Paul Carr

Paul Carr's Hotel Show-Tell: Hotel Monaco, San Francisco

2011-08-05T14:23:21-04:00

Another week, another hotel: such is the life of the permanent hotel dweller.

This week, I'm back in San Francisco and decided to check out Kimpton's Hotel Monaco. Turns out, it's a hotel that's almost impossible to fault, but almost impossible to get excited about.

Video review below. Try not to get too overwhelmed by the unrelenting adequacy of the place.

Paul Carr's Hotel Show-Tell: El Cortez Cabana Suites, Las Vegas

2011-07-22T21:22:40-04:00

After my deeply traumatic experience at Rumor, I was looking for somewhere fun and friendly to recover. I found it at the El Cortez Cabana Suites in downtown Vegas.

Video below.

Paul Carr's Hotel Show-Tell: The Worst Customer Service in Las Vegas

2011-07-18T18:30:09-04:00

Hotel number two on this Vegas trip is Rumor; a new "boutique" hotel, about 10 minutes from the strip. Spoiler alert: don't stay there.

It's not that the room was awful -- see video below -- in fact, it wasn't bad at all. It was, however, a bit grubby in places (stale water in the in-room jacuzzi) and a lot un-private (no net curtains and room that backed on to a parking lot) so I decided to stay one night and then check out early. I emailed the manager, who confirmed that would be fine.

And that's when my experience at Rumor went bad.

Despite getting an email confirmation of the early departure -- from the general manager, no less -- two days later an additional $300 was charged to my card. Ah well, mistakes happen. But no. When I complained to the same manager, he denied all knowledge of the early-check out and, on the subject of the refund, said he wasn't "going to get into it with [me]." There then followed a bizarre back-and-forth where I pointed out that, when it comes to unauthorized credit card charges, he doesn't have much choice but to "get into it" with me -- and he continued to stonewall and prevaricate.

Could he at least offer a quote for this review? "Write what you like..." he replied.

Things didn't start to get better until I started Tweeting about the whole ridiculous episode. At that point, Commercial Affairs Director, Michael Crandall got in touch, apologized profusely and very kindly offered me a free room to make up for everything. The refund, he assured me, was already being processed. I accepted his apology, but declined his kind offer of a room.

"One other thing," he said, "is there any chance you can delete those negative tweets? They could really damage us."

Crandall was charming and genuinely apologetic, even when I explained to him that I had no intention of deleting the tweets. But the fact remains, the only reason I'd got my money back was because I was in a position to publicly expose Rumor's horrible customer service. If I'd been any one of the thousands of other people who stay at the hotel every month (some of whom appear to have had similar problems), I'd be out of luck.

And, anyway, what was it the manager said? "Write what you like..."? Ok, I'll write this: don't ever stay in Rumor. The rooms are fine -- see video below -- but, when it counts, the service is the worst in Vegas.

The Ten Most Annoying Mistakes Made By Luxury Hotels

2011-07-15T03:12:50-04:00

A few years back, I sold everything that wouldn't fit into a small suitcase, gave up the lease on my tiny, overpriced London apartment and hopped on a flight to New York to begin a new life living permanently in hotels.

The decision wasn't as ridiculous as it sounds: my parents are both career-long hoteliers and, while growing up, I spent more time living in hotel rooms than I did in actual houses. Moreover, thanks to my inherited ability to negotiate great room rates (and my gift for talking my way into things), I had figured out a way to live in hotels just as cheaply (or expensively) as staying in my London apartment.

Over the years, hotels have provided me with endless adventures - some perfectly wholesome, others so debauched that I ended up writing a book about them, which is now beginning the slow, torturous process of becoming a movie.

More depressingly, having spent thousands of nights in hundreds of rooms, I've become a reluctant expert in the annoying habits of even the fanciest hotels. And given that the electronic version of my hotel-living book has just been published, I figured this was as good a time as any to share them.

Here, then -- for lovers of first world problems -- are the The Ten Most Annoying Mistakes Made By Luxury Hotels...

10. Aggressive Front Desk Upselling

Every hotel-dweller knows the joy of receiving an unexpected upgrade. Perhaps you're a regular guest, or maybe the hotel is oversold: whatever the reason, the words "...and I've put you in a suite" are amounts the sweetest one can hear in a hotel (except for guests at the Lanesborough where the sweetest words are "you have your own butler and all the adult TV channels are complimentary".) But times have been hard for the hotel industry and even check-in is seen as a way to squeeze more revenue from guests. The result? Increasingly guests are being told that -- good news! -- an upgrade is available, but only if they're willing to pay a small additional sum; perhaps 50 or 100 dollars. For solo travelers, it's easy enough to say no, but for those checking in for a romantic weekend, saying no to paying a few extra bucks is a great way to look like a cheapskate in front of your partner. Blackmail accomplished. Dicks.

9. One-Guest-At-A-Time Bellhops

Speaking of financial duress, it's no secret that bellhops, valets and most other service staff in hotels live or die based on the size of their tips. Unfortunately at some hotels (The Hudson in New York, for example) this has lead to a weird practice whereby the bellhops will only fetch one guest's bag at a time, no matter how many others are waiting. The idea, of course, is that by giving each guest their undivided attention, the bellman's tips will be bigger. The real result is that, after waiting 25 minutes for a bag, everyone wants to punch that same bellman hard in the face.

8. Decaffeinated Rooms

Time was that even the cheapest, crappiest hotel room offered guests the use of a coffee maker (or a tea kettle in the UK, obviously). Today it seems that only the cheapest, crappiest hotels that still do; the upscale ones are increasingly doing away with that most basic of hotel room human rights, forcing guests to order (and pay for) their morning coffee from room service. Seriously, hotels, if you're so desperate for the extra cash, just bolt three dollars on to the room rate and let me make my own damn coffee.

7. Hotels That Think They're Nightclubs

With well-stocked minibars and 24-hour room service, hotel rooms have always a great place to continue a party started at a nightclub. Recently though a new breed of party hotels has appeared, aiming to keep the whole night under one roof by turning the entire hotel into a giant bed-filled nightclub. Bouncers on the front door, a preposterous dress code (a dress code!) and $600 table service in the lobby bar -- and don't get me started on front desk staff and waitresses who look good enough to be models but lack the customer service skills of... well... models. Clift in San Francisco, I'm looking at you.

6. Unworkable Work Desks

I would like to propose a simple rule: henceforth, anyone who designs a hotel room must be forced to work for an entire week in that room. Curious as it might seem - especially to those who have confused hotels with nightclubs - some of us actually do spend a lot of our working hours in hotel rooms. We don't ask for much; just some decent lighting, power outlets near the desk (and the bed) and a desk and chair of appropriate proportions to one another. Paring a tiny backless stool with a twelve-foot high table should be made a capital offense.

5. Rooms Without Bathtubs

For 300 bucks a night, I want a freaking bath. That's all.

4. Passive-Aggressive Signs

"Think before you throw your towel on the floor", "Please be considerate to our neighbors when leaving the hotel.... and no more than four people in your room", "If you must smoke, a cleaning fee of $250 will be added...". Ok, ok, hotel room signs, I get it -- I'm an asshole.

3. Resort Fees

The bad news: we're going to add an arbitrary $15 fee to your nightly rate. The good news: we'll give you a copy of USA today and comp the $11 wifi. Subtext: We hope that infographics and porn will distract you from the fact that we're screwing you.

2. Paid Wifi

I remember, in about 1987, staying at a crappy b&b on a family trip to the English seaside town of Blackpool. The place was so cheap that to operate the television, you had to drop 10p (about 15c) into a little box on the wall. Today's children will look back with equal sadness at the days where they had to enter their parents' credit card details just to log on to Facebook.

1. Glass bathrooms

Seriously, whose idea of a sick joke was this? Which moronic - but apparently widely emulated - hotel designer walked into a meeting and announced that the problem with hotel bathrooms was they offered too much privacy? His solution: "glass showers, glass toilet doors -- glass everything!" It's bad enough at the Standard in New York -- a hotel which at least prides itself in being a place for exhibitionists -- but now everyone is getting in on the act. As a friend of mine staying at the new Yotel in Manhattan texted me the other night: "nothing says 'romantic getaway' like seeing your partner take a dump."

The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale Without Reservations

Kindle

iBooks

Paul Carr's Hotel Show-Tell: The Four Seasons, Las Vegas

2011-07-14T14:46:53-04:00

Back in May, I spent an entire month in Las Vegas, staying a single night in each of the hotels on the Strip. I wrote a daily diary of my adventure for The Huffpost, and for some of the better or more - uh - interesting hotels, I even pointed a Flipcam at myself for a series of highly amateurish, somewhat-sweary video reviews.

Since then, I've carried on making the videos -- reviewing hotels in London, Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and beyond. In London, the brand new W Leicester Square banned me from filming, so I convinced my friend Scott to smuggle me and my camera in. Fun ensued.

But now I'm back in Vegas and figured it was about time to bring the reviews back to HuffPost, and not just because my new book about my ridiculous hotel adventures has just been published in the US and I want to shamelessly promote it. (Kindle! iBooks!)

Ok then, my Second Big Vegas Hotel Adventure starts at The Four Seasons...

The Strip Diary, Epilogue: We'll Meet at the End of the Tour

2011-05-07T14:12:48-04:00

Day Thirty Three: Mandarin Oriental (Comped)

8 am, London time and I'm sitting in the 'bite.' coffee shop in the arrivals hall of Heathrow airport, eating an egg and cress sandwich.

It's a little more than 17 hours, including the New York layover, since I left Las Vegas. I'm tired, disorientated by the time change, and the portion sizes here are weird; like going back to your childhood classroom and finding all the chairs have shrunk.

My final few days on the Strip were a curious whirl of press -- TV, radio, magazines, newspapers of various stripes -- all of whom asked the same question in a different way: how has 33 days in Las Vegas changed my opinion of the city?

An amusing thought occurred to me as I stood outside Caesars Palace, talking to Fox5's Elizabeth Watts: there's probably no other city on earth in which a man wanting to stay an entire month would constitute headline news. But Vegas, of course, is unlike any city on earth: it's a place where, so the popular narrative goes, out-of-towners like me fly in in our millions, drink our body-weight in alcohol, accidentally fuck a hooker and go home with enough "crazy" stories to get us through the rest of the year.

33 days of that would be a combination of madness and laziness, not least because after just a week in town, you start to see the cogs moving. Every Friday they arrive; the groups of guys, swaggering down the Strip, spaced just slightly too far apart -- WE'RE GOING TO OWN THIS TOWN -- the first guys ever to buy a guitar full of booze, the first to be thrown out of a casino for being too drunk, the first to every dare each other to order an escort; the first to be amazed when she actually shows up: "JUST WAIT TILL WE TELL THE GUYS BACK HOME. THAT WAS EPIC." Also, the first to hook up with their female equivalent -- the "bartender story girls", as one local described them to me.

"All of their fucking stories start the same way" he said, putting on an alarmingly convincing Valley Girl voice: "OHMIGOD we went to Pure and the bartender made this drink -- it had Vodka and Gin and Rum and... the next night OHMIGOD we went to Marquee and the bartender made this drink -- it had Tequila and Absinthe and Whisky... and OHMIGOD then we went to..." and on and on, ad nausium ad infinitum.

So, yeah, embarking on this trip, I expected -- and received -- a lot of cynicism from Las Vegas locals. And I get it: for people who call Vegas home, the idea of yet another journalist coming to their town and living out theta Hunter S Thompson fantasy on the strip might be cause for rolled eyes and cynical sighs.

But raised eyes and cynical sighs were not the end of it. While many of the locals I encountered -- Tony Hsieh, Jennifer and Michael Cornthwaite, Tom Anderson, Erika Wright, Shawn Miller et al -- were generous with both their time and enthusiasm -- an equal, perhaps much larger number, made it clear that I wasn't welcome in Las Vegas and should stop trying to understand 'their' town.

Even as my trip entered its third and fourth weeks, even after I'd written about local museums and the regeneration of downtown and the collapse of the local housing market, nary a meeting went by without someone admitting some variation of "everybody here is saying you're a dick, but I think you're ok". People tweeted stuff like this...

"Regardless of popular belief, that @paulgoestovegas is one cool dude."

"Regardless of popular belief"!

Hell, even people who were professionally obliged to be nice to me weren't. Most hotel PRs on the Strip flatly declined to meet with me. On the few occasions when I wrote negative reviews, the reaction was swift and, well, mental -- Criss Angel's publicist spent half an hour on the phone railing against the "inaccuracies" in my review of his show ("You say that Criss is a 'douche' -- he isn't" / "Actually, I say he dresses like a douche. And he does. he's 43-years-old and looks like this, for God's sake") while somewhat-sinisterly insisting that she'd hate for one negative review to ruin my relationship with the Cirque du Soleil "family".

I've dealt with a lot of big city PRs in my life and I've never, ever seen the kind of defensiveness I experienced in Las Vegas. Maybe they're just not used to being asked actual questions, I thought: after all, the city's most high profile entertainment 'journalist' is the guy who used to host Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: a man who, had he been present for the killing of Osama bin Laden, would have felt compelled to praise the man's history of charity work.

For the longest time I was baffled. The locals distrusted me -- until they met me at least -- the PRs hated me and the media couldn't understand what the hell I was doing spending so long in their town. What could I do to please these people? And why on earth would Las Vegas of all places -- a city that prides itself in crazy behavior and not giving a fuck -- act so defensively and insecurely when faced with an unpaid blogger from -- gasp -- The Huffington Post?

Again, it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the answer. For a start, let's once and for all dismiss this myth that Las Vegas is a crazy place where "anything goes". It isn't. It's a place where almost nothing goes, especially if it's likely to offend Jesus. Gay people can't get married; and most chapels flat-out refuse to even perform civil ceremonies for (as one wedding chapel worker put it) "those people". Strippers can't get fully naked where alcohol is served. Escorts can't ply their trade or get health benefits. The mannequins in the lobby of the Mirage wear pasties for fuck's sake. Pasties! But -- ooh! -- at least you can smoke in casinos.

Rampant capitalism -- and a bedrock of religion -- do that to a place: filing the edges off the fun and distilling everything down to its most efficient money-making core. There's no profit in anarchy; you can't spend money when you're unconscious. And why on earth would you want to frighten away the bible belt Republicans? They're the ones with all the cash.

Let's also dismiss that even more prevalent misconception -- particularly amongst we outsiders -- that Las Vegas is a big city that doesn't give a fuck. It most certainly is not. Las Vegas isn't a big city, but rather a small town which -- thanks to a confluence of legislative, geographical and historical events -- happens to attract billions of dollars of tourism revenue each year, centered around a single street that mostly lies just outside city limits. Oh, and it very much does give a fuck.

To be clear, when I say Vegas is a small town, I don't mean it's a big city with small town attitudes; I'm mean it's actually a small town. A place where, away from the strip, you can't walk into a bar or a coffee shop without bumping in to someone you know by name. A place where the arts scene is confined to two or three blocks, but where a passionate group of local business people and culture-lovers bust their asses every day trying to help it grow. A place where the mayor gets elected time and time again with 85+% of the vote, despite his fondness for organized crime, and no-one being sure what he actually does. A place where the next mayor will be the old mayor's wife. A place where foreclosures hit hard, unemployment is amongst the highest in America and where the education budget is being slashed. Again.

Once you realize all of that, suddenly everything else starts to make sense. The distrust of outsiders -- particularly reporters; even bloggers -- isn't because the people of Las Vegas are mean; in fact everyone I met was as warm-hearted as the people I've met in any town in America. It's because every month another journalist or filmmaker comes into their small town and writes the same story, or makes the same movie (The Hangover is the cinematic equivalent of a bartender story girl).

Those writers mention the wedding chapels (ho ho ho), but not the museums; they meet the comedy mayor but not the people actually making a difference downtown. And then they fuck off and leave the good people of Las Vegas to continue worrying about their mortgages, or their kids' schooling or their jobs. And that includes the PR people who -- as one admitted under promise of anonymity -- don't want to get fired for "allowing" a rogue journalist to write something bad. "We're used to controlling the story," said my source, "we give them a comp and they write what we tell them, and everyone's safe."

Me not wanting a comp (I paid for all but three of my rooms) wasn't a positive sign, it was a red flag: I was up to something. And no-one ever got fired for saying no. Furthermore, in a small town, no good can come from negative reviews: when tourism is the lifeblood of a place, every show has to be AMAZING, otherwise -- oh God, oh God -- people might stop coming.

But of course, the cynics were right weren't they? Here I am at the end of my trip, writing the hit-job they feared. Silly old small town Vegas, with its silly terrified people -- and clever old me coming in and cleverly understanding what makes the city tick.

Except that's the precise opposite of what this is.

What this is -- honestly -- is a mea culpa. I came in to Las Vegas with all the swagger of a Strip-striding weekend tourist, ready to confront the place based on my misconception of its size and self-confidence. I wasted a huge amount of time being confused by the defensive attitudes I encountered and being surprised by the culture, the arts scene and how friendly everyone was when I finally got to speak to them.

It was only when I finally got past all of that, and started to hang out downtown, shoot the shit with new friends and generally act like a new arrival trying to find his way around rather than someone in search of some grand truth... it was only then that I started to understand the place. But only started.

It would be ludicrous for me to suggest I understand a damn thing about Vegas after just a month there. Socrates once said, "I am only wise insofar as what I don't know, I don't think I know". And I feel like that: all my 33 days in Las Vegas has only taught me how much I don't know about Las Vegas.

Last night, during an interview with some newspaper or other -- they all bleed into one after a while -- the reporter asked me whether I would ever come back to Vegas, or whether a month is enough.

I didn't hesitate: a month is nowhere near enough. And of course I'll come back to Vegas. Not just because I want to, but also because I have to. It's got under my skin now: I have friendships I want to continue building, neighborhoods I want to continue exploring and promises I need to keep. I'm sad I didn't get to experience First Friday, or to spend more time in the arts district, or to see any local theatre. I wish I'd seen Mac King, and could stick around to see how the growing popularity of Absinthe inevitably commercializes it. I have to come back for all of those reasons.

But also for one more reason: I really miss the place.

Still know too little
To write a Vegas haiku
To be continued

...

And so there you go. The Strip Diary, days one to thirty three. Thanks to everyone who dropped in and out along the way, and the few thousand people who interacted with me on Twitter over the past month. I appreciate all the tips, questions, clarifications and corrections. Thanks also to Arianna Huffington, Kate Auletta, David Flumenbaum, Sebastian Howard, Mario Ruiz et al at The Huffington Post for allowing me to shout from the top of their platform.

If you're interested in what I do next, I'll be documenting my continuing travels over at The Upgrade, the official, and hugely self-promotional blog of my new book: which, as luck would have it, is now on sale. I'll also be sticking around on Twitter for a while, posting hotel haiku as I go. Follow me, why don't you?

The Strip Diary, Day Thirty Two: The Last of the Vegas Hotel Reviews, in Haiku Form

2011-05-06T08:27:07-04:00

32 nights in 32 hotels; the finish line is so close I can almost bite it. Just one night still to go, at the Mandarin Oriental, and my month-and-a-bit in Las Vegas will be over.

Of course, technically speaking I've failed in my stated goal: to stay a single night in every hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. For reasons I've already written about -- and talked about -- at length, I skipped out of the Palazzo, replacing my night there with one at the M Resort. I mean, I could argue a technicality: the Venetian (where I did stay) and the Palazzo share a check in and booking process, and an entrance, so technically I could argue that they're the same hotel. But I won't. I don't care. What I care about is that I made it through 33 nights, staying a single night at a different hotel. And I lived to tell the tale.

Not only that, but I've enjoyed every second of it. Even during my horrible check-in experience at the Riviera; even during the darkest, unfunniest moment of Criss Angel's show; even during the resulting half-hour phone call from his show's publicist during which she insisted I'd been grossly unfair to Angel -- even during all of that, I haven't once been bored.

On the contrary; venturing downtown, visiting museums, meeting the mayor, playing video games and eating hotdogs with Tony Hseih, seeing Absinthe for the four hundredth time; every day has brought something interesting to write about and (hopefully) relatively un-dull to read about.

Tomorrow, I'll post my final thoughts on the town, its people and what -- if anything -- any of it can tell us about the state of the world. Before that, though, there's some important business to attend to before I close. And that is of course the last batch of hotel review haiku.

Here, in 5-7-5 syllables, then, are the last of them... (I'll tweet one for Mandarin Oriental tomorrow)

Saturday: Luxor ($120)

It's essentially
A pointy Holiday Inn
But without wifi

Sunday: Monte Carlo ($76)

Underrated gem
With wifi like greased lightning
Made up for Luxor

Monday: Bellagio ($140)

Well appointed room
Fountains never get boring
Unlike the big crowds

Tuesday: Vdara ($109)

Room had a kitchen
But still ordered room service
Which is quite stupid

Wednesday: Aria ($99)

A beautiful room
Best minibar on the strip
Made a video

The Strip Diary, Day Thirty One: Enough Has Been Written On the Awfulness of Criss Angel, So Here's a Video

2011-05-05T08:52:21-04:00

Day Thirty One: Vdara ($109)

The last thing the world needs is another person writing about how terrible Criss Angel's Believe show at the Luxor is. Instead, then, I've decided to do today's diary entry as a video. In which I talk about how terrible Criss Angel's Believe show at the Luxor is.

If you're looking for a snappy rant, this isn't for you. Instead it's twelve and a half minutes of me venting my frustration at everything that's wrong with bad Las Vegas magicians, and everything that's right -- by contrast -- with Penn & Teller's show at the Rio.

The too long, didn't watch summary: Criss Angel's show is a disgrace, his use of stooges is beneath contempt, I feel sorry for Cirque Du Soleil (who co-produced the show) like one feels sorry for the long-suffering wife of a complete dickhead -- and you should see Penn & Teller instead.

Video below...

Untitled from Paul Carr on Vimeo.

Quick note: in the video I say I can't believe that Angel's show cost $100 million to put on. I checked. It did.

The Strip Diary, Day Thirty: The Las Vegas Natural History Museum Has Outlived Liberace

2011-05-04T08:49:07-04:00

Day Thirty: The Bellagio ($144)

"I can't even make payroll from admissions fees".

Marilyn Gillespie isn't complaining; simply acknowledging a fact. Gillespie is the Executive Director of the Las Vegas Natural History Museum and, in the world of Las Vegas museums, her's constitutes a success story. "We had a Guggenheim, but that's gone," she says, "even the Liberace Museum had to close."

Seriously -- Vegas couldn't even support a Liberace museum?

"It's a generational thing. An Elvis museum might have universal appeal, but Liberace isn't so interesting to people any more."

I don't know why the loss of a Liberace museum would make me sad, but it does. "Are the museum closures because people don't want to venture off the Strip?" I ask. "It's partly that," says Gillespie, "but the Guggenheim was in the Venetian. The real problem is that Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world; not the culture capital. People don't come here for the museums."

Indeed they don't. During my tour of the Natural History Museum, I've seen maybe half a dozen visitors: in an average year, roughly 87,000 people will pass through its doors, bulked by students from the 350 schools that fall within the museum's catchment area (The Clark County School District is the nation's 6th largest).

Here again, though, Gillespie has a problem: with budgets cut to the bone, many schools can't afford such fripperies as museum field trips. "Every year I write checks to the schools to ensure their students can still visit."

The bulk of the Natural History Museum's operating expenses are met through donations of money and exhibits -- the Luxor handed over its entire King Tut exhibition to the museum -- and through corporate sponsorships. As Gillespie explains, some of this corporate generosity stems from companies wanting to raise their standing in the local community, but much of it is due to government legislation like the Community Reinvestment Act which mandates that financial institutions in particular must support local cultural projects. Additional assistance comes from the city, which charges the museum just a dollar a year in rent for its building.

Despite the constant financial high-wire act, though, Gillespie clearly maintains huge enthusiasm for her job; a job she's held since the museum opened in 1991. And I can understand the appeal of the gig, even if I can't quite bring myself to envy her for it. As a kid growing up in South East England, my two favorite museums were the Science Museum in London and the Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire. My love for the former came from its interactivity: at the push of a button, science came to life -- spinning wheels spun, periscopes extended, traffic lights lit up. Tring, on the other hand, had no interaction at all, just row-after-row of glass cases containing stuffed animals I hadn't even seen in zoos: polar bears, sharks, even -- if I remember correctly - a dodo.

The Las Vegas Natural History Museum lacks both the scale of the Science Museum in London and the comprehensiveness of Tring, and yet my 10-year-old self would still have loved its stuffed polar bear, its tanks of live sharks and snakes and its interactive dinosaur exhibit and rain-forest. As a grown-up, I still had way too much fun pressing buttons and making it rain. Those things never get old.

The centerpiece of the tour, though, and the one that instantly turns Gillespie from helpful tour guide to excited historian is the King Tutankhamen exhibition. I slept through Egyptology at school, so seeing the near-faithful recreation of Tut's tomb, and hearing Gillespie explain the story behind how it was discovered, brought a series of revelations. Did I know Tut was buried with his two (stillborn) children; the result of his incestuous marriage? No I did not, Marilyn. Did I know that the tomb had been broken into twice before Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered it in 1922? To my history teacher's residual disappointment, again no. It's a cliche, but in this case it's a true one: I could have stayed there all day.

As Gillespie walks me out, back on to North Las Vegas Boulevard, six miles from the Strip and a mile from the nearest cab, she says she'd be grateful for any plug I can give to the museum.

"I'll do what I can," I say. And what I can do is this.

Frankly, I'd gone into the tour expecting to have to feign enthusiasm for a tired, underfunded but ultimately well-meaning local museum -- but, hey, I said I was going to explore culture off the strip, and it's not like I had many museums to choose from. But after an hour remembering my childhood love of museums, coupled with Marilyn's stories about keeping afloat in an almost impossible market for museums, I left wishing there was something I could do to persuade every visitor to Vegas to shun the slots for an hour and swing by Tut's tomb.

If only wishing could make it so.

The Strip Diary, Day Twenty Nine: The Oscar Goodman Show Must Go On

2011-05-02T23:09:37-04:00

Day Twenty Nine: Monte Carlo ($76)

Oscar Goodman doesn't approve of my new shoes. "You always wear sneakers?" he asks, peering across his over-ornamented desk at my bright orange Chucks. "I only own one pair of shoes," I explain. And I do: the price of living permanently out of hand luggage. But Goodman isn't satisfied: "You can't dress up for the mayor?"

"I can't dress up for funerals."

I could have picked a better comeback, and a less well-connected person to be snarky to. This is, after all, the man who once suggested that an unsympathetic news producer should have her legs broken, and who sat by as a columnist critical of one of his friends was chased from a Four Seasons by the mob.

The fact that the mayor was drinking with the mob in the first place is a less remarkable aspect of the story: before becoming mayor, Goodman was a high-profile defense lawyer, representing old school characters like Meyer Lansky, Anthony "Tony The Ant" Spilotro and Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. If you've seen the Scorsese movie Casino, you've seen Goodman: He played himself, defending a mobster played by ~~Joe Pesci~~ Robert De Niro.

"So what made you turn your back on that life and become mayor of Las Vegas?" I ask.

"I ran out of clients," he explains, with a shrug -- "they all died or went to jail."

Still, sitting in his wonderfully over-the-top Las Vegas office, Goodman looks like a man who was born to be mayor of Las Vegas. His desk, the floor, and any other available surface are packed with memorabilia of the town, from life-sized showgirls, to mayoral poker chips to a curious little shine celebrating Zappos' Tony Hsieh. It's a mayoral office, as designed by TGI Fridays.

"Oh please, says the mayor, "it's better than TGI Fridays... "

"Bennigans?" I suggest -- I'm flying slightly blind when it comes to the hierarchy of American restaurants.

"How about PJ Clarke's?" he suggests.

Deal. Although feigning offense over dress codes and the classiness of his office is a bit much coming from Goodman: This is, after all, the man who accepted $100,000 from Bombay Sapphire Gin to be its spokesman (he donated the money to charity) and then told a group of schoolchildren that his hobbies include "drinking Bombay Sapphire gin" and that the item he would take to a desert island would be "a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin."

Whether schtick or genuine irreverence, Goodman's personality does the trick for Vegas voters: He's nearing the end of his third and final term -- a term he won with 84% of the vote -- and is only calling it a day due to Las Vegas' term limits. The lead candidate to replace him? His wife. "We're a team, and there's a lot I still want to achieve -- her becoming mayor will allow us to finish what we started."

"So you think she'll win?" I ask.

"Yes," he laughs, predicting she'll get 65% of the vote. The polls seem to bear out his confidence.

Less verifiable than his -- and his wife's -- popularity are Goodman's actual achievements over the 12 years he's been in office. On the face of it, his seems to have been a mayorship as written by Aaron Sorkin: getting nothing done in a highly entertaining way, leaving behind a proud legacy of soundbites. In 2003, the readers of the Las Vegas Review Journal voted him "Least Effective Public Official" (that same year he was re-elected with 86% of the vote) while Chris Giunchigliani -- who is rivaling Carolyn Goodman in the mayoral elections -- "defined Oscar Goodman's legacy as two blocks of new nightclubs on Fremont Street and the beginnings of a club scene in the downtown Arts District."

In response, Goodman points proudly to the regeneration of downtown Vegas and the city's emerging arts scene, both of which began during his time in office. And yet he is quick to credit the likes of Michael and Jennifer Cornthwaite -- and other members of Vegas' "creative class" -- for much for the work, which echoes what Jennifer Cornthwaite told me last week: that those regenerating downtown don't want too much involvement for the city, lest everything get bogged down in red tape. Goodman takes credit only for providing "a little leadership," including waiving liquor fees for some venues in the Freemont East and Arts districts.

So, if that's the finished business, what does Goodman consider unfinished?

"I'd like Las Vegas to have a major league sports team," he says. Goodman has tried a couple of times to attract a big team to the city -- including making a formal offer to San Diego Chargers to relocate -- but so far he's been rebuffed. "I have three weeks," he says "and it still might happen -- I have a couple of meetings lined up."

Another as-yet-unrealized Goodman proposal is for the creation of a red-light district in Las Vegas, to provide a safe place for the prostitution, which everybody knows exists in the town.

"What?" says the mayor in mock horror -- "prostitution in my town?"

"Let me guess, you're... "

"...I'm shocked, shocked... "

Goodman is hard not to like. "Ok," I say, "but you are at least proposing a red-light district."

"I'm saying it's something we should discuss."

Goodman's unwillingness to admit to the town's reputation for paid-for sex is curious, but unsurprising. One of the things that puzzles -- or perhaps amuses -- me the most about Las Vegas is its tangled web of moral contradictions. This is a town in which anyone can get married in an hour, but in which the law demands that even the tackiest chapel must have a formal religious affiliation. It's also a town in which you can drink 24-hours-a-day, or watch girls get naked for money, but not at the same time.

"Aren't all the contradictions a bit weird?" I ask.

"Yes they are. Las Vegas is a tale of two cities. Along with the fun side, as mayor, I'm the advocate of two million squares."

I laugh. "And yet they still vote for you, these squares. These people you call squares."

"Being a square isn't a bad thing," the mayor insists, "it's a compliment to be called a square."

"It's hip to be square?" I ask.

"Exactly."

So the chances of getting a red-light district built in the city are roughly zero, then? "It won't happen in my lifetime -- even though it's safer [than the current blanket ban on prostitution, and denial that it exists], it will bring in revenue... "

It might even get rid of the card-flickers from the Vegas strip, I suggest. "They're not my problem," Goodman points out. "I'm the mayor of Las Vegas [most of the strip is not actually in Las Vegas, but rather neighboring Clark County] -- in fact I didn't even know what was on those cards until Piers Morgan told me."

He is keen to draw the same "not-my-problem" distinction when I ask him about the city's financial woes: "You can't argue with the fact that hotels aren't getting built, that people are broke and unemployed... " I suggest when Goodman waxes bullish on the city's recovery. "Actually, I can argue with that," he says, "the hotels not being built are on the strip, and the houses... have you been out to Tivoli [a shopping, office and dining development that opened last month]?"

I haven't. And of course I've made the classic mistake of the rookie public prosecutor coming face-to-face with the veteran defense attorney; arriving at the argument woefully unprepared. I knew that unemployment and foreclosure rates in Las Vegas were high -- but I didn't have the hard numbers to hand. Goodman, on the other hand, was able to list half a dozen examples of how Las Vegas is pulling out of recession.

No further questions.

And so then it was the mayor's turn to cross-examine me. Did I go to school in the UK or the U.S.? Which school? What did I study? Law! His face lights up.

The English legal system seems to be a minor obsession for mayor Goodman, mainly for the showmanship of it all.

"I went to the Old Bailey in London," he says, "I wanted to put on a wig. I think I'd have looked good in a wig in Casino." I promise to try to get him a barrister's wig when I'm next in London.

For all he enjoys being mayor, Goodman clearly spends a lot of time reliving his past courtroom glories. "Do you miss the mob?" I ask him. He doesn't hesitate.

"I do. I miss the old ways, when a man's word was his bond and you could go to sleep at night over a handshake.

"And today?"

"The corporations had taken over by the late 1980s -- now you can have a file of contracts this big," -- he raises his hand chest-high -- "and they still mean nothing."

It's safe to say that the mob also appealed more to Goodman's sense of theatrics than any corporation ever could. On my way out, I spot a big brown lump, lying on his couch. "Holy shit, is that a horse's head?"

"Yes it is," -- he's beaming now -- "it was a gift. Originally it was covered in fake blood -- I had to use my wife's nail polish remover to clean it up."

The Strip Diary, Weekend Roundup: Yet More Vegas Hotel Reviews, in Haiku Form

2011-05-01T17:49:22-04:00

Day Twenty Seven: The M Resort (Comp)

If I were prone to Trumpian flights of conspiracy fantasy, my paranoia would have been off the charts on Thursday night. Not twelve hours after I quoted a representative of Culinary 226 describing Venetian boss Sheldon Adelson as "a horrible human being", I checked in at Mr Adelson's flagship hotel and -- well -- it seems revenge is a dish best served offline.

For a start, the Venetian screwed up my booking: I had planned to stay a single night each in the Venetian and the Palazzo; Thursday and Friday. In fact, when I arrived at 9 p.m. on Thursday I found I had actually been booked into both hotels on the same night. To make matters even worse the person at the front desk was unable to fix the error, leading to the irritating possibility that my credit card would be charged as a no-show for the second room. Cool!

By the time I gave up trying to remedy the booking snafu, it was already heading close to 10 p.m., and I had to be up at 4:30 a.m. the next day to be on television. That barely gave me time to bash out a couple of already overdue columns and grab a couple of hours sleep before my wake up call. Time to fire up the Venetian's wifi and...

Ha!

Forty five minutes later and I was still sitting on hold with the hotel's IT department. As it turned out, the entire building was without internet access due to some unspecified problem with the server. Quite why the IT department hadn't communicated this fact to the front desk and avoided the need for me -- and presumably countless others -- from wasting almost an hour on hold, I'm not certain. Still, by a little after 11 p.m. everything was back up and running.

For five minutes.

And then it was down again. Net result: two missed deadlines, almost no sleep and a very, very frustrated me. Nicely played, Mr. Adelson.

On the upside, the series of unfortunate events lead to the admirably opportunist PR folks at The M Resort offering me alternative accommodation the following night, and even promising to personally check the wifi was working before I arrived.

Despite the fact that the M Resort is about ten miles south of the Luxor (albeit still on Las Vegas Boulevard) I decided to stretch my 'only staying on the strip' rule to breaking point for one night, for the following three reasons...

1) Since arriving in Las Vegas, everyone -- including staff at rival hotels -- has been telling me to check out the M and its famous buffet. The M is basically the Absinthe of hotels.

2) Staying at the M instead of the Palazzo seemed like a neat way to say "fuck you" to the Venetian while actually staying somewhere that had verifiably operational wifi.

3) Did I mention they were offering to comp me a Flat Suite?

Now, of course, anything I can possibly say about the M is rendered meaningless due to the entirely PR-driven nature of my stay. Not only did the hotel comp me a huge suite -- which was absolutely perfect in every detail, even down to the gallons of Diet Coke someone had left waiting for me on the bar -- but from the moment I set foot in the place, every staff-member I encountered greeted me by name. The guy who checked me in asked me about Absinthe. Clearly someone was really keen to prove that they were better than the Venetian. And they succeeded.

But, while the room was clearly rigged to be a guaranteed win, it's hard to PR-rig a buffet -- and the one at the M was worth the ten mile taxi ride many times over. It's just lucky that I didn't visit during my drinking days -- with free booze included in the price of admission, there's every chance that I'd still be there now.

Anyway, back to reality -- and this week's round up of the previous week in hotel stays, told through the medium of haiku.

Friday: Tropicana ($159)

Upgraded to suite
The world's only bath-less suite
First rate service though

Saturday: Encore ($299)

Looked in minibar
Sad to find no Jelly Beans
Thus the Wynn still wins

Sunday: Mandalay Bay ($56)

Decent mid-range place
But crawling with screaming kids
Like bees in The Swarm

Monday: THEhotel at Mandalay Bay ($64)

Pleasant surprises
Turn down service brought fresh ice
Small things score big points

Tuesday: Mirage ($99)

Totally fine room
And has dolphins and tigers
and Beatles, oh my

Wednesday: New York-New York ($155)

I was downgraded
Bitched at bad room on Twitter
I was upgraded

Thursday: Venetian ($179)

Waste of time, money
See above for full details
Will never go back

Friday: The M Resort (Comp)

Gave me a free suite
To show up the Venetian
Fuck you accomplished

The Strip Diary, Day Twenty Five: Hey China, President Trump Will See You Next Tuesday

2011-04-30T12:41:42-04:00

Day Twenty Five: New York, New York ($179)

The Huffington Post has a very strict, and admirable, policy against ad hominem attacks. I know this because a couple of weeks ago I submitted the first draft of a post calling for a boycott of Donald Trump's Las Vegas hotel and, an hour or so later, I got a phone call politely but firmly explaining that policy.

On that occasion, it was an easy fix -- a couple of tweaks so that I was hating the game and not the player. This time around, having sat in a ballroom at the Treasure Island last night, listening to Trump address a group of Nevada-based "Republican Women's Groups," my task is way harder.

In fact, after less than an hour in the same room as Donald Trump, I defy any right-thinking human being not to want to call him some pretty unpleasant names. After all, if Trump gets his way, America will immediately be plunged into a pit of political and economic isolationism that would make the Bush Jr years seem positively warm and fuzzy. As a foreigner who loves America, it took all of my reserves of self control not to heckle from my press seat.

"Motherfucker."

That's Trump's word, not mine, obviously. My journalistic impartiality -- and the Huffington Posts rules -- explicitly prohibits me from calling Trump a motherfucker. And so, accordingly, I will keep my opinion of the man -- whatever that opinion might be -- to myself. No, "motherfucker" is how Donald Trump referred to Chinese politicians. As in, "I'm going to say, listen you motherfuckers, here's a 25% levy on Chinese imports..." Throughout his speech, Trump cursed like a tourettic Soprano. This despite the fact that the average age of attendee was close to triple figures, even allowing for the half dozen children I counted scampering around the room. On Iraq he cursed about how we can build schools in the war-blighted country ("schools, which they then blow up") but "we can't get a fucking school built in Brooklyn"; On oil: "You have oil at this much a gallon because someone in Washington said 'You ain't gonna raise the fuckin' price"; on Trump's lack of racism: "Some of my friends are Chinese; But now they're not talking to me. They're like 'shit, can you believe this guy?'"

And on and on. To the point that the AP reporter sitting next to me broke off her conversation with one of the organizers: "Sorry, I have to listen to this -- he's going to curse some more."

Between the fucks and the shits, though, lay actual concrete Trump policy; "The Trump Doctrine," as he straight-facedly referred to it. For a start, Trump promised to be tough on nature, and tough on the causes of nature. "Nobody knows more about the environment than I do. I receive a lot of environmental awards," he assured the crowd, to murmurs of approval. "Green technology is important. But what good is green technology here when China is spewing out crap. We gotta drill in Alaska. We gotta drill. There is so much oil."

That particular point caused the first of many confused audience reactions of the night. Conditioned to respond to clearly flagged platitudes and talking points, the crowd gamely tried to second guess the appropriate reaction to each word as it came out of Trump's mouth. In the above case, the response went like this...

"Green technology is important"

CHEER!

"But what good is green technology here when China is spewing out crap...?

CHEE... BOOOOO!

"We gotta drill in Alaska!"

CHEER!

Even more comical was the audience reaction to Trump's defense policy...

"We went into Iraq because there were weapons of mass destruction!"

CHEER!

"But there weren't any weapons of mass destruction!"

BOO!

"And people said it was all about oil"

BOO!

"And I say, well that would have been a good reason to go in!"

CHEER!

Make no mistake, Donald Trump loves oil, like the Cookie Monster loves cookies or the Republican Women's Groups of Nevada love hairspray. On Libya: "I say, we go into Libya and we take the oil. People say, Donald that's a sovereign nation. I say, there's no nation!" That one got a big cheer too. Fuck sovereign nations.

Fuck also America's inability to bomb one back to the stone age. "Out leadership is weak and pathetic -- we can't even take over Libya" Big laugh that time. America is weak, ho ho ho. Apparently, to Trump supporters, for all the flag waving and singing of the national anthem (the pledge of allegiance was recited too), America is only great when it's run by Republicans. The rest of the time: "America isn't a great country. We love our country, but it isn't a great country."

Really? I'm just a persistent visitor to these shores, but from where I'm sitting, it looks pretty great. I mean, where else but America would you find a system so democratic that it allows a clown like Donald Trump can run for office rather than, say, locking him in an asylum?

The next of Trump's weird semantic somersaults took him spinning towards his critics: "Some of the press is scum," -- and then away again, with a nod to the Fox cameras in the room -- "not all of the media -- but some of the media." Accordingly his mention of the New York Times elicited a boo, until it became clear that he was quoting a positive review of his own TV show, whereupon it turned instantly to a cheer. To this crowd it seems that, like America itself, the media is scum until the point you agree with what it says.

More contorted still was Trump's rhetoric on foreign goods: "Every time I buy a television -- and I buy a lot of televisions for the Trump hotel -- I look at the market and I end up buying LGs from South Korea."

The crowd waited for its cue. Where was Trump going with this, I wondered. If he attacked foreign goods, then he's tacitly admitting the TVs at his hotels suck. But he can't praise foreign manufacturing. Unless... "they're good televisions -- but why don't we make them?" Huge applause.

In fact, televisions form an important cornerstone of Trump's foreign policy. If South Korea wants American troops to continue to help defend it against the North, he explained, then they're going to have to agree to make their televisions in America. Problem solved. Big cheer.

China too will have to outsource its manufacturing to America, if it wishes to continue having the honor of owning American debt. "This year China is going to make from this country, $300 billion" exclaimed Trump. Again, the crowd didn't know how to react, so they let out a kind of collective "ahhh--oooh-eeeh" noise. But then came the punchline... "Why shouldn't we make $300 billion?" Why indeed, Donald? Except for basic economics, but let's not get dragged down by those. Let's also gloss over the fact that your tie pins and clips are made in China. Those motherfuckers. "We had the president of China here and we gave him a state dinner. When people are screwing you, you don't give them dinner"

(For the record, I do like to give dinner to people who are screwing me. It seems only polite.)

And so the madness continued, for a good solid forty minutes -- all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Like some kind of grotesque burlesque dancer, Trump littered his speech with hints at a presidential run, being careful not to peel off his pasties and naming a date. "Run for president" shouted a woman in the crowd. Trump responded with a smile: "Thank you darling; I think I'm going to make you very happy."

Just don't expect dinner afterwards.

The Strip Diary, Day Twenty Four: Going Undercover With Culinary 226

2011-04-28T21:23:02-04:00

Day Twenty Four: The Mirage ($99)

"What do you think about an effigy?"

The union worker's colleague looks puzzled. "I'm not sure what that is."

Up until now I've been standing quietly, listening to their conversation. But now I can't help myself: "It's like a paper-mache model of a person. Generally speaking, they're burnt. You haven't really arrived until you've been burnt in effigy."

"Oh, ok. Uh. Let's talk about that later."

Yeah, probably best table that discussion until there isn't a journalist being given a tour of the union hall.

I love unions, and I don't. A child of the 80s, I grew up in the UK at a time when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ("the Iron Lady") was doing all that she could to de-unionize the UK, including triggering the 1984 (coal) miners' strike which devastated entire communities and cost the UK economy something in the order of 1.5bn pounds ($2bn+). Later, I began what I still wryly refer to as my journalistic career writing for the Guardian newspaper, which, on union matters, is only slightly to the right of the Socialist Worker.

And yet, as if proving Churchill's maxim that "if you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain," the older I've become, the more conservative I've turned on the subject. That natural rightward drift was hastened during my years living in London where Bob Crowe's National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) shut down the London Underground every time they decide they need a pay rise. There's something a bit perfect about a union fighting to improve the lot of its 80,000 members by preventing millions of other London wage-slaves from getting to work. See also the Communication Workers Union who once had to call off a proposed one-day strike in order to allow their workers to deliver postal ballots, to facilitate a future strike.

More recently, on this side of the Atlantic, I've been vocal in my opinion of the Newspaper Guild and their demand that all Huffington Post writers, even the shit ones, be paid for their work. Accordingly, I am not paid for my work at the Huffington Post.

So it was with those mixed feelings, trending against sympathy for unions that I arrived at the union hall of Culinary Workers Union (Local 226), the largest union in the state of Nevada - representing over 60,000 Las Vegas hotel and cassia workers.

The union's political director, Yvanna Cancela, had contacted me with an interesting proposal: how would I like to go behind the scenes of one of the strip's biggest hotel and casinos, to talk to some union workers, maybe meet some employees and generally understand what life is like for the countless thousands of hotel workers in Las Vegas?

There was just one condition. As if to underline the constant cold-war between unions and hotels, my visit would have to be undercover. Under no circumstances could I mention the name of the hotel in any of my coverage, and if we were stopped by hotel security, I'd have to lie. Would I feel comfortable with that?

It's a pretty basic tenet of journalism, in America at least, that a journalist should always identify himself as such. To pretend to be something I'm not -- in this case, a brother unionist visiting from London, would violate every journalistic code. And what if workers told me things they wouldn't share with a reporter? The moral implications were so complex they made my brain hurt.

"Sounds fine," I said. It doesn't do to over-think these things.

First though, Yvanna offered to give me a tour of the union hall -- a sprawling set of buildings on South Commerce Street -- to explain the structure and mandate of the union that represents many of Las Vegas' culinary workers, porters, valets, GRAs...

"What's a GRA?"

"Guest Room Attendant... a housekeeper"

"Ah."

... GRAs, bell desk workers... in fact, almost every job that keeps hotels working smoothly. "Except security guards -- they're not unionized. But they want to be, so they're usually nice to us."

Let's hope.

Lining the hallways of the union hall are photographs of the union's great victories. "This is the Frontier strike," says Yvanna, "that was one of our big successes." The Frontier? I'm not sure I've been there. "It's gone now." Uh huh.

A cynic might note that disproportionate number of the Culinary Workers Union's big victories seem to be in either securing or retaining recognition for the union within hotels. But that cynic would be doing the union an injustice: in the space between the photographs, are pasted posters offering members assistance with everything from health insurance, to alcohol awareness training, to becoming homeowners to obtaining citizenship -- your permanent resident card does not fully project you.

It's easy for me as an overpaid, over-educated whiteboy to question the value of union membership, but judging by many of the snippets of conversation I hear as I walk around the union hall, for many members, Culinary 226 is all that stands between them and the breadline. The American Prospect's Harold Meyerson credits the union with "boost[ing] wages and transform[ing] dead-end jobs into middle-class careers in the very belly of the casino economy." And according to the Associated Press, even the president is a fan: during his election campaign, then-senator Obama addressed the union's membership "telling them he was ready to walk their picket lines should their current contract talks turn sour."

"We have representatives in all of the hotels on the strip," says Cancela, "except Venetian and Pallazo." What's different about those? "They're owned by Sheldon Adelson -- and he's a horrible human being." This from the National Journal:

Adelson's "anti-union views are of a piece with a much broader extremist ideology that he employs for his own financial benefit," says John Wilhelm, one of two presidents of UNITE HERE, the key union of casino and hotel workers in Las Vegas. "The economic growth in Vegas has been made possible by a very positive relationship between the unions and all the other major gaming companies except his."

(Adelson is apparently not horrible enough to be burnt in effigy though; that potential honor is reserved for Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, who "is trying to destroy education in the state" by diverting hotel room tax revenue away from education.)

"So what's to stop all of the hotels on the strip following Adelson's lead and de-unionizing?" I ask, disingenuously.

"We represent so many essential workers in the hotels and we can bring them all out on strike. Hotels would lose millions of dollars in business if we did that."

Certainly there doesn't seem to be much sign that Las Vegas will be de-unionized any time soon. The front page of the Winter 2010 issue of the union's in-house magazine, The Culinary Worker, trumpets the news that "by a huge percentage, more than 4,500 workers in Culinary and Bartenders classifications from CityCenter's Aria signed on to be members of the union." Recruitment is helped by a 'neutrality' agreement between the union and many of Las Vegas' hotel operators, including MGM which owns Aria. "That means we can go inside the hotels to talk to staff and recruit members."

Speaking of which...

"I've got a letter that says you're visiting [Hotel X] on union business," says my guide; a senior union official who -- for obvious reasons -- I'm not going to name. "That's all we need if security stops us." Seriously, I'm filing all of this stuff away for my heist.

As it turned out, neither the letter or my paper-thin cover story were required. Gaining backstage access to a mid-four-figures room casino is as simple as walking through a door marked "no admittance, staff only". If anything, management and security gave us a wide berth: a senior union representative in the hotel can only mean trouble. "Actually, we have a really good relationship with the management here, with very few complaints. They realize that keeping a happy workforce means they'll give better customer service and everyone will be better off." Careful readers will have deduced that we weren't touring the Riviera. (Nor, for the avoidance of doubt, were we in the Mirage, where I stayed last night).

Still, we're barely ten paces inside the building when the first petitioner approaches. "Can I ask you a question?" he says to my guide, with no more introduction than that. He doesn't ask who I am, and I don't volunteer the information.

The worker -- a porter or bellman judging by his uniform -- has an issue with the hotel's lateness policy. Until a decade ago, the policy was informal: employees who showed up persistently late were given warnings and then dismissed. But different managers had different levels of tolerance for tardiness -- some workers were dismissed after six episodes of lateness, others after twenty. The union spent an inordinate amount of time complaining about the inconsistencies, so the hotel introduced a more formal policy, based on points. For every incident of lateness, the employee "earned" half a point. For every unauthorized absence, without some kind of doctor's note, they scored a whole point. Ten points in any given year, and they're out. Every year, employees with fewer than eight points have their slate wiped. Those with eight or more have to have six months without incident for their record to be similarly expunged. What could possibly be clearer?

"I has two minutes late to work yesterday and was given half a point," complains the worker. My guide nods sympathetically, and waits for the question.

"Is that right?" asks the worker "I was only two minutes late."

"9:02 is still late," explains my guide, patiently. "Some managers will be lenient if it's just a couple of minutes, but technically it should still be half a point."

The worker walks off, still frowning at the injustice of it all.

"A lot of my job is trying to coach workers on which fights are worth having and which aren't. That guy was late, and he got half a point. It's fair, and it's explained in the handbook that every employee receives, but people will always complain," she says. "Isn't that a problem with unionization?" I ask - that you train people to complain about every injustice, and very soon everything turns into a grievance."

"Actually things have to be a step one before they're escalated to a grievance."

It seems I've accidentally blundered into some union speak. A grievance is part of the formal complaints process agreed between hotels and unions to ensure that serious gripes are dealt with by the right people, while minor quibbles are handled by the shop stewards -- regular hotel employees who volunteer to take on union duties. Shop stewards also monitor relations between staff and managers, including ensuring that staff who have made complaints are not victimized by their bosses. Above the shop stewards are volunteer organizers with more formalized duties: 12 hours a week or unpaid administrative work to help the union. Then there are the more senior representatives, like my guide, who have overall responsibility for union activity in the hotel.

Eventually -- having been stopped by three or four more petitioners, we arrive at the employee dining room -- or 'EDR.' This is the hub of the hotel workers' community, where bread is broken, war stories are shared and -- looking around the vast room -- naps are taken. The EDRs are where you realize what a monstrously large operation a Las Vegas hotel is. I have to be careful giving hard numbers, but each day at Hotel X, the EDR chef serves 1000 more meals than the hotel has guests. And the food looks good: really good, actually -- spanning Asian, American, Italian and French cuisine, including a "healthy" counter which, curiously, contains both apples and cakes.

To my earlier question -- "The EDR here is one of the best on the strip. At other places employees are lucky to get spaghetti and some garlic bread. But still we hear complaints that the food selection here isn't as good as it used to be. Again, I try to explain how it's important to pick fights."

From the EDR, we move on to a meeting with a shop steward representing two workers with a fight worth picking. The employees have been "terminated" by the hotel for theft, after being caught removing some schwag left behind by a conference. "When an employee is given something by a guest, she is supposed to get a letter from her manager authorizing her to remove it from the building. Ideally she'll also get a note signed by the guest, so if the guest comes back alleging theft, we have proof that it wasn't." Throughout the example, my guide used the pronoun 'she' even though both of the people involved in today's case are male. Perhaps it's more common for female members of staff to receive gifts from guests. In any case, the two terminated employees have filed a grievance with the union, and it's my guide's job to brief the shop steward on how to get them their job back.

I listen as she explains how the employees' fate rests on whether the property left behind at the hotel is considered trash (belonging to no-one) or whether it remains the property of the guest or the hotel. If it's the former than an employee taking it home is guilty of a simple policy violation, subject to the usual escalating system of warnings and final warnings pre-dismissal. If it's the latter, then it's theft, which is a casino hotel is a one-strike-and-you're-out crime.

"You need to argue that it's just a policy violation," says my guide, pausing to ensure that the shop steward has understood. Then she turns back to me. "That's assuming, of course, the employees are telling the truth -- that's something I've learned to say: 'assuming they're telling the truth.'"

After all, as I'm always telling my colleagues back at my entirely fictitious union back in the UK, nobody likes a liar.

The Strip Diary, Day Twenty Three: Please Help Me! I'm Going On Television by Mistake

2011-04-27T09:07:01-04:00

Day Twenty Three: THEhotel at Mandalay Bay ($83.99)

Dearest Readers,

I need your help.

I may be 5,000 miles from London, but even here in Las Vegas, I can't utter a word in my British accent without somebody mentioning the upcoming Royal Wedding.

"You must be very excited," said a total stranger in the coffee shop at the Cosmopolitan last Sunday. The poor woman babbled on for a good minute-and-a-half about dresses and abbeys and the Archbishop of Canterbury before I had the first idea what she was talking about. "I expect you'll be watching it on television?" said someone else who I got chatting with at the gelato place in Vdara. Not wanting to disappoint the enthusiastic colonials, I gave the most British answer I could: "oh yes, jolly excited -- and of course I'll be watching on television. Crikey, toodle pip, cor blimey Mary Poppins... " all that nonsense. They lapped it up and went away happy.

But then a few days ago I received an email from a producer at KSNV Channel 3, asking me to come on their breakfast show on Friday and -- I shit you not -- help commentate their royal wedding coverage. Idiotically -- publicity whore that I am -- I agreed.

Here, just for the record are all the things I know about the royal wedding.

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6) William's brother's name is Harry.

7)

8)

9) The Queen will be there.

10)

So you see my problem.

Fortunately, though, I have this amazing platform -- courtesy of The Huffington Post -- to beg for your assistance. So here goes: If anyone reading this knows the first thing about the upcoming nuptials between Prince Baldy and Kate -- um -- Kate Thingy, please for the love of God email me here.

Anything will do. What's Williams' favourite color? Where did the two of them go on their first date? Does Kate own a cat? How long are experts giving them before the inevitable, painful royal divorce? I'm serious. Make stuff up if you have to. I promise I'll regurgitate the best facts I receive -- true or entirely fictitious -- on KSNV Channel 3 on Friday.

Thank you, and cheerio.

Paul

The Strip Diary, Day Twenty Two: Las Vegas House Prices Are Now Your Friend

2011-04-26T15:59:03-04:00

Day Twenty Two: The Mandalay Bay Hotel ($95)

Yesterday, I wrote about Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's plans to regenerate downtown Las Vegas by moving his company's 1,100 employees to a new campus in Fremont East. One of the side effects of the move, I mentioned, is that many of those employees are now looking to buy houses closer to downtown. And for those buyers, Internet tycoon-turned-Las Vegas housing expert Tom Anderson has some good news: there has never been a better time to buy a home in Vegas.

"In August 2006 [Las Vegas] house prices were 134% higher than they were in January 2000," he explains, "but as of January 2011, prices are back to around those 2000 levels. When you adjust that for inflation and current wages, homes here have never been more affordable." And it's this affordability which makes Las Vegas such a haven for property speculators. "You've got a lot of investors -- and some regular homeowners -- making all-cash purchases in Vegas right now. In fact over 50% of monthly home sales in Vegas are all cash-purchases, and have been for a few years."

By "all-cash", of course, Anderson means houses bought without mortgages, either by people with lots of money to spend, or -- more frequently -- by those who are buying real estate as an investment. Given how many people lost their shirts on Vegas housing investment the first time around -- more on that in a moment -- Anderson's 50% statistic surprises me. But that's because I know dick-all about the world of property investment.

Explains Anderson:

A homeowner who has a good amount of savings, but who bought at the peak [of the market] with little to no money down -- which is how many loans were back in 2005 and 2006 -- may choose to do a strategic default and buy another house in cash. Investors are doing a lot of buying and flipping of REOs, short sales and houses that are auctioned off before they reach REO status. An investor can buy a house all cash, fix it up and sell it for a small profit: they might make $5-$10k on a $150-$200k house. Investors are also holding properties and renting them. I've met a number of people who've started funds or raised money to buy and flip and/or rent houses in Vegas. For the end-user or buyer who has good credit, there's quite an opportunity: get an FHA loan and only put 3% down on a house that is priced near or below building cost.

Sounds amazing, right? And it is, for professional investors or cash-rich homebuyers like the ones Anderson describes. For a whole other class of people, though, the story is much, much less rosy.

When Anderson talks about "REOs", he's referring to "Real Estate Owned" properties -- a neat euphemism for a home that is owned by a bank or a government agency, following an unsuccessful foreclosure auction. In other words, many of these homes that provide such a profitable opportunity for investors today previously belonged to home buyers who couldn't afford to keep up mortgage payments on them.

Erika M. Wright is a partner in the firm, Miller & Wright, which provides bankruptcy services for clients who lost everything when the Vegas housing bubble burst. "We do what we can to help people," she says, "but we're often their last resort, and many of them come to us too late."

The story Wright tells is one we're all familiar with, because it happened right across the country -- and the world. Around 2006, the harsh realities of economics finally caught up with the real estate bubble: mortgage payments were missed, homes were foreclosed and a global financial meltdown ensued. And with Vegas being a major epicenter of housing hype, so it followed that the city was hit harder than most places. As the Las Vegas Sun reports, people moved away in droves -- and continue to do so -- as Vegas ceased to be the land of milk and honey it was sold as. As building engineer Tyler Young told The Sun: "If I'm going to be looking for another job, I'm going to live where I want to live... you need to go to a place where you can better yourself and have a future. Here, it's just going down."

And for those who couldn't afford to leave: put simply, the last few years have been pretty good times for bankruptcy lawyers.

Wright wouldn't say anything so mercenary, of course. And nor would she say that a lot of what went so wrong for Vegas homeowners can be traced back, not to misfortune or misselling by banks, but to basic human greed. What she will say is this...

"At the height of the housing bubble, you had people who were buying houses, seeing them increase in value by $100,000 in no time, selling them and saying 'now I'll buy five more houses and do the same with those'"

"So, they wanted to make a quick profit, and they screwed up?"

Wright concedes that in some cases, greed was a factor, but insists that in many others, banks were just as culpable: encouraging customers to take mortgages they shouldn't have and sending out a message that -- contrary to all the laws of economics -- houses in Vegas would just keep increasing in value. "There was so much land here that people just kept building and building."

Her partner in the firm, Shawn Miller, explains just how ridiculous things got: "we saw bidding frenzies on properties, with prices in no way relative to actual values. People were buying multiple properties sight unseen. Meanwhile construction companies were building high-rises out in the suburbs. You need high-rises in cities like London or New York where space is at a premium, but not in Vegas."

"So what did the buyers think they were going to do with all these houses and high-rise condos?" My question could have been rhetorical: it's clear there wasn't a lot of rational thought being put into the question.

"Actually a lot of the homes were sold or rented to the construction workers who were arriving to build all the new houses," explains Miller.

I laugh. I can't help it. "So people were buying houses to rent to builders who were building new houses to sell to people who then rented them to builders?"

"Yes."

"And the banks were encouraging this?"

"Yes."

"But why? Surely the banks can't be that stupid? Surely they could understand how unsustainable it was?"

"Oh, they are that stupid," Miller deadpans. And he should know. Before joining Miller & Wright, he worked as an attorney representing those same banks.

Whatever the cause -- stupid banks, greedy homebuyers, whatever -- the result is the same: "You go down to the square near the bankruptcy court and there are whole communities of homeless people living there," says Wright. The problem is the housing collapse coincided with a rise in unemployment. At the end of last year, the national (U.S.) unemployment rate was 9.5 percent; in Las Vegas it was 14.8 percent. "If people have jobs then bankruptcy offers a way to get creditors off their backs for a while so they can start to rebuild their lives. But if you don't have a job then very soon you're back where you started, and you can't file for bankruptcy again for six or seven years."

"So why," I ask, "are the banks so quick to foreclose? Isn't it in their interests to try to work with the homeowners to get something back?"

"Some of the local banks are willing to do that," says Wright, "but for the larger ones... many of them don't own the debt any more. They sold it to someone else, who sold it to someone else. Our clients come to us with letters from companies they've never heard of, demanding repayment." And for those banks who do still own their debts, it's often a question of either not caring -- "you have to understand that there aren't people at banks making human decisions, they just look at numbers and make an instant call" -- or of not wanting to set a precedent -- "if they renegotiate one person's debt then they worry that everyone will come to them wanting to do the same. They foreclose to set an example."

It's a hell of a way to make an example, but as with so many things in Vegas, one person's loss is another's gain. One real estate agent, specializing in foreclosed homes has created the Foreclosure Bus Tour: a three hour guided tour of other people's misery. For people like Anderson, meanwhile, the availability of REOs represents nothing more -- or less -- than a sensible business opportunity, and a Las Vegas housing market returning to the normal rules of supply and demand.

"Lots of industry pundits say Vegas [house prices] may drop by another 5% this year," he explains, "and they may. But it depends on the neighborhood. There's a condo near downtown Vegas that had bottomed out about 12 months ago, with too many units on the market. A unit in that building might sell for 20/30% higher today than it did last year. The condos in CityCenter are holding on to their higher prices, and the developer won't sell them for less. They've decided to rent them in the interim, rather than sell them at a loss. Tract homes in a neighborhood like Summerlin may be around $110 per square foot, whereas a similar home -- even one built by the same builder -- may go for $65 per square foot in North Las Vegas. It really depends on the desirability of the neighborhood; the building -- in the case of a condo; the floorplan. Like any market, that which is rare tends to hold its value -- you can still get a higher price for a strip view in a condo. And in the luxury market, you'll still see people paying $400 and $500 per square foot in the most desirable neighborhoods."

Of course it's all too easy to paint all of this as a story of the rich getting richer and the poor getting screwed. As a card-carrying liberal Guardian columnist-turned HuffPost blogger, I was temped to do precisely that. In truth, though, Anderson is right: what we're seeing play out in Vegas is simply basic supply-and-demand economics. For every hardworking homeowner who took their bank's advice and ended up paying the price, there were plenty of others who thought they could become property tycoons overnight, and fell victim to their own greed. Likewise for every ghoulish Foreclosure Bus Tour, there's a perfectly decent businessman who understands that a down market is a good time to buy property in the town you love. Especially when you have the cash to do it.