It's Not A Bender, It's A Lifestyle.

I took this with my own camera. About 5:30 in the afternoon. Probably the single most amazing man-made view I've ever had eyes on in my life. Truly unreal. you can just barely make out the tip of the Stratosphere in the middle behind the hulk of the unfinished Fontainebleau. 4 MILES AWAY.

Vegas, late October. Overall good trip, fairly uneventful, if that's possible in Vegas. Arrived as planned at about 11:00a on Wednesday. After getting pretty comprehensively lost I quickly gave up on my plan to walk out of the airport and caught a cab. To MGM. I was staying at THEhotel at Mandalay and didn't have enough sleep the night before so I decided to head straight over and try to get lucky w/a room. Had a slightly bitchy check-in girl and was charged a $100 hold per night for incidentals, so that started off the trip on a bummer note. I am under no circumstances a wealthy person and I always have a very carefully planned amount of money that I take with me, so losing $384 of that (resort fee on top) was a shocker. I know it's just a deposit but I don't like having cash taken out of my pocket in Vegas w/o being aware of it beforehand. Anyway, got there so early that no Strip view room was available, so I just said fuck it and took a room on the 13th flo...

When I go to Vegas now, I have been taking in the neighborhood of 1K a day as my drink/eat/gamble budget. This time it will be $933 per, so I'm in that range. The first time I went I had around $650 a day, but I only stayed for two nights. Not sure how I didn't freak out having that little. I like to feel like I can pretty much do whatever I want as a non-whale gambler who has no card skills and likes to play penny or nickel slots. When it comes down to it, while I go to Vegas ostensibly with an amount of money that I'm prepared to blow, I do like to come back with at least a little left over. This time I will also have $125 in resort credit for MGM joints so I should be able to squeeze a couple good meals out of that as it'll be just me going. All I will really need to pay for is the resort fee for 3 nights, and one of those will be covered by the MLife points I have built up so I'm looking at about $50 of actual onsite obligations as everything else is paid for;...

This time will go according to plan, damn it, or if it doesn't, it will be because something better overruled the plan. Day 1: Will get into Vegas via Jetblue at about 10:30a, walking out to the Strip (b/c fuck $40 taxi rides that go 2 miles), should take about an hour. Will be too early to check in to THEhotel, so will go to PH and pick up my TR card, then want to stop somewhere to pick up liquor; will be good this time to be pre-partied up before heading out, and will save a little money. Then will saunter over to Mandalay and pre-register or possibly check in, at least being able to drop off bags. Then it's off to find a bar and maybe drop a hundie on slots while waiting to check in. Once I get into the room (hopefully up high, and w/ a Strip view) It's unpack and iron clothes time, then maybe take a short two hour nap if I need it. Next, I'm going to take a FUCKING BATH. THEhotel suites have an actual bath tub. I don't know why I'm so pumped to do t...

This trip was fun, but I made it hard on myself. First mistake was booking Megabus to get me to/from Vegas. Megabus is a Greyhound-type service that goes from SF to LA to Vegas for super cheap. My round trip for the whole shebang was $80. Cool right? I'll be able to sleep on the bus overnight, I get to see the Mojave desert, which I never have before, sure it'll take a little longer, but road trip, right? Wrong. The bus was super crowded, uncomfortable, and for some reason I could NOT sleep on that fucking thing. I got on the bus at around 10p here, and didn't get to Vegas until 1p the next day. 15 fucking hours on that bus; sure I got to see the Mojave, but that motherfucker is overrated. You seen 1 mile you've seen them all. And I saw them all. To be fair none of this was Megabus' fault, it was actually on time the whole way and in reality once we got past LA and dumped off all the beautiful people it wasn't that crowded for the last leg. It just would hav...

Previous to this trip I have stayed at some of the most bargain-basement "resorts" on the strip. Here are some condensed post-mortems based on really just my impressions of the resorts, cuz my memories of the actual trips are pretty fuzzy. -Rumor, a boutique place about a mile east of the strip. This was my first trip to Vegas. It was really cool/funky, bit youngish of a vibe for me and I learned later that it caters to the LGBT community (whatever). The room was beautiful but you could tell the resort itself was a converted Rodeway Inn or something. Has a little apartment complex pool and no real lounge or restaurants to speak of. Check in desk is about 10 feet wide and right behind it is a 15 foot long bar with a little outside deck where people were clustered looking uncomfortable and listening to a sad little DJ. I came back to the bar on my way to the room at about 3a the first night I was there and the bartender and I were literally the only people there. Anywhere...

Many facts about me that you will find endlessly fascinating to the extent that you will forget them immediately. I live in San Francisco. BTW, no one from San Francisco says they are from San Francisco, as we all just refer to it as The City. As if there are no other cities, just this one. So, for fear of breaking some arcane social contract I will, forever more, refer to San Francisco as The City. Despite this, this blog will have almost no mention of San Francisco. So never mind. I've been to Vegas 6 times in the last 3 years and will be going for the 4th time this year in 2 months (Dec '13). You will hear a lot about Vegas on this blog. I loves me some Vegas. My life consists of going to work, going out to get drunk on days off and saving up for/going to Las Vegas. No joke. I have no hobbies or interests to speak of. ERGO, this blog will consist mainly of posts about my personal adventures in and endless obsessing about Las Vegas. In fact, to call it a blog is a bit...