Las Vegas, Where Thousands of Taxis Still Aren’t Enough

I just stopped off in Las Vegas for a couple of nights en route home from a snowboarding road trip to Park City, Utah, and I couldn’t have picked a worse time. The gigantic Consumer Electronics Show just ended, and the city has been jammed for days. The crowding got so bad that the Nevada Taxicab Authority, which had already added 300 additional cabs for the trade show, had to hold an emergency meeting to add 300 more. And I still saw long, snaking cab lines in front of many hotels. It’s ugly.

At some point, the strip area is going to become too big and crowded and cumbersome for its own good. The question is when.

Meanwhile, the casinos are continuing to experiment with ways to attract gamblers. At the Imperial Palace on the strip, where I’m writing from Betty’s Diner Cyber Cafe, celebrity look-alikes, from a faux Michael Jackson to Madonna, are dealing blackjack. I played for a while at Little Richard’s table. Losing to Little Richard was no more palatable than losing to any other dealer, and I consoled myself by listening to a faux Irish rock band play in the lounge at Barbary Coast.

©2026 World Hum, All Rights Reserved