If you’ve been to Las Vegas even once, you know that while you may lose some money along the way (may, as in will) you’ll board the return flight at McCarren with something even more valuable than a big pile of dough—a big pile of stories.
 
I love to ask people about their “Vegas stories,” since it’s the one place where you can (can, as in will) completely abandon your sense of…sense.  Which is the basic ingredient in some of life’s best tales. 

But I’m always astounded when people tell me that even after their third, fourth, or millionth trip to Vegas, they’ve never been downtown.  If you’re not entirely familiar with the layout of Las Vegas, the Strip (where the majority of visitors spend their time/money/brain cells) is not actually in the downtown section of the city. Downtown Vegas is the area near where Main Street meets Fremont Street—home to “official Las Vegas” (City Hall, the Clark County Courthouse, etc.)—but now the core tourist area (formerly best known as Glitter Gulch) has been repackaged and rebranded as “The Fremont Street Experience”. 

To get there, it’s about a 15-minute, $20 cab ride from the center of the Strip, and if you’ve never been…it is a place you need to Experience. 

Here are five reasons why:

5. It holds as much significance in the history of America as Plymouth Rock.
It all started here.  Literally.  Fremont Street represents not just the birthplace of Vegas—not just the first place in America to legalize gambling, not just the original home of the World Series of Poker—but the genesis of the entire American tourism industry. 

31 million visitors come to Vegas every year, making it the #2 leisure travel destination in the US (only Times Square in NYC attracts more, at 35 million), and tourism is a significant contributor to the American economic engine.  Over 12 million US jobs are directly dependent on tourism, and 1 in every 8 jobs in this country (including construction, materials, supplies) is connected in some way to the tourism industry.  Of the 10 largest resort hotels in the world, 8 of them are in Vegas (the Venetian/Palazzo complex is the biggest with 7,117 rooms). 

And all of that began on Fremont Street with cowboys and Hoover Dam construction workers drinking whiskey, mingling with the local working gals and blowing their wages on the tumble of the dice. 

In many ways, all the other great tourist destinations in our country (Myrtle Beach, Branson, Nashville—hell, even Disneyland and DisneyWorld) owe a debt of gratitude to Glitter Gulch.

A 5-block section of Fremont Street has been covered over in a canopy that becomes a spectacular light show for 5 minutes at the top of each hour (from 6pm-midnight). All the other lights and neon signs in the area shut off, they crank up the tunes (usually classic rock, blasted at appropriate volumes) and the streets fill up like it’s an every-night New Year’s Eve. Definitely worth seeing.

4. It’s sleazy.  In a good way.
When you first visit some place you’ve been led to believe is elegant, lovely or even just decent…but what you actually find is older and rattier than it looked in the photos, it’s a huge disappointment. 

There’s nothing disappointing about downtown Vegas, since the whole reason for going is to intentionally take a walk on the sleazy side.  But I don’t mean sleazy as in unsafe and you’re gonna get rolled...

or…the only reason you’re even here in this neighborhood where you clearly don’t belong is because you’re a crack addict and this is where you can score some rock and now you’re busted in some sting operation and there’s a film crew from “COPS” here and your face is being mosaic-ed out on the Fox network.  Not like that at all. 

But more like a kind of let your guard down and loosen up for God’s sake sleazy that (in small doses) is both fun and even a little therapeutic.

On the Strip, they call it “gaming.”  Downtown, it is what it is.  Gamblin’.

3. If drinking’s your sport, you’ll be on your game here.
No one likes a refreshing cocktail more than yours truly, but if we’re all being honest with ourselves, the concept of drinking yourself blotto is pretty juvenile.  Amateur hour.  College stuff.  However, if you’d like to spend even just one nostalgic night reliving those glorious times, downtown Vegas is for you.  It’s America’s frathouse for all ages and education levels.  No SATs required.  It’s a place where boozy excess is not just tolerated, it’s mandatory. 

You are free to tote your drink of choice with you wherever you like as you stroll/stumble from one casino to the next.  Every third person you see on the street is carrying some kind of alcoholic souvenir.  Yard-long margaritas, football-sized beer steins, all manner of frozen concoctions and glow-in-the-dark shooters.  And those are the drinks people actually paid for.

If you’re gambling (even playing video poker one nickel at a time), the drinks are always on the house.  And off the hook.  For a tip of a dollar per round, they’ll keep ‘em comin’ as fast as you can sling ‘em back.  And in Vegas, last call every night is…a quarter after never.  Want a Jaeger bomb at 6:45am Sunday morning?  Here ya go.  Lemme know when you want another.

2. It’s the ultimate showcase for the Whitman’s Sampler of humanity.
You know what kind of people you don’t see in downtown Vegas?  Nobody.  The totality of the human race is on display here.  Million dollar businesspeople and down-to-their-last-Camel boxcar drifters.  College kids in hoodies, old folks in Hoverounds, lard-ass enormos eating fried Twinkies (a downtown specialty) and bags-o’-bones who look like they spend their meager incomes on meth instead of meat.  You’ll see people who’ve traveled from every continent on the globe to get here, and people who look like they were born in Vegas, never left, and will likely die right there.  Possibly tonight.

People watching?  You kidding me?  There’s no place better.  Stand outside The Four Queens for an hour and soak in the human parade.  Every race, every face, all in one place. That’s the greatest show on Earth.

40-foot-high Vegas Vic is the unofficial sheriff of Glitter Gulch.  Looks like he lost the neon off his pointin’ hand.  Probably in a poker game at Binion’s.

1. It’s the REAL Vegas.
The whole point of The Strip is to escape reality.  Billions have been spent creating these elaborate fantasies come to life, these impossible geography-shifts—the pyramids of Egypt, the Eiffel Tower, the canals of Venice, the Palace of Caesar—all right there one after another on Las Vegas Boulevard.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re all spectacles, they’re all cool, and you can/will have an amazing time at any/all of them.  But they’re all pretend. 

In stark contrast, downtown Vegas doesn’t pretend to be anything.  In fact, it doesn’t even pretend to be nice. Which, in many ways, is the nicest thing any place can be.  Real.  Utterly, unflinchingly, unapologetically real.

So the next time you’re in Vegas for a 4-day/3-night getaway, go ahead and spend one of your nights downtown.  It’ll be a night you’ll never forget.

Unless you wake up unable to remember anything.

How about YOU?  Got any Vegas stories?