Las Vegas

Harry’s Vegas, in the United States, has two halves, and most of what’s useful comes from the second. The Strip is a four-mile stretch from Mandalay Bay to the Strat, most of whose hotels are owned by two companies, and it is where the overwhelming majority of the money is made. Everything else is a city of over two million people with an ordinary economy, where locals live ten to thirty minutes out and some go years without going near a casino.

His own comparison is an American Dubai — a tax-advantaged holiday destination built out of the desert.

Myths corrected

Taken from Jacob, a Vegas-based creator who walks him off the Strip:

• Nobody lives in the casinos. People ask him constantly which hotel he lives in. Very few locals live on the Strip at all.
• Prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas. It is legal in Nevada, but only in rural counties — not Clark County, where Vegas is. The nearest legal option is Pahrump in Nye County, and fewer than half the rural counties that could offer it actually do.
• Crime is not what the Strip’s reputation implies. Violent crime rose in 2020 and further in 2021 and has come down since; Los Angeles County is about five times the population.
• “Old strip” isn’t a thing locals say. They say Fremont Street or downtown.

Underneath it

Around 1,500 people live in the storm tunnels beneath the city, which Jacob describes as having its own community and hierarchy. Addiction — gambling, alcohol and drugs — is a real feature of living somewhere built around all three, and he is direct that it makes recovery harder.

Rent on the Strip runs at least $1,000 a month for a studio. Prices peaked around two years before Harry’s visit and have flatlined rather than dropped.

Casinos, honestly

• The house wins. Far more people lose than win, and Harry’s description of the slot floor is a big dopamine machine.
• Where skill exists: table games. Blackjack played to basic strategy — off a printed card, based on the dealer’s up-card — can reduce the house edge to roughly half a percent. Video poker is similar.
• Free drinks are a business decision. The alcohol costs the casino almost nothing and keeps you at the machine.
• Small wins do the same job. Two dollars back on a twenty-dollar stake is the mechanism, not luck.
• The Mirage closed for around three years shortly after Harry’s visit.

Costs and hotels

• Hotel towers run to around 2,200 rooms each, and you walk through the casino floor to reach yours.
• The resort fee is the thing to watch: $50 a night on top of the room rate, charged for wi-fi and parking, and disclosed only in the terms and conditions rather than at booking.
• Pay-per-view adult channels at $9.
• Harry rates American hotel beds the best he has slept in anywhere.

Fremont Street

Downtown, and where the canopy light show is. Also where the street photographers work: they will not take your picture without a tip agreed first, and Harry’s word for the exchange is extortion. They earn around $500 on a good day, work four-hour shifts, and work for someone else rather than themselves. Performers work the street with very little on, which surprised him.

Two things to do that aren’t gambling

• The buffet. Around twenty cuisines, open 7am to 1pm, with crêpes, eggs benedict, sushi and a seafood counter made to order. Harry rates it the most extravagant he has seen and points out you physically cannot eat across it.
• A rage room. Thirty minutes, a baseball bat and a room of things to destroy. He found it genuinely therapeutic, and staff told him people with relationship problems are a large part of the clientele.

Harry’s tips

• Budget the resort fee, not the room rate.
• Get someone local to walk you off the Strip. Everything worth knowing in this video came from that.
• If you’re going to gamble, play the games where strategy exists rather than the machines.
• Agree the price before the photograph on Fremont Street.

From the road trip

• A $18 win at 8am in a casino on the state line, on his first visit to an American one — a dopamine hit he says beat most things.
• Nevada legalised gambling in 1931, which is the origin of everything else on this page.
• The 20,000-calorie burger. At a themed restaurant on the strip: eight patties, no sauce and no fries, free if you weigh over 350 lb — someone qualifies while he is there — and a public spanking if you don’t finish. He doesn’t finish.
• The Sphere: $2.3 billion, the largest audio system in the world, $99 a ticket for a 50-minute film that circles the earth. His verdict: $100 is a lot, and it is worth it.

Source

• What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas 🇺🇸 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugKRNmqEtCU
• 30 Days Travelling USA - American Dream or Failure? 🇺🇸 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ttOIcmgZYk