A Tuesday in Las Vegas
You might think this is a quaint title, like “Emily in Paris” or “Autumn in New York” or “Before Sunrise” to describe the crazy little happenstancey misadventures that happen in Las Vegas even on a synecdochey normal day like a Tuesday! :)
False. This post is about Tuesdays specifically, and how banal they are.
The thing about Las Vegas is if you are there on a Tuesday, because for example you have turned down flying home to New York on a stranger’s private jet because you have tickets to Jen Kramer’s incredible Magic Show at the Westgate, and this latter plan involves staying in Vegas for a few extra days while you are in the cheap weekday rooms at the Excalibur until you get on your $150 flight back, everything will be closed.
Tuesday in Las Vegas is like Sunday in a very Christian town. You might think that for example at least the hotel specials are going on, for example Excalibur’s Medieval Tournament of Kings Feast and Show. Nope. That is closed on Tuesdays.
Vegas on a Tuesday still, feels like Vegas, in that there are flashy lights and it is hot and you are in the middle of a desert, which means it is a bit depressing if you are not working or otherwise doing something with your time there. And so being there on a Tuesday with nothing to do was not acceptable to me.
What did I end up doing…
Uhh how do I explain…so there was this place. There were these places. All these places that do the things where you get to shoot guns and ride tanks, they were open on Tuesdays.
You call them up and a handsome former military man comes to your hotel and picks you up in a very cool military truck. I love this about Vegas. You might want to go out and do something and be willing to spend some money, but you’re hungover and would be confused about something as simple as getting an Uber there and back, and how it all is going to work, and so you call up the place that is advertising getting to shoot some big guns including a machine gun! All legal and all supervised, all safe, and you are asking how much it’s actually going to cost and what times are available, and on that same phone call they ask you what hotel you’re at because they’re going to come send someone cool to pick you up in a cool truck and then they will also drop you off, no need to get an Uber.
I feel more taken care of with this plan, than staying at the hotel just hanging out, and so I say okay. I love this city for their hospitality, and tell myself that one day I will just come live here for a month. Probably my second favorite service phone call of all time.
My first favorite phone call was trying to see if I should book whale sharks in Cancun, not being sure about it, and straight up calling and asking “uh do you know if the sharks…will be there?” The man on the other line said that he is not sure. I asked “I guess maybe were the sharks there…uh…yesterday? Or this week?” and he said yes. They were there all week. Turned out the forecast for sharks doesn’t work that way and they were worried. But the sharks were indeed there.
Behold my destination:
It was a lot of fun. This was right off the strip, but there are way crazier supervised helicopter-guns-desert adventures you can have near Vegas if you have a bit more time.
The way I ended up here — this man, who I met at this conference — he said that I should shoot a machine gun at least one time in my lifetime. He said there is not quite anything like it, and I agree with this.
I was told a story, by the ex-military man who drove me. He told me a little secret. He told me that you know you see those photos of good-old-American boys, on some mission, and they just destroyed something big, and they’re all smiling, and people think it’s because they’re secretly sadistic. He says no — there’s actually a bit of a high, getting to use a machine as powerful as a launcher or a machine guy, and so in those photos the people are just a little bit high from using the apparatus of destruction, not high off the destruction as the fact of the destruction. They aren’t high off their own power, they are high off the machine’s power and that’s a different thing entirely.
This high — I got to feel it for 40 minutes afterwards myself. I just sat there, feeling the feeling, after maybe 2 seconds of getting to shoot the thing.
Afterwards I got lunch at this place:
There are games, and they give you paper hats with insults on them. It’s pretty fun, but more importantly, a lot of food places were very closed.
Other things to do on a Tuesday…ah yes. The Flamingo. You can go hang out with the flamingos! They are just hanging out in their pond, so there is nothing to “close.” You can just go there and hang out with them. I noticed I didn’t take any photos of the flamingoes, which surprises me. I guess I was feeling tranquil.
You can get a cake from a vending machine. It wasn’t bad.
And then In-N-Out is always open, if that’s your thing.
And then that was my Tuesday.
And then you’d be a MORON if you don’t use any opportunity in Vegas to go seen Jen Kramer’s magic show. She will be known as one of the finest magicians of the first half of the 21st century. Penn and Teller and David Copperfield are already saying so. And she performs in a very small theater. It will be the best magic the most close up you’ll ever see in your life, I’m telling you.
https://spotlight.vegas/shows/magic/jen-kramer/
