Almost Christmas, and Vegas is well decorated. All of the casinos have some form of generic holiday stuff up – usually trees and lights. We’ll go wander the Strip later in the week and take lots of photos so you can all share.
In competition with the Santa race earlier in the month there was also the Rock ‘n’ Roll Vegas Stiletto Dash at the Palazzo, where young women dressed in short skirts and very high heels (minimum three inches) ran across the casino floor. Not to be sexist, there was a separate run for men in heels (no word on short skirts there). Over at the Bellagio there was the Downy Unstoppable Scavenger Hunt with a $20,000 first prize. Downtown at the Beauty Bar was the Freakshow Wrestling, one of the main events was a guy in a banana outfit wrestling a big, pink furry Elvis. (Hey, it’s Vegas). On the other side, Catholic Charities ran a ‘Phone Home’ event, with free phone calls for the homeless with clothing and toiletries given out. At Aliante Station there was an event for our local Army reservists being deployed to Afghanistan. In Boulder City the railroad museum ran train rides with Santa. Quite an assortment of things to do.

We were at the Harley Davidson Café for my companies’ holiday party. As usual I parked a distance away so that we could walk through a few casinos to get there. Being old folk we normally hit the Strip during the day, this was our first evening outing in a while. The tourist style does change after dark. Though it was only 9pm and not the opening time of all the fancy clubs (they open doors sometime between 10pm and 1am depending on venue) there was a definite switch from sweat suits and jeans to nice evening wear, with quite a few young women wearing very short, very tight dresses. My wife is convinced that the absence of visible panty lines was due to the wearing of Spanks, but I think there is a simpler explanation. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your (or my wife’s) point of view) I was not able to investigate thoroughly.

Just to throw in a few photos, here are some more of Tivoli Village. Yes, the sun is shining, though cold at night (around freezing this morning) it does get up near 60f (15c) in the daytime.

Outside the Scoops Ice Cream parlor


Main street


Security didn't seem very busy

MIB coming back? more 80's music

Oh, I really liked these guys – nice to see them coming back


As long as we are doing Monday videos (on Tuesday) let’s continue with those 80’s hits that we all love so well. I loved the ears on these guys


For standing on the street corners, these guys had a good beat


At the start of that video there are some clips of fans greeting Johnnie Ray, someone I had never heard of him. Wikipedia says he had a number 1 hit in the UK back in 1956 with this one


Personally, I’d rather hear Huey, who else would be brave enough to wear an orange suit?

Cupcake Sunday

For those of you in Las Vegas, the lovely ladies at Pick Your Poison cupcakes
(who make absolutely the best cupcakes in the world) will be shown competing on Cupcake Wars on the Food Network this Sunday night.

The girls are also having a viewing party at The Lady Sylvia speakeasy, 900 LV Blvd south, from 7 to 10 on Sunday, with drinks and cupcakes to sample. If you follow them on Facebook there is a map and link.

weekend events and E

A new restaurant is opening at the Excalibur – a BBQ joint partially owned by Lynard Skynard. Yes, these guys


Older versions of those guys of course. If you show up tomorrow for the grand opening they will be putting on an acoustic performance inside to kick the place off. I like that song, but most people would list this one as the band’s most played, so I’ll include it.


Other events this week include the ongoing Grand Finals Rodeo, directed at that audience are performances by Dwight Yoakam, Charlie Daniels, Tanya Tucker, Merle Haggard and more, for other directions there are Jay Z & Kanye at the MGM, Jane’s Addiction, Andrea Bocelli, Ron White, Bill Engvall, Jenny McCarthy, Skrillex and a lot more scattered around town.

But on Fridays I usually post photos of my granddaughter E, so here are a few from back when she had more hair:
She still likes to read

And drive

And eat cereal for breakfast (she goes along with Grammie for Honey Nut Cheerios)

City center lights and the marathon

It was a busy weekend here in Las Vegas. The marathon ran on Sunday, and I didn’t realize that this year they ran it at night – the start time was 5pm. Starting at Mandalay Bay on the south end of the Strip, runners proceeded up Las Vegas Boulevard north to downtown, running on Freemont Street and back. The half marathon returned to Mandalay while the full marathon turned west and wandered around a bit to get to the full 26 mile mark. This was put on as a Rock N’ Roll Marathon, with live bands playing every mile or so. It must have been a nice run, between the casinos and all the lights to the Freemont canopy with music along the way. It was cold though, at the start the temperatures were in the low 50’s (around 12c) and cooled off from there. But moving the run to the evening hours did spark attendance – over 44,000 runners, the third largest marathon in the US.

The timing required that Las Vegas Boulevard be closed for most of the day, which caused a lot of problems with our other big event: the National Finals Rodeo. The Rodeo itself is taking place at the University center, which is a few miles east of the Strip down Tropicana. When it let out at 3 there were thousands of people that had to get back to their hotel rooms, which was a challenging task with the Strip closed and traffic not being able to cross except at limited points. But the rodeo went well. We walked the south end of the Strip on Saturday night, and cowboy hats and very short skirts were much in evidence. The hats come and go, but the skirts are around most nights, no matter how cold it is. We also walked through the Monte Carlo and New York New York casinos and noticed the new trend in the big places of putting scantily clad dancers up on a bar right on the casino floor. (one in Monte Carlo did have on a cowboy hat, which probably covered more skin than the rest of her outfit). I was distracted walking past, I wonder how the players like it. It must work at attracting and keeping gamblers putting out their money or the casinos wouldn’t do it.

In keeping with the Strip theme, here are a few shots taken at the Crystals shopping center at City Center: first, I liked the birds on this store’s windows


From the upper level the center shows it’s interesting interior shapes


Down at the bottom is this sculpture, where the plastic sculptures keep changing colors