I've been to Las Vegas twice, once because I flew in for a triathlon, and once for CES.
I do not like Las Vegas. Its existence defies logic and economics. Walking around the strip I kept looking at the huge hotels and their serpentine design. It took a while, but I finally understood it...
The Las Vegas strip is like if 10-20 cruise ships beached. Each hotel is a mass of rooms, 3-8 mediocre restaurants (I said it, LV restaurants are vastly overrated). The hotels really don't want you going around the strip, that means less revenue for them.
Really the entire strip is like a huge cruise ship beached. It's actually pretty hard to get off of the strip. It has these beautiful mountains in the distance, and you ... can't get to them. The lifetime fitness gym is 20 miles from the strip. There's no bike paths, walking paths away from the strip, escape from the hellish cheap crap. But yeah I can go shoot some machine guns somewhere.
I hate going to Vegas, but it can be fun without hitting the casinos. They have some of the best restaurants and music venues in the world, and Las Vegas the city has interesting things to do too.
I stopped in Las Vegas for a couple nights as I was making my exodus from San Francisco back to Oklahoma. I wish I would have known this existed. When I was looking for things to do all I could find was the overpriced shows and resorts on the strip. Seems to be a marketing failure, because I'm definitely their target audience. How do most people find these developments organically?
Although I was passing through with my car, I tried to venture off the strip on foot and take the bus around town. Walk any direction perpendicular to the strip and you start to feel like you are in an empty wasteland. Next time...
I’ve gone to Vegas a half dozen times for business and conferences. It’s one of the worst places I can imagine. No plants, no walking. Everything is big and loud and obnoxious and expensive.
I can’t imagine ever wanting to live there. In fact anyplace I would want to live is basically the binary opposite of Vegas in every way.
I love Vegas. Tons of stuff to do no matter what your interests are, great weather, low rent, low taxes, lax laws on vices (gambling, drinking, marijuana), cheap flights in and out. Also a great arbitrage opportunity for remote tech work.
reply