Question of the Day - 23 June 2023

We agree that Sin City is the most common nickname for Las Vegas.

As far as we can tell, the first reference to Las Vegas as Sin City, or the City of Sin, was in a 1963 book penned by two casino executives, Dick Taylor and Pat Howell. The title of the book was Las Vegas: City of Sin?

This book was one in a succession of similar "exposés" of Las Vegas released in the early to mid-1960s that combined a wide-eyed view of the city’s glittery surfaces with a jaded look at its slimy underbelly. The whole era is remembered today as "the Diatribe." We told the story of the Diatribe in this QoD from 2008.  

Other nicknames for Las Vegas include: the Entertainment Capital of the World, the Gambling Capital of the World, the Marriage Capital of the World, the Neon Capital of the World, the City of Lights (along with Paris), the City that Never Sleeps (along with New York), the City of Second Chances, Lost Wages (credited to Milton Berle), Adult Disneyland, and Bargain City (the title of Anthony Curtis' 1990s' guide), Comp City (the title of Max Rubin's classic), and the new one, Gouge City.