DC VEGAS XII: Just Another One of Those Epic Sin City Weekends...

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

Usually, the way things work at DCBLOG is that it takes a good deal of time, effort, thought and detail to put together the many posts and the outstanding content that this site has been able to offer on here the past ten years. But for someone who has put this passion project on pause for much of this year for tend to a new family reality but who has just got back from a city he loves so very much, this blogger decided that he did not want to wait to let it all out after letting it marinate a bit before it's published on here. Hence, this post began its draft just eighteen hours after he departed his favorite city on this planet and returned home back to reality, and now it sees light on my biggest weekend.

All Photos Courtesy of... ME!

On this long Veteran's Day weekend, I'm celebrating my birthday smack dab in the middle of the busiest time of year when it comes to celebrating the holidays: today, November 13, falls right in between Halloween and Thanksgiving with the ensuring Christmas season riding on its coattail. Off of this site, I've been marking it with the ones who I love the most, and who are my greatest supporters: my family and a few of my relatives who flew in from New Jersey. But in many ways more than you can count, the #DCBDay celebrations began two weeks early just two weeks ago -- as it normally is the case in this guy's calendar. And when it comes to getting the party started, there's no better place to get to celebrate an early birthday than in the ultimate of happy places that there is on this earth.

So much has changed in my life since the last time I went to Las Vegas: mid-November of 2021 came at almost a last-minute kind of trip being booked a month beforehand instead of two, and I got to go on my first big vacation since this world changed like night and day a few months after that tenth trip. But as I got to stay in the luxurious Wynn tower, did an all-nighter at the town's newest hotel across the street at Resorts World and paid my first visit to downtown, there was no hint that the perfect world of this blogger and his family would turn upside down. This was the last vacation my dad would ever go on in his 71-year-old life, and four months before the heartbreaking news that he had been diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer that would claim him the following summer.

Mariano loved going to Vegas as much as I did and go to the casinos as much as my mom... and as we continued to mourn his absence a year after his death, the feeling has always been there to recapture that Vegas feeling. Just that jealousy I had for those in my inner circle who flew there on weekend trips and gave me no advanced warning over the summer, and being a loyal viewer of the daily flood of Vegas YouTube videos only fueled the anticipation I had of going back once again. But fear not, earlier this summer my mom booked that flight for the pre-Halloween weekend... so started the 127-day leadup that culminated in that twelfth #DCVegas trip just like the anticipation sports fans like me have for an NFL season or most especially the Olympics: everything all leading up to a few weeks ago.

Almost from the moment that trip was set in stone on June 30, I literally waited all summer and the first two months of fall for that epic weekend in the desert, which is treated by me just like a Super Bowl... and unlike those four hours on a Sunday evening every February this trip generally lasts four days in total. And after all that we've been through in the 708 days in between my eleventh and twelfth trips to this happy place, there's a reason why Vegas is the perfect escape from all that's going on in this world... even as we lost a great actor in Matthew Perry, that terrible shooting in Maine or a political rally by a prominent billionaire & ally that took place while I was having the time of my life – but those three events and two ongoing wars overseas were just mere blips on my radar compared to the main event.

   If you love this oasis as much as I do, then that's why it meant so much for me to return once again like a reunion of a friend you've never seen in a while most especially when we have lived apart for most of this time just like so many of you went through during the height of the pandemic. Once I glanced out the window of our plane from the Bay Area to seeing the Southern Nevada desert and its community of 2.2 million on that Thursday afternoon, I felt like I had came back to my second home. A sacred tradition I have of playing "Viva Las Vegas" in my headphones the second the jet touched down at what's now Reid International just never gets old – same goes for that ride from the airport to our hotel. But only here in this latest instance, the side door of our taxi van was not all the way shut, and I actually had to open and close it while it was running – quite the start to this.

   We were uptown last time out with that amazing view of the Strip from that Wynn Encore room... but this time we stayed mid-Strip and at that lonely place that surrounds my family's favorite Vegas hotel. If you are lucky to go on any Maps app and scroll around The Cosmopolitan, the resort was built around a complex that's been around since the mid-70's entitled the Jockey Club – a hotel that also doubles as a timeshare place... and every unit is a condominium with one or two beds and a living space that has a sofa with pullout bed (which I slept in every night while my mom and aunt took up the bedroom), full-scale kitchen (that saved us a few), and all the standard trappings of any good hotel... and no resort fee.

Save for the first several trips and the last one, October has been as traditional a time for us to go to Vegas as trick or treating, autumn leaves falling and postseason baseball. And on the subject of sports, it has made this onetime outcast in the sports world a real player thanks to the Golden Knights, the Raiders and the WNBA Aces all calling home in a span of six years. But coming into Vegas this time around, our first night saw us stroll the Strip and that ideal location with the Bellagio, Planet Hollywood and Cosmo all over us... but also, this has also been a hotbed lately when it comes to the big event that will stamp Vegas as America's new sports capital.

   When it comes to motorsport, NASCAR has been king in the U.S. the last couple decades since a riff that tore apart IndyCar... while the one that rules the rest of the world, Formula 1, has often been seen here as a niche brand in comparison. But the change in ownership from longtime boss man Bernie Ecclestone to Liberty Media has seen its new American owners finally make a big investment here thanks to the exposure the sport was given by Netflix show Drive to Survive and the marketability of drivers like Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen to becoming an equal to Kyle Busch and Helio Castroneves. And the number of races held in America have grown from one in Austin (formerly in the famed Indianapolis Brickyard), to a second in Miami a few years ago, and finally to a third in Sin City... a return to the desert after a short-lived stint at Caesars Palace during the '80s.

   It's with that in mind that construction has been ongoing for most of the summer along the mid-Strip, which makes up part of the circuit where the Vegas Grand Prix will take place next week. It has no doubt been a bone of contention among locals due to the many road closures that's seen grandstands erected in front of the iconic Bellagio fountain and the Mirage volcano, among other things related to the sport's coming out party here in the last frontier for anyone wanting to make it big. We walked along the Strip portion of the course, seeing why folks are just ready to have this all over with... but then again, this is only part of a big stretch of sports that will see a Super Bowl and a Final Four come to town, and maybe a baseball and NBA team join in by the time this decade is through. It's a long way from when Vegas was on the outs in the professional sports game.

The Cosmo was the last hotel to be built during that stretch from 1989 to 2010 that saw The Mirage, Bellagio, many themed resorts and others be built on the Strip before the recession grinded that boom to a halt. Even as traveling went through a pause during this dark time, the past few years have seen the openings of Resorts World and Circa and the rechristening of the Hard Rock as Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and next month it will be the turn of Fountainebleau that will finally open after years of development, limbo and construction just as it was with RWLV... not to mention, the Durango will also open on the outskirts of town. But perhaps the most awe-inspiring place in all of Vegas is located behind its largest hotel, all in the midst of this full-scale return to normalcy in millions traveling back to Vegas regularly.

   When I was last in town, construction was ongoing near my Encore room of the enormously massive concert & event complex known as Sphere – a $2.3 billion project by Madison Square Garden Entertainment in partnership with Populous and The Venetian, which added to a stellar list of event venues that includes T-Mobile Arena, Allegiant Stadium and many others. The sheer size of the entire arena — over 18,000 seats and its 160,000 square-foot interior screen, is dwarfed by its massive display outside the venue: 60 stories high and nearly 600,000 sq. feet of pixels of its sphere-shaped exterior — easily the largest structure of its kind anywhere on this planet. And July 4th weekend saw the centerpiece of its lighted exterior being activated for the first time around the fireworks, and September saw the venue be christened for the first time when U2 took to the stage to start their residency.

   When you walk the Strip, it does feel like it goes on and on for three whole miles... but then again and in spite of this trip being hampered by F1 construction, it's a place that I can navigate that much more easily than even my hometown because of transportation and knowing where any Strip hotel is located. Nonetheless, we walked all the way from where spent much of that first day at Planet Hollywood and the Miracle Mile Shops, past the LINQ Promenade and Caesars (where I walked the whole length of the pedestrian walkway) and to the Venetian & Palazzo property, and then to the Sphere. And I can tell you, it is just as gorgeous as you have seen it in your social feeds... you now have another place to put on your Vegas bucket list thanks to all of the buzz.

   The traveling party of me and my mom brought along my aunt Angie here, and the budgeting ways of this trip actually saw her suggest that we save money by not taking a taxi back to our hotel… and that was one of a few instances where there was some sort of riff where, as of now, my mom hasn't talked to my aunt since she drove home after we flew home. But the long walk of an hour or so from Venetian back down south to Cosmo (which included a stop to get some pizza on the way back) did set the stage of the highlight of night 1 of this trip — and one that was a personal one for myself.

The situation as is in both my family and in our world forced me to take on the role of man of the house, and earlier this year I officially stepped away permanently from part-time volunteer work pre-pandemic helping mentally disabled people to become a full-time, self-employed content creator. This has been the one thing I had envisioned of while going to school here some three decades ago of wanting to have a job in the media industry, but for various reasons it never came to pass. While that gig did give me some opportunities here & there to get behind the camera to take video and photos, there's nothing like getting to do it for a living... and my work on both this DCBLOG site and my YouTube channel are the products of that passion, even if they're still considered side projects and I refuse taking in advertiser money just so you can enjoy it free of charge without a commercial or a side ad hampering your experience at all.

   Every trip I take to Vegas and other places has offered me the chance to further that passion in adding new gear and applying what I've learned from watching a lot of YouTube and other content to hone my craft of recording, producing and editing. I bought a new GoPro camera just for this trip, but because the battery I installed the day I got it somehow got stuck I never got to use it even once on the weekend... nor did I have the time to use the gimbal I got last time out. But nonetheless, improved resources and experience over the years gave me the chance to again use this Vegas trip and this content creator's playground as a venue to better showcase my visual skills... and you'll see the results of that when the Vegas XII vlogs debut in two weeks (I might've opted to put them out earlier, but the attention to detail I put in sweetening the videos for various things won out — as well as wanting to take advantage of the holidays when you're all gathered with family and friends so you all enjoy it on Thanksgiving).

   As evidenced by a blog post I did before debuting the Vegas XI vlogs two years ago, I've been a loyal viewer of Vegas YouTube content before the start of the streaming boom... and it was both that and the slot videos my parents watched a lot of that allowed us to have that love of Vegas and gambling when we couldn't go to the casinos or anywhere else in that dark time. One who launched a channel while in lockdown was Norma Geli, who had to find something else to do when the hotel she worked in as a member of concierge was padlocked... and it turned out to be the best thing to ever happen to her even as the pandemic put everything in a tailspin. And over 100,000 subscribers later, Norma's found herself part of a Vegas vlogger community with hundreds of locals and many more out of state, including Jay Jay Manquis – a well-traveled San Diegan named "Jaycation" who, like me & those in my family circle, is Filipino-American, and often travels there regularly to film vlogs, hotel reviews and other things.

   As I was walking up & down the Strip on that Thursday night, I was watching Norma & Jay's live stream just as I would back at home... but this time, I was in the same city as them just as he was about to celebrate the recent occasion of him also reaching the 100K mark with a party in downtown on Halloween night dressed up as Bruno Mars -- and who had dressed up as Count Dracula for a spooky hotel review. In the back of my mind, there came the hope that, somehow, I can spot them and say hi to them... and it took just as I was about to return to Jockey Club after that Sphere walk that I had my chance – and it was seen live everywhere on YouTube as I took a selfie with them, which you see next to this. And there was not the last — the following night came two more people: the vlogger known as "The Other Me" and one of the three people who make up Sin City Family in Angel... it would have been five and six had I met his parents Manny and Julie. But that was only part of what was most memorable night of this entire trip, and maybe of my entire Vegas career.

A pity of my first ten trips to this paradise was the fact that my traveling party (that includes just about everyone in my family, relatives and cousins at one time or another) have spent most of our time on the Strip and haven't experienced much in the way of other sightseeing around this city, including what's always been considered the spiritual heartbeat of this community. That all changed two years ago when on Day 3, we took that taxi up the road for the first time to Downtown... and we finally got to check out the place where the city was born, and where it has become a communal meeting space thanks to it being rechristened from a famed street to a pedestrian mall known as the Fremont Street Experience.

   City leaders knew back then in the mid-90's that the Strip was taking all the visitor traffic away from a street located inside the actual Vegas city limits, and they had to respond. Fremont Street was reborn into something totally different, which has since revitalized this once proud part of town — similar to the renaissance of Times Square. Watching those aforementioned live streams from downtown especially on weekends, gave me a good sense of what it would be like setting foot in that part of town that, other than for a last day buffet trip on my birthday weekend in 2009, we had never been to before... and we were lucky that dad got to go there on that last trip just over a year after he retired. However, it took place during the work week and it was not as crowded on a Wednesday evening... and it was after the tourist season had ended that mid-November when the 100-degree heat had dissipated for the winter.

   So, it wasn't until this time around that I got to experience Fremont Street in its full and pure grandeur, with this sophomore trip taking place on a Friday... and it also coincided with the last week of October, which means, of course, it's Halloween. And when you mix in all three of those ingredients, it made for what I would later call on that former Twitter platform, "...the greatest & most memorable day in the entire history of the DC Vegas series. Yes it dates back 29 years, but today might have topped them all."

We started our Friday – the Nevada Day state holiday commemorating the anniversary of statehood – by going to one of the last in a dying breed: the independently owned & operated El Cortez located down the block from Fremont, and among the oldest hotels in town as well as its oldest continuously operating casino which has remain largely unchanged a month before Pearl Harbor. My mom had become fascinated with El Cortez due to the fact that it was a home base for one of her favorite slot YouTubers in D-Lucky, but we never got to see him on this trip despite our best hopes. But it does have prime real estate among many shops and restaurants on being across the street from the Container Park, most notable for the flames that come out at night from the mantis that resides in front of it.

   These trips typically see me try out things I have never done before, and last time out saw me take a bite out of my very first Subway sandwich... this trip saw me take another one at their location inside of El Cortez (a half-foot chicken cheese herb), and I also had my very first sip of some Canada Dry ginger ale. And my phone stories also spotted someone getting stopped by a police cab after allegedly speeding through downtown... but that was miniscule compared to what I would get to go through once we made our way towards the madness that is Fremont Street, and unlike last time there would be the crowds in the hundreds (if not thousands) that would join along for all the fun to start the spooky holiday weekend.

   Unlike last time where we made way through the side, we made our way through the grand entrance into downtown via the Neonopolis shopping district whose entry way is part of Slotzilla – one of Vegas' two ziplines that sends riders flying above the street and just underneath the canopy that covers Fremont Street. And the feeling was the same as it was last time out: beneath my double facemask (yes, me & my mom still wear these - we don't wanna run the risk of getting the virus ourselves after instances with some in our circle), my jaw was dropping in awe of seeing the Experience arch once again... and so did getting to see all of what makes Fremont Street so awesome, and so mature too.

   Mature, as in the fact that there are a lot of street performers who may not be that suitable for the kids to get to see with their own eyes especially at night... we'll leave it up to the imagination, but it's safe to say that I may have quite a bit of editing to do to make the vlogs more appropriate for everyone this holiday season - it makes up a bulk of the seven hours' worth of footage I captured on this trip. But that is only part of the unique appeal that Fremont has — a pedestrian mall that always feels alive at any time of day, but it is truly the case after dark. A full panorama of what Las Vegas and its two million residents & 40-or-so million annual visitors is on full display in what is truly the heartbeat of this city on those two city blocks -- wannabe Michael Jacksons, kid drummers, silver-clad statues and the like line the sidewalks. And in the case of this trip, there were a lot of people deciding to play dress-up some two or three decades after they last did trick or treating for candy.

   Getting to watch Fremont every Friday and Saturday night from home on YouTube just doesn't do justice to getting to experience it for real in person: as I was walking up and down the mall, I could just feel it... the energy that just wasn't there on my first go was finally on display. There was also something else too: for one who's only been to just one concert in his life compared to everyone else in my family – that was twenty-five years ago with 'NSYNC headlining a radio concert, I could also feel the vibe of live music (live acts play every night on three stages, plus major artists during the summer), and I could feel the waves of the speaker system as local cover band Alter Ego performed as did a couple DJ's playing dance music. And the centerpiece of the entire space are the nightly Viva Vision shows: on the hour, 8-minute mini-mixes of artists like Katy Perry, The Chainsmokers, The Killers and Imagine Dragons on the large HD super screen of nearly 50-million LED's that towers above the street.

   In spending eight hours in the downtown corridor on that pre-Halloween Friday, I got to soak in that atmosphere and enjoy that extraordinary day & night – the likes of which I have never experienced before in the eleven previous Vegas trips. I was glad that we got to put a checkmark to Fremont Street to the Vegas bucket list two years ago (and for dad to experience it on that last trip)... and no wonder why so many people have put it out there that it is a must-visit for anyone who goes here. And when I went into the various YouTube chat rooms afterwards I wrote: "To all of you watching, it's a must go to Fremont - just watching the streams as I have the past few years pales in comparison to being here and seeing the madness for yourself. It's absolute mayhem here."

   And... as it was a couple years earlier, there was this to add to the "Only in Vegas" file: when we came back from Resorts World, we spotted a man who passed out in front of his Encore room after he got drunk and was left snoring in the hallway. For this instance – while there wasn't any of that in the Jockey Club complex, when I came back from a hop to the McDonald's across the street (made possible through a shortcut from a secret elevator to Cosmo) and down the hall from our room there were a more than hyphy hotel room with the guests in that room having a lot of fun at their own afterparty. Yes people are supposed to be asleep at around 2:30AM and who prefer to keep the peace, but then again – it's Vegas... you really can't have a Vegas weekend without something quite like that.

It was a hard act to follow those first two nights when it came to Day 3 of this trip, and indeed that was the case – it was a chill Saturday compared to the first two. All we did on Saturday (usually my favorite day of the week) was just spend the relatively limited time we had to just being at Planet Hollywood and the Miracle Mile Shops once again, before a Sunday morning flight back home to California. But on this day, I took advantage of the chance to pay it forward of sorts: before I flew to town, I made a pledge to my sister and her kids that I would buy them souvenirs... and I got them a shirt and two Sanrio plush animals, plus a Formula One Vegas hat, shirts and hats from various casinos for myself.

   As for the money aspects of this trip, I actually spent much more on the things that I bought before the trip than what I actually spent during. I bought a new backpack, some new clothes, a Golden Knights hat and some electronic gear... plus there was an emblematic of any big trip for myself: buying over $100 worth of new music to fill another iPod (I prefer to not stream to save up on the family phone bill). And for when I brought over $2,000 with me to Vegas, I only spent a mere $250(!) – just food, souvenirs and some lowball slots in and around my audio-visual work... by comparison, my mom gambles a lot and usually loses when she goes to the casinos with my other relatives.

   By the time we boarded that plane back to the Bay Area (and there were many Niners and Bengals fans onboard so they could see that game), that feeling came back to me of just anticipating a return back to Vegas again. A chat my mom had with my aunt a few days later has already put a foot on the pedal on an idea I've secretly been wanting: turning DC VEGAS from once every one-to-two years into twice a year – and with 2024 being the 30th anniversary of trip #1, it would obviously be that cherished next step in the evolution of my Vegas obsession into a year-round gig. My sister and brother in law, who were my travel mates in the first half of this run of Vegas trips, have not been to Vegas in eight years... and they've let me know that they are down to end that drought soon – perhaps they can have me along to for a certain football game before Valentine's Day. Mom has even let me know that should want me to go on my first-ever cruise: we'll see about that... and that would be something unlike any other.

But as I celebrate my birthday this weekend with them, their kids and our relatives from New Jersey -- and let me put it out there, it is the magic 4-O that I am turning, it's been two weeks now since that trip and I've nursing a cold (a seasonal allergy and not the virus). Looking back, I felt that I had achieved what I exactly wanted to do: just have the time of my life as I would usually have, and engage in what I had always envisioned myself being a content creator – and that would be the perfect Vegas trip as I would have liked it. Outside of filling up my SnapChat stories, I wasn't even posting much on social media as I would have usually done in past trips, simply because something like this doesn't happen as often in my world as it would be for anyone else who'd usually go here every few months – this is one that just takes place as often as a blue moon.

   DC VEGAS XII was the first without the presence of our patriarch, and Mariano would have loved the chance to take on another of these trips -- he loved to go to the casinos as much as my mom, but he was with us all the way in spirit. I had the chance to experience the magic of what makes Fremont Street in downtown such an amazing place, while also solidifying the bond I have with this town and its YouTube vlogger community in meeting four of them on this trip just as I have been inspired by their work to pursue being a content creator myself for a living. But most importantly, there's that Vegas feeling: one that you only feel once you see the Strip, downtown and everywhere in between... and which has always made, for me at least, the backdrop for one of those Epic Sin City Weekends. And in 2023, no exception -- again, Bravo Las Vegas. I can't wait for us to get together once more.

🎰  🎰  🎰  🎰  🎰

The trip may be done and dusted, but our special DC VEGAS XII content is just beginning: to coincide with the publishing of this special blog post and #DCBDay, DC Instagram is rerunning the stories originally posted on DC SnapChat throughout this weekend on Instagram.com/dc408dxtr. To come shortly are new pictures from both this year's trip and past ones, which will have residency on my brand-new DC Facebook page at Facebook.com/dc408dxtr. And on Thanksgiving weekend, DC YouTube will proudly present this year's new DC Vegas vlog series at YouTube.com/dc408dxtr... and that is only part of my many and broad social media offerings, the full listing of which are at DC LinkTree @dc408dxtr. Below, a look ahead at the #DCVegas XII vlogs... and we'll see you here soon.

- I AM DC

@DC408DXTR