VIVA GAY VEGAS Why this desert

LAS VEGAS

Vegas Keeps Its Cool

Sin City may have been shaken, but visitors will still be stirred.

By Neal Broverman

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 Las Vegas Strip

 Neon Boneyard

If there’s any place ready to put troubles in the rearview mirror, it’s Las Vegas. Adept at forgetting the past, the tourism mecca is all about moving forward, not looking back. It was one of the rst destinations to reopen with safety protocols, and later reluctantly imposed new indoor mask mandates. But even amid all the whiplash of the last year and a half, Vegas has seen numerous openings that make slipping on that face-covering well worth it.

Downtown Las Vegas’s first new ground-up hotel-casino in over 40 years cut its ribbon in late 2020. Adding to an already resurgent downtown, Circa Resort & Casino opens right onto the quirky and entertaining Fremont Street Experience, a ve-block pedestrian promenade. Circa touts huge sports betting facilities and an expansive pool stadium, but we found its restaurants the biggest draw. Don’t miss 8 East, a fantastic Asian fusion from the guys behind the city’s iconic Le Thai restaurant. Meanwhile, Saginaw’s Delicatessen, open 24 hours, has some of the best latkes, lox, and pastrami outside of New York City.

Circa owner Derek Stevens has a deep love for old-school Vegas, apparent in the resort’s retro steakhouse, Barry’s Downtown Prime, and the salvaged iconic Vegas Vickie (1) neon sign, which now hangs over an eponymously named cocktail lounge. Circa’s rooftop Legacy Club, boasts 360-degree views of the city.

Circa, being more modern than other DTLV resorts, feels more welcoming to queer travelers than some dingier downtown casinos, but your Grindr or Tinder may not be popping off like

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it does on 1the Strip (2). Move south, to the city’s Arts District, and explore The Garden from Vegas nightlife legend Eduardo Cordova. Elegant and sexy, this indoor/outdoor bar has lled a niche in a city that has lost many of its major gay nightclubs in the past few years. There’s food, a drag brunch (Coco Montrese performs there), and bottle service on Friday and Saturday nights. Celebrities (including Cher) are known to swing by, but most attendees dress casual yet chic.

Keep moving south and you’ll hit Resorts World. The new mega-resort that opened this year counts Las Vegas Hilton among its 3,500+ rooms and a myriad of restaurants, including an Asian street food dining hall. Celine Dion, who decamped from Caesars Palace, will be the resort’s rst residency in November, followed by Carrie Underwood and Katy Perry. Lady Gaga will return to Park MGM for her acclaimed Jazz & Piano. The unforgettable Area 51 (3) is an art experience that has to be seen to be believed. Inside are Meow Wolf and Omega Mart, immersive experiences with giant neon creations and virtual reality opportunities. It is a fantastic commentary on consumerism that is thought-provoking not preachy.

Luxor’s Temptation Sundays is the city’s longest running LGBTQ+ pool party. Sipping a cocktail while surrounded by smiling queers from around the world — that you can actually see and possibly touch — will make you forget both the pandemic and the desert heat.

Queers Made Vegas Vegas

LGBTQ+ folks put the glitz in Sin City.

By Jacob Anderson-Minshall

Las Vegas announces its fabulousness on the giant welcome sign that ushers visitors to the Nevada desert’s most popular oasis. Vegas is the reigning drag queen of American cities, with a wardrobe to die for and body built for sashaying down catwalks. Sin City’s very history is infused with an anything goes attitude. Sure, that was initially about gambling, drinking, and debauchery. But just as New Orleans’s laissez faire attitude provided an environment where LGBTQ+ people could exist and even thrive, so did Vegas. And as the destination matured from a gaming town into the “Entertainment Capital of the World,” the queer community boomed with it.

One could even argue that the thriving queer community made Vegas what is today, rather than the other way around. Liberace and Siegfried and Roy are prime examples of gay celebrities whose flamboyance became synonymous with Vegas.

From the 1950s to the ’70s, while Liberace had his residency in Vegas, he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world. Just as Vegas is known for tearing down its past to build bigger and glitzier casinos, Liberace kept upping his game, wearing increasingly exotic costumes, draping himself in ostrich feathers and mink capes — and creating more spectacle in his shows, from being chau eured onstage in a Rolls-Royce to incorporating chorus girls, animal acts, and even flying (via a secured cable) into his choreography.

Other lesser-known LGBTQ+ artists joined the big shows in town, from Cirque du Soleil to Broadway tours, to showgirls, male revues, and drag cabarets. Jahna Steele, a Vegas showgirl with the Riviera Casino’s Crazy Girls revue in the late 1980s, was voted “Sexiest Showgirl on the Strip” in 1991. The following year, she was outed as a trans woman on national TV (on A Current A air). LGBTQ+ people been putting the Vegas in Vegas even back when audience members didn’t realize the dazzle was brought to them courtesy of the city’s queer and trans folks.

The city’s former motto, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” played up the accepting atmosphere of the adult playground, where travelers could try anything, or be anyone for a night or a week, and then return to their relatively sedate lives back home. In other words, straight tourists go to Vegas to give themselves permission to go a little queer, even if it’s just for the duration of their stay.

This year the destination is embracing its unspoken queerness, with a marketing campaign that nods to LGBTQ+ visitors while encouraging all travelers to “Let out the Vegas in you.” The city wants visitors to open their inner closets and let out the parts of themselves they might usually shun. That permissiveness continues to draw queers of all stripes – even those that only let their hair down while in the glittering desert oasis.