Elvis Presley was on the wane, so he went into the desert and landed a furious comeback. The scene of the action in 1968: Las Vegas – a city barely bigger than Nuremberg. The mafia spread here, and with it money, gambling and fantastic delusions of grandeur.
The best hotels, the most beautiful casinos, the most dazzling neon signs, Sinatra, the “Rat Pack”, stars, Hollywood movies – ever since Las Vegas flourished, this unreal spot in Nevada’s Pampas has been the weirdest mirage in the world. Take a fabulous room for 90 dollars and burn 50 times that amount in the casino on the same day. André Agassi was born here, and too many have died. Voluntarily, involuntarily, it doesn’t matter. The lights, which have been lit for less than 100 years, will certainly never go out in Vegas.
Full power
With a consumption of around 20 million megawatt hours, Las Vegas is the biggest power guzzler in the world. No city needs more power in relation to its size or Population. Because the supply from the nearby Hoover Dam, solar panels etc. is not sufficient, several 1 million volt lines import electricity from all over the country (5,000 suppliers) at the speed of light. Although Beijing is significantly higher at 45 million megawatt hours, it also has 17.5 million inhabitants. In other words, if Las Vegas were as big as Beijing, it would need around 680 million megawatt hours. Purely theoretical.
Do you want to? Yes!
Fill out the form, put 60 dollars on the table and you’re married. Las Vegas is well known for its bang-for-the-buck weddings – approx. 120ʹ000 per year – but also for special, examples: Getting married on the Eiffel Tower, saying “I do” stark naked, getting married on a pirate ship, in a helicopter, skydiving, gay, lesbian, American, Swiss, whatever. Even before Elvis – he married Priscilla in Vegas in 1967, but died 10 years later. But his doppelganger does everything, from the costume to the rock’n’roll gig in the Graceland band, to look as good as the real thing. By the way: a divorce in Las Vegas costs around 450 dollars. So here are 10 important tips to keep in mind when planning your wedding in Las Vegas.
39’713’982
100 dollar bet, click, click, click, suddenly there are 39,713ʼ982 eggs. A 25-year-old engineer from Los Angeles wins this record prize on a “Megabucks” slot machine at Excalibur Casino in 2003. Rumors then spread that he had died of a drug overdose, crashed in a plane crash or been stabbed to death by a gang in LA. The fact is, he is still doing well today. He still has the money, at least repeatedly, because the casino pays out the winnings in stages: 1.5 million dollars per year for 26 years. Nice pension, and that until 2029.
Power
In the 70s and 80s, Las Vegas was considered run-down. Allen R. Glick made a significant contribution to this. The casino owner at the time acted as a front man for mobsters and the Cosa Nostra, a key figure in the infiltration and skimming of casinos at the time. In 1982, he switched sides and appeared as a key witness in mafia trials. Steve Wynn (pictured) initiated the “clean” turnaround in 1989 with the opening of the Mirage, which attracted a serious and affluent clientele. The billionaire is also responsible for Treasure Island and the Bellagio, important hotel magnets for the city. Highlight: His superlative resort Wynn Las Vegas, completed in 2005. Donald Trump owns the 189-meter-high Trump International Hotel and Tower with its golden façade, the third tallest building in the city. A twin is soon to follow. And a Swiss man is now also wielding power in “Sin City” – albeit not with private capital. Josef Ackermann is known to be the CEO of Deutsche Bank. It, in turn, has pumped four billion dollars into the brand new Cosmopolitan casino hotel
On celluloid
Dozens of films were made in “Sin City” over the decades, and many a classic. Here are the best: “Ocean’s 11” (the original, 1960) – Eleven veterans plunder five casinos simultaneously on New Year’s Day, and the “Rat Pack” around Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford also create a monument to themselves in the cinema. / “Viva Las Vegas” (1964) – Swedish tart Ann-Margret turns the head of the racing Elvis Presley, who in turn turns the heads of all the women and many a man in the movie theater. / “Leaving Las Vegas” (1995) – A failed script writer goes to the city to drink himself to death. Disturbing work about the abysses of life and a final destination that cannot be stopped. Nicolas Cage drank himself ready for the role, John O’Brian, author of the novel, killed himself before filming began. / “Casino” (1995) – Director: Martin Scorsese, in the picture: Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, James Woods – any questions? / “Fear and Loathing Las Vegas” (Image, 1998) – Hunter S. Thompson wrote the story, plus “two bags of weed, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, acid, coke, tequila, rum, beer,…”, Benicio Del Toro and Johnny Depp. It’s all in the mix. / “The Hangover” (2009) – Stag night, Jägermeister on the hotel roof of Caesars Palace, a movie tear, the suite is a battlefield.
History
A Mormon settlement in 1864, then an army base at Fort Baker, not until rancher widow Helen Stewart sold her ranch property to a railroad company for $55,000, which in turn sold it on the 15th. When the parcels of land were auctioned off to speculators on May 1, 1905, Las Vegas (“The Meadows”) was officially founded. With the construction of the Hoover Dam in 1931 and the legalization of gambling, the starting signal for growth was given. First, two casinos were built. Then came mobster Bugsy Siegel. He tried to force his way into the casinos, but failed. In 1945, he bought one and had it converted into “The Flamingo Hotel”, financed by money from the Cosa Nostra. With the casino-hotel model, he set a development in motion that continues to this day.
Good in the river
The annual turnover of Las Vegas casinos amounts to a good 8.5 billion dollars. In the meantime, however, it has been overtaken by China’s cesspool Macao. The city-state makes – with roughly the same number of inhabitants – 13 billion dollars a year! So the same amount as
Copy Paste
Las Vegas is home to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge – copies, of course. Other amazingly authentic replicas: Venice including San Marco’s Campanello, Rialto Bridge and canals, the Eiffel Tower, Egypt’s pyramids, and small but mighty: Munich’s Hofbräuhaus. Even the ceiling was hand-painted and 75,000 roof tiles were shipped in from Germany. The “punishment” for the counterfeiters follows: An exact copy of the US player city is to be built in the middle of the steppes of Kazakhstan. The CHF 30 billion project is scheduled to take ten years and the airport will be completed by the end of next year.
Bye, bye, 2Pac
It’s not just unknown gangsters who die in Las Vegas: rapper Tupac Shakur – drug dealing, assault, sexual assault – had his own death on the 7th. He had just been watching a boxing match at the MGM Grand Hotel on September 1, 1996, when shots were fired at his car at a traffic light. The star died on 13. September the injuries. The murder remains unsolved to this day; rivalry with rival rappers is thought to be the motive, but the main suspect, Orlando Anderson, was shot dead himself in 1998.
The rival
If Las Vegas is Coca Cola, then Atlantic City (New Jersey) is Pepsi. The East Coast city received casino licenses earlier than Las Vegas, and the golden era was already here in the 1920s. This was followed by a decline, because Vegas lured visitors with world stars and attractions that were unbeatable. When organized crime got out of hand in Las Vegas at the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s, Atlantic City was again briefly ahead of the pack – thanks to world championship boxing matches, for example.
The godparents/h3>
Since the 1950s, the influence of the US-American Cosa Nostra has increased in the city. Numerous hotels were controlled by them, profits from the casinos were siphoned off and passed on to the bosses’ families in Chicago, Miami, etc. The National Crime Syndicate soon declared Las Vegas an “open city” – in other words, the metropolis was not just in the hands of one clan, but from then on anyone could become a sponsor. From 1960 onwards, mafiosi even used trade union funds to build hotels and casinos – in other words, new sources of money. In 1974, for example, Allen Glick bought two casinos with 63 million dollars from a unionist pot; the fund manager was ultimately the last link in the chain of mafia “functionaries”. This is how the “Aladdin”, “Circus Circus”, “Dunes”, “The Tropicana” and “The Sands” were created. The latter was something of a second home to the “Rat Pack” for years, Frank Sinatra was even involved in the store before billionaire Howard Hughes bought it.
Dangerous!
Robbery, rape, manslaughter, murder: according to FBI crime statistics, Las Vegas is the fourth most dangerous city in the USA. Not criminal, but just as grim: in the desert metropolis, by far the most people take their own lives – twice as many as the US national average!
39’000’000
Every year, 39 million visitors flock to Las Vegas. That is 70 times as many as the city’s 558,000 inhabitants. This results in 39.4 million passengers per year for the city’s airport, McCarran International Airport, making it the eighth largest airport in the USA (22nd worldwide), even though Las Vegas is just the 28th largest city in the United States.
20,000 kilos per day
A glass, 72 prawns, sweet and sour sauce on top, and the shrimp cocktail is ready. Every day, 20,000 kilos of it are consumed in Las Vegas. The original has been available in the Golden Gate hotel casino since 1959, back then for 99 cents – today for a still modest 1.99.
Hotel, Hotel
14 of the 20 largest hotels in the world are in Las Vegas. The top position is occupied by The Venetian with 4,049 suites, 4,059 hotel rooms, an 11,000 square meter casino and a window view of the Grand Canal. The MGM Grand (2nd place) spreads over 35,000 square meters an 89-meter hotel tower, five pools, rivers, a television station, the largest casino in Clark County and an arena for 16,800 visitors. In the latter, boxer Mike Tyson bit out a piece of his opponent Evander Holyfield’s ear in 1998. The Encore from 2008 (young “sister hotel of the spectacular Wynn, 18-hole golf course with mini-Niagara Falls, the most expensive with 2.7 billion construction costs) is in 4th place. It is considered one of the finest hotels in the world and, together with the Wynn, has received more “Forbes Five Stars Awards” than any other casino resort in the world. The Bellagio (10th place) has the most fountains with 1,000 fountains on a 4.8-hectare lake. In 11th place is the classic Circus Circus from 1968. While the guests race around the indoor roller coaster, James Bond also drops by. “Diamonds Are Forever” (1971) was created here. Place 15: The
(since 1962), it flaunts columns, statues and water fountains like ancient Rome. 3ʼ348 rooms, a 15,000 square meter casino, not bad. Formula 1 races were held in the hotel parking lot in 1981 and 1982. And because that’s not enough, since 2003 there’s been a Colosseum with 4,000 seats, built for Celine Dion, who had an exclusive contract for over five years.
Make me Michael Jordan
Even the size of the Hardwood Suite at the Palms Casino Resort is impressive at 930 square meters. Even more exciting: the luxury apartment is the only one in the world with an integrated basketball court, professional scoreboard and changing room included. The 2-storey suite also has three XL beds in NBA player format plus a Jacuzzi. And the hotel promises: “You can customize your stay with your very own team jerseys and cheerleaders.”
Underground
Let’s put aside the petty criminals, the gangsters, the mafiosi. Las Vegas has a second underworld: hundreds of homeless people live in foul-smelling tunnels and corridors in a canal system over 800 kilometers long – designed to protect them from flooding during heavy rainfall. Drug addicts, alcoholics and stranded soldiers of fortune use the garbage that has washed up on the shore to build places to sleep and live, while the gamblers in the Mirage or Bellagio have no idea what is going on under their feet. This parallel world is so bleak that even homeless people from the streets – there are said to be around 100,000 of them in Las Vegas! – don’t trust those goths. Here you can see a movie about the Tunnel People on Youtube.
Sin City
The motto is: “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” – in plain language, this means drinking, whoring, spending money, letting yourself go, nothing is impossible as long as the money is rolling in. There are no watches in casinos, prostitution is illegal, but you can still get flyers from horny chicks on every corner. They simply call themselves “strippers”. However, thousands of “willing” visitors are robbed by escorts every year. Anyone who then calls the police for help has a double problem. While Las Vegas suddenly focused on family-friendly entertainment in the 90s, the semi-seedy milieu has reasserted itself. “Crazy Horse” at the MGM Grand, “Fantasy” at the Luxor, “X Burlesque” at the Flamingo – it has nothing to do with kindergarten, but it does with a petting zoo – the number of nightclubs is in the hundreds. If you can’t see the wood for the red light lanterns, here’s our tip: the “Olympic Garden”, or “OG” for short, is one of the biggest (and best) strip clubs in the world. On any given weekend, up to 500 girls show up to dance on the pole and collect the dollars in their panties. On the second (650 square meter) floor, bachelorettes indulged in delicious muscular treats. The “OG” is the only strip store on the approximately seven-kilometer-long main boulevard “The Strip”.
Photo: picture alliance / Zoonar / Bruno Coelho
Heref you will find a story about the faces behind the neon signs of Las Vegas.