Ah, Las Vegas. What else can you say about this teeming neon wonderland of girls dressed like they are perennially hitting some sort of super slutty prom and older men, who have such close relationships with their daughters that they walk arm-in-arm with them through casinos? The swank of Circus Circus to the Murano-glass ceiling and wide atrium of the Bellagio, it’s a place where every cocktail waitress seems to sport the same boob job and you can see any number of strip shows attempting to disguise themselves as high-end hotel entertainment. It’s a city where Cirque du Soleil even gets in on the act of presenting titillating moments (some under water) and even the perfumed highly oxygenated air they pump through each casino ripples with sexual enticements.

This dessert respite is truly a playground for adults and even though there have been marketed attempts to make the place more enticing for kids, Vegas is certainly still pretty much sin city…which is what I love about the place. It does not hide what it is. You take it all in, from the Jersey Shore-like atmosphere of overly crowded Fremont Street with its roofed and occasional light show scaling overhead to knowing that you’re going to be digging deep into your pockets every second to tip

It had been a while for me visiting and as I suspected, there has been plenty of building done in the few years since I have been in town. The south end of the strip (where Mandalay Bay, Tropicana, New York, New York and others casinos sit) and the Showcase movie theater especially, is very crowded now with the recent building of the city-like structure of “The City Center.” This 76 acres next to the Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino houses the Aria hotel and casino as well as the Vdara and the Veer tower. But the true crowds, which lots and lots of people seem to still swirl around, include the The Paris, Bally’s, Bellagio toilet-water fountains and Cesar’s Palace in what I would consider the mid-section of The Strip.

It was here that I went to see what is the last classic showgirl revue in Las Vegas, the Jubilee! show at Bally’s. Yes the leggy girls are topless (and pretty much sporting real breasts as far as I could tell) but beyond the moments of high camp and attempts at sexy recreations of the Samson story or the sinking of the Titanic, what impressed me the most was the sheer spectacle of the production. If you aren’t awed by these girls walking around with enormous headdresses, then you just have to be, by the set pieces that are changing in split seconds on a regular basis and the amount of costume changes the near 60 cast members run through in this non-stop hour and a half. Sure it’s schmaltzy, old Vegas and probably a bit misogynistic, but really, this show was impressive even for someone like me who has seen my share of Broadway musicals.

Next week I’ll tell you about Wynn’s golf course, the monorail, details about Raid The Rock Vault, the skinny on Fremont Street and my tour of The Lion’s Den, a new sex toy shop. ‘Til then…