After taking a trip out to Sin City for five days and four nights in June, I thought I'd put out a little list of things for a group of guys, or mixed group of guys and girls to remember when planning a trip filled with nightclubs. I also thought, it would be a nice to know what kind of atmosphere to expect in a Vegas Nightclub, so I wanted to briefly, and casually speak about four of the more popular clubs that I went to on my last Vegas trip.
First thing's first: If you are going to Vegas with a majority of guys (actually, this advice could go for girls, too), the best thing to do is pick up VIP passes for the nightclubs you want to go to at the front desks of the hotels they reside in. For example, if you wanted to go to Pure, go to Caesar's Palace during the day and see if you could get some. Many clubs in Vegas offer free cover since they make the most money off of drinks.
Also, if you don't have any girls to get in the guestlist line with, expect to wait in the general admission line for an hour (after the club opens its doors), AT LEAST. Vegas nightlife is always crackin', but the downside to getting into a club a little later is that you won't get in until after midnight when the dance floor is ridiculously full of drunk people who got there before you did. Of course, a packed dance floor is expected--but, to those who have been to the Levende Lounge in SF, a couple more people in your grill is the difference between crackin' and uncomfortably crowded. So, get bottle service if you can afford it. Otherwise, claim your dance space early (or, drink so that being in the midst of hot sweatiness doesn't bother you).
General rules of thumb for maximizing your nightclub experience:
1. Get your VIP Passes for free admission
2. Go with a group of girls to expedite the line-waiting process
3. Make friends with someone who will hook you up with bottle service, or get used to people stepping on your kicks.
4. If you have a lot of money, then you'll be alright.
Here is are the clubs I went to Thursday through Sunday nights, on my trip to Vegas last month. The schedule went:
Thursday: Tao @ The Venetian
Friday: Jet @ The Mirage
Saturday: Pure @ Caesar's Palace
Sunday: Poetry @ Caesar's Palace
The following is a rough journaling of the atmospheres (minus the interior designing since you can find that on the clubs' websites) I encountered this past June:
@ Tao: The club is most spacious from 10pm-11pm. On a Thursday night, it fills up quick, and on our particular night the DJ was playing the lady R&B jams during this spacious period which made the environment very, very chill. At about 11:30pm to 12:30am is when the place really begins to hit capacity. At that point, it's difficult to dance in the main room, here, because you're constantly avoiding sharp heels, or if you're drunk you're just ignoring them stabbing your feet. The music is Hip-Hop/Top 40 (AKA OK hype for a dancer more geared towards Hip-Hop) between 11:30pm and 1:30pm, and then the DJ starts to drift off into techno and dance towards 3am as the crowd thins out. There is a secondary dancing room that is a bit darker than the mainroom that does not get as crowded as the main room, but would be a good place to escape to for a bit. The crowd is pretty mixed: The bulk of the crowd is probably 21 to late twenties, with a good deal of middle-aged men and women partying like they're still in college. One interesting trait Tao has is that there are a LOT of tables set up for bottle service that make the club seem more spacious than it is for those who don't get bottle service. The side effect is this: Enjoy yourself on the dance floor, or find yourself endlessly nudging along with a stream of pedestrians through the crowd. There is no place to be a wall flower here for more than 5-10 seconds, and the bouncers make sure of that. While this can lead to the temptation to try to KO a bouncer, Tao is definitely a good call on a Thursday night.
@ Jet: Similar experience to Tao crowd-filling and initial impressions-wise, except the DJ opted out of the lady R&B jams and went straight to the Hip-Hop/Top 40 early on. There's a little more room to get around here--part of me thinks it's because there aren't as many tables for bottle service in the main dance room as in Tao. The bouncers aren't as adamant about you moving along with the flow of a stream of pedestrians. And, the crowd in the main dancing room has a younger average than at Tao. Again, the crowd is mixed, but more of the middle-aged people stayed in a smaller second room that was knocking 80s hits. Cannot go wrong with Jet on Friday/Saturday.
@ Pure: Similar crowd experience to Tao & Jet, except that the geography of the main room makes it extremely difficult to dance comfortably. This is one club that I would strongly suggest bottle service for. While you can get by without bottle service at Tao, or Jet, I found myself in a more obvious constant envy of those people who had tables for bottle service since Pure allocates so much room for bottle service. The crowd shared an aesthetic diversity comparable to Tao and Jet, however definitely felt a bit "richer"--I'll leave this up to interpretation.
@ Poetry: This place is known as the "Brother Club". It is the only place that plays solely Hip-Hop in Vegas, and thus was the place that the group that I went with enjoyed the most since we enjoy dancing to this type of music. On a Sunday night, the place fills up a little slowly, but picks up to a comfortable fill--much more comfortably spaced than the three aforementioned nightclubs, but this does not negatively effect your dancing experience. Like to get hyphy? Get crunk? Or, dance with swag? Then Poetry is the place you wanna hit up. A blunt note: Yes, it's primarily black people--but, if you're down with the brothas, then you gonna be al-RIGHT. Seriously, all good vibes, here.
Hopefully, this gives you a little more of an idea than you might have had about the said nightclubs. I just wanted to shed some light on some intricacies in order to give people a better idea about what they may be getting into.
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