How To Do Vegas Right

I never set out to become an expert on Las Vegas . The truth is, at heart I'm an awful gambler, one of those fools who plays by pure emotion, raising my bets when the cards feel “hot”, maxing out my credit cards to double up on roulette when I know, for a fact, that the math says I'm a moron. But about three years ago, I fell ass backwards into a story that changed my life - and my relationship with the neon city. See, I knew these MIT kids. Math and science geeks, unremarkable in a city full of overeducated social misfits, except for one simple characteristic: these MIT kids had tons of money. Stranger still, their money was all in one hundred dollar bills. In New York or LA, you see hundred dollar bills all the time. But in Boston , you hardly ever see anything bigger than a twenty. Curious, I went over to one of the kid's apartments, and he proudly directed me toward his closet. Inside, stacked above his laundry - in banded stacks of benjamins - was six hundred thousand dollars, money that he and his friends had won playing blackjack.

A year later, I wrote a book about him and his MIT buddies, and ever since then, I've become a de facto guru of everything neon. In my travels to Vegas, I've seen just about everything: I've been trailed by private eyes, kicked out of the Mirage at three in the morning, taken to a back room at Caesars, and watched a bet of $75,000 on a single hand of blackjack. I've learned to love Las Vegas , but I know it's not for everyone. In fact, people come up to me all the time and tell me about the horrible time they've had in Vegas, how they lost all their money and ended up sleeping in a parked car on the edge of the Strip, how they got food poisoning from some sushi bar they found in a dark corner of a ninety-nine cent buffet and spent the last two days of their trip puking into a backed-up toilet in a disturbingly neon-lit hotel room.

There are two very distinct ways to do Las Vegas . There's the romantic Vegas: you and your significant other, champagne and caviar with the dancing fountains of the Bellagio spraying up behind you. Then there's the all-night party Vegas, the Vegas of the TV commercials - you and your buddies in the back of a limo wondering what the hell happened after you finished off that fifth bottle of Ketel One. Either way, with Vegas, you need a plan.

If you've chosen the romantic route, I'd actually go for the Venetian over the Bellagio or even new 2.8 billion dollar Wynn Hotel because nothing spells romance better than a faux Italian palace, complete with gondoliers and opera-singing valets. And break down and see one of the Cirque de Soleil shows (O, Ra, or the new Reve at the Wynn). I know the idea of some bizarre French Canadian dude in a skin tight jumpsuit wiggling all over your date isn't the most appealing image you've ever had, but trust me, the shows are worth the hundred dollar ticket price. Get your ticket through the hotel concierge, and it's often better to wait until the day of the show to make the call. It turns out that all the shows in Vegas hold back the best tickets in case a high roller shows up at the last minute, so the good seats aren't released until the day of the performance.

If you're in Vegas to party, choose the Hard Rock over the Palms or Mandalay Bay . The circular casino is now an extension of LA on the weekends, with all the plastic, superficial beauty that you'd expect. After 11:00 PM rolls around, bribe the doorman at Body English, Pure, or Taboo, or spring for a bottle and a table. And ignore the cab drivers who try to direct you to the best strip club in town; they are getting kickbacks to shuttle you and your drunken friends to some hole in the wall crawling with mutated escapees from nearby Area 51. Good strip clubs don't need to bribe cab drivers. When I wrote Bringing Down the House, the best strip club in town was the Crazy Horse Too, but recently, all the good girls moved over to the Spearmint Rhino. If you find yourself sprawled out on the loading dock of the Rhino at 5:00 AM, being slapped awake by a bouncer, then you know you've done Vegas right.

Either way you go, romantic or ribald, my best piece of advice is to remember that Las Vegas is located in the middle of a desert. If you've been card counting all weekend and have won more than you should have, don't accept any ‘sightseeing' drives from oversized dudes in dark suits and sunglasses. And whatever you do, don't eat the goddamn sushi.