Dumping Them Out: Monday Las Vegas Spectacular
Welcome back to the first ever non-National Holiday episode of Dumping Them Out. I apologize for the wait. I was in Las Vegas this weekend for my bachelor party. I thought I would be smart and save a few hundred dollars on a flight by booking the Sunday night red eye. What I did not consider was the very obvious fact that spending an extra 12 hours in Las Vegas is almost certainly going to cost you as much, if not more money than you would have spent on a reasonably timed Sunday morning flight.
Now I know what you're probably thinking, "Do they not have wifi in Las Vegas?" The answer is yes. They do not have wifi in Las Vegas. My hands were tied. Also I forgot to charge my laptop before checking out of my AirBnB and I really just wanted to sit in a casino and watch the U.S. Open, and I really it to be on a comfortable couch, an the idea of walking around the strip with my luggage searching for a decent couch in view of the U.S. Open that was also close enough to an outlet was simply too much work.
Every time I go to Las Vegas, there is one game that I hands down look forward to playing the most. Not that the game is a secret or anything, but I don't hear nearly enough people give it credit for being the best way to spend your time and stretch your money in all of Vegas. The electronic horse racing game.
Even Las Vegas doesn't realize what they have in this game, considering it's only in maybe every 1-in-3 casinos. It's always a treat when you stumble upon one. The minimums are always $1 or $2. I feel like so many people's problem with Las Vegas is that they can't afford to sit down at a fun game and play for an extended period of time unless they're winning. But the horse racing game is the best bang for you buck. You can sit there for hours. It actually actually gives you something fun to watch and cheer for. It's actually competitive. It's a great community game. The table goes wild when a long shot hits. In the end I almost never end up winning on the horse racing machine, but every time I go it's by far the most fun I have. There should really be a casino that just has them from wall-to-wall.
Something specifically I noticed about Las Vegas that was different from the last time I went there (which I think was 2021), I swear the scantily clad women dressed as police officers and feather girls on Fremont Street have gotten way more aggressive. I must have got my nipple pinched and/or ass grabbed 10 times in the span of a few hours. Honestly it got to the point where I felt like it was rude of me to not grab an ass back. Although by the end I came to realize by far the best way to handle those girls is to hit them with a juke/spin move. That's actually pretty fun. Also, what is the end game for those girls? Are they just trying to get you to pay for sex? Are they just straight up prostitutes? I think they're just prostitutes.
The other group of girls who's existence I don't fully understand are the massage women who walk around casinos with a seat cushion that says "massage". Are there really that many people who take them up on that to justify their existence? They're everywhere. I was offered a massage multiple times an hour. I don't think I saw a single person agree to one either. The massage industry in general never makes sense to me. I've never got a massage in my life. I've never been tempted to get one. Especially not like, in a fucking mall where thousands of strangers are just walking by watching you get rubbed down by an old Asian woman outside of a Claire's.
The celebrity TV chef/food people in Las Vegas are the biggest sellouts in that whole place. They'll really just slap their name on anything nowadays. I used to think if I saw Gordon Ramsey, or Bobby Flay, or even Guy Fieri's name on a restaurant, that I could expect the quality of food to at least be above average. But they don't even try to make their food anything better than fast food caliber anymore. I paid $20 for some Guy Fieri chicken tenders that were the saddest looking tenders I've seen in my life. There's no shame in those guys.
One last thing I appreciate about Las Vegas is that outside of maybe the table games where the casinos appear to be on the same page regarding their minimums, there doesn't seem to be any collusion between restaurants when it comes to pricing. Some places try to gouge you. Sometimes you'll walk up to a food court in a casino and a bottle of Aquafina will cost you $8.50. But other times you'll walk into the In-N-Out Burger on the strip and pay $6.40 for a double cheese. The drink prices in casinos are all over the place, but every 1000 feet there's a Walgreens or a CVS that doubles as a liquor store. You can even get a hotel in the middle of the strip for under $100. If you know what you're doing, and are a halfway responsible gambler, it's really not that expensive of a vacation. I'm always surprised all the different Las Vegas Strip establishments aren't more on the same page when it comes to completely fucking you over.