Las Vegas
Story Stream
How Las Vegas Became the Weirdest, Wildest City in America October 25, 2024
On hot, cloudy nights, the artist and writer Brent Holmes will sometimes stand in the backyard of his house, near Las Vegas’s Chinatown, and look to the east. Behind a screen of clouds, he’ll see flashes of light and the desert -dweller in him will f...
The Tom Brady Broadcasting Experience Feels Pointless October 17, 2024
Perhaps you’ve heard—Tom Brady is back to work. The seven-time Super Bowl champion and three-time league MVP has been calling games on Fox this season, the latest former player to make the jump from gridiron to broadcast booth. ...
The Killers’ Return to Las Vegas October 08, 2024
A tense and anticipatory silence engulfed the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. It didn’t last long, but an entire universe of waiting seemed to unfold in mere seconds. Then a series of brightly familiar guitar notes twirled up from the stage and hung sus...
How Elvis Became the King of Las Vegas Weddings July 22, 2024
Even if he weren’t dressed in a black jumpsuit studded with gold sunbursts, even if his thick black hair wasn’t combed back, a single strand hanging roguishly across his forehead, Collins’ voice would still be instantly recognizable. The Nashville-bo...
Mike Tyson Takes One Last Swing at Immortality July 17, 2024
Mike Tyson steps through the black ropes and lies down on his back in the middle of the boxing ring. He looks up at the ceiling of the warehouse in the Las Vegas suburbs and closes his eyes. The makeshift gym is so silent and sterile that all you can...
How Computers Made Poker a Game for Nerds July 16, 2024
Thousands of poker players have gathered in Las Vegas this month for their biggest tournament series of the year: the World Series of Poker (WSOP).For many professional players, the WSOP is an annual pilgrimage. For amateurs, it may be the culminatio...
The Secret of the Sphere January 08, 2024
Like yours, my first glimpses of the Sphere in Las Vegas were online ones. I’d seen pictures and videos crop up in social media posts showing the glowing orb on the outskirts of the Vegas skyline and in the banner images atop a rash of recent stories...
The Sphere December 25, 2023
Once when I was about twelve I was walking down the dead-end road in Albuquerque where I grew up, around twilight with a friend. Far beyond the end of the road was a mountain range, and at that time of evening it flattened into a matte indigo wash, l...
Welcome to the Real Las Vegas December 07, 2023
If you want the defining story of a place, there’s no better way to get it than from the mouths of the common folk. The patrons of a local pub; the bouncers on the doors of the grungiest nightclubs; the taxi drivers who’ve learned, if they know what’...
Inside F1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix November 21, 2023
You may have heard about the Manhole Incident. About eight minutes into the first practice round at the inaugural Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, around 8:38 PM local time, a loose manhole cover on the track became a piece of shrapnel as driver Carlo...
Bravo in the Flesh November 20, 2023
Thousands of romantics, driven to the desert. This year, the reality-television network Bravo held its third annual fan conference, BravoCon, in Las Vegas, dumping the Javits Center, its previous locale, for the pillarless ballrooms of Caesars Forum....
The Sphere and Our “Immersion” Complex November 17, 2023
Spend more than a few hours in Las Vegas and you become hyperaware of the carpets. They course through hotels, casinos, theatres, and malls. They teem with triangles, circles, ogees, leaves, flowers, and teardrops. They are hideous. When I was a kid,...
115 Degrees, Las Vegas Strip August 01, 2023
It was 115 degrees outside when I left my house, around 5 P.M. My steering wheel was hot to the touch. So hot, in fact, that I had to steer with the bottom of my palms; some people store gloves in their car during the summer, but I keep forgetting. T...
The Closeup Agency July 20, 2023
I was in Las Vegas, where the medical care is so shoddy people joke that if you need to go to the emergency room, you should drive to the airport, so that’s more or less what I did. I flew to Los Angeles on a Sunday afternoon; my appointment with the...
On Las Vegas and America July 14, 2023
But it’s a dry civilizational collapse.Last week I flew to Las Vegas to play in “The Main” - the signature event of the World Series of Poker, where players put down $10,000 to seek a first prize that this year is $12.1 million.The tournament is stil...
Welcome to the Age of the Cage Match July 07, 2023
Call it the melee of the middle-aged men.We already know the main event. That would be Elon Musk versus Mark Zuckerberg in Las Vegas, or maybe the Colosseum in Rome. The rival tech billionaires are inching toward a cage match, brokered by Dana White,...
A Nation of Sports Gamblers October 24, 2022
The Circa casino, in downtown Las Vegas, home to the biggest sportsbook in the world, features a hundred-and-twenty-by-forty-foot television screen, three floors of stadium-styled seating, and a pool area with an even bigger screen where you can rent...
