thevcblog: California Day 0 - Last Chance Shopping and Errands in Las Vegas

I loathe Las Vegas. This is the worst, dumbest city in the world. It's a giant Gatlinburg, but with a somewhat lower proportion of hillbillies. Its only purpose is to extract as much money as possible from suckers.

Here are two pictures that sum it up for me:

This is the smoke detector in my room at the Flamingo.

My room doesn't have a coffee maker, either. During the conference, I would just go downstairs one floor and grab a cup early from the urns set out for conference attendees. Conference attendees get a discount room rate, which means we are all on the 4th floor of the 28th floor building, with a view of air conditioning units and spotlights. But today, my conference is over, and I didn't feel like stealing coffee from the next conference, so I went down to the lobby and bought coffee from the cafe in the mini-mall in the lobby. $9. There was a Starbucks, too, but God only knows what that would have cost.

Next up is the picture of my beer, where it has been sitting lonely and forgotten under the tap for 10 minutes at the Gordon Ramsey Burger restaurant.

When I finally got the absurdly overworked bartender's attention he apologized profusely, and offered to comp me the next one. He said he is still learning "the new system" they just put in place, which I suspect is a system whereby they can have fewer servers doing more work less effectively.

When the bartender brought me my next, free, Guinness, he apologized again for "making me drink more beer than I wanted to."

me: "That's not actually true."

He laughed.

The Gordon Ramsey burger is nothing special and it is nowhere near as good as a bacon double smash burger with Old Bay tots at the Cheesesteak Factory on Route 1, despite costing way more money, and the Cheesesteak Factory smashburger is not cheap. Cost of a Gordon Ramsey Backyard Burger with fries and one Guinness, plus 20% tip was $56. Total ripoff.

The airport noise conference ended at 3:00, so I got right on my bike and headed west 10 miles to REI to do my last chance essential shopping and errands, which were air in the bike tires, a headlight since I forgot to back the mount for the light I brought, and a belt, which I forgot to pack, resulting in my pants sliding down throughout the conference.

There was a Bike World on the way to the REI. Bike World is a low end bike shop chain that sells bike brands like Diamondback and Mongoose, barely a step above department store bikes. The shop looks like it has been there forever. It has a very faded "Schwinn" sign out front. But they are awesome. I explained how I forgot my bike mount, and the guy there said "let me see the light", which was a Knog Blinder which has a proprietary mount. He returned with a general-purpose velcro strap mount, which gets the job done just fine. $5. Bike World is the best.

So on to REI, where I got a belt and some energy bars to get me through the long, service-free stretches of desert highway coming up.

When you get out to where people actually live, prices become normal. Where people actually live is still weird though. Here's what a residential neighborhood looks like:

What we have here is a large city block bounded by major two lane connector roads (with bike lanes) where the whole block is a giant walled compound. Walls are cinder block, painted to match the mountains in the distance. Inside are densely packed condos and snout houses. Condos sell in the 300s, snout houses in the 400s. There are miles and miles of these walled compounds. Why would anyone want to live in such a place?

Well you could also choose an apartment in a tower that looks just like a casino, I guess.

Heading back towards downtown, I came upon this piece of work from Frank Gehry.

It's the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. There is nothing wrong with this building, it's just that your brain is sick.

I picked my route home so I could see more of the historic Fremont Street District in downtown Las Vegas. Ha ha ha.

https://youtu.be/jJmdve7ST7M

Historic Fremont Street is now "The Fremont Experience", which is two entire city blocks enclosed under a giant video screen showing seizure-inducing graphics as music blasts away. All two blocks are an open air bar. You can also ride a zip line the whole length of it if you want. I wonder if Las Vegas has a Historic Preservation Commission that approved this?

I noticed that the side streets are named after entertainers from the 1950s and 1960s. Who would have thought that the Rat Pack would eventually become this exercise in humility?