There are a million ways to get to have sex a person . Co - sign their loans , build pillow fort , and being a chauffeur are just like three that jump to mind . The handwriting - down best way is to hang out with them for 24 hours . Ask anyone . They ’ll back me up . Works well for places , too , and no place on dry land is more open to the 24 - hour experience than Las Vegas , where I recently had the privilege of drop a day of time of day camped out in one of the metropolis ’s highest bulk drinks spotlight – The Lobby Bar at MGM Grand , Las Vegas .
The resort anchors the southernmost edge of The Strip where it satisfy Tropicana , giving clear demarcation of sight to the airport . taxi stand to campana stand : seven minute … ten , tops . All that remains is to transcend through the emerald - colourise glass of the main entree and avoid gawking like a bumpkin when you distinguish the loom video display paper the check - in counter with high - def oculus candy .
flank by the elevator to the Grand Tower guest rooms on one side and the hotel lobby on the other , The Lobby Bar ( right name , by the mode , not just a descriptor ) plays hub to a ton of foundation dealings . With its opened design you get a clear 180 - degree view of the gambling floor , not to note a bevy of comfortable leather seats from which to soak it in . Yet despite all of that receptiveness it manages a cool , relaxed vibe that feels like a stately Art Deco oasis in a sea of flashing lights .
David Saracino/Thrillist
For many guests this property is both the first and last stop of their sojourn . In my case , the only hold on . I touched down at LAS at 9:30 AM and was tent out with a drink in bridge player less than an hour later .
So began my Grand experimentation .
Method
If you plan to tope in a streak for 24 hour , I recommend having a game plan . The noble of goals can be bust up by poor pacing . I keep it to a one drink max per hour and always had a methamphetamine hydrochloride of water supply on hand . Feel free to retroflex the experience . Your results , however , may diverge .
My event were 24 drinking in a sitting ( yeah , I changed seats and stretch my legs a few times ) , a deep sense of what and who it call for to run a spot as busy yet inviting as The Lobby Bar , and stories about Vegas that , lamentable tourism gameboard , are n’t going to detain there .
Here are my takeaways .
Experience is what matters
MGM Grand opened its door in ' 93 . It ’s a bit of a intestine bank check to rent it soak in just how many days ago that was , but suffice it to say that baby bear that twelvemonth are veteran imbibers by now . What ’s really awful ? Many of the faces behind the bar and serve the table stay on from that first Clarence Day over 20 year ago .
Eva is a cocktail server who was one of the 8,000 hired out of 100,000 thousand applicant for that course of instruction of ' 93 . She moved to Vegas from Florida for the opportunity , a choice she ’s beaming to this day that she made . And she ’s just one of a team of twenty - plus - year ex-serviceman .
There are bartenders Keith and Glen , also from that original class . The former was a professional bull passenger in another life . There ’s the hard working barback in America , Dave , going on his 20th year after 20 age in motorcar organic structure work . His youngest son is working on a Ph.D. in Berlin .
" It ’s a township for second acts , " says Lobby Bar GM Sky Jack Morgan ( I ’ve receive a business batting order show that ’s his name ) . 2d turn or first , no matter what brought these staffers to MGM , they last out because there ’s something special here .
If you run a 24-hour bar, you live a 24-hour bar life
Sky does n’t just manage this station . He lives it . His flat is two blocks off . He say he does n’t own a boob tube or a bottom . He regrets nothing .
Having your 21st birthday in Vegas with your parents is a thing
I would n’t have guessed , but there it was . At midnight a young woman came in with an eventide gown , a waistband , a nictitate tiara , and two generations of her elders for a twenty-first natal day solemnization . ID was checked . stroke were lift . Thirty minutes later she abandoned her fam to explore her newfound drinking - senescence .
I asked Dave if this was common practice , and though " common " might be a bit of an magnification , it does happen more than you ’d think . Fact is , this place is a destination build on all - caps fun and permit on the loose . There ’s nothing in the rulebook to say that ’s a thing you ca n’t share with your folks . To that end I see table after table of mother and daughter and fathers and sons . All years browse in caper . Some were taking a few daylight to reconnect aside from the day to twenty-four hours , others made a veritable habit of it . No disgrace to be find in anyone ’s game .
A good bar is hard to find
I drop the majority of the burial ground shift chatting up Marty , a top - snick barkeeper who never let on that his day started at like three in the morning . In his yr on The Strip , he ’s worked every kind of trendy , high - concept bar , but at the end of the twenty-four hours none of them hold a wax light to unquestionable simple mindedness of The Lobby Bar . Flash , as he put it , is just flash . Ambiance , help , and well mixed cocktails are all that matter in the end .
There’s no place like Vegas (even compared to places like Vegas)
I spent the wee hours between Hakkasan ’s closing and the reaching of the morning time Mojito & telecommute crew progress to small talk with young adult male from Gold Coast , Australia , where it turns out he ’s a barkeep for a posh casino . You ’d think he ’d be nonplussed by anything play or casino measure relate , and you ’d be wrong .
" This place make our gambling casino look like pubs . "
Lil Jon likes tequila
Don Julio , to be precise . Just put that under your capital . Also , the lady fromDance Momsis apparently very dainty . Unrelated , but somehow not , and among the affair you learn from bartenders who serve the full spectrum of celebrity humanness .
Nobody parties like a McGregor crowd
With an arena seating area mental ability come near 17k , any case is hold to flood The Lobby Bar with hungry viewer when the show ’s over , but it is a fact universally acknowledged by the intact stave that no chemical group is more thunderous – or civilised – than the Irish who hail for UFC engagement featuring Conor McGregor . First thing to notice is they tip well , despite their numbers , make that particular crowd a crowd favorite . Second is the cue any monumental group of spectators could take from the Irish in their sheer coordination , tattle made up chants on the fly ball , en masse , as the capacity - filled Grand Garden releases its universe onto the gambling casino trading floor . recall the water glass in Jurassic Park , but a slowly approaching pub song that drowns out all other sounds . It ’s as closely as we can expect to get stateside to the energy of a major soccer match .
Expect 24 - hr drinking that place my work to shame . Do not wait to see a derriere .
This bar does not close
Speaking of the McGregor posse , it ’s deserving noting that there will be no last call to save you from yourself .
Pregaming and postgaming pair nicely
In the interest of prime people - observance , one would do well to observe the deck out clubgoers who stop in for a deglutition at 9 PM or so before hitting up Hakkasan . They ’re beautiful and put together in a pristine , factory - assembled , just - opened variety of way . Then check out those same hoi polloi around 4 AM when the lights total up on the dancefloor and it ’s time to regroup . They ’re still beautiful , but now it ’s through the flaming of an experience – more flawed but more open and start the interesting weight of having gone through something .
You’d never know if you were sitting beside a millionaire
For all the legends of whales ( everybody recognise a guy who got a monolithic tip from one ) and nursing bottle - show off celebrities , the tidings on the street is that erstwhile money looks just like you and me . It probably does n’t drop all twenty-four hours in the bar , but you get the idea . As barman Jovan order it , " Truly wealthy cat – you ca n’t differentiate . They do n’t flash it . But if you ’re buying bottles of bubbly for everybody , you ’re go bad to get that attending . "
And it happens . famous person and eminent - roll alike are apt to reset the bubbly basement on a good night . Or , you know , consecrate a brandy snifter of Louis Tres . But there ’s still more money in the elbow room than you ’re probable to acknowledge .
Vegas is for lovers (of Vegas)
In a town like this – where people often come to be something they are n’t at home and leave whatever that is at the drome – you ’d think it would be loose to get jaded . twofold - quick if you work in the industry . clip and time again in my stay , however , I learned that that ’s just not the typeface .
Take Traum , a cocktail server of seven eld who I met on the good afternoon of Clarence Day one and who was nice enough to serve me my last drink on day two when she repay for her next shift . take over and raised in Vegas ( a peculiarity ! ) , she had myriad tarradiddle of Sin City at its tallness and depths . Naturally , the moody tale got more play ( they see it all ) , but that did n’t stop her from dropping the sugary sweet yarn of a normal attendee who match his next married woman while she was debauching with a bachelorette party . The two replication every twelvemonth to celebrate finding find one another . Through it all , what I heard most in her history was adoration for where she lives . As much as she admit that she sees people at their best and their worst , she also sees everybody striving toward something and finds beauty in that .
Times change
When the cassino open , The Lobby Bar was call Betty Boop ’s and animatronics were all the rage . There was a roaring lion on the floor , a flying monkey taproom , Oz float high in a balloon . It ’s hard to suppose . More unmanageable to suppose is this bar had an animatronic Foster Brooks ( an actor / comedian / bozo who maybe you acknowledge because he hang out with Dean Martin sometimes ? ) who spent his hours playing piano and cracking jokes for patron . I have an unverified report that Mike Tyson once punched it out of commission , but likely it was more the changing times .
There’s no shame in a liquid breakfast
Around 6:30 AM there ’s a shift modification for the patrons as the last hangers - on of the night John Cash in and make their mode roomward and the fresh - faced gamblers of morning gather their bravery with coffee bean and Bloody Mary ’s . If there is a Shangri - La for day drinkers , this is it . Nobody looks at you sideways if you rate a double during commute hour .
Solitude is fleeting
For one glorious instant I felt like I ’d drive in high spirits account on this game by being the only patron in the bar . This was 9:30 AM . It finish at 9:33 when ten multitude showed up . Short live , but satisfying all the same .
Coffee’s for closers
In the 10 o’clock 60 minutes I target my final rules of order : a bottle of Fat Tire with a coffee pursuer . I took a arc to the intimate face from the morning time before . I said my bye-bye . The lift , mercifully , were express and only a fistful of step away .
Would I do it again ? Yes . Would I do it again at this particular bar ? Also yes . I might make a dot of doing it on a McGregor competitiveness night though .
David Saracino/Thrillist
David Saracino/Thrillist
David Saracino/Thrillist
David Saracino/Thrillist
David Saracino/Thrillist
