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 -- It was our first night in Las Vegas -- both of our mini-tour and, for three of us OMCers fresh off our maiden voyage to Vegas, the first night ever. Arriving at the magnificent Luxor, the constant flow of activity surrounding our hotel quickly beckoned us on a six-mile tour of The Strip. Later we dined deliciously at the incredible Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare in the elegantly modern Wynn Las Vegas.
After a day of taking in what I found to be an amazingly over-the-top cultural phenom, we decided that during our second night in Sin City it'd be interesting to see where all the glitz, the attraction, the madness started. We hopped in a cab destined for Downtown. It was time to see "old Vegas."
Downtown is a fraction of the size of the newer Strip, but the number of casinos, restaurants and twinkling neons it packs into the space is uncanny. And at the heart of it all is the Fremont Street Experience -- a five-block pedestrian mall domed by Viva Vision, the biggest LCD screen in the world, 90 feet above us.
The only thing to do is look up.
As the light show was going on, I couldn't help but find the display very Japanese-like as electronic music pounded the air and an array of animated characters danced above my head, courtesy of LG. The street under the illuminated canopy was permanently blocked off from traffic in 1994, allowing people to gather in swarms and heard themselves in and out of the 10 casinos and 63 restaurants. The energy here is astounding.
I never quite figured out what the cartoon light show was all about -- it might as well have just been a 15-minute promo for LG -- but it was still a somewhat surreal experience in aesthetics to be surrounded by 12 million moving lights and booming sound on a city street.
What I loved about this area the most were the classic casinos like The Golden Nugget and Binion's Horseshoe, and familiar signs like Vegas Vic -- the giant cowboy that, until the '80s, greeted you with a "Howdy partner!" It was the introduction of all this neon in the '40s that launched an otherwise ordinary Fremont Street into the "Glitter Gulch" it's known as today.
You're not going to find towering casinos imitating entire cityscapes a la The Strip's New York New York or be able to take a gondola through water from one end to the other like you can at the Venetian, but you can't beat the kitschy charm, the campy glamour and the very large chunk of American history you find in downtown Las Vegas. You really haven't done Vegas until you've done vintage Vegas.
OnMilwaukee.com staff writer Julie Lawrence grew up in Wauwatosa and has lived her whole life in the Milwaukee area.
As any “word nerd” can attest, you never know when inspiration will strike, so from a very early age Julie has rarely been seen sans pen and little notebook. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee it seemed only natural that she major in journalism. When OnMilwaukee.com offered her an avenue to combine her writing and the city she knows and loves in late 2004, she knew it was meant to be. Around the office, she answers to a plethora of nicknames, including “Lar,” (short for “Larry,” which is short for “Lawrence”) as well as the mysteriously-sourced “Bill Murray.”
