Las Vegas or San Francisco? Hmmm.....

by Eric Jansen, Out in the Bay Gay Radio Show, San Francisco

Email Eric | Visit the Out in the Bay Website

Visit the Purple Roofs Nevada Page

Want to Get Married in Las Vegas? | Looking for Real Estate in Las Vegas?

Las Vegas has been marketing heavily to gay and lesbian tourists and its efforts have paid off. LGBT vacationers now spend more hotel nights in Las Vegas than they do in San Francisco, according to market research firm Community Marketing Inc. Well, Sin City has nearly four times more hotel rooms than my City by the Bay. But, still, Las Vegas?!?

I hadn’t been to Vegas in more than a decade, when it felt like Disneyland on steroids and you couldn’t walk down The Strip without being run over by baby strollers. So for my radio program, Out in the Bay – Gay Radio from San Francisco [www.outinthebay.com], I figured I better go find out what draws queer tourists to this desert city that was a Mormon missionary outpost in the 1850s. Why on earth had Las Vegas eclipsed my home town as a gay destination?!? The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority set me up with a 3-day junket, and I must admit I was impressed …

First stop: The Riviera Hotel, where entertainer Frank Marino plays Joan Rivers as he emcees the longest continually-running show on The Strip, the drag revue La Cage. In his opening monologue, before bringing out lip-synching comic impersonators of Cher, Bette Middler, Britney Spears and more, he ripped into celebrities like Paris Hilton: “When she went to jail, my god she was on TV crying every night. Not because she was in jail, but because she’d never spent more than one night in the same bed!”

Marino - who calls himself “the Queen of Vegas” because of La Cage's 24-year run - told me that besides a brief stint as a junior pharmacist while a pre-med student, he’s never had another job. In fact, his drug-store access make-up and application tips from cosmetics salesmen helped liberate his drag persona and start his career.

“I was doing Dianna Ross, my idol,” says Marino. But after meeting an encouraging agent “I realized I’m not black and I can’t sing! So, let’s do somebody white who tells jokes,” and he settled on Joan Rivers, then at the height of her career.

The Riviera took a huge chance on him in 1985. “We came on a six-week contract, and we’re here 24 years later. Gay people prevailed.” Marino says it helps that straight patrons are receptive. “They warm up. I make it very clear that I’m not presenting a lifestyle to them, I’m presenting a form of entertainment.”

Marino says Las Vegas’ courting of queer visitors became especially noticeable about six years ago, with a surge of gay media advertising and casino-hotels putting on more gay-oriented or gay-friendly shows, such as Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity with its infamous “gay kiss” and then some. (Not that most Cirque shows don’t have homoerotic moments, at least, and the form-fitting costumes on all those gymnasts and acrobats – hot!)

“The hotels are looking for the gay dollar,” says Marino, and also “the young dollar – the Paris Hilton dollar is what I call it. The night club crowd, the $300 bottle of vodka. I’d like to know where these young kids are getting that kind of money -- obviously I sleep with people who do me no good!” he quips.

Next stop, the Liberace Museum. (I’d somehow sniffed this out on my very first trip to Vegas some 20 years earlier, and that should’ve given me a big clue about my preferences!)

For those unaware, Liberace was one of the most popular, successful, and ‘gayest’ entertainers of the 20th century (although he wasn’t ‘out’ and once sued a London tabloid for implying he was gay). How big was Liberace? He was the world’s highest-paid pianist in his time. Barbra Streisand opened for him in 1963. He influenced Elvis Presley. His 1950s television show aired on more than 200 U.S. TV stations and in 20 countries, and he broke attendance records at Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Gardens and other premier venues from the ‘50s through ‘80s.

The flamboyant Liberace was credited with starting Las Vegas-style glitz, and you can get a heaping helping of it at the Liberace Museum, chock full of the outlandish cars, pianos, costumes and jewelry that he drove, played and wore until mere months before he died of AIDS in 1987. (His family tried to cover up Liberace’s cause of death, but the county coroner ordered an autopsy).

His costumes range from the relatively tame, but outrageous in its time, gold lamé jacket that he first wore onstage in the 1950s to a mink-and-Swarovski crystal number that cost almost $750,000 when it was made for him in 1974. The museum displays about 30 at any one time. There’s one made of pink turkey and chicken feathers – he stepped out of a giant Faberge egg wearing it as a grand entrance for an Easter concert – and another featuring sparkly red, white and blue hot-pants that he wore for a U.S. Bicentennial concert.

Pianos covered in mirrors and rhinestones and a room full of antique pianos he collected are on display along with cars – he especially liked Rolls Royces – that delivered him onstage for performances. Some match his outfits. There’s a rhinestone-covered Rolls and a red-white-and-blue Rolls which, museum curator Tanya Combs informed us in her lovely southern drawl, he had to get special permission from Rolls Royce to alter. There’s also a pink Volks-Royce Liberace used briefly in the 1970s, trying to “feel our pain” about the gas crisis.

Liberace opened the museum in 1979 to fund the Liberace Foundation scholarship program for performing and creative arts students nationwide. [www.Liberace.org]

My assistant and I also had the luck to meet Liberace tribute artist Will Collins, who gave us a private tour of Liberace’s Las Vegas home, now the Las Vegas Villa. [www.LasVegasVilla.com]. The home, in which Liberace commissioned a partial replica of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting on the ceiling over his bed, is available for weddings and other private parties. Collins showed us how Liberace’s personal suite could be easily closed off for privacy from the rest of the home, except for an adjoining guest bedroom that opened directly to the Grecian-style sunken whirlpool bath -- large enough for two -- in Liberace’s master suite. How convenient! (Although the Las Vegas Villa has no regular public tours, one might be able to “inspect” the premises, if one were interested in renting the facilities …)

Now the food: Honestly, with images of casino buffets in my head, I hadn’t believed the PR flack when he said dining is now one of Vegas’ main tourist draws. But we were treated to one of the most memorable dinners of my life at miX, an incredible (make that ‘incroyable’) restaurant, perched atop THE hotel at Mandalay Bay, under the direction of French chef Alain Ducasse. It was truly sumptuous, the attentive, friendly staff and glittery view of Las Vegas both complementing the top-notch delights from Ducasse’s kitchen.

Sunday brunch also gave a true Las Vegas moment: Sipping kir royales while leisurely dining on the outdoor patio of Paris hotel’s ground-floor café, Mon Ami Gabi, facing the ornate Bellagio hotel while pedestrians strolled by, I almost felt I was on a European boulevard. Then, right when the hourly Fountains of Bellagio water-show-choreographed-to-music climaxed, jets of water erupting 70 feet into the air, a truck-billboard advertising a boob show passed right in front. Now THAT’s Las Vegas!

I returned from my 3-day jaunt with a changed opinion of Las Vegas. I saw three fun shows, enjoyed the kitschy and informative Liberace Museum, went country-western dancing at Charlie’s, one of Las Vegas’ gay bars far from the strip – and consumed three top-notch meals.

We stayed at Paris, the hotel Harrah’s has chosen to market most aggressively to LGBT travelers. It was nice, but not particularly “gay.” If you want that, the Blue Moon Resort, off The Strip, touts itself as Las Vegas’ only exclusively gay male hotel. [www.bluemoonlv.com]
And if you want to get really off The Strip, several residents told me they love Las Vegas for its nearby outdoor recreation spots, like Mt. Charleston, Lake Mead and Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area [www.redrockcanyonlv.org], 197,000 acres of hiking, biking and sheer geologic beauty.

If you’d like to know more: The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority now has an LGBT-specific page on its website: [VisitLasVegas.com] For the non-commercial perspective, there’s also lots of info on the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada’s website: [TheCenterLV.com]

Eric Jansen is founding producer and host of Out in the Bay – gay radio from San Francisco. You can hear 6 months worth of past shows – including his Aug. 13 Liberace feature and his June 18 “gay Vegas” feature – on the archives page at www.OutintheBay.com, where you can also sign up for free weekly podcasts and get lots more info. You can hear the program live at 7pm Pacific Time every Thursday online at kalw.org or, in the San Francisco Bay Area, on the airwaves on National Public Radio affiliate KALW, 91.7 FM.