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LAS
VEGAS - NIGHTLIFE AND ENTERTAINMENT |
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| Vacation
Rentals in Las Vegas |
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Bars and clubs
As the perfect fuel to turn a
dithering gawker into a diehard
gambler, alcohol is very
easy indeed to come by in Las
Vegas. If you want a drink in a
casino, there's no need to look
for a bar; instead, a tray-toting
waitress will come and find you.
Beers and cocktails are delivered
free of charge to anyone hovering
near, let alone seated at, the
tables and slot machines, and
assuming you keep on tipping the
waitress, the supply will keep on
going around the clock.
All the casinos have at least
one actual bar as well,
located in the heart of the gaming
area and invariably packed with
cacophonous slot machines; even
the ones at Bellagio have
video poker screens inlaid into
their solid marble counters.
Customers who are actively
gambling can usually get their
drinks free. If you're staying at
a major casino on the Strip or
downtown, you'll have no
difficulty finding a place to
drink in your hotel. Neither area,
however, holds any significant
bars other than those attached to
casinos. Elsewhere, neighborhood
bars do exist where you can drink
and eat away from the frenzy of
the casinos - the most popular
local pub chain, PT's , has
around twenty locations - but very
few tourists bother to seek them
out. Brewpubs too have
appeared both in, and away from,
the casinos; if you're a beer
drinker, you might prefer to seek
them out, but don't expect
anything special in terms of food,
let alone that you're going to get
away from blaring slot machines.
To buy or consume alcohol in
Nevada, you must be aged 21 or
over, and have photo ID to prove
it.
In terms of enjoying a proper
night out, however, ordinary
run-of-the-mill bars are just a
small part of the picture. In the
last few years, Las Vegas has
witnessed an explosion of
nightlife opportunities. The
old-fashioned Las Vegas lounge
has returned in force, both
knowingly retro-styled for
twenty-something rockers and
lovingly re-created for older
visitors looking to recapture the
quieter but still somehow
deliciously decadent flavour of
the Rat Pack era. The casinos are
once more competing to hold exotic
and characterful lounges; the Venetian
, for example, currently holds
three highly individual
alternatives.
What's even more striking is
that Las Vegas has finally come of
age as an international clubbing
capital. The opening of the
stand-alone Club Utopia on
the Strip in 1994 paved the way
for a steady trickle of copycat
ventures, but only since the start
of the millennium has the scene
really taken off. No longer are
clubbers considered a breed apart
from tourists; instead, the
success of nightclubs at hipper
casinos like the Hard Rock
and Mandalay Bay has
prompted all their major rivals to
follow suit, often with
spectacular results. As the word
gets about, Las Vegas is becoming
known as a specific clubbing
destination, although it's still
somewhat skewed towards older
punters - Hugh Hefner is even said
to be talking about bringing in
the first new Playboy club
for twenty years.
So many entrepreneurs have so
much money to throw around in Las
Vegas, aiming to please all of the
people all of the time, that it's
getting all but impossible to
pinpoint the differences between
bars, lounges, restaurants, and
nightclubs. Our listings are
divided on the basis that you go
to a bar to drink, whereas you go
to a club to dance. And a lounge ?
well, you go to a lounge because
you're in Las Vegas.
Entertainment
There was a time when performing
in Las Vegas represented the
absolute pinnacle of any
show-business career. In the early
1960s, when Frank Sinatra's Rat
Pack were shooting the original Ocean's
11 during the day then singing
the night away at the Sands
, the city could claim to be the
capital of the international
entertainment industry. It was
even hip.
The money is still there in Las
Vegas, as was shown by the MGM
Grand paying Barbra Streisand
a reported $20 million to perform
on Millennium Eve, but the world
has moved on. As the great names
of the past fade from view, few of
the individual performers popular
with traditional Vegas visitors
are now considered capable of
carrying an extended-run show.
Today's stars, on the other hand -
Celine Dion excepted - don't want
to spend their lives playing
Vegas. Top-selling musicians make
quite enough money from recordings
and occasional tours not to need
to spend months at a time in the
desert.
Nonetheless, live
entertainment remains a
crucial component of the Las Vegas
package, and the days of the
big-budget "spectacular"
are far from over. The tendency
nowadays is to rely on lavish
stunts and special effects rather
than global megastars, with the
illusionist-magicians Siegfried
and Roy now into their second
decade at the Mirage . A
fair number of old-style Vegas
revues are still soldiering on,
but there are more stimulating
contemporary productions than you
might imagine. In particular, the
arty Canadian-based circus/theater
troupe, Cirque du Soleil ,
has revolutionized attitudes
toward what Las Vegas audiences
might be able to handle. Its two
stunning shows, Myst่re at
Treasure Island and the
magnificent O at Bellagio
, remain the biggest tickets of
all, though the Luxor 's Blue
Man Group has stolen a little
of their avante-garde thunder. To
make sure of seeing one of these
big-name shows, especially on a
weekend, it's essential to make reservations
as far in advance as possible; if
you're happy just to see
whatever's available, however,
most of the lesser shows are still
selling tickets right up until
showtime.
It also looks as though Las
Vegas might finally be getting
more into tune with the musical
tastes of the baby-boom
generation. You can still see Tom
Jones, Englebert Humperdinck, and
Wayne Newton if you're in town at
the right time, and lots of
unfashionable names from the
Seventies and Eighties linger on,
but the Hard Rock, Mandalay Bay
, and Aladdin are all now
showcasing the biggest names in
contemporary rock, reggae, blues,
and soul.
We've reviewed a representative
cross-section of Las Vegas shows.
All take place on the Strip
; several of the downtown and
off-Strip casinos have showrooms,
but with the Rio repeatedly
misfiring, none currently features
anything of interest. Note that
the entertainment scene was
especially hard hit by the
post-September 11 economic
downturn. Several shows closed,
while others reduced their
frequency and/or ticket prices.
All the listings here are
therefore even more subject to
change than usual.
As for what the future
may hold, the Cirque du Soleil
will certainly remain at the
forefront. They're said to be
developing a show for Steve Wynn's
Le Reve , set in a
Himalayan village where all the
children aged under eleven can
fly, and another for New
York-New York , with a fire
theme to match O's water
motif. The biggest single project
of all, however, is the Colosseum
at Caesars Palace ,
intended to draw four thousand
people per night to watch Celine
Dion.
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