Beer and loafing in Las Vegas

When life hands you lemons, take them to Nevada

It’s October 2022, the week of my birthday, and I’m about to start a new job. Like, a real job with benefits. The American Dream. After so many years of failed interviews or coming this close to landing the job, I had begun to think I was unemployable. I started to imagine spending the rest of my days languishing in side-gigs, hustles and freelancing. This stroke of luck feels so alien that I spend a solid few hours wondering if it’s real, or if I even deserve it.

But it is real, and it’s cause for celebration. Lucky for me, I already had plans to spend the weekend in Vegas with Ryen, my good friend from Salt Lake City. Before landing the new job, I fretted about how I could do Vegas on a budget, but now, with a sense of financial security, I’m free to take the highway to the danger zone. 

I jump in my car, practically burn rubber on the I-15 northbound onramp, and I don’t plan on stopping until I hit Vegas. I crank the music up, a spooky Halloween mix that I listen to year-round. Nothing says “Vegas, baby” Iike, uh, Q Lazzarus. 

I only make it to Miramar before I hit traffic, and I remember why I hate driving in Southern California. And people. And the universe. This is why I’ve made it my MO to never leave the two-mile radius around my home. 

I creep along at an infuriating pace. Nearly five hours later, I’m only in Barstow. I pull off the highway and grab a Monster Energy. I’m not a “Monster guy,” but dire situations and all. I chug it and pretty soon I’m seeing in the 4th dimension. It doesn’t matter that there’s traffic, because my mind is flopping around on a hamster wheel that’s spinning too fast. 

As the clock tolls midnight, I roll up to the El Cortez hotel on Fremont Street. As Ryen has taught me, Downtown Vegas is where it’s at. It’s difficult to imagine wanting to stay anywhere on The Strip after experiencing the grime and spectacle of Fremont. The only place that’s perhaps more demented is the Twisted Mind of Rob Zombie™. 

I check in, and the front desk employee hands me a map that looks like it was made in MS Paint. She circles where my hotel room is located: The Pavilion. I say, “Okay, thank you” and make it about ten steps before I forget everything she said. I study the map, but it’s only then that I realize just how strung-out I feel. I’m starving and my body feels shot with traffic-induced rage adrenaline. Let’s not forget that I still have god-only-knows-what ingredients from the Monster coursing through my veins. I must look confused, because a hotel security guard offers to help me.

“Oh, we don’t rent those rooms out anymore,” he says, pointing at my map. “In fact, we just demolished that whole side of the hotel just a few days ago.” 

We stand there, staring at each other, and I know deep in my heart that he’s fucking with me, but for every nanosecond that he lets this joke hang I imagine a thousand violent deaths. Finally, he says, “Ha ha. I’m just pulling your chain.” He leads me to the same elevator I used after parking my car. “You’re going up to the third floor.” My hotel room is just one floor above the parking garage.

I step into the elevator and a man in a tailored suit appears behind the security guard. “Seriously though,” the suit says, “that is one of the worst rooms in the hotel.” I wait for him to tell me he’s pulling my leg. “Don’t let it be a reflection of our hotel.” 

The elevators doors begin to close. Just before they do, the security guard says, “And he should know. He’s the general manager.” 

*

The Pavilion is exactly what you would get if someone built a motel on top of a parking garage. It smells like an ancient burial ground for cigarettes. All the rooms open up to an outside corridor, and you can look into everyone’s room. I pass a bunch of lonely people watching TV who haven’t bothered to close their shades. Pavilion living, I think. I’ve only reserved this room for one night because everything in Vegas was booked for Saturday, meaning that I have paid for a hotel room that I’ll use for maybe six hours. In any other situation, this would piss me off, but in Vegas, the money-loss-to-time-spent ratio is actually pretty good.

I drop my shit off and text Ryen. He’s up in his room—a fancy remodeled dwelling that’s made to look like El Cortez’s original rooms. The stairway to access these rooms is guarded by a security guard, who looks at my wristband—green, signifying me as a resident of The Pavilion and therefore the lowest class of guest— and denies me access. Ryen has to come down and retrieve me.  

Ryen is a pro at Vegas. He stays and gambles at El Cortez enough to be in their special VIP club. They hook him up with free rooms and gifts and appropriately-colored wrist bands. Since I couldn’t secure a reservation for Saturday night, he’s letting me crash in his single, queen-sized bed. Because of this, we spend the first hour of our reunion watching and reenacting the clip from Planes Trains and Automobiles when John Candy and Steve Martin find themselves in the same single-bed-situation.

“I like me,” I’ll say, trying to remember John Candy’s strangely emotional monologue, but it gets harder as the beers start finding their way into my mouth, so we just start doing the kwakwoowakzoo sound that happens when Steve Martin first lays eyes on the bed. It’s funny every time. 

Around 1:00 a.m., we hit Fremont Street. Ryen gives me a tour of all his favorite casinos, including The D, Golden Nugget and Circa, where we stare at a massive screen in the world’s biggest playbook and all I get stuck on the idea of someone putting an art movie like Fellini or something on. That would be cool. 

We feed video poker machines to get free drinks, and it doesn’t take long for me to get, like, really intelligent and loquacious. I invite Ryen up to The Pavilion, and he smokes a cigarette while I take down a preroll. We look out at the Vegas skylight from the worst room in the El Cortez. After he leaves, I fall asleep to Forensic Files, a show ostensibly about very unlucky people. 

*

It’s hard to be in Vegas and not think of Hunter S. Thompson. Of all the writers who’ve sought out the American Dream, I think he was the closest to finding it. What could be more American than sadness, alienation and struggle, punctuated with hot flashes of luck? 

I didn’t realize how unhappy I was in my career in media until I was out of it. Most of my adult life has been trying to make a living boosting pageviews, attracting eyeballs, and writing fresh content. 

But now, I’m realizing that maybe all those failed interviews may have had an element of self-sabotage. Perhaps something in my brain knew that I was unhappy, and wouldn’t allow me to appear convincingly passionate about, say, developing content or reaching audiences or meta-tags or web numbers. I think back to a lot of those interviews and imagine what my life would be like if I had landed any of them. I don’t think I would be as happy as I am now. 

In other words, after losing for so long, I feel like I’m finally on a lucky streak. The American Dream. 

*

The next morning, I wake up to housekeeping. When I unlatch the door, the wind pulls it open. The housekeeper is clinging onto all the toiletries on her cart, preventing them from blowing away. 

“I uh requested a late check-out,” I lie. 

“Okay,” she says, not giving a shit. She drags her cart to the next door and knocks. Trash tornadoes swirl in The Pavilion’s open-air corridor. 

Dang! I think, closing the door. I look out the window and dark clouds have amassed over the city. The entire landscape looks hazy with dust.

I open Twitter and learn that When We Were Young—an emo mega festival that’s happening in Vegas at the same time—has been canceled due to high winds. Is there anything sadder than a canceled emo music fest? Scenarios run through my head. Watching Eeyore open his therapy bills might be sadder, but that’s about it. 

It’ll be hours before Ryen wakes up. He surely went back to the slot machines after bidding me adieu last night. I brace for the weather and walk over to Downtown Container Park—a hip little space with shipping containers turned into bars and restaurants, etc. The place is filled with sad, young alt-looking people in My Chemical Romance shirts. All are looking at their phones, scrolling for some salvation. I have a vague desire to give each one a hug, and tell them there will be other emo fests, but I also don’t want to get black hair dye on my shirt. 

There’s no breakfast in Container Park—does breakfast even exist in Vegas?—but I find a container shoppe selling pizza. I sit outside and stare off into the middle distance while the wind blows sand onto my slice of pep. Each bite becomes increasingly gritty. A sulking emo kid walks by and says, “That looks good” and I say, “It is!” 

When Ryen wakes up, I make him drive us to a horror-themed cafe in Las Vegas’ art district, but when we get there, the host says, “I’m going to be transparent with you: we’re out of food.”

This is pretty much the only thing I had planned for the day, so without a backup plan, we head back to El Cortez. We ruminate on the host’s strange use of the word “transparent.” Like, would that be something he’s previously tried to hide before? Has this host ever tried to trick customers into believing the restaurant has food when it didn’t? And has this charade been so difficult to upkeep that it left him physically and emotionally deflated, resolving to just be more “transparent” next time?

We have an early dinner at El Cortez’s restaurant. We’re the only two in there, and the server calls us both “hun.” Ryen has a gift certificate—one of his VIP perks—and tells me to order “whatever I want, birthday boy.” I order 16 ounces of prime rib and two old fashioneds. This must be what Frank Sinatra ate every day, I think. Fly me to the moon, or maybe just the hospital. 

After dinner, we sit in Ryen’s room and watch the Padres lose to the Phillies. It feels like an excuse to drink more and partake in what a lot of moms I know refer to as “microdosing”. So we do. 

*

Fremont Street on a Saturday night feels like a living, breathing thing. There’s an energy that erases the overwhelming sadness of the canceled music festival, and everywhere there are inebriated emos just happy to be here. Good vibes, I think. It also doesn’t hurt that ‘80s hair metal group Vixen is playing a free show right in the middle of the street. Their anthemic ballads give everything a cinematic feel. What a time to be alive. 

We walk by two women who say, “We’re from Salt Lake, too,” pointing at my Heavy Metal Shop SLC sweatshirt. “Nice!” I say, and keep walking.

There’s a line outside The Plaza Hotel, which we learn is where the band Thursday has booked a last-minute show. Many of the bands whose sets were canceled today have found new venues, which has seemed to energize the emos. I watch a kid in line throw up in a large concrete planter. A security guard near me raises his hands in defeat. “Aw man, my plant,” he says, quietly.

Ryen tells me he has to use the bathroom, and he leaves me alone for what feels like hours. I find a pizza place in The Plaza and order chicken tenders. This seems really funny to me for some reason. I sit by myself, eating tenders and laughing. 

Ryen finally returns and we head back to El Cortez, our sanctuary. We post up at a single-deck Black Jack table with a $15 minimum, and I throw down a hundred dollar bill—a birthday present from my dad who said I couldn’t spend it on anything responsible. The green felt on the table feels good against my fingertips. The dealer exchanges my money for chips, which make a delightful sound when I stack them. 

A young couple from Sweden sit next to us, both of whom look vaguely scared of everything that’s happening around them. It’s not a vibe I’m ready for, so I try to make small talk. Suddenly it’s my mission to make them feel easy, comfortable, so I start asking them about church burning and black metal from Scandinavia. This has the opposite effect. “Shit, shit, sorry,” I say. “I’m thinking of Norway.” 

The Swedish woman tells us that so far, they’ve been to New York City—which they hated—and Florida, which they loved. I’m this close to offering them a microdose because I want them to have an experience better than Florida, but I look over at Ryen and it’s like he can read my mind. He shakes his head. 

I’m killing it at the table. I split, I double down, and the server keeps bringing me seltzers. At some point, I realize I’ve turned $100 into $300. How did this happen? I take it as another sign of luck and quit while I’m ahead. 

I find Ryen at a virtual craps game, so I sit next to him and watch. He’s trying to teach me how to play, but it’s hard to focus on anything besides how cool his chips look when they fly across the screen.

I sit with him until I realize I’m paying more attention to the carpet than the game.

*

The next morning, Ryen is too hungover to do anything we had planned the night before—no brunch, no Meow Wolf art exhibit. He was up until daybreak playing virtual craps. He made a lot of money doing so, and I’m proud of him, but also feel a sudden urge to get moving. I have a nervous energy flowing through me and feel like I need to get out of Vegas ASAP, even if it means going alone. You can only have so much good luck here before it turns on you, so I pack my stuff and say goodbye. 

On my way out of El Cortez, I feed a hundred dollar bill into a Buffalo Gold slot machine and it’s gone in less than a minute. Yep, gotta go. 

There’s an old-school restaurant called Ichabod’s that’s miles away from The Strip or Downtown. It’s a dimly-lit, loungey diner located in a strip mall and it has vinyl-covered booths and a perpetual spooky vibe, and I’m pretty sure it was invented for mornings after the night I just had. I sit at the bar next an old woman playing video poker, and she tells me to order the chicken fried steak. I also order an orange juice, a coffee and a Long Island iced tea because the bartender recommends it. Never been a hair o’ the dog type of person, but the greasy food and Long Island resurrect me. A TV in front of me plays another Padres vs. Phillies game, and it’s comforting to know that the Padres are in a lot worse shape than I. 

Eager to hit the road, I almost skip Meow Wolf entirely, but I’ve already paid for the pricey tickets, so if I don’t go, Vegas will have won yet again. I just can’t let it have that satisfaction. 

I’m unsure of how to explain Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart, even after being in it. It’s an experience tailored for the Instagram crowd, designed to look like a supermarket but stocked with alien and dystopian items. Throughout the supermarket, there are hidden passageways that lead to a spacious cavern that seems to go on endlessly, branching off into various rooms with lighting effects straight out of giallo movies. 

For three extra dollars, you can buy a card that you can scan at kiosks which give you a narrative of the place—kind of a scavenger hunt type of gamification— but I don’t have the fortitude or will to understand it. I try to fit in with the rest of the Gen-Zers and take a few selfies in the strange rooms, but alone it just feels sad and pathetic. Maybe coming here after a night of hard Vegas-ing was not the best decision. 

I hit traffic multiple times on the way home. It takes eight hours to get back to San Diego, but it’s not so bad. It gives me lots of time to think about my new life ahead, and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever felt lucky after leaving Vegas. 

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LISTEN TO THIS

This week, I had the distinct honor of being a guest on the Friendsgiving episode of Voice of San Diego’s podcast. I bring a lot of good mouth sounds, but also talk about bike lanes in San Diego—and the media coverage of them. I must apologize though, because in my nervous inarticulateness, I forgot to mention any of the great bike advocates and advocacy groups that have put in so much work to make San Diego a better place for cyclists. It’s always fun to hang with the VOSD crew, but it was a delight to be in the same room again with former CityBeat colleague, Andrea Lopez-Villafaña. Listen to it here! 

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MARK YOUR CALENDARS 

Back in March 2020, I organized a showing of the cinematic gem, Tammy and the T-Rex at Digital Gym Cinema. It was supposed to be the beginning of what I imagined to be a semi-regular series dedicated to underseen and ridiculous/amazing movies. 

And then a week later, everything shut down. 

Well, I’m happy to say that Awkward Movie Nights are back, baby! On Thursday, December 15, we’re going to watch Deadly Games (aka Dial Code Santa Claus) at the beautiful, new Digital Gym Cinema. 

Deadly Games is a French film about a child who builds MacGyver-esque weapons and booby traps to defend his home against an invader dressed as Santa. If that sounds a lot like Home Alone, just know that Deadly Games predates Home Alone, and is way more stylish. I hope you join us for this holiday masterpiece. 

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Got a tip or wanna say hi? Email me at ryancraigbradford@gmail.com, or follow me on Twitter @theryanbradford. And if you like what you’ve just read, please hit that little heart icon at the end of the post.