i had no idea this was happening…
…well, until the week before. and by then it was too late.
my (somewhat) beloved hard rock hotel has closed in las vegas. don’t get me wrong, while i will miss it, and i’m glad i went around and checked out all the memorabilia i could see last trip (2016), it had somewhat declined in certain ways. the original tower rooms were in need of help, and the new ones weren’t laid out conducive to the next trip we take out there which will inevitably contain the boy as well.
while i love me some vegas, i feel like i could love it differently and in new, better ways. i had toyed with the idea of the ufc and i staying somewhere else previously, since i had only explored it on my first trip out there (1999) and then stayed there exclusively when i went with alex (2005 & 2006) but it’s always been my “vegas home” since i knew it well (i thought, the remodel made me get lost at first – amazing the difference a decade will make in that town) but i can say this…i’ve never left their casino floor, at the end of a trip out, without clearing a profit. and doing that, surrounded by good food and booze and shopping and tattooing and the largest collection of music shwag on the planet earth? that’s gonna be a hard thing to top in my world!
so now it’s being renovated, rejuvenated, and reborn under branson as the “virgin hotel & casino”, which will be the only virgin in that town, lemme tell you! i might just have to check it out – although me at a place with “virgin” in the title doesn’t sound right, does it? fuck it – we may just have to stay on the strip next time.