Tag: Party

THE LAWLESS CITY THAT IS LAS VEGAS

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Upon recent reflection, I’ve discovered that Las Vegas truly is a place that could have been drawn up in a fictional piece of literature or the setting for a hollywood blockbuster. If you’ve ever been, you know just how outside of the real world it can be at times. If you haven’t, I am going to try my best to paint you the picture (or atleast the one I know of [which is probably even on the tamer side than some devout Vegas goers]).

Enter a tall, bright light, hot, industrialized city plopped in the state of Nevada. Sure, there’s towns and civilization out there (shoutout to my roommate KC who grew up over there), but you have to think the idea to plop this crazy international attraction in the middle of the desert is a strange thing to dwell on. Just imagine nothing and then snap your fingers and you have big, bright buildings that never close down. I am sure it wasn’t built overnight, but this ideal alone can kind of get the gears turning. 

The second thing that really just makes you feel like you’re living in some sort of screwed up netflix series is the rules-or lack of them. It seems like just about everything is legal in Las vegas. Walk around with beers or open containers of hard liquor on the streets? Check. Having people trying to blatantly sell you all the drugs under the sun as soon as you exit your hotel and walk on those same streets? Check. Having go-go girls dressed up waiting to handcuff you and give a good time for a monetary payment? Check. Combine all of these along with the strange characters that inhabit the vegas streets and you can really easily see how things could go astray quickly. As all this is going down, there are still cops regularly arresting people and breaking up street fights.

Now on the polar opposite end of the spectrum-gambling is very legal but heavily monitored. There’s big money floating around even the common folk tables, and then there’s even the high roller zones where people put up stupid amounts of cash just to take a ride with luck and probability. In the casinos, rules are not meant to be broken. You have to know how to act. No phones on the table. Dealers switch every 15 to 30 minutes. It’s a well oiled machine and it’s kept that way so the gambler rarely has the upper hand on the casino. Which tends to work out well in their favor. The streets can be lawless, but the casino keeps things very buttoned up.

No matter the regulations, Las Vegas is a gambler’s dream. If you fly in, get ready to hit the slots at the airport, because there’s plenty there and you know you have time to kill while waiting for a cab or an uber. If you drive it, from where I live you spend 4 hours give or take with not much scenery just to arrive and most likely make that initial bet. You gotta spend money to make money here. And whatever money you have, you have to be very comfortable losing it all. Play it safe or suffer the consequences. 

These are all the attractions that pretty much come free of charge, and then you have to factor in the mecca Las Vegas is in the entertainment industry. Big shot DJs, rappers, and comedians all have residencies (or pretty much hotels they call home) in which they get paid boatloads of cash to perform. Either during the day, during the night, weekend or weekday, there’s a party going on. Like most things in vegas, you’re going to have to pay the premium, whether that’s a cover (girls get in free), a stupid expensive mix drink, or just something going wrong and throwing a wrench in the system. 

It’s easy to see how some people love this place. If you want my personal take on vegas-a weekend is typically enough. But I could see how you could get sucked in and stay a while. There’s just something in the air that’s different. I’m an early to bed and early to rise kinda guy, but in vegas I push the bedtime back a little bit and take in the big bright lights. 

A (NOT SO) GREAT WAY TO SPEND A SATURDAY: HUNGOVER

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Another reincarnation of an older series I wrote a couple of posts for: A Great Way to Spend a Saturday. Typically, these posts outlined the joys of having the day off and planning something extravagant, or just enjoying time outside of the house. If you are tied down with work during the week, the weekend is when you can move around and do whatever.

This time it’s the antithesis: a (not so) great way to spend a saturday. 

So this is how not to spend a Saturday. As a man approaching his quarter life crisis, I have had many Saturdays in which I would have loved to spend them a different way. DMV days, long rides in the car, consequences from the night before, or just other random happenings that can throw a wrench in your Saturday are what we are going to chop it up about. Here’s just one.

Being hungover can be very painful, or also could be not so bad. The mellow ones are not the problem. These ones are cured by coffee and a simple surf. I swear I’ve said that exact phrase in so many pieces. As a resilient young man, I should be able to shake these off quite easily. As I am growing older, it is starting to take a little more. When I was younger, the majority of my experiences with hangover were limited. Yes, I got them, but they didn’t stop me from doing much. These aren’t terrible, as they go away by noon (or they used to). Eat something good and you feel alive again (one breakfast burrito, please). And potentially be inspired to run it back the next night (now a days this is a herculean effort). 

The type of hangover I am talking about is the one that throws off your whole day. You sleep in, crawl out of bed, and do little in the first part of your day. These can turn even the most morning-centric person out there shudder at the fact of doing things (and by things, I mean even the simplest tasks). With these, it is best to try to do something. I always believed the less you did when you are experiencing a severe hangover, the longer it lingers and clouds your mind. These are the hangovers coffee and surfing do not fix. But we can always try these methods to make them slightly more minute for the time being. The quick fix. There is nothing worse than having an obligation that you have to attend with one of these hangovers. For some time it would be class on certain days in college days, but thankfully this has been limited to purely weekend days of recent. Going to class was never that hard because mine were always later so I could surf beforehand, or in some cases have ample time to shake off the night before. 

As I grow older, they only get worse. I sound like a broken record, but shudder at the memories of going out so much at school. Nights in which I wouldn’t even flinch the next morning have become a little more groggy in the AM, and the times I anticipate a hangover the next day it is twice as bad as I would have imagined. It’s like every time I need to ingest a greasy meal to feel 100% again. It’s a rough life getting closer to 25 (I am exaggerating a little). And I can imagine it’s only going to get worse. So that is one way not to spend a Saturday. I’d have to assume 95% of the eyeballs skimming through this post have been in this position.

Spending a Saturday hungover is a spend. But it depends how you look at it. If the night before was worth it, you might bask in the hangover and relive the debauchery with your friends. Plenty of times the amount of fun had justified the punishment. On the occasion it maybe didn’t live up to your expectations, I feel like this just amplifies the hangover. But it’s Saturday, and you can turn a shitty morning around if you try hard enough. Either way you splice it, we most likely get more done and have more productive Saturdays when we are not hungover. 

However, it is the weekend so it does beckon a little freedom to do nothing. And that’s just fine.

This is sometimes the icing on the cake below: thinking you will not be hungover and setting an alarm just to be woken up early and be even more hungover due to an early wakeup. That is an awful sentence.

Sounds in Sequence: Weekend Mix

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My weekends have become pretty routine at this point. I am unsure as to whether or not I am happy or sad about this, but it is what it is. Here is the skinny: I can guarantee to wake up one morning hungover. Lately, it’s been both mornings. On Saturdays, I need to rise somewhat early, as I work a shift at the Catch Surf store in Laguna. So if I want to surf or get some sort of exercise before putting in the work, I kind of have to be on it. Fast forward through my shift and I tend to be pretty toasted.

I usually go to catch surf strapped: coffee, kombucha, and a decent packed lunch. This can get me through most of the days, but sometimes I am just smoked. No amount of snacks or coffee can give me the extra edge. Work usually goes by decently quick however, as I am friends with my coworkers and the people that trickle in and out of the store tend to be on the more friendly end of the spectrum. We wrap it up at 7 and typically by 7:15 slapping fives in the lot and peeling away, everyone heading south and me being the lone soldier northbound.

What happens next is a toss up. I’d say my group of friends and I are more on trend of going out Friday rather than Saturday, so if we are limiting it to one night of going out, I can cruise home and play some mellow jams or whatever I am vibing as of late. If it is the other way around and a night on the town is imminent, I usually am thinking if I need to pick up any supplies on the way home as the turnaround time is tight. Even when my morale is the lowest, I know one way to get amping and ease into the mindset of sending rather than sleeping: music.

I had given up using Soundcloud when they started making you listen to not one but TWO ads in between a certain number of plays. While I am a dual citizen of both Spotify and Apple Music (because of Sean Carter), I can’t see myself purchasing Soundcloud Go anytime soon. Not even the commercials about it that bombard me on the rare occasion I open the app can sell me on it. Some time ago, I really enjoyed making playlists for different occasions. Soundcloud has a lot of mixtape songs and unreleased music floating around, so you can find some awesome mixes and even stuff from artists not available on the traditional streaming platforms.

So where is this going? I decided to make a playlists on Soundcloud that mimics one of my Spotify ones. The Spotify playlist is the music I put on at 7:15 on a Saturday night to crank on the drive back home. This Soundcloud playlists would give me the same energy and excitement. So whether you are in my case and are leaving work or somewhere low on energy, or the energy is already flowing and you want to amplify it, hit play and let it run. I even added a cool photo of 1800 tequila as the main image and sequenced the songs in a nice order, so shuffle is not necessary. Press play!