I grew up in Las Vegas. My mom worked in pretty much every casino on the Strip.
Las Vegas is a 24-hour city. It never stops.
I've always thought of Las Vegas as Los Angeles on its day off. There's not any hierarchy of taste, and that's what L.A. always was to me: It's not really a town of culture - it's a town of entertainment.
When a lot of people are calling it a night at 2 A.M., New Orleans is coming alive.
Las Vegas is Everymans cut-rate Babylon. Not far away there is, or was, a roadside lunch counter and over it a sign proclaiming in three words that a Roman emperors orgy is now a democratic institution. 'Topless Pizza Lunch'.
It's a corny old gag about Las Vegas, the temporal city if there ever was one, trying to camouflage the hours and retard the dawn, when everybody knows that if you're feeling lucky you're really feeling time in its rawest form, and if you're not feeling lucky, they've got a clock at the bus station.
Once I moved to London I thought it was unbeatable. I work a lot in L.A. and love it, but would never give up London. It's a true world city, with an energy that's unique.
Las Vegas is a great place to be from, not to live in.
[On Las Vegas:] I love that town. No clocks. No locks. No restrictions.
For a degenerate like me, Vegas is like a walk down memory lane. Last time I went to Vegas, I went to my old coke dealer's kid's bar mitzvah.
People say, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." Because people do wild and crazy things in Vegas that they probably wouldn't do any other time. Which is why I feel like, if you're gonna open your first restaurant, this might be the place to do it.
The biggest difference between L.A. and my hometown in Georgia is when Georgia goes to sleep, L.A. wakes up. So, like, in LaGrange, when people are going to sleep at 10, 11 to get up in the morning, we're just getting dressed to go out.
I love Las Vegas. I like that Las Vegas has everything. Everything and anything you want to do, you can do in Las Vegas. You can pretty much do it all day and all night if you want to.
I came to Vegas because I work 20 days a month here; I couldn't live anywhere else.
But I love New York. I used to set my alarm clock when I was there, and get up at 4am and get a coffee, just because I could.
After the bitching I'd done to Abe about going to remote, crappy places, I should have been excited about the prospect of going to Sin City.
Viva Las Vegas with your neon flashin' and your one arm bandits crashin' all those hopes down the drain. Viva Las Vegas turnin' day into nighttime, turnin night into daytime. If you see it once, you'll never be the same again.
