Vegas

After barely recovering from New Years I was off to Vegas last week for the Consumer Electronics Show. Needless to say when we weren’t working we were partying. This is how the partying went.

Wednesday

The MIX at THE Hotel. After getting to Vegas at around 10pm we grabbed some drinks with the Design team a top THE Hotel. This bar probably has the best views in Vegas.

Thursday

Pure at Caesar’s Palace. Microsoft/MTV hosted a party for us and our partners at Pure. The Media Center team rallied and headed over to Caesar’s Palace together:

Once inside we were treated to an open bar and lots of great food. Will and Veronica certainly enjoyed both:

The highlight of the show was The Killers who played about an hour set. Fortunately Thomas Hawk was at the show and shot some amazing photos (bloggers are partners after all).

Home Theater Watch reports on other bands playing Thursday night at CES parties:

This year, however, on a single night events featuring the Killers, Maroon 5, Foo Fighters and Black Eyed Peas were happening simultaneously.

The Pussy Cat dolls also performed, again Thomas shot some great photos:

Tryst at the Wynn. While we had a great time at Pure, the night was still young and not all of us had morning booth duty shifts (though one or two did), so after asking around it sounded like Tryst was the place to be. Unfortunately even at 1am there was a long cab line so we hailed two limos.

Tryst, is a beautiful bar looking out onto a large waterfall. Needless to say we had fun dancing until the wee hours of the morning.

Friday

(I had been invited to a party thrown in association with the other convention in town but the invite was forwarded to my work email address and was bounced for reasons obvious hindsight. Oh well!)

Body English at the Hard Rock. Last time we were in Vegas we really wanted to go to Body English at the Hard Rock but were stymied by a long imaginary line, expensive VIP booths, and a 3:1 (guy to girl) entrance ratio. This time around, perhaps armed with more confidence and bravado, after a quick chat with the host, we were in. No bribing, expensive booth or 3:1 ratio required. While this club is like most Vegas clubs beautiful, the dance floor was packed, and we weren’t feeling it. About to leave, none other than Ludacris arrived to do a 5 song set on the stairway flowing down from the entrance to the dance floor. Of course, I’m a rap ignoramus and didn’t realize who it was until much later. Though I did appreciate that he was fairly famous.

ICE. After seeing Ludacris we headed to ICE for house and hip-hop. There we met up with some women I had met earlier in the day. Together at the end of the night, since there were no cabs in sight, we caught a party bus back to the Strip (we negeotiated a lower rate).

Barbary Coast. Where ended up at Barbary Coast and Drai’s. Since I had to work Friday I bailed out, but Ming party until the wee hours and apparently our friend Marissa went to yet another party after that.

Saturday

‘O’ at the Bellagio (website). I probably wouldn’t have consider going to this myself, but Emily was taking care of the purchasing arrangements so I said yes. Am I glad I did. O was the most amazing show/performance I have EVER seen. I will definitely see it next time I’m in town and would encourage you, even if you have no interest in anything else in Vegas to go and see this show. It is a true marvel. The stage is a pool (with performers doing high dives from 60 feet) and five seconds later it can be gone, only to reappear in another five seconds. I can’t even begin to understand the engineering involved and can only marvel at the athleticism of the performers.

RA at the Luxor. We got free entrance here through some CES magic but it was not happening.

Tao at the Venetian. Fortunately Tao was. Consider that Tao is the hotest new club to open in Vegas. Now consider that everyone attending the Adult Expo is staying at the Venetian. Now consider how hard it must be to get in on the CES/AEE weekend at midnight. Fortunately, a well placed large bill got us past the crowds and into the the place to be. With Veronica and I was Charlie. He’s a trouble maker :) (at one point he was asked to leave the club, but then reappeared five minutes later. Amazing!).

This club was pretty off the hook. For instance they had numerous bath tubs around the place. Three of them had models lounging around.

Ming and Marissa later joined us and we danced all night.

Conclusion. If you think I partied too much, I did. At CES if you’re not working your booth, you’re walking the floor, and when you’re not doing that you’re travelling to and from the convention center (which can take an hour) and when when you’re not doing that you’re meeting with partners, and when you’re not doing that you’re partying (I intentionally left out eating and sleeping). Anyhow, you can read

I’m actually really glad to be back in Seattle and back at work. And am really looking forward to slowing down for the rest of January and taking it easy during my off hours. Why? Because partying began Thanksgiving weekend and didn’t end until this past weekend in Vegas. The good news is that I feel I’ve really reached the pinnacle of clubbing. Between the VIP NYE to impromtu shows at Body English to bribing our way into Tao I feel like I’m now an experienced club goer :). The only thing left is to own my own.