Chicago: More Bars in More Places

like, i sort of understand why people get all worked up about dubai and how it's omg over the top, look at all the money and construction and weirdness and then i remember flying into vegas airport and the ensuing hitch out to the desert.

you're going by developments, then there's nothing but streetlights and sidewalk and desert, and then it's just desert. it's like someone just arbitrarily turned off the city.

If you like gambling and risk as much as Kenan says and know when to quit winners, there's always the chance of covering the cost of the trip...

xxxxpost RW OTM, in Vegas a couple hundred is nothing. A $5 blackjack table is a real find, maybe at Mandalay Bay or one of the smaller places on, like, Wednesday morning. At a place like Bellagio, $25 is prolly as low as you can go.

yes, I was in Vegas as part of a crosscountry road trip and it was like whoa where did this all come from and how is it sustaining itself? LA was kind of like that, too, actually.

I have added links to zip files of the first FF album (Fact Friction) and the follow-up Ep (Experimental Cheerleading) to the mp3 page of our website, if anyone wants to download them. If you do, please let me know if the links work or not.

i guess i am probably cheap, but that is not chump change for me

:-/

i truly genuinely cannot bear the thought of losing $200 to a casino

i realize there is a chance that i could win, but that chance is not worth more than $20 to me.

Stay out of Bellagio if you want to leave with your shirt.

xpost Vegas out of a plane window at night is wild. There's no mistaking it. There's NOTHING out there except for this one really, really bright spot.

I think I aloted $10 for myself to gamble with. I lost all of it. ha ha

I thought I would hate vegas, but it was interesting as a cultural phenomenon. I can think of a zillion other places I'd rather go though now that I've been there, done that.

A - Nick's parents moved there from DC when his dad retired. Neither of us have been there before. Since my fam doesn't have a home base, we chose Asheville this year. They'll be staying in a B&B, but our families will converge for a big Christmas Eve dinner. I'll be jumping between the two places. Then my fam will all leave on the 26th and Nick and I will spend the rest of the week hangin' with the ammercrew.

that's good, Amanda! when I was in Vegas I was driven to distraction by the thought of all the money that was going to be lost by the tourists walking around. it's the saddest place I've ever been.

it's not chump change for me either!

i have never gambled more than $40 at a casino! it's just that, as kenan says, if you go to vegas to play blackjack, THAT is your entertainment, so a few hours at a table getting lit on free drinks and maybe winning every now and then is actually worth a couple hundred for lots of people. plus, you've got to spend money to make money.

I think I aloted $10 for myself to gamble with. I lost all of it. ha ha
I also meant to mention that I think I'm prone to addictive behaviors, which is why I've avoided smoking/gambling/drugs like the plague.

I am a bummer and no fun at all, I know. I don't get gambling.

HEY GUYS $200 TOTALLY IS CHUMP CHANGE FOR ME

Give me some of that.

oh it's awful, for sure. but it's AMERICAN awful, and totally fascinating to me for that reason.

Ding ding ding.

How many pop punk bands do you guys think have existed with the name "Chump Change"? Like 40? 70?

Chump, Change (Your Ways)

xpost to hs - I don't get being a problematic gambler, I don't get that at all. But games are fun.

And yeah, that $200 is just part of your vacation budget, no different than setting that amount aside for a dreamt-of meal at a fancy restaurant or whatnot. Of course it's not nothing!

No, I am totally with you, Horseshoe! It just seems sad and depressing and awful. I have no urge to go there if I have to spend my own money -- Sarah's way of seeing it makes a lot of sense to me. I think I would like to see it for like 1 hour and then go somewhere else.

but if you eat a meal, you get to eat a meal! if you gamble you get nothing!

powering vegas is destroying the west's rivers

xp i mean you are all otm. just because i think it's fascinating doesn't mean i don't wish that someone would just go ahead and carpet bomb the whole thing. and hit the hoover dam while they're in the area.

awesome site:

http://www.cheapovegas.com

if you gamble you get nothing!

You get to play a game and sit in a weird, weird place! Your results may vary, obv.

gotta know when to hold 'em
know when to fold 'em

i like the sunshine and buffets. eazy has sold me on vegas.

toby wants to go to the grand canyon. this might be a stupid question, but is it doable year round? or does it actually get cold/snowy in winter?

gambling to "get" money ---> addiction and sorrow
gambling to pass the time, get drinks and chit chat with your tablemates ---> can be fun, but only if the stakes are low (for me)

xp grand canyon in the winter is fully snowy

i mean, at the rim. i think there's something like a 25 degree temp differential between the rim and the base, if not more. but i visited in the spring with my parents, and there was snow on the ground, and it was about 40 degrees up top. you have to remember, it's at 5000-6000 ft (?) or something, and in the desert. that equals cold.

gambling to pass the time, get drinks and chit chat with your tablemates
see, this appeals to me zero

i would rather be at moody's playing cribbage.

i mean, horshoe and gambling not-getters: why do you think men have poker night??? to make a little extra spending money?

$9 pitcher + games + tablemates who have been preapproved by me = much much more appealing.

i understand how someone would find vegas appealing, i guess, it's just that it sounds like an awful, depressing nightmarish waste of time for me. poker night makes a lot more sense than vegas.

(I'm not really arguing with anyone here--there's nothing arguable it seems. there's something aesthetic about the experience of gambling that I've never experienced, I guess.)

Chicago Fire v. Club Deportivo Social y Cultural Cruz Azul
10/10 7:30 PM

Lots of tix still available, looks like.

http://chicago.fire.mlsnet.com/news/team_news.jsp?ymd=20070914&content_id=117203&vkey=pr_chf&fext=.jsp&team=t100

(if anyone's interested)

yeah, of course, rw. I know. it's that aesthetic thing that's unavailable to me.

it's basically the same as sitting around and playing cribbage or whatever with your pals, except with the added dick-measuring of who is able to place large bets, and who walks away with everyone else's money

xp and yeah, vegas /= poker night, for many people, but then again going to vegas with your pals is basically poker night on coke, and with more strippers

(many many xposts)

I'd go to Vegas just to see the insanity, probably wouldn't gamble much if at all, probably wouldn't go back unless someone else was paying for it.

lol we r all poor

right, the aesthetic is unappealing to me, too.

but honestly, i've been to some extremely depressing poker nights. sitting in people's basements, listening to deep purple on classic rock radio and seeing some dude lose his car to this other dude? extremely depressing. a valuable experience, but not something i want to do for myself. i mean, he gambled his car away. that's a bad idea.

i guess what i do not like is dick-measuring.

rw, do you think the dick-measuring thing is the content of the enjoyment? that would be interesting if it were true...

(I mean, obviously figurative dickmeasuring, there are women who dig gambling, after all)

(although the other half of why Vegas depresses me=fliers for hookers that get passed out on the corner)

thinking about gambling turns me into Ned Flanders. ;_;

So I take it your screen name isn't a tribute to the establishment in Hammond, IN?

Yeah, Dan OTM, the appeal of Vegas for me has little to do with gambling. I mean, I'd love to go into the casinos and check out the scene, but it's more just about being in the belly of the beast and walking down streets lit up entirely with neon and having a cup of coffee at an all-night 50's-style diner and gazing at the gaudy glass buildings.

Do you play cribbage, Amanda? Did I not know this? Can we do this before it's too cold out in the beer garden?

Gambling as recreation that pays for itself is the ideal. Three hours of poker that costs the same as dinner at Charlie Trotter's is sad. three hours of poker that results in winning a dinner at Charlie Trotter's is rad.

I wouldn't try to talk anyone into gambling any more than I would talk anyone into drinking or drugs or threesomes or whatever. I think part of my interests in poker and wine have to do with moderation, that I don't crave either one and that I wouldn't enjoy them as much if I did.

That said, I know some decent poker players who have enjoyed the recreation of gambling in Vegas but who also profited from playing against tourists for whom $200 is chump change and poker is a goof.

(and I won first place, $380, in a poker tourney a few weeks ago playing against 16 people, including Chicago's finest audio engineers!)

Certainly, part of enjoying the liminal places Kenan and I sometimes enjoy (casinos and bars - I never made it to Clark's) involves enjoying places that other people find severely depressing.

(yeah, the hotels are amazing; if there hadn't been zombie-looking families everywhere, I might have had a good time.)

i mean, i think for some guys it really is figurative dick-measuring: they can bet you off the table when you don't have enough cash OR they walk away with all your money. but that's just poker. blackjack is a game, and, moreover, it's a game that CAN be "gamed," which is why there are so many nerds into gambling.

however, anteing up your car in a friendly neighborhood poker game probably means that you are depressed, and the type of person that actually believes that fortune will smile on you this time, when the truth is that she never ever smiles on anyone ever. no one ever actually wins at gambling. that's sort of the point!

I guess I have a failure to experience the aesthetic at all? like it never rises to the level of aesthetic because I'm too caught up in the mechanics of it all.

xpost to Eric

also, Vegas is too effing hot.