Night Life in Vegas as a VIP

As I gazed upon the psychedelic lights of the Las Vegas Strip from a 32nd-floor suite of the Venetian Hotel, watching pirates shoot cannonballs off the coast of Treasure Island, it finally hit me: This is an extraordinary life.

In the next 72 hours, I would hang with Hugh Hefner and the Bunnies, get kicked out of a VIP lounge and revel in the splendor of the House of Blues’ Foundation Room. I was a low roller in the high desert, another lost angel, looking for complimentary passes to Siegfried & Roy.

Before I even hit town, though, I was on the guest list at six nightclubs and a private V Bar bash. I got the VIP treatment all the way, baby. I was a working girl on assignment and I didn’t hesitate to work it.

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At the Venetian, I scored an upgrade to a suite 30 square feet bigger than my house and spread out for a spell. It’d been a few years since me and the hubby eloped to Las Vegas and my how she’s grown.

We got to the Hard Rock and were whisked in to Baby’s, a disco originally operated by Sean MacPherson of Bar Marmont, Jones and Good Luck bar fame. Hefner was having his own lost weekend, celebrating the Playboy Music Awards, his 75th birthday and the release of new videos (including the “Women of the Hard Rock”).

You wouldn’t even know the nightclub was there if it weren’t for the huge line of collegiate-looking kids angling for a way in. I was blown away at the scale of the club, which felt about the size of the Palace but all underground. A huge video screen displaying images of Tony Bennett made it really feel like Vegas.

No disrespect to Hugh, but I skipped out almost as soon as I got there. Even on the clock I don’t like listening to house music and besides, the altars of rock awaited outside the club’s velvet rope.

Piped-in music from the Rolling Stones, Prince and Led Zeppelin lured me into the Hard Rock casino. Cruising from one display case to another, I coveted Carlos Santana’s O.G. Woodstock T-shirt, marveled at Gene Simmons’ ax, pictured myself rollin’ on the back of Nikki Sixx’s Harley and worshiped at the heels of Ginger Spice’s Union Jack platforms. Yes, this is mecca. By the time I made it to the Sublime exhibit, I was overcome with emotion.

After being snapped back to reality by a Sex Pistols quote hanging over a casino doorway--”The only notes that matter come in wads”--I pogoed over to C2K, a four(!)-level nightclub at the Venetian. In Vegas, it seems bigger is always better. C2K, which features a Playboy bunny as a hostess on weekends and offers live music, comedy and dancing, is very much a nightclub for the 21st century. The only thing I can compare it to is an opera house, and truly, the place really does sing. Each level looks down on the other and it has such neat innovations as a cigar lounge, where you can watch arrivals. We got cozy in a fourth-floor skybox to some late-night hip-hop before taking last call at Grand Luxe, a Venetian bar that doubles as a late-night restaurant.

After lollygagging around the hotel the next day, we trotted off to one of the gigantor swimming pools, pausing only to watch one of Vegas’ current tourist attractions: construction workers pouring concrete as they build the Guggenheim Museum, which is scheduled to make its debut in September. From my hillbilly perch, it looked like ancient Egypt in hard hats. Totally radical.

After a swim, we strolled to the VIP lounge in bathrobes to snake some free cheese and crumpets. Although we were card-carrying VIPs, a Venetian employee quickly asked us to leave, not appreciating the Hugh Hefner approach to casual living.

This wasn’t, after all, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” but I did bump into its host, Robin Leach, the next night at a swell party for V Bar, Brad Johnson’s new Vegas joint. Johnson (Sunset Room/Roxbury) teamed up with Will Regan (Lotus, New York) to open the intimate, gorgeous new bar. The sexy single-level lounge, with its frosted glass walls and casual seating arrangements made for an environment that was good for conversation. We met so many interesting people we were late to Everlast’s show at the House of Blues inside the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.

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The V Bar bash, a party for the new Vegas File magazine, was so good we did something werarely do in L.A. We made an encore appearance. After mad-dogging Backstreet Boy A.J. back at V Bar (but only because I thought he was Joey Fatone) we found refuge in a booth with a photographer and a liquor distributor. We all bayed at the moon when we found out our new businessman acquaintance specialized in high-end tequila.

The subsequent hours and days were spent snooping around Studio 54 and the low-key Pok Bar at the House of Blues. We even scored a private tour of the Foundation Room--a 16,000-square-foot spectacle atop Mandalay Bay with a view that only money can buy.

Vegas sure gets you where you live. My last image of Sin City, or at least the one I like to picture last, is of a young man, necking with a no-bones-about-it call girl in a hotel lobby. “Yep, she’s working,” noted the bellman. I could relate.