As the perfect fuel to turn a dithering gawker into a diehard gambler, alcohol is very easy indeed to come by in Las Vegas. If you want a drink in a casino, there's no need to look for a bar; instead, a tray-toting waitress will come and find you. Beers and cocktails are delivered free of charge to anyone hovering near, let alone seated at, the tables and slot machines, and assuming you keep on tipping the waitress, the supply will keep on going around the clock.
All the casinos have at least one actual bar as well, located in the heart of the gaming area and invariably packed with cacophonous slot machines; even the ones at Bellagio have video poker screens inlaid into their solid marble counters. Customers who are actively gambling can usually get their drinks free. If you're staying at a major casino on the Strip or downtown, you'll have no difficulty finding a place to drink in your hotel. Neither area, however, holds any significant bars other than those attached to casinos. Elsewhere, neighborhood bars do exist where you can drink and eat away from the frenzy of the casinos the most popular local pub chain, PT's , has around twenty locations but very few tourists bother to seek them out. Brewpubs too have appeared both in, and away from, the casinos; if you're a beer drinker, you might prefer to seek them out, but don't expect anything special in terms of food, let alone that you're going to get away from blaring slot machines.
To buy or consume alcohol in Nevada, you must be aged 21 or over, and have photo ID to prove it.
In terms of enjoying a proper night out, however, ordinary run-of-the-mill bars are just a small part of the picture. In the last few years, Las Vegas has witnessed an explosion of nightlife opportunities. The old-fashioned Las Vegas lounge has returned in force, both knowingly retro-styled for twenty-something rockers and lovingly re-created for older visitors looking to recapture the quieter but still somehow deliciously decadent flavour of the Rat Pack era. The casinos are once more competing to hold exotic and characterful lounges; the Venetian , for example, currently holds three highly individual alternatives.
What's even more striking is that Las Vegas has finally come of age as an international clubbing capital. The opening of the stand-alone Club Utopia on the Strip in 1994 paved the way for a steady trickle of copycat ventures, but only since the start of the millennium has the scene really taken off. No longer are clubbers considered a breed apart from tourists; instead, the success of nightclubs at hipper casinos like the Hard Rock and Mandalay Bay has prompted all their major rivals to follow suit, often with spectacular results. As the word gets about, Las Vegas is becoming known as a specific clubbing destination, although it's still somewhat skewed towards older punters Hugh Hefner is even said to be talking about bringing in the first new Playboy club for twenty years.
So many entrepreneurs have so much money to throw around in Las Vegas, aiming to please all of the people all of the time, that it's getting all but impossible to pinpoint the differences between bars, lounges, restaurants, and nightclubs. Our listings are divided on the basis that you go to a bar to drink, whereas you go to a club to dance. And a lounge well, you go to a lounge because you're in Las Vegas.
There was a time when performing in Las Vegas represented the absolute pinnacle of any show-business career. In the early 1960s, when Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack were shooting the original Ocean's 11 during the day then singing the night away at the Sands , the city could claim to be the capital of the international entertainment industry. It was even hip.
The money is still there in Las Vegas, as was shown by the MGM Grand paying Barbra Streisand a reported $20 million to perform on Millennium Eve, but the world has moved on. As the great names of the past fade from view, few of the individual performers popular with traditional Vegas visitors are now considered capable of carrying an extended-run show. Today's stars, on the other hand Celine Dion excepted don't want to spend their lives playing Vegas. Top-selling musicians make quite enough money from recordings and occasional tours not to need to spend months at a time in the desert.
Nonetheless, live entertainment remains a crucial component of the Las Vegas package, and the days of the big-budget "spectacular" are far from over. The tendency nowadays is to rely on lavish stunts and special effects rather than global megastars, with the illusionist-magicians Siegfried and Roy now into their second decade at the Mirage . A fair number of old-style Vegas revues are still soldiering on, but there are more stimulating contemporary productions than you might imagine. In particular, the arty Canadian-based circus/theater troupe, Cirque du Soleil , has revolutionized attitudes toward what Las Vegas audiences might be able to handle. Its two stunning shows, Mystre at Treasure Island and the magnificent O at Bellagio , remain the biggest tickets of all, though the Luxor 's Blue Man Group has stolen a little of their avante-garde thunder. To make sure of seeing one of these big-name shows, especially on a weekend, it's essential to make reservations as far in advance as possible; if you're happy just to see whatever's available, however, most of the lesser shows are still selling tickets right up until showtime.
It also looks as though Las Vegas might finally be getting more into tune with the musical tastes of the baby-boom generation. You can still see Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck, and Wayne Newton if you're in town at the right time, and lots of unfashionable names from the Seventies and Eighties linger on, but the Hard Rock, Mandalay Bay , and Aladdin are all now showcasing the biggest names in contemporary rock, reggae, blues, and soul.
We've reviewed a representative cross-section of Las Vegas shows. All take place on the Strip ; several of the downtown and off-Strip casinos have showrooms, but with the Rio repeatedly misfiring, none currently features anything of interest. Note that the entertainment scene was especially hard hit by the post-September 11 economic downturn. Several shows closed, while others reduced their frequency and/or ticket prices. All the listings here are therefore even more subject to change than usual.
As for what the future may hold, the Cirque du Soleil will certainly remain at the forefront. They're said to be developing a show for Steve Wynn's Le Reve , set in a Himalayan village where all the children aged under eleven can fly, and another for New YorkNew York , with a fire theme to match O's water motif. The biggest single project of all, however, is the Colosseum at Caesars Palace , intended to draw four thousand people per night to watch Celine Dion.