Vegas sucks now. Lake Tahoe was a really nice respite from the faggotry of The Strip but even now the fatigue is spreading there. Vegas thought the future would be 20 something DJ parties forever but that fad has sailed and they continue to market it as this place that is "sexy" but is just ugly.
Yup. Lots of kangs, gringos, prostitutes (and the thirsty cops who chase them) and thieves galore. Thankfully the city quit directly trying to attract children so much (though the Fremont Street folks still peddle their mini-strip as "kid friendly" despite the strippers
), but like you said they're still trying to attract the night club types and those are getting bored with what Vegas has to offer. You can only renovate a night club so many times before you run out of ways to switch it up for a new crowd.
The days of decent comps and bonuses from the casinos are long gone. There's little (or no) cheap food on or near the strip anymore. All the casinos on the strip (and most of the ones off-strip) are owned by a handful of companies that only distinguish individual properties with different logos, colors of paint on the walls and typefaces on the signage. Minimum bets are too high on the strip for them to be any kind of draw for "regular" people anymore.
They haven't built any "neat" casinos with the theatrics of the 90's in, well, a couple decades. Siegfried & Roy are gone, along with their cats. There's no Treasure Island show anymore. The Mirage volcano only goes off once per night now on a few days per week. Rio's "Masquerade Show in the Sky" is gone. Merlin doesn't fight the dragon anymore at Excalibur. All the kid-friendly stuff is gone too. The "AdventureDome" at Circus Circus is a nigger-infested nightmare now.
The casinos they've built in the past decade are just generic skyscraper hotel/resort hybrids with some neon on top and nothing to make any of them unique. Even the high-end shops are boring as fuck (not that anybody who could afford that shit would actually buy it in Vegas anymore). The strip mall "gift shops" on the strip all sell the same Chinesium garbage.
Besides casinos, all they've built are one of those London Eye things and a big dome with an admittedly very neat display in it that they use as a venue for concerts and events. They bought the Oakland Raiders awhile back, though (lol). But there's just nothing "special" about the place anymore to draw any specific demographic there. Nothing for kids, nothing for families. Nothing for low-roller gamblers. High-rollers have much better venues than Vegas. Not even anything "fresh" for those ravers/clubbers.
Ah well. The place was cool in the late 90's and early 2000's at least, and that curved escalator set they have at Caesar's Palace is fun too.
