Don’t Bet Against The Odds Of Las Vegas

 

 

The first time I saw The Sphere was when my uber was taking me from the Las Vegas airport to the W Hotel. It was the reason I came here with my wife this past weekend. What a sight to behold.

It looks like a sunken moon had landed on Earth, spraying screen-produced light for miles in all directions, brightening the evening sky in a city that constantly glows. It is the glitzy city’s pride and joy, a centerpiece worthy of its display amidst a skyline of massive tributes to untempered greed and wealth.

I got to see the inside of this globe-shaped entertainment behemoth the next night. We saw the Eagles give a tremendous performance for a concert. But this was more than that. This was an unrivaled show, placed in an incomparable venue,  set in a megatroplolis of entertainment. The SRO crowd of 20,000 went wild.

I can only describe it as being in a giant planetarium or IMAX, where 64,000 LED tiles (mini-screens)are displaying the coordination of flashing pixels and video to provide a 4D feel.  The visual fireworks provide depth to the oratory dimensions being pierced by a band that has performed for over a half-century. You are gripped by the vibration of a multimedia tsunami infusing many of your senses. It is just amazing.

The landscape has changed in the eight years since I last visited here. The overcrowded got even more crowded. It has LA- and NY-like traffic. It could take 30 minutes to go three miles. Ordinary, over-priced restaurants are filled by reservations made weeks and months ago. It is on the one hand almost too big too function, and on the other hand, struggles to meet all of the constant needs of a consistent flow of hungry visitors.

This place just keeps building and expanding. More, bigger hotels….more restaurants and casinos, and more ways to part you from your money. They now have a WNBA team, an NFL team, and soon an MLB team. The many entertainment options are ever-expanding and the tourists feed the beast 24-7. It is its own scale of economy here. You can’t come here and not spend thousands of dollars on overpriced everything. There is a 30-50 percent premium to anything.

I bought suntan lotion for 25 bucks. It would be cheaper at CVS but a 25-dollar uber 1.6 miles away would take at least 20 minutes. Double it to complete the roundtrip. Starbucks took a nine-dollar order from home and made it 14 bucks in Vegas. Restaurants make up prices as they go, even adding in fees they hope no one questions. A night at any hotel is a week’s worth of a mortgage payment. Tickets to any show are easily double Broadway’s prices.

I am not claiming poverty nor do I have to come here, but it is crazy ridiculous that people are hosed to this degree.

The first time I visited Sin City was 35 years ago, to attend my first book convention. The place was transitioning from its roots of Mafia-rigged casinos to its corporatized Disneyfication of today.

All-you-can eat $2 buffet breakfasts were still around. Getting married by an Elvis impersonator was still a thing. It was a gritty, sex-filled town. It was a home where both the desperate and greedy overlapped. The optimism surrounding an opportunity for life to change was ever-present, always just a roll of the dice, a spin of the wheel, a pull of the lever away. There was a hustle in the air.

Now it feels cleansed of street criminals but the robbers are the restaurants, hotels, casinos, theaters, and even the ubers. But, it is still a place for bachelor parties, normalized excess, and for seeing many dreams die while a few get lucky.

Vegas is America’s playground, a mall for hedonism and escape, and it is a place that continues to expand in its size and diversification of offerings. Today’s Sphere, though so amazing, will become yesterday’s transistor radio here in no time. Party on!

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 5,300,000 page views. With 5,500+ posts over the past 14 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs  by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2025.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum