March 12-18 is Milwaukee in Las Vegas Week on OnMilwaukee.com. Last month, Funjet Vacations sent our editorial team to Vegas, where we sought out connections between Brew City and Sin City. These are our stories ...

LAS VEGAS -- In his book of essays entitled "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," author Tom Wolfe sizes up Las Vegas thusly:

"Las Vegas is the only town in the world whose skyline is made up neither of buildings, like New York, nor of trees, like Wilbraham, Massachusetts, but signs."

Take a nighttime flight into 58-year-old McCarran International Airport, which welcomed a record 46.2 million passengers last year, and you will see more of those neon monstrosities than Wolfe could have imagined when he typed that passage 40 years ago.

But, you don't have to board a plane or leave Milwaukee to see the signs of Vegas.

You can see them at various times on the faces of your brother-in-law, neighbor, co-worker, cousin, insurance agent, auto mechanic, nail technician and just about anyone else you encounter during an average week in Wisconsin.

If you see a bright smile of eager, "kid in a candy store" anticipation, it often means that someone you know is headed to Vegas in search of fun, fortune and more fun. Look at that same person upon their return and you may see telltale signs of Sin City fatigue: dark circles under sleep-deprived eyes; a reluctance to reach for a wallet that was depleted at the gaming tables; and the familiar "morning after" pallor that says "What I just went through was taxing, but I can't wait to rest up and do it again."

According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, nearly 40 million people visit Las Vegas each year and roughly 250,000 of them are from Wisconsin, with more than half of those -- about 171,000 -- hailing from Milwaukee.

The editorial staff at OnMilwaukee.com decided to examine why Milwaukeeans are drawn like moths to the neon lights, so we started asking. The initial answers were obvious:

Gambling and booze. Booze and gambling. Mix those together with world-class hotels, golf, warm weather, night clubs, celebrities, cabaret shows, bachelor and bachelorette parties, sumptuous buffets and strip clubs and you start to get a bigger picture.

But, there has to be more to it than that, right?

"The thing about Las Vegas is that it gives people a chance to reinvent themselves," said chef Paul Bartolotta, a Milwaukee native who runs Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare in the Wynn Hotel.

"People come here and they can act like the person they've always wanted to be; like the person they've always imagined themselves to be. They act in ways that they can't when they are leading their normal life at home."

Brewers pitching coach Mike Maddux is uniquely qualified to talk about the Vegas-Milwaukee connection. Maddux, grew up in Las Vegas and still spends time there, though he also maintains a home in Hartland.

"We love it in Vegas when people from Wisconsin come down and spend their money," Maddux said in a recent phone interview from spring training.

Asked what draws Cheeseheads to Vegas, Maddux said it was the excitement, most of which emanates from the casinos.

"I just think that Milwaukee is like a lot of cities where they have Indian gaming. People get into it. They go to Potawatomi or whatever casino is closest to their house and before they know what happened, they get hooked. Once people pull the lever on their first slot machine, they want to see how the big boys do it. That's Vegas.

"I know a lot of people from Wisconsin come to Vegas. You see them everywhere. Every time the Badgers play the Rebels in football, there will be 20,000 of them there. I think it's a tribute to Funjet and the La Macchia family (that owns the company) that so many people from Milwaukee and Wisconsin go there. We (in Las Vegas) certainly appreciate the business."

Are you feeling lucky?

"It's a corny old gag about Las Vegas, the emporal city if there ever was one, trying to camouflage the hours and retard the dawn, when everybody knows that if you're feeling lucky you're really feeling time in its rawest form, and if you're not feeling lucky, they've got a clock at the bus station.

-- Michael Herr, writing in "The Big Room"

The casino experience, which is the lifeblood of Vegas' nearly $40 billion tourism economy, is designed to be addictive. The casinos are housed in some of the more opulent, interesting buildings in the country. Signage is deliberately vague and tables are arranged in a maze that makes leaving difficult. The sounds, smells, lighting, décor and placement of the games all are designed to maximize traffic and activity. The music is soothing and trance-like. Some people theorize that casinos pump in oxygen in order to keep gamblers energized; others, citing a fire hazard, dismiss that as an urban legend and credit state-of-the-art smoke-eating ventilation systems as the reason.

The vibe is simultaneously soothing and uplifting and that combination creates a vibe that is tweaked and revised almost constantly.

No matter what they do, it works.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's most recent research indicates that 86 percent of people who visited the city gamble, spending an average of 3.6 hours per day at the casino, budgeting an average of $626.50 for their stay.

Like many 'locals,' Maddux doesn't spend a lot of time at the casinos when he's in Nevada. "You see (The Strip) when you fly in and you see it when you leave," he said. "About the only time we venture down there is to go to the (UNLV) Rebels basketball game, or the rodeo. Once in a while, if people come in from out of town, we'll go to a show or out to dinner. But, that's about it."

The LVCVA says that seven out of 10 Vegas visitors attend a show, with most of them being lounge acts and 23 percent of visitors go to other paid attractions in the city.

"That's where Vegas stays a step ahead," Maddux said. "They offer more than gambling. When people say ‘I'm going to Vegas,' some people are going for fun but a lot of people are going for work, for a convention or for some other reason. They'll go to the NBA All-Star Game, or the NASCAR race or the Rodeo. There are a lot of other things going on that add to it."

The feeling in Vegas is that you can do whatever you want -- whenever you want -- and that there are people to help satisfy your desires 24 hours a day.

"I'm a night person. Las Vegas is a night person's city," Bucks guard Charlie Bell said after a recent game. "It's a city that never sleeps. You really can't sleep there. There is so much going on and so much to do. You can always find something to do."