Flooding Across Vegas. MGM Conspiracy, 5 Spin Method, F1 Backtracks & Inside the Vegas Sphere

Hello and welcome to the MT and Vegas podcast. I'm Sean Coomer, your host joined us always by Mark Ostroman. We have a great show for you. As a reminder, you can watch this entire show along with all the visuals that go with it at youtube.com forward slash miles to memories that's youtube.com forward slash miles to memories. There are two shows a week on Tuesdays and Fridays, release them on youtube and then combine them into this audio podcast once a week for your listening enjoyment. We hope you enjoy it. If you do like the show, consider leaving us a five star review and Apple podcast or your preferred podcast app. It helps us out tremendously. And as a final reminder, you can find all of our Vegas content that's posts, podcasts and videos at mtmvegas.com. Thanks again for listening, let's hit it. So Mark, once again, Mark Wahlberg is on the strip bartending. I think this is like the fourth time since he's moved here fifth time, something like that. It seems like every month there's a new picture of him bartending somewhere on the strip. This guy is just Mr. Las Vegas these days. He's everywhere all around the city. I mean, you would think if it was like Wahlbergers and he wants to go in there to promote his restaurant, that would make sense. But it's kind of crazy. I'm just going to random spots and I don't know if this plays into him trying to get all the studio money and everything and just trying to be like beloved by Vegas and all that. But I mean, it'd be cool if you're in a restaurant all of a sudden Mark Wahlberg shows up. I know my wife would be super excited about it. Yeah, so book him your next grand opening, I guess. I don't know. It's interesting to see him all over the city, but the city loves him and the press, he's everywhere. I wonder how much his cameo is for that. Mark, we can't start the show without talking about Hurricane Hillary, the storm that never really came to Las Vegas, but there was a lot of craziness around this and we got an early storm like a couple days before the actual storm came and it was pretty bad. We saw crazy lightning. Area 15 shared some photos over their tower of like crazy lightning storms. We got some flooding and we were all prepared for this crazy weekend, but the storm sort of passed to the left of us and we didn't get too much. You know, you had link flooding, beautiful waterfalls over at Lake Powell and Mount Charleston actually did get a lot of flooding too. There is some stuff there, hope everybody's okay, but for the most part, we just got cool temperatures and just a little bit of rain, not bad at all. I mean, the link floods if like somebody spills a slurpee, so that's not surprising at all, but I can't believe they haven't fixed that in some way now, but no, the waterfalls cascading into Lake Powell was really cool to see. Mount Charleston looks like a guy at the worst of it, kind of crazy up there with the landslide type of thing going on, but you know, Vegas didn't get hit too bad, but I should say Lake Mead, whoever owns a boat out there, I feel bad for you. I hope it's not too damaged, but it's just crazy. Those, you know, the boat docks didn't look very secure. They look kind of like makeshift boat docks. I don't know what the deal is with that if they pull them out a lot or what, but it looked like plywood and stuff didn't look like the best setup out there for a storm. They've had to move the marina a few times, so I don't know what that's about, but like I said, the pre storm like caused all kinds of havoc here, and then the actual storm was a bunch of nothing, so or a lot of nothing for most people. So that's good, but yeah, it was crazy. I think we were all just holding our breath and maybe the media sensationalized it just a little bit. And of course, Los Angeles did get hit pretty hard, Southern California, got a lot of rain, but even I don't think they got quite the extent of the storm. It fell apart a lot, so there wasn't the wind and the quite everything that they had expected it to be. 78 degrees in the middle of August is fantastic, so the temperatures have just been spectacular. I mean, if anybody's been in Las Vegas, yeah, it's been cloudy, there's been some rain, but it's nice to just go outside and not be hot. Yeah, I mean, that's what you see in like the northern states type of weather in the summer. And we've seen the Southern states get hammered, 110. We talked about your air conditioning bill last month, so I'm glad that your pockets are feeling a little bit, you know, a little release, a relief from that AC bill, so that's good to see. And I'm sure everybody's enjoying that break from the heat, so maybe we'll just roll right into fall and it won't get too hot again. Yeah, turn off the air conditioner, turn off the water for a few days, save some money because both those bills are ridiculous these days. Did you put buckets out to catch water? I saw people doing that on Twitter and he's like, I'm putting these buckets out to catch water to throw them on the plants and stuff and the guy's like, well, doesn't the rain do that? Yeah, I don't know why I didn't quite see that craziness going on. We don't know how to handle any of this stuff. This is just all new to us. All right, so let's update everybody on the Venetian parking. We talked about how they're implementing paid parking and how you get free parking. Examples get three free hours and Grazzy Premier and above get free self parking. And one of the commenters pointed out that to get that status, you only need to spend $334 on a hotel room or about $1,000 in the casino. So they're not really, you know, we talked about validating parking stuff like that. I guess in a way, this is sort of that, not a high spend threshold, but they do want to make sure you spend some money. So if you're staying there, though, I imagine anybody staying there is going to spend $334 in the hotel. So you probably will get that status. Yeah, and if I, you know, if I worked on the strip or near the strip and needed to park down there a lot or go to a lot of events and lived in the area, I think that'd be the place I'd probably do my gambling or dining until I hit that status and, you know, that's probably the easiest, sustainable status outside of, you know, getting credit cards or something like that for MGM and things of that nature. But for just pure spend, I can't think of anything that's a better deal or a return to value. Kudos to the commenter for pointing that out. I think that's a really good hack for, if you need to park or you're coming from California or something like that, you know, it's perfect. So what's not perfect is Martin Yan. Mark, do you remember this is the guy that neither of us had heard of and then we got roasted in the comments so much hate because he was on PBS for like decades and decades and decades and we didn't know who he was. He opened his new restaurant ad, Horseshoe, I was at four or five months ago. It was not a long time ago and it is already closed. So I told Mark, I said, I guess we didn't really need to learn who he was. He's not going to be opening up multiple restaurants would be my guess. It just didn't do well. Overpriced, the food was okay according to reviews, but Martin Yan out at Horseshoe. Yeah, I mean, the only person I know from PBS is Bob Ross, the legendary, you know, the goat of all time for PBS TV. Even if it's like not a great launch or the food's not great, you know, to close this quickly is kind of a shock because we've seen how much they put into these restaurants just retrofitting them and design and all that stuff, multiple millions of dollars. So usually they hang on for a while, you know, at least a year or two to see if they can make it work or tweak it. But so this is crazy. I wonder if there's something else going on there. And the Horseshoe just did this whole refurbished, you know, bringing all these new restaurants and to have one of your big celebrity chefs go out so quickly isn't a good sign for them. Yeah, it's not a good sign, but I guess the writing must have been on the wall for them to pull the plug so quickly how bad could this restaurant have been performing. And you know, we'll see what they do in that space. Clearly they'll come up with a new concept. But yeah, we never got to try it. So I don't know. We're going to have to forget all about Martin again. They should have been smashing potatoes on the table and then they would have been, you know, a success. Yeah, Martha Stewart should have consulted on this restaurant. So speaking of restaurants, I got a chance to walk through Arias food hall the other day. And this is the replacement for their buffet. We talked about it before, but I got some good video of it. So I thought I'd show people really quickly. The old buffet area was very orange and you know, that's the best way I can describe it. It was a buffet, right? But that whole area was orange. It was big and they've changed it into this food hall. And I like it. I mean, I walked in there. First you get this sort of vibe where you see people kind of hanging out at a bar and playing games and stuff as you sort of see the exterior of it. And then you can work your way into the interior with all the different food concepts. But I didn't get a chance to eat there. Definitely want to do that on a future trip. But it really is an attractive space. And I think they did a great job with the old buffet space turning it into this. And it does feel more like a food hallmark than a food court given, you know, they have this sort of games and has more of like a hangout kind of vibe. Same kind of kiosks that you have at Resorts World. So everything kind of works the same in that way. So I think they did a good job here. And I have to try some of that stuff out. Yeah, hopefully the systems work better than they did at Resorts World. The first couple of months there with issues on ordering and everything and food getting billed, but not getting made and stuff like that. But it does look really nice. I think it's a good use of the space. It definitely feels more like a food hall than even like Resorts World. Because it's it's segregated, you know, you feel like you're in a unique area versus just like kind of along the side of the casino, at least that's what it looks like from the video. So I think that's nice. I like the design of it. I know everybody loves their buffets, but you know, this is going to be open longer. People don't have to pay 60, 70 bucks to have dinner can go pick what they want and not pay a huge fee and have to fill their face to feel like they got value. Depends on the prices though. Were they crazy? I'm assuming so. Yeah, typical strip prices. So, you know, high for that type of food, cheaper than you'll find it to sit down restaurant. You know, similar to what you'd find at Cosmos Food Court and elsewhere that we've seen. So you actually have three really good food courts or food halls, sorry, on that side of the street with Italy and then next up at Arya, you have good eats and then of course the one at Cosmos. So there's a lot of choices, lots to eat in that area and I think they did a good job. I think it also adds like a Vidara, you know, we've talked about them being connected to these other properties and how that's kind of like a hidden gem. And people were complaining in the comments last week after you brought up the MGM issues and do you get an email asking you how your stay was afterwards if you complain and a lot of people were saying Arya has been an issue and somebody said, you know, Vidara is the option if you want to be in that area really and I just wanted to point that out again. I think that's, you know, a great thing and it ties into all these other Cosmos food hall, you know, Arya's food hall, Bellagio, easy connection. So I think that really is kind of the gem of MGM right now for value. Yeah, it's great with all the connections there. And speaking of the survey thing, a lot of people seem to have noticed the same thing that I did that if you have a problem that they somehow delete the email, some people said that they'll change the email in the system. So when the email goes out, it just goes out of that email address. There's some conspiracies. Maybe that is actually true. Mark, we're having a bit of a golf revolution here and not the regular golf, but alternative golf, right? Top golf came in a few years ago on the old MGM Grand Adventurers site. But just in the last year, we have atomic golf, which is now under construction at Strat and then was it a month, month and a half ago, the swingers golf, which is like this adult mini golf at Mandela's Williams. Yeah, not the swingers club, the swingers golf. And then pop stroke, which is, I know they partner with Tiger Woods and they're expanding rapidly around the country. They are opening up a facility in town square. They broke ground this week and this is like, what is this like a putting course where you put it? So it's like actual greens where you're putting. So it's less like mini golf, right? Yeah, no windmills were used in the creation of this pop-up course, but it's not really a pop-up course. It's like, it's like a professional level putting greens and I think they said 36 holes so you can play two 18s and I'm sure they'll pack it full of people. And I think that's really unique, something you don't see, you know, everybody's been to pop-up, but have you really gone to like a true putting thing that, you know, professional golfers would use in a facility. So something unique to pull them in, the only issue is it's in Vegas, it's outside, it's not inside like the other ones. So what are you going to see in the summer, you know, maybe at night people will go out, but during the day is it going to be used, you know, is this investment worth it with that type of thing? I mean, in the winter and fall and stuff, it will be perfect, but we just talked about 110 degrees. I don't see anybody going out there to put when it's scolding hot out. Yeah, that will be an issue there and it's not right on the strip. I mean, it is on Las Vegas Boulevard, but this is a few miles south of what you would consider to be the main part of the strip. But this is insane. So every type of golf you could possibly have. We also have like the kiss mini golf, those like black light indoor golf. So we have golf covered from every angle here in Las Vegas, from traditional golf down to putting greens and now adult theme, even miniature golf and everything else, even empty golf courses. Yeah. You know, surrounded by rich people complaining about it, costing the city hundreds of millions of dollars. And speaking of that, Mark F1, let's talk F1 for a second. They released a new pack talking about the race. And I think we learned a few new details here. Basically, it's funny because in several different spots, it's like, will I be able to see the race from the sidewalk? No, we're going to block views. There's going to be scrims and fences and you will not be able to see this. Will I be able to see the race from pedestrian bridges? No, we're going to enclose the pedestrian bridges, quote unquote for your safety and the safety of the drivers. Basically, you're not going to see it from anywhere. We kind of knew that and they talk about road closures. They're putting in two road bridges, which is interesting, one over Flamingo and then one over Harmon. And they're going to start installing those in October. So just as they finish the paving through September, then they're going to put the road bridges in. It's one thing after the other. Nothing is going to be right until this is all done. And they're building grandstands already, so the fun has already begun. No, the question and what I'm really interested to hear is, when this is all said and done, will the locals, people in Vegas, will they think it was worth it, all the pain, all the suffering, all the construction and stuff. And it's just going to get worse. And then that weekend will probably be hell, you know, you want to stay away from the strip if you're not going to the race. So I'm just curious, like, you know, how much does it bring into the city, money wise and people wise? And then was it worth all the sacrifices to get there? I don't know. If you're not going to the race, I couldn't even imagine wanting to be down there. If you're going to the race, I think it'll be an awesome experience. But I wouldn't want to be in Vegas that weekend just to be there. And I wonder how many people are going to book it, not thinking about it or realizing it and showing up and being like, oh crap. Well, I think hotel rates will help them a little bit. That's true. That's trouble with that. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting with these road bridges is that they're not going to be open to the public. So you're going to have to prove that you have some sort of a reservation or some reason to be in the zone where you're crossing over the bridge. So that they're not doing that for traffic purposes. Everything will still be closed. It's going to be ugly. One other thing, Ellis Island announced their own grandstands. And this is strange to me because I hadn't previously heard them announce anything. And it seems like they're rolling out these grandstands, like maybe they gave the big players the first chance to sell their tickets. And then a few weeks later, you eventually got the mirage grandstands. And now we're at Ellis Island. So we just see more and more of these $1,500 for a three day ticket, including food and drink, $5,000 for a three night package in their hotel or motel or whatever you have at the Ellis Island. I think it includes a few other things. But yeah, it's crazy. It should be, it's that $1500 for three nights. If you get the hotel, it should be a thousand bucks because it's a super eight. Now, the front yard, which is really nice. We love the front yard is going to have all kinds of stuff going on. And they're going to have food and drink and everything. So Ellis Island, we do love it, $1,500. A little cheaper, I think, than some of the other places. And I was actually looking at the race course. Ellis Island would be a really good spot. That straightaway there would be a neat spot to watch the race compared to some of the other ones. So good on them. But are they selling all these tickets? That's the question. I love Ellis Island. I go there every time. Pretty much I go to Vegas. Frontroom's amazing. I think the grandstand at $1,500 is about what you're going to get anywhere. So I don't have a problem with that. The $5,000 with room included just blows my mind because of the hotel they have attached. I don't see a lot of those packages being sold. I checked about a day after they announced and there was maybe a few dozen tickets sold. It doesn't seem like they're flying off the shelves. But I'm sure there's going to be a lot of giveaways around town. A lot of locals are waiting for their friend to give them free tickets to this. People with Jews, people in the know, including myself, everybody out there. So you got to take no, but seriously, I think they will fill the grandstands, even if they don't sell them, right? People will find a way in and they'll do all that in the best Vegas way possible. And finally, I want to finish with this. I stumbled across this video from Vegas, Matt. He's a big YouTube channel. Has a lot of different, he streams on a lot of different platforms. But he did a video with the five spin method, which is basically you went into a high roller room, but you could do this anywhere. And he played every machine in the high roller room doing five spins per machine. And apparently this is a method that a lot of slot players are using. So basically the idea. I'm going to give the machine five spins, see if I get a bonus or whatever I get in those five spins, move on to the next one. Other people do variations with 10 spins or they do it until they get one bonus. My question everybody out there is, does this work for you? Like, do you think you actually get a better return by doing this? Or is it just like a fun game to play? And obviously the odds are still there. So hard over time to actually win more by doing this. Yeah, I mean, the real way to do it is to do five at once and then hop as you push the button. Exactly. Vegas Matt, you know, we want to see Vegas Matt running back and forth with his $50 bets on each machine. That would be great. Yeah, that would be pretty epic. Yeah, I don't think any of these things necessarily work. It's just a question of, do you have more fun doing it if you do than, hey, by all means go for it. It gives you a little bit of, you know, instead sitting at one machine, you get to test out a couple different machines and a lot of people playing because they like the bonuses or something. So this gives you a taste of maybe what that machine offers you and you might not have played it otherwise. So I think that's kind of cool. Like, maybe it's like an exploration type of thing where you're trying to find a machine that you think is good to use, but outside of a few people, I know that like really study a machine and can tell somewhat when it's going to close to hit type of thing depending on the way the graphic looks and stuff like that. I've never heard of a foolproof plan out there, at least not one that people are putting up on YouTube. Yeah. And there isn't one, right? Because these are slot machines that you can't really tell. Yeah. Obviously some machines have progressives that have to hit by a certain amount so you can predict on that, but even those machines that have those bonuses that you work towards them and, you know, they'll show fire and smoke and all of that is you get more of them. They're still random. So they're actually not triggered based on that. It just shows the amount of time you've done through it. So there's a lot of craziness with slots these days. You know, there's people that claim there's always this guy on YouTube years ago claim that he could tell you all these tricks and tips to save on slots and everything else, but I don't think it works. I think Vegas Matt lost a little bit on this go. Although he has several videos. He's done that in several high limit rooms. So, you know, he gets around playing the game sometimes five spins, sometimes ten. Yeah. I think anybody that does the our tips and tricks type of thing and sells a package, if it was really that good, they wouldn't tell anybody and they would just be making tons of money off of themself. So anybody that's selling something like that definitely as a scam do not give them your money. You know, nothing like that is worth. You know, there are ways in the casino to tip the advantage to you certain games, mostly table games stuff like that, but that takes years of practice and a lot of money that you're going to lose along the way learning the ropes. So I definitely don't think there's a get rich quick type of scheme out there. Yeah, in slot channels, I don't think that's a get rich quick kind of scheme. So those people on those slot channels seem to be losing more than they take in, but they're having fun. Shout out to Vegas Matt. I love your videos and you're making it all look good and those big bets are exciting to watch. So Mark, did you see that picture of the bat that this family found in their room at New York, New York? Apparently it was flying around in the curtains. The dad killed it. He puts it out in the stairwell or something. Next day he goes and tells the front desk goes home to Arizona. They say you got to get rabies shots because we don't know if the bat had rabies. Now they're suing New York, New York and MGM basically saying they were negligent. I don't know like why didn't they bring the bat downstairs right away? They threw it in the stairwell. What do you think? Is there a pad or something? I think this is a scam. No. When I first saw the headline, I was like, okay, you know, I think they're asking for like 15, 16,000, nothing like outrageous testing all that stuff. I get it. But then you hear the whole story where they dealt with this on their own and there was like eight people in the room or something like crazy like that and you know, they didn't alert anyone. If I have a bat in my room, I go outside and I go down the desk and I say, hey, send somebody up to take care of that. I don't wrangle it myself and then put it in the hallway and then the next day be like, okay, by the way, kill the bat and they get mad when they throw it away. It just makes those beautiful New York New York rooms even better, Mark. It's because they're basements and the bats want to live in the basement. I'm like big stories and big properties and things we're going to talk about this week, including resource world. And this was a weird thing to somebody tag me in a tweet showing the food hall there on Wednesday night, I think, or Tuesday night, around 830. And I guess Monday through Thursday or whatever, they're closing half the food hall. It's not even open. And you know, maybe think about how big that food hall is compared to some of the others. Like they have so many different venues in there. But then the next day's 7pm in the casino and it was empty. So I don't know if this is what's happening on the rest of the strip. I haven't really seen empty casinos this week. So it's interesting. Is resource world struggling? We don't know. Yeah, I mean, the complaint since they opened was that you didn't have late night eats or anything past like eight, nine o'clock at night. So I couldn't even imagine if I went there during midweek and they have all their food. They don't have a ton of other food options outside of that that are probably open or vibrant at that time. So that's like your grab and go type spot. And then you have to go out into the mall area to sit down at some other dining area. But those are all high end, higher end, expensive restaurants. So you don't really have anything. So now you're going off property. Maybe you're going to the Tacos del Gordo across the street or pepper mill or something like that. But you're losing that business. I guess there isn't really any business there. It's kind of crazy. Virgin hotels, you know, everybody take a sip for, we have the Virgin hotels mentioned. The good thing for resource world is it's a new property. So it doesn't have any leaks. So just a foreshadow to what's happening later in the show, but it's yeah, because half the strip is leaking. It's insane. But yeah, we'll see. I mean, I was there on Seco de Mayo, obviously, that was during the week, but it was a holiday packed, you know, and that was my last time really spending a lot of time at the property, like spending an entire evening there. Every other time I've been there recently, it's been fairly busy. So maybe it's just a slow week, probably no conventions there. We'll see, but we'll keep an eye on that for everybody. I just realized on this show, we're going to talk about all the villains of Las Vegas, the current villains of Las Vegas. So let's start with James Dolan, although I don't know if he's a villain of Las Vegas. A lot of people don't like him, but he brought this fear here. So I guess for Las Vegas, not really a villain, but we learned a few other things. There's a villain on Nick's fans, for sure. And one crazy story is he built a 2.1 billion dollar sphere, a couple of other things he mentioned in an interview is that they're going to have robots, and holograms, and they're doing all that with their sort of theater show, the movie that we've talked about so much. So they're going to make it more, it sounds like almost like a theme park, pre-show, attraction before you go into the movie. So yeah, some interesting things as it comes, they're also still looking for more residencies. We saw a look inside, another leaked look inside of the screen. This time it wasn't deleted, so I can show it to everybody. And then Tommy Lee posted a video inside the sphere on Instagram, leading to some speculation is Motley Crew or Tommy Lee himself. Are they coming to the sphere for a residency? The first thing you look at, you're like, oh, did they get hacked? What is this? But they're just testing the video. It's like a double-edged sword, though. I feel like the coolest, the best view of the immersion for the screens is like the top back. But when you see the stage, you're like really, really far away from the stage. It's not all seats or good seats for seeing the show up front. But do you want to be more seeing the people perform, or do you want to more see videos? For the movie aspect, I'm guessing you want to be up or decked probably to get all of that. But maybe for a show, you want to be kind of downed center. So it'll be interesting to see once people are in there and you see stuff go live, which area is better or what the best seats are for that type of thing. It's funny. I had the same exact thought I was looking at those videos being like, where would be the best place to sit for this to be able to see the show, see the screen, definitely not all the way on the bottom, right? Obviously, you'd see the performance really close. I think the very top, like those 400 levels, you're probably missing some of the screen above. I don't know. I think like the 300 level, but it'll be interesting to see once it opens, we'll get a better idea. It's not like a traditional thing where you can say, yeah, closer is better. There's got to be some sweet spots in there and I look forward to hearing about that. Someone also talked about other spheres. When they first announced the Vegas fear, they also announced a sphere in London, release concept art. And then that project has sort of just gone away or we haven't heard anything about it. They do mention that they're still working on that project and also that they've developed different versions of the sphere that could be as small as 2500 seats. As a reminder, this has I think 17,500 with seating for up to 20K with like standing people in the back stuff like that. So maybe one tenth, one ninth, one eighth of the size. So they're going forward with this. So I hope it's a financial success for them. Yeah, that kind of like opens my mind up to a bit or my eyes up like, maybe this is just like proof of concept Vegas, they didn't care about the expenditure so much and they want to sell whatever they've designed out of this, like lease it to people, the concept of the design and they'll make money and fees off of that building these around the world and taking a cut. That type of thing, I don't know if that's what they're looking to do or if they're trying to bring up some money that they'll invest themselves for it. But it just, it does seem like, hey, we're going to show you what this can be, how cool it is. And then you can pay us to build it other places, even small ones, which I think makes more business sense than trying to make it all back off of this one sphere. But it'll be interesting to see if that plays out long term or if they just end up killing it at the sphere and making the money back that way. I'm still skeptical that it will be a positive business experience, but I think it'll be really cool when it's all done. You're just waiting for the MGM sphere. That's true. For sure, 2030 MGM sphere, unveiled. And let's talk about the rain, Mark. So we had Hurricane Hillary, she kind of missed us, didn't get that much rain. We were projected to get between 2 and 3 inches of rain in a matter of 4 to 6 hours with Hurricane Hillary. Well, a tiny like summer monsoon, which we get in Las Vegas, these kind of storm clouds that pass through, rains for an hour, doesn't even always rain all over the city. Like for example, this cloud came through the other day. I got barely any rain at my house. They got up to like half an inch head, Belagio, UNOV got about a third of an inch, other areas of the strip a little bit less in about 30 minutes. And everything went to hell, Mark. Like we missed the hurricane and then some little storm cloud comes through and the whole city. And I mean it, like Harris, did you see Winnie and Buck, where they used to be, the entire roof collapsed. Vital Vegas said it was the revenge of Winnie and Buck. So a good on Winnie and Buck for coming back from the dead. Then Paris started leaking and then Belagio started leaking and then there was a video of top golf leaking and everything else going to hell. And of course your favorite, the link flood down there. As people like to point out, it was designed that way, Mark, it is a flood channel. But I think you and I both agree, maybe it's time to redesign it. About the years later or four, you know, as the 70s when that was built, there was so much crazy footage. I can't imagine what would have happened if the hurricane came. Yeah, I hope we get to use the Hillary meme again, you know, the storm meme that any reason to bring that up again is great. So hopefully Sean throws it up on the screen. But no, it's just crazy. You know, you see these videos and you're like, wow, they must have got pounded and then you're like a third of an inch and you're, oh, okay, you're like, and this happens every year. You think they would figure out a way to design the buildings or retrofit the buildings to make sure that they're not getting poured on. At least it wasn't like circa when the water was coming through the sportsbook screens. That was still the craziest thing I think I've seen from rain and Vegas. But flooding, you know, even the streets and parts of Vegas were flooded really badly. And then other parts of Vegas got no rain. It's totally bizarre. On a side note, I don't know if I've ever talked about this for people in Las Vegas, but if it's raining, go to the Adventure Dome. The entire dome is leaked since it was built. It's never been airtight. So if you walk around Adventure Dome, there's literally buckets so that it can catch all the water coming through. It's a lot of fun. I don't think that's a good time. Yeah. So go do that. But I wonder if this is really the deferred maintenance. We've talked so much about how buildings and the maintenance have kind of changed since the ownership of the building and the operations has changed in a lot of these casinos, especially the MGM and Caesars casinos. And I wonder if like some of that deferred maintenance is finally hurting them. I don't remember seeing this widespread flooding like all over the city and multiple properties. And yeah, it was an insane site. So we've got our crazy videos that we thought we were going to get with Hillary, but it was just some random monsoon. Yeah, I think there's something to play in that, but I also think that they have design flaws. I mean, look at circuits, what, two, three years old, and they're getting pounded last year. So I don't know if anybody doesn't consider the rain or the monsoon season that happens in Vegas every summer. But you know, somebody who ever builds the next one, hopefully Fountain Blue has that set up that they know what they're doing and they don't get flooded, you know, year one that they're open. What are the odds that the Fountain Blue has a leak in its first year, given everything we've seen. Yeah. We just don't know how to handle rain. So Formula One, back in the news again, we're going to have to talk about them because they did something good. This is our second sort of villain of Las Vegas. And you know, they had gone to every business and basically said, you have to pay us $1,500 a person for your occupancy. So if you have a thousand people, 1,500 times a thousand, just like that. And there was a lot of backlash. And now they sort of backtracked a little bit. Now they're charging 50K for the entire venue. And this will get them access to the feed and get them the ability to sell packages. And you know, viewing and they're not going to block their views and everything. So they backtracked on it. Are you happy about this? I mean, I think this is what they should have done in the first place. I'm glad people fought back a little bit. But it's a little strange how this race has come together with Formula One coming to the government asking for more money, you know, really destroying the streets for a long time without announcing the full scale of it, but kind of roll it out and piecemeal. And then this, it hasn't been a good start. But I'm glad to see that they changed their minds. I think this is good. You know, it makes sense for everybody. I understand they want to get money for their products if somebody's able to view it. So I don't have the problem with the setting of fee. And I think a set fee because not everybody on these terraces or restaurants or anything like that are going to have a view of it. So to charge everybody the same fee, even if you're in the back and you can't see anything I think is ridiculous. So the flat fee, I mean, 50K, still a burden of some thing to take on unless you can sell these tickets. You know, Ellis Island hasn't been able to sell their tickets very much since they launched. And so who knows how well this will do, maybe it will be a money losing thing for the venues. We'll only have to see how that plays out. But I think this is a better fit for everybody and they still get their money and hopefully the restaurants can make money off of it too. Yeah, this feeds more into the narrative of Formula One helping Las Vegas and helping Las Vegas businesses instead of Formula One trying to come and take all the money out of the economy, which is what it seemed to happen or at least the hotels got some of the stuff. But these smaller businesses need that and I'm glad that they're doing that. We also saw the bridge that they built one of those temporary bridges, the one that's going over Harman and we saw it testing with like a cat bus, one of our RTC buses and it was kind of cool. I mean, it's interesting that they built this thing. It's going to be up there for a couple of months and two lanes in each direction, kind of fun. I wouldn't want to drive on it. No. I mean, it looks fine. I mean, it looks okay until it doesn't, but you know, the bus is going down the middle and you're going to have two buses on there. I didn't seem like there's a ton of room for it. So it's going to be tight. It's going to be slow moving. It's going to be a mess of traffic and people getting clearance to go through and, oh, man, just craziness. Yeah, you're right. The bus did drive in the middle because they're still testing and to be safe. But yeah, there's not going to be any high speed driving over this bridge. It's going to be very slow. And to your point, you're not allowed inside the race zone unless you have reservations or something. So hopefully they're going to try to keep people off of it. But this is the way that they're going to help get people in and out of the resort court or for the race with these bridges. That's the answer to the question that everybody asked, how are people going to get to work? How it, yep, this is it. You're going to sit in traffic for two hours on one of those temporary bridges, but it's better than nothing. It's better than nothing. I'm telling you what, I would get an Uber from the airport and have them drop me off outside the zone and I would walk in with my luggage. I would not want to sit in that. It's just going to be nuts. It's going to be, it just prepared to be frustrated. Get your zen on before you start moving your way into this. Yeah, it's like New Year's Eve on the strip. It's the same kind of thing where it's just a hassle and then you finally get to where you go. You have fun. And then it's like a three mile walk to get back to your car because you got to figure out where it was. Because that's what I always did. I would park outside the resort areas and then walk in because it was just so hard back in the day to do that. But I'm old Mark and I haven't been to the strip under New Year's Eve for a while. So I can't really speak to that experience these days. Unfortunately. Yeah, that's how we roll rollers. Yeah, so let's talk about the A's. John Fisher, the A's owner just had an interview with the review journal because the A's finally submitted their paperwork to Major League Baseball for their relocation. That's the official sort of process. Now the owners and the commissioner will kind of evaluate it and then they will vote. And we expect them to vote to approve it. Basically, I mean, they've been behind this all along. But he does this really extensive interview and he answers a lot of questions that are very interesting. Has he considered selling? He says, no, I'm not going to sell the team. He says, I've owned the team since 2005 and I've been looking for a new home for them since then. Now, this is a guy who is widely criticized for not embracing the Oakland city. And here he is saying, I bought the team 20 years ago. And since that day, I've been trying to move them or at least get them a new home, you know, maybe a new stadium in Oakland. He also said that the A's are going to lose $40 million this year, which I haven't heard of a Major League sports franchise losing money. Now remember, the A's are in risk of losing their profit sharing, right? If they didn't get a stadium deal by I think the end of January of next year, they were going to lose their profit sharing. I always assume the profit sharing really drove them into the green, but he seems to be saying no. I'm skeptical of this, you know, and I'm sure there's some funny accounting they get to get this and get a tax rebate or write off or whatever. I'm like, okay, maybe they're spending a lot on their lease. I looked that up. They paid $1.2 million last year for the Coliseum. So, you know, and they're not refurbishing that or fixing it up in any way, so there's no money going there. You know, this is all before ticket sales, merchandise sales, concession sales, which I know they don't sell a ton of tickets, but still, you're getting all that money. I don't know where you're, you know, you're already $40 million under and then you're saying you're losing another $40 million on top of that, I just don't see it. That's cheap. What is that, like, under $10K a game? That's insane. It just doesn't add up to me and I'm definitely no expert for MLB teams, but the math that seems a bit funky. What I found interesting in this interview is he's very careful to say how the other owners and the commissioner have all the power here, like, to not try to overstep his bounds, you know, and to give them the respect because they are really deciding this. So they asked about the Las Vegas ballpark, the home of the aviators, and whether that's where they would play after next season, because they only are allowed to stay in the Oakland Coliseum, at least as of now, through the end of next season. And he basically said there's some improvements needed. It's up to Major League Baseball on where they'll play. So the commissioner and the other owners will decide where they play in the interim while they build their stadium. And then he dropped this thing in there. The question was, are you considering a fixed roof or are you sticking with a retractable roof? Remember, they were very, very adamant in all of their proposals and the law that they got passed, all the funding that they got that this was a retractable roof stadium. And of course, now that they got their money, they're not doing the retractable roof. He hedges a little bit, but if he hedges, you know, they're not building that retractable roof. That's just goes to show that whenever you give public funding, they never fall through. There should be stipulations if you don't, you know, once you put the retractable roof and you get this chunk of money and that type of thing, but they never write it in that way. So they always back down and do less than what they promise in. You know, that will be sad because, you know, certain months of the year, April, May, even into like, you know, end of September, Vegas is great at night and you want that roof open. So that's something, you know, an experience that you won't get now if they don't add it in. So hopefully, you know, he gets a lot of backlash for that and they put it in. Just more confirmation that that concept art was BS, right? It's not a real stadium. This was just something they threw together to get it in front of lawmakers, the stadium all over again. Yeah, exactly. And it was, we knew that when it came because it was a ridiculous concept art, but he said they haven't made their final decision yet. Again, this was always pitched as a retractable roof stadium, never pitched as a dome, but he said, even if it's a fixed dome, which we know it's going to be a fixed dome, it will have large openings and a lot of clarity in the roof structure and walls that it will have a feeling of being outdoors, even though you have a roof over your head. So that's what you're going to get on the strip. They'll put some windows so you can see the strip in the background, maybe similar to a legion, I guess. Yeah. And that's a shame. You know, baseball is meant to be outside, at least, you know, not in the heat of the summer, but the shoulder seasons, you should have that roof open and get the views of, you know, that's the big thing. That was the big selling feature that you get awesome views of the strip, you know, from the backstop, like watching from behind home plate and it was going to be spectacular and now you're probably not going to get most of that. All right. Last thing, we're a little long on this subject, but we have to talk about the Mark Davis and Fisher feud, right? These guys really don't like each other. Mark Davis thinks that Fisher sort of screwed him as the Raiders were leaving Oakland. And in this interview, he sort of admits that he apologizes and says it was his fall. He didn't make it easy on the Raiders when they were leaving. Mark Davis has said basically the ain't signed a lease with the Coliseum in order to block the Raiders from getting a new stadium on that site. And he seems to be trying to make nice with Mark Davis as he moves here. So he was a little humble in that interview and I think probably Mark Davis appreciated that. He'll be, you know, hanging out anytime soon. Well, he was like, you know, the Raiders have been successful. I want to know how they've been successful. They sell 60% of their tickets to the visiting team. That's how they're successful. They have done a good job, a better job than I think a lot of people expected as far as coming here and being in the community and I'll give him credit for that as far as what Mark Davis has done. A team that was very sort of divisive when it came. But yeah, he's looking to them in the golden nights and to see what's going on. So I don't know. I left this thinking at least he was a little humble in this interview. I don't have all the personal history that a lot of A's fans do who hate him. So hopefully we will move along here. We should know in the next couple of months with the approval and then they'll start with everything else. And then we might actually get to see what the stadium is going to look like because we know that big concept arch thing ain't going to happen. So good old Las Vegas smoking mirrors turn of events. It's going to be at the All Net Arena. There you go. So let us know what you think about anything we talked about today. The All Net Arena marks favorite thing. We got a couple of MTM Vegas drinking game references in here today throw it up. So it's good stuff. Although poor Chris Angel wasn't mentioned. So we'll have to do better. Thank you for listening to the MTM Vegas podcast. Don't forget to check us out on YouTube where we released the show twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. YouTube.com forward slash miles to memories and all of our Vegas content can be found at MTM Vegas.com that's post podcast videos. See you there. Thanks again for listening. Talk to you next time.