We'll Always Have The Flamingo: 33 Dry Nights Along The Las Vegas Strip

by Paul Bradley Carr

When journalist Paul Carr decides to spend a month in Las Vegas, staying a single night in every hotel along the city's famous Strip, he knows the trip will be a challenge. Having given up alcohol a year earlier (for reasons outlined in not one, but two drunken memoirs), he has worked hard to avoid any temptation to go back to his hard-partying, hard-drinking ways. But now he has a new book to promote and his publicist has suggested 33 days in Sin City, writing an account of his inevitable descent into madness. Ever the enabler, Arianna Huffington has agreed to publish his daily diary on the Huffington Post. What could possibly go right? And yet, and yet… what begins as a cliched jaunt amongst the strippers, escorts and circus performers of the world's most famous party town soon becomes something very different. The further off the Strip he ventures and the more of the city's inhabitants he meets, the more Paul realizes that the Las Vegas that most of the world (and every journalist) imagines is so far from the real story as to be laughable. The real Las Vegas is a much, much more curious fish. This book contains Paul's entire month-long diary, from The Sahara to the Encore. Buy it for the episode with the stripper and the clowns, the encounter with the naked spa consultant and the fights with Criss Angel and Matt Goss, but stay for the real-estate agents, the gallery owners, the museum curators, the coffee-shop proprietors and the truth behind the world's most misunderstood city. ( a lot of swearing about Donald Trump.)

129 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 29, 2012

About the author

Paul Bradley Carr is a journalist and author. He has written three memoirs about his adventures in and around Silicon Valley. He was the Silicon Valley columnist for The Guardian, senior editor at TechCrunch, cofounder of PandoDaily, and founder and editor-in-chief of the infamous NSFWCORP in Las Vegas. His writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, National Geographic, and much more. He lives in Palm Springs with his family and is the co-owner of The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs.

Reviews

[S. Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of Paul Carr’s series of Huffpost articles to promote his new book (The Upgrade) is an interesting time capsule that not only allows a glimpse at a specific stage of Las Vegas’ ongoing transformation, but unexpectedly foreshadows the ongoing absurdity of the current Trump presidency.

The concept of the series, to spend the night at a different Las Vegas hotel every night for a month, opens the door to Carr’s combination of edgy travelogue and social/political commentary, always with an eye towards honesty and insightful reflection. Carr not only spotlights the good and bad experiences of hotel amenities and the nightlife of the Strip, he also takes a closer look at the political landscape, real estate struggles, and the burgeoning artistic community attempting to gain a solid foothold in an overly commercial landscape. And yes, Carr even finds himself present at a union workers meeting led by Donald Trump in one of his previous forays into announcing a presidential bid without actually running. The Trump chapter alone is worth the price of admission; Carr’s coverage and deconstruction of Trump’s early campaigning tastes like a bad case of déjà vu, as bitterly disappointing as it is humorous.

That aside, Carr’s focus is not just of the visitors to Las Vegas, but of those who work and live there as well. From sex workers and hotel clerks to the Mayor of Las Vegas, Carr doesn’t just try to describe Vegas, he attempts to understand it, and that genuine level of attachment elevates this collection far above the sarcastically sniping travel blog that it so easily could have been.