Day 101:Las Vegas

We went back to Macys for breakfast and had some nice waffles and oatmeal for breakfast. We figured it was about 5 hours to Las Vegas give or take and we would gain an hour at the Nevada border. A guy called Leon had replied to our couchsurfing requests but made the offer on the provision we would come out to the Las Vegas Santa invasion with him. Since I missed the one in Austin this was fine by me, and might help to keep me out of the casinos… :p The walls at Macys were covered with prints from a local photographer, I was amazed anyone could charge $2300 for essentially a large poster. I guess you can tell I wasn’t overwhelmed by the pictures. Certainly not for that much, but I guess if he can charge that much people might pay it. On the way to Vegas we went looking for a ‘Ghost Town’. There is a website dedicated to such places and after checking for somewhere on the way we went to a place called Chromium or Chlorine or something. After bouncing down a bumpy dirt road for 15 minutes we found a normal town. There were even people! So much for the Ghost towns of the west. Tempting as it was to kill a few locals to try to make it a bit more authentic time was pressing and we had to get a move on. No one else had offered us a place to stay so it looked like we would be getting santafied tonight.

Did you hear about the dyslexic devil worshipper?
He sold his soul to Santa….

Just outside Las Vegas in the falling twilight we made it to the Hoover Dam and jumped out for a few pictures. The traffic was horrible as everyone else was doing the same. There is lots of construction going on there at the moment and they’re building a huge bridge that will shoot the cars right over it instead of making them drive across it as they currently are. I was expecting something more remote and spectacular but it just goes to show you can’t take all your knowledge from Google maps and photos, you have to go there. Leon had cleverly provided us with a map on how to get to his apartment but he was busy for a while so we would have some time to kill before he got home. I won the prize on who gets to see Vegas first but it’s kinda hard to lose that competition by much, we drove through the mountain pass from the east and the whole desert looked like it was afire with multicoloured neon. Arriving at night really is the best way. We plugged in the center of town and found it was still 30 miles from when we hit the suburbs! What a monster of a city!

The Interstate seemed to want to take us right there but that was no fun and we jumped off a bit before and drove through the normal streets which were packed with mini casinos, cheap hotels, bars and homeless. Gain, having never been to Vegas I didn’t really know what I would find there. You can watch films of anywhere but the actually ability to look around, smell the places and hear the normal life going on around you can’t be beaten. I wanted to find somewhere to drive my car on 2 wheels too. We ended up driving right past what they call the old downtown area, but its actually pedestrianised now and as it turned out we would be coming back here later that evening. I couldn’t quite believe we had been through the middle of Vegas as downtown is only a few blocks wide but didn’t have a guidebook to tell us otherwise. I put ‘Sunset Boulevard’ into the GPS and that directed us towards a huge tower in the near distance. We got onto the main drag and found the real center of town. The eifel tower, pirate ships, huge fountains, new york…. Why travel the world just come to Vegas…. At least people seemed to be walking around but the place was nearly gridlocked so it was easy to see why. It was coming up to the time to meet Leon so we got off the ‘drag’ and had a go at finding his apartment. After driving to the wrong place we eventually had to find some wifi to consult google maps. My GPS is pretty damn useful but the maps can be slightly out of date and sometimes it needs a hand from Big Bother Google. What else can you expect for free! :p

Leon lived in a gated complex about 10 miles outside of the drag but was right on the highway so quick to get back into town. He gets lots of hosting requests but wont take people without their own transport and I can see why, it would be a nightmare to get anywhere on public transport here. He shares his apartment with a guy called Chad and a crazy dog called googly who seemed to want to eat any available toes or fingers when he saw them. He had bought me a santa outfit and a hat for Daniella which she complemented with all the red items she had in her wardrobe. I didn’t really want to go as a boring normal santa though and wasn’t able to do my Rambo Santa idea (besides, it was about 5° outside and no weather for shorts and t-shirts. I got flashing red nose, some sunglasses and put my outfit on backwards. This also helped to keep the horrible synthetic white Chinese made beard out of my mouth. I finished off my costume with a pillow up my back (good insulation too) and Leon provided a red elephant posing pouch which I put on backwards too. I looked like a whackjob with a tail!

We tossed down a couple of glasses of wine and headed back into the city with Leon volunteering to drive. He sped back down to the downtown area and parked up with people waving and staring at us. Leon had opted for the jewish santa look and had a purple skullcap and a Menorah around his neck- The menorah is the oldest symbol of the Jewish faith. It is a seven branched candle holder. We set off in search of the rest of the group and everyone was shouting at us and asking for presents. I told most of them they had been too naughty to get anything this year :p It was kinda hard to miss another 40 people dressed as Santa and we caught up with them as they were heading off to another bar. We were slightly late but no harm there and to the amusement of the bar staff we all turned up in some bar with a dancefloor and proceeded to get down and groove. Behind the bar was a stage with a couple of girls gyrating in their bikinis which was like red rag to a bull and they were soon joined by one of the santas before the bouncers kicked him off. The girls seemed to enjoy it :p

Some Santa was distributing condoms so I took a trip to the toilet to put some water in it to give my ‘tail’ a bit more substance. We had a dance and bit of a boogie and then went out to join the smokers on the balcony and get to know our new friends a bit more. Seemed like a reasonably normal group of people who just like to dress as Santa and get drunk. We took some photos of the famous smoking cowboy sign but I’m guessing the whole thing is completely different since that was put up. After another drink we went outside to sing some carols, but these were not normal carols, they were based on the classics but had dirty words instead. Nice !

Favorite Things
Halogen uplights and big-muscled fellas
Pink puffy draperies and drinks with umbrellas
Brown Puerto Rican boys tied up with string
These are a few of my favorite things
Penthouse magazine and silicone breasts
Girls dressed in leather with tatoos on their chests
Blonde lesbo orgies, a quick mid-day fling,
These are a few of my favorite things.
When the whip cracks (oww)
When the cane stings (ooo)
When I’m feeling bad
I just think of a few of my favorite things,
And then I get hard…for Dad.

Download your own carol sheet at santacon.com!

The rest of the evening was just a big pub crawl. We went for $99 shrimp and I foolishly sat on my ‘tail’ causing an explosion and wet bottom! Then we tried to get in a strip club but they wanted $20 each. Everyone was pretty drunk and chatting various things. They found some poor fat guy in a Santa hat and surrounded him shouting ’one of us! One of us!’. I don’t think he knew what hit him but we dragged him off to the next bar, Hogs and Heifers. They got all the females up on the bar after a while to dance. I then got chewed out in front of the whole bar by one of the barmaids over her megaphone for taking a photo of Daniella on the bar! ‘You better buy her a drink buddy!’ She didn’t seem to care that I had *just* bought her one! Bitch. Some people started asking me questions and I explained the whole santacon idea. At least as much as I understood it, this was my first and I just understood it was just a fun thing. I had my fun telling them I was flying to Japan for the next one the following day. By 2am and another bar 2 bars I was pretty tired of the whole thing and we headed back. No one understood the fact that I was backwards, they just thought I was a hunchback because of the pillow down my back. Stupid Santas! Still I had a great time and will be hoping to catch another one next year. Maybe I’ll get some more use out of my $20 suit!

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