Living Las Vegas

Real Life in the Shadow of the Strip

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Top Vegas Hotels: Bellagio, Luxor, Rio

Roads from the Ashes: An Odyssey in Real Life on the Virtual Frontier, by Megan Edwards

Big, Even in a City of Excess

As President’s Day weekend draws to a close here in Sin City, I feel like heaving a big, “Whew!” And I didn’t even go to the All-Star Game, celebrate Chinese New Year’s, get married on Valentine’s Day, attend the MAGIC show, spend a three-day weekend on the Strip, or go hear Barack Obama give a speech. I didn’t even take today off, but I still feel as though I’ve run some sort of gauntlet. If the last three days didn’t bring a record number of visitors to my fair city, it sure felt that way. I’ve even heard it described as a “perfect storm” of a weekend.

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Valentine’s Day at the Courthouse

If Las Vegas is the “marriage capital of the world,” then I figure Valentine’s Day is its Fourth of July. Up to now, I’ve only read about all the wedding action that happens every February 14th, but today I checked it out myself. I took a little field trip to the Clark County Courthouse to see what it’s like to get a marriage license on the busiest day of the year.

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None Dare Call it Super

Super Bowl has come and gone once again, leaving millions and millions of dollars behind in the city that will never be its host. It’s amazing to me that Las Vegas reaps all the benefits of the most popular football game of the year without contributing a cent to its production. And not only is Sin City exempt from underwriting any Super Bowl costs, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (of “What Happens in Vegas” fame) isn’t allowed to buy even one minute’s worth of advertising during the television broadcast…

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Hooters in Need of Support

What? Hooters is failing in the city of hooters? It seemed impossible last January, when old San Remo was still going through his makeover. Women turned out in American Idol numbers to see if their racks were awesome enough to land them the right to wear tight T-shirts and orange hot pants while they shuttled beer…

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Shark (but not Card) and Lizard (but not Lounge)

It still amazes me that people who don’t live in Las Vegas think that there is nothing here except smoky casinos, feather-twitching showgirls, and the people who inhabit and ogle them. They seem to be perfectly aware that the valley is home to nearly two million people these days, but, like Pittsburgh’s long-outdated reputation as a sooty steel town, the enduring Las Vegas image is a relic from Rat Pack days…

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