Vegas, Baby

Last weekend marked my first visit to The Entertainment Capital of the World, Sin City itself: Las Vegas. For years I’d rejected the idea. For one, I am not much of a gambler. It’s hard for someone so calculated and logical to get excited about gambling. Besides that, I just envisioned this over-hyped, long-lined, unfulfilled fantasy where people think they’re going to have the time of their lives but end up waiting in line at a club for an hour because they don’t have women with them. I shuttered at the idea that slipping people 20s made you important. The politics and bullshit appealed to me as much as the club scene does in Chicago. It doesn’t. So for 5 legal years of drinking, I was never enticed to visit the most famous party destination in the country.

I’d love to say that after this weekend, my views and opinions and judgments have completely changed and I’ve embraced the bright lights of the strip for what they’re worth. Truth is, I was pretty spot on in my assessment, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have the best weekend of my life, because I’m pretty sure I did. Here’s why:

Six guys met a plane ride away on a Friday night in March to celebrate the lucky friend’s end of bachelorhood. From the moment we got on the train in Chicago, it was already positioned to be one of the greatest weekends in memory. It just so happens that we chose a place that catered to and facilitates that mindset. Our nights and days and everything in between were filled with the classic and sensational shenanigans and camaraderie that you would expect. From sunrise to sundown and through to the next sunrise, we glimpsed the life of those we’ve all aspired to be. For a weekend, I felt like I was brushing shoulders with, stepping in footsteps with, and chasing the ghosts of the biggest and the brightest, the most untouchable, unreachable, unattainable, the magazine pages and the behind the scenes. It was a vacation on steroids, a weekend injected with more adrenaline than a city of tweakers. It was less sleep in an entire weekend than I get in a normal night. It was more fun in an entire weekend than I get in a normal month. Forgive me for vagaries, but you know what they say.

So how does all of that reaffirm my preconceived notions? Because it was exactly how I described. I’m not much of a gambler, and I proved why. I lost a tiny chunk of change at a video poker game the first night. The next day, I doubled my cash-on-hand in 10 minutes, reversing my luck to be ‘up’ for the weekend. I had planned on gambling with my earnings and putting the rest on bets for the Bulls and the Bears to win it all. Well, another 30 minutes at the blackjack table and that wish was sailing faster than Dread Pirate Robert’s ship. That turned me off to the scene, and I cut my losses before I let it affect my mood. So like I said, gambling isn’t my thing.

The rest of it, the politics? It’s all there. We didn’t make it into a club the first night because we were 6 guys and no girls. We reserved a table at a club and had to meet the minimal just to sit there, which, if you scan the price tags at a liquor store, there’s a slight up-charge to get the same bottle at a table in a club in Vegas on a Saturday night. I’ll spare the details. And we still had to wait in a short line. Luckily, we didn’t pick a peak weekend for crowds, so the pools and the streets weren’t just overrun with ridiculousness.

But I guess the reason why I was so easily able to overlook so many details that would have killed me in Chicago is, well, it’s Vegas. Vegas is much less a location and much more a mindset. It’s why the phrase ‘Vegas, baby’ caught on. For those who know, just hearing that can flip a mood in a flash. Where we were wasn’t so overly impressive that it’s impossible to have a bad time. Yes, the casinos are crazy impressive and beautiful and yes, the people watching is a full-time event and yes, at some point, it seems like Vegas has everything, but everything comes at a cost. A serious cost. So you balance. You balance the expenses with the rest because at some point, it’s a battle you can’t win. So you give in and try to soak it up for everything it has. If I spent every transaction pondering how it will look on my bank account when I got back, I would have missed the point. Can I do a Vegas weekend every month? Absolutely not, I’d be broke by fall.

But when the time is right, when the event is right, when the reason is right, when the people are right, there isn’t a better playground for adults. Every memory I have (all of them), every person I met, every story I’ll not tell, every place we visited, street we walked on, picture we took, vehicle we were driven in, vehicle we drove in, drink we cheersed, song we danced to, every hand that was dealt, roulette ball spun, ace flipped over, every moment that we were awake made it the most memorable weekend in my life. I can’t think of one thing I would have done differently, one regret, one mistake. We knocked Vegas over and took it for everything we could. We squeezed more into 64 hours than seems humanly possible, and we’re all still alive, with our pride, dignity, and organs. We accomplished everything we sought out to, and will have a catalog of memories and stories to share for a lifetime to come. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but that jaded, cynical viewpoint I had a week ago? Long gone. Now it’s just looking for the next reason I’ll have in my life to get there. Vegas, baby.