.

The reason I am pointing this out is because the other local spineless bastards won’t.

If you can’t find a website/blog authored by a local Vegas resident, please use the Las Vegas Advisor, Vegas.Com, The Review Journal, Rich’s LA Times Vegas Blog (at least The Times hires residents to blog Vegas), The Las Vegas Weekly, LasVegasNow, or one of the scores of sites that actually exist primarily within Nevada.

Sure, they are shameless click pimps, but at least they are local shameless click pimps.  At least they hire people who shop in our stores and eat in our restaurants.  Not two times recently, but EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Making sure your clicks stay in Las Vegas will help our economy far more than farming it out 2,500 miles away to Massachusetts, who’s businesses are trying to profit off of our pain.  It can be very hard to tell them apart, but before you click, please click the “about us” or the “contact us” link on a site, and if they don’t indicate that they are in Las Vegas, they probably aren’t.

We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.  We now have struggling cab drivers and cocktail waitresses setting up websites to get a piece of the dwindling “click action” in return for their REAL Vegas expertise.

This is a fact:  Massachusetts, California, Texas, etc doesn’t know Vegas the way the people who are sticking it out here know Vegas.  Most of us gamble in the same casinos, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same nightclubs, go to the same pools and yes even stay in the same rooms as even the most seasoned tourist.

There is a lot to hate about this town, and the bad news that is flowing in fast and furiously should be screamed from the highest mountain to wake this place up.  Much of the pain is self-inflicted by the corporate beancounters.  By all means, people should point it out and discuss it.

However, using our pain only to entice people to give you money is gratuitous.  I don’t think this applies to locals and local businesses since they are the ones actually enduring the pain, but when it comes from so far away, it’s nothing less than Vegasploitation, and in my opinion, it should not be rewarded.

I am formally inviting the “Deal Detective” to grab her blooodhound, break out her magnifying glass, find the crack of my ass, and kiss it.

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