Reviving the old Sin City attractions of Las Vegas
By Gene Sloan
USA Today
The glimmering curtains at the La Femme Theater sweep open, revealing 12 anatomically perfect young women standing rigidly at attention. Like female versions of the guards at Buckingham Palace, they wear tall black hats and military-style boots, and they stare ahead, unflinchingly.
Unlike the guards, however, they don't wear much of anything else. Rounding out the topless "uniform": black garters, black stockings and metal-studded neck collars. Leather straps dangle from the collars, connected to large white tassels like those Buckingham guards wear above their Scottish tartans – except that these tassels rest strategically between the performers' legs.
After nearly a decade or more or less behaving, Las Vegas casinos are returning to what has been described as a tried-and-true formula: gambling, drinking and sex. Casinos are bringing a variety of nightclubs, shows and bars aimed at an adult-only crowd.
Advertiser library photo • Nov. 23, 2001
The fireworks are just beginning. When the music starts, the women salute smartly and begin to march in place, causing the tassels to sway from side to side.
Never before has so much skin been seen at a casino on the Strip. Dubbed "L'Art du Nu" (French for "the art of the nude"), the new La Femme show at the MGM Grand hotel and casino is a copy of the famously erotic Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris – and just as risqué.
Remember all that talk about the new "family-friendly"' Las Vegas? As the mobsters who once ran this town might say, "Fuhgeddaboudit." After nearly a decade of more or less behaving, the Las Vegas casinos are rediscovering their naughtier sides with a new wave of shows, nightclubs and bars aimed squarely at an adult-only crowd.
In short, the sin is back. "Casinos are saying, 'Enough of this (family-friendly focus). Let's get back to what Las Vegas is all about, which is to blow your brains out,'' says longtime Vegas-watcher Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor, a newsletter for gamblers. "You leave your inhibitions at the door."
Curtis is nursing a Heineken at the Shadow Bar at Caesars Palace, which epitomizes the new "sin is in" culture. Behind the bar, nude female dancers gyrate on platforms, separated from the audience by thin screens that leave little to the imagination.
'This town never had this. And then, it's whoosh. All at once, it's everywhere," says Curtis, 44, a former professional gambler who has spent most of the past two decades living in casinos.
Indeed, in the past two years, topless show have popped up on stages all across town:
The Luxor casino has launched "Midnight Fantasy," a dance revue with bare-chested babes bouncing about the stage to pop tunes.
Harrah's casino started up "Skintight," starring Miss Nude World, Penthouse cover girl Vanna Lace.
The Blue Note jazz club adjacent to the Aladdin casino is teasing visitors with Tease, a "sexy musical comedy" about life in a strip bar (where the mostly female cast dresses the part).
Toplessness in Vegas, of course, is nothing new. The Dunes casino offered a topless revue as early as 1957.
But starting in the early '90s, Las Vegas began to downplay its wilder side in an effort to broaden its appeal to mainstream America. Topless shows along the Strip disappeared, in favor of more wholesome offerings such as magic and circus shows. Eyeing the success of family-friendly Orlando, some casinos even built theme-park rides.
A town built on partying
"We pretended to be a family destination," says Gamal Aziz, the president of MGM Grand, which opened an entire theme park next to its casino in 1993. "The (core) gambling market had gotten to a point of stagnation, and it was just another way to expand."
Alas, the family-friendly rhetoric "really backfired," he says.
Sitting in his modest office, one level above the world's largest casino floor, Aziz explains that the town's die-hard gambling customers and other fun seekers who saw Las Vegas as a place to cut loose "definitely did not want to compete with the strollers." Families, meanwhile, were lukewarm to the idea of visiting a town where a walk down the main boulevard means running a gantlet of hawkers passing out brochures for hookers (despite the fact that prostitution is illegal).
So now, MGM, which closed its failing theme park last year, and its neighbors on the Strip are returning to what Curtis calls the "tried and true" formula: gambling, drinking and sex.
"People come to Las Vegas for one thing: to party," says veteran casino owner George Maloof.
Maloof is the poster boy for the new adult-oriented Vegas. The 37-year-old wunderkind touts what's being called the sexiest, most adult casino ever built ' the Palms, which opened in November. While you won't find topless girls at the Palms, you will find some of the hottest adult-only nightspots around. At the club Rain, a dance floor surrounded by a moat with dancing fountains draws the bold and the beautiful. Another club opening in May will be outdoors around a pool, with women dancing on platforms and "mermaids" swimming in glass tanks. Its name says it all: Skin.
Such clubs are among an explosion of hedonistic nightspots that began opening three years ago with MGM's Studio 54, a remake of the New York icon of the '70s. In the past six months alone, more than half a dozen have arrived, including last month's star-studded debut of Light at Bellagio, where swells sip champagne that starts at $195 a bottle. (The Bellagio, by the way, recently sold off much of the famous art collection that it had touted as a sign that Vegas had found culture).
"Ultimately, you've got to look in the mirror and say, 'Who am I'' That's what Las Vegas has done," says Scott Degraff, co-owner of the three-month-old Ghost Bar at the Palms. While some family-friendly offerings, including roller coasters, remain on the Strip, "essentially, this is an adult playground."
Gentleman's clubs
In part, the Strip's renewed adult focus is a reaction to the growth of adult-oriented "gentleman's clubs" that are off the Strip and have been pulling ever more tourists – and their money – away from the casinos. The phenomenon has exploded over the past decade as Las Vegas has morphed from a gamblers-only haven into a major convention town.
Conventioneers, Cu
rtis says, are notorious for two things: "not gambling, and going to strip bars." As a result, casinos are losing out.
"The $20 that was going into the slot machine is now going into the stripper's pocket," says Wayne Bernath, a public relations executive who has worked here for years.
On a typical Saturday night, there now are 1,000 girls stripping at the major clubs in Las Vegas, estimates Brad Keiller, a partner at the 3-year-old Spearmint Rhino, an upscale gentleman's club that caters to conventioneers.
"My top girls in here might make $1,000 or even $2,000 a night (in tips)," he boasts. Collectively, he reckons, the clubs and their dancers pull in $150 million a year. "I'm sure the casinos are concerned because they're losing some of the discretionary spending."
Keiller, an articulate, clean-cut former lawyer who defies the stereotype of a strip-club owner, says he doesn't worry about the new competition from the topless casino shows. "It's the difference between watching the Playboy channel and having the Playboy girl come out of the TV," he says.
Conventioneers eat it up.
'The buzz is that one of the casinos will install its own strip club," says Curtis, who notes that way back to Vegas' mobster days, casinos have lusted after every dollar that tourists bring to town.
But while the finances make sense, MGM Grand's Aziz says it's not something his casino plans anytime soon. "You can't chase every business that is lucrative."
Aziz says such an operation undoubtedly would draw a howl of protest from certain customers and shareholders of the casino's parent company, MGM/Mirage. "It's not a morality call (on strip bars), but it certainly does not fit into our business."
Indeed, casino executives – perhaps eager not to offend female gamblers, who make up nearly 60 percent of Las Vegas visitors – are careful to differentiate their new topless shows from those at the gentleman's clubs. Aziz stresses that La Femme is tasteful, noting that two-thirds of ticket buyers are couples.
"It's artistic, beautiful," he says. "Almost like being in a dream."
