Frommer's Las Vegas 2004

268
CHAPTER 10 . LAS VEGAS AFTER DARK
(both men and women) are friendly and offer rotating drink specials that might
keep you from busting your budget.
Downstairs is the large two-story dance floor, which dominates the center of the
room and is built around a full-service bar at one end. The sound system is top-ofthe-line,
as is the lighting design (but the wash from the rest of the bar made it a
little too bright on the floor to appreciate). Nobody really seemed to care though—
there wasn’t 1 square inch of space available on a recent Friday night. Upstairs, there
are balconies overlooking the dance floor, pool tables, darts, foosball, pinball, and
various other arcade games plus slot machines, video poker, and a sports book.
Other neat touches include tarot-card readings by the stairs and hot-pizza vendors.
And let’s not forget those Jell-O-shot contests where club-goers try to eat shaky
cubes of alcohol-spiked gelatin off each other’s partially bared bodies.
The crowd is aggressively young and pretty, more men than women (70/30
split), and about 60% tourist, which is probably why the place can get away with
charging a $10 cover. Party people look no further: There’s free valet parking,
and if you’ve driven here and become intoxicated, they’ll drive you back home
at no charge. Open daily from 10pm until the wee hours. 365 S. Convention Center
Dr. (at Paradise Rd.). & 702/731-1925. www.beachlv.com. Cover $5 and up.
Bikinis By now, you should be getting the format for the most recent trend in
clubs and lounges in Vegas: liberal use of dancing girls who wear very, very little.
What makes this different from an honest strip bar, we don’t know (but you
can read some thoughts on the matter below in our review of Sapphire), but it
does show how mainstream strip bars have become. How else to explain the gogo
dancers here, who wear thong bikinis and little wisps of gauze as they dance,
with various degrees of enthusiasm and talent, on stages with strippers’ poles,
and then sometimes get into tanks of water to gyrate? How else to explain the
gaggle of male customers who watch them with studied blank expressions, and
how the female customers end up congregating towards the back, studiously
ignoring the floor show, except to say things like “I wish I had her legs?” Expect
also occasional pillow fights and lingerie shows. In between this is a dance floor
for you to shake your thang to hip-hop and house, while the interior Lava
Lounge plays old-school funk. Open Thursday to Sunday from 10pm to late
into the night. 3700 W. Flamingo Rd. (in the Rio). & 702/777-7777. Cover varies.
Cleopatra’s Barge Nightclub This is a small, unique nightclub set in part on
a floating barge—you can feel it rocking. The bandstand, a small dance floor, and
a few (usually reserved) tables are here, while others are set around the boat on
“land.” It’s a gimmick, but one that makes this far more fun than other, more
pedestrian, hotel bars. Plenty of dark makes for romance, but blaring volume
levels mean you will have to scream those sweet nothings. Check out the barebreasted
figurehead on the ship’s prow, who juts out over the hallway going past
the entrance. She could put someone’s eye out. Open nightly from 10:30pm until
4am. In Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S. & 702/731-7110. No cover; 2-drink minimum.
Club Rio This is one of the hottest nightspots in Vegas as of this writing, but
apparently made so by people who don’t mind long lines, restrictive dress codes,
attitudinal door people, hefty cover charges, and bland dance music. Waits can
be interminable and admittance denied thanks to the wrong footwear or shirt.
The dress code (no sneakers, and shirts must have a collar) is supposed to make
the clientele look more sophisticated than grungy; the effect is the opposite, as
most of the men end up in combinations of chinos and button-down shirts. Of
course, it’s so dark you can’t tell if someone is wearing sneakers.