Las Vegas city fathers need to stop frowning on Electronic Daisy Carnival and embrace it. EDC saved their bacon in May, stopping a prolonged slide in Vegas visitation, which bottomed out and 
made the slightest of upward bounces. While occupied room nights were up a mere 0.5%, room rates on the Strip rose 7% and revenue per room ($130) was also up 7%. Room rates averaged $144/night. Thus Sin City was able to ride out a month when all-important convention traffic was down 5%. Gaming revenue on the Strip was also up a disproportionate 6%, to $581.5 million. Statewide, the increase was 5%, with the final tally safely above the $1 billion mark.
So what went right (besides EDC)? One word: Baccarat. The house 21.5% more than last year, despite 3.5% less money bet. Other table games were 1% on 7% less wagering. Slot win was up 5.5% to $282 million, on 2.5% more coin-in. Allowing for some late-April revenue sloughed into May, locals win was up 5%, to $214.5 million. Downtown ($53 million) was off 3.5%, North Las Vegas ($27 million) eked out a 2% increase, and the Boulder Strip was flat at $80 million. Amorphous “Balance of Clark County” rode to the rescue with $107.5 million, a 10% increase.
Out in the sticks, Laughlin was just up 2%, grossing $44 million. 
Reno came on strong, up4.5% to $53.5 million, while Lake Tahoe was surprising calm, up 1% to $18 million. The house sure was winning out in Carson Valley, up 10% to $15.5 million.
These latest numbers emerge as WalletHub ranks Las Vegas #2 in the nation for recreation (only Orlando beats us). The factors propelling Vegas upward include number of music venues (#1) and of bike-rental facilities (#9). In a way, Vegas’ high overall score comes a surprise considering how mediocre some of our numbers were: 46th for population with walkable park access, 33rd for spending on parks, 39th in swimming pools per capita. We’re obviously doing well by the tourists but if Las Vegas and Clark County put more money into quality of life for locals that #1 ranking could be ours.
* Speaking of life (and its preciousness), an Arizona couple is suing Mandalay Bay over the Stephen Paddock massacre. Jovanna Calzadillas sustained a head wound but miraculously lived through the ordeal (hospital staff advised that she be taken off life support) 
and now she and her husband are charging MGM Resorts International with negligence. Five other affected concertgoers (or relatives of the deceased) are also parties to the suit. Reads a newspaper account, “The hotel has a no-weapons policy, the lawsuit claims, and yet housekeeping staff did not mention those in Paddock’s two-room suite. Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges, security and staff ignored the bolts Paddock used to close off a stairwell door and the surveillance cameras he had placed on a room-service cart in the hallway and in a hotel room door’s peephole.”
No amount of damages has been specified. Calzadillas and her fellow plaintiffs are leaving that to a jury’s discretion. MGM is attempting to have the suit moved to federal court, saying that it falls under the Safety Act of 2002, designed to deal with terrorism issues. Among the allegations in the suit, it charges MGM with allowing Paddock to use the freight elevator multiple times to transport his arsenal to his 32nd-floor pair of suites. “MGM’s 
employees also went into the Shooter’s room multiple times to perform cleaning, housekeeping, and food service delivery or retrieval,” reads part of the suit, “where Plaintiffs believe employees either witnessed his cache of weapons, explosive materials, power tools, hammers, tripods, ammunition, and homemade gas masks … and therefore negligently and carelessly did not report their observations to law enforcement.”
Paddock supposedly tripped an alarm on the fateful evening of 10/1 but MGM security stands accused of taking 30 minutes to investigate. Also, when the bolted door was discovered, instead of calling security, maintenance was alerted. Incidentally an Arizona man is currently being prosecuted by the feds for selling Paddock certain ammunition (although Donald Trump will probably pardon him).
* Quantum mechanics is beyond my ability to understand but someone smarter than I has discovered an actual time warp just north of Sin City (perhaps a convenient portal if you’ve done something in Vegas that you regret). “Using what’s known as a ‘differential time rate meter,’ also known as a ‘DT meter,’ he 
claimed that for the first time ever he was able to record a measurement showing time had been slowing down for 20 microseconds.” Asks researcher Joshua Warren, “The big question at this point is not whether or not we have these anomalies, but what’s causing them? Is this something natural that gives us a window a gateway into another world or another level of reality? Or is this the byproduct of some kind of weird technology, be it something secret and man-made or something that’s extraterrestrial?” Heck, in Nevada anything is possible. Now if only Warren could solve the problem of travel via unstable wormhole.
