Las Vegas: 5/12-17/09

Las Vegas from May 12 to May 17, 2009.

The Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area was surprising in a great way; Las Vegas is hundreds of square miles of concrete and I really never connected the place to natural beauty. There is actually a lot of natural beauty in the area:

But of course there is also the main reason over 37 million people visit Las Vegas each year — its pedestrian-friendly urban planning. Here is a walk down The Las Vegas Strip During The Day (a few images are from our 2005 trip to Las Vegas, but the bulk of them are new, and there are links to each spot from the page). We started out near the Happi Inn, across from the Luxor, a remnant of the “old” Strip:

. . . learned about our entertainment options:

. . . and ended our journey at the strange architecture of Fashion Show, 2.5 miles later:

Along the way we wended through Luxor, Excalibur and New York-New York, got lost in the MGM Grand (and its Lion Habitat), passed by the mammoth new construction at CityCenter, skirted by Planet Hollywood and Paris Las Vegas, stopped in the Bellagio Hotel & Casino and the World Recordbreaking Chocolate Fountain at Jean-Philippe Patisserie, scooted across one of the pedestrian walkways that rises above the ten-lane roads to Caesars Palace where we saw the odd animatronic Fall of Atlantis Fountain Show, the Aquarium and ate at Beijing Noodle No. 9, then walked by The Mirage and its Siegfried and Roy Statue, through Treasure Island and finally visited the Wynn, before heading back to The M Resort in Henderson via its shuttle bus that departs from Fashion Show. We walk a lot but this was a long day.

Feed: Lotus of Siam for the best Thai food in the U.S. (and this includes Woodside, Queens’ Sripraphai . . . highly recommended), Raku Japanese Charcoal Grill (highly recommended) and Bartolotta at the Wynn (highly highly recommended). This dish at Raku was described as “Bonito Guts”:

Oddities: Serge’s Showgirl Wigs in the same shopping center as Lotus of Siam, the Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas Sign at the southern end of the Strip, the Las Vegas Monorail (the first privately financed mass transportation system in the U.S. since WWII — it’s also really expensive at $5 a trip!) and the PG-13 Sirens of TI show outside Treasure Island.

And then of course there are the slot machines at McCarran International Airport:

May 9-10, 2009

The powerful Tiecoon at Penn Station, Midtown Manhattan, May 9, 2009, 10:00 a.m.:

Phillies vs. Braves at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, May 9, 2009, 5:24 p.m.:

Dirty Frank’s, Philadelphia, May 9, 2009, 11:42 p.m.:

The Shirt Corner, Old City, Philadelphia, May 10, 2009, 3:15 p.m.:

The exciting new Trenton Transit Center in Trenton, New Jersey, May 10, 2009, 4:47 p.m.:

Mets vs. Phillies, May 7, 2009

Another Mets vs. Phillies game, this time from Section 512:

The Section 512 seats were much better than the Section 538 seats we had, which you can see, about where the Chicago-Houston score is posted:

I’ll tell you what, there’s a huge difference between the advertisements from last year at Shea and this year at Citi Field. Last year at Shea, you had Delta, Sharp, Chevy and Verizon:

Then State Farm and of course the infamous AIG:

This year, on the food media day before the stadium opened, on March 31, 2009, there was a sort of blank slate — not sure if they didn’t put the signs up yet or if (hrm!) they didn’t know who would buy signage:

So now that the stadium is up and running, note that AIG is notably absent, and in its place, an expanded “freecreditreport.com” presence:

They’re the ones with that ad with the garage band in the basement; still not sure what the catch is, and why this is a profitable enterprise.

As for the newcomers, there’s Bob’s Furniture:

spongetech.com (what is that exactly?) and superpages.com:

The old sell-your-gold thing:

Titan Motors:

And the Arpielle Equipment Co.:

In short, the Citi Field ads look a lot like what you’d see at a minor league game.

Arpielle Equipment Co. also sponsors the Mets’ version of the ubiquitous [blank] vs. [blank] race, that computer-generated doodad where digitalized items “race” each other and the results are randomly generated. I think it’s supposed to elicit a crowd response, but I don’t feel at all bad not rooting for a computer program. At Yankee Stadium last year (haven’t been there this year yet) the B, D and 4 trains “raced” each other to the stadium. The Phillies do a similar thing with SEPTA and its joke of a subway system. At Army football games at West Point, they race tanks. Spectators at other ballparks seem to enjoy the eternal ketchup-mustard-relish match. But the Arpielle [blank] vs. [blank] at Citi Field is just inexplicable — it’s a fork lift against a light tower. I’m not even kidding:

I guess that stimulus money is good for something . . .