Roaring 20s

An Oppulent Weekend in Las Vegas with Friends

Long weekends are beautiful; you can do a lot with an extra 24 hours. I escaped San Francisco this past weekend to celebrate Tony and Kaitlyn’s birthdays in Las Vegas.

Tony and Kaitlyn are two of the first friends I made in college. During orientation in 2019, Tony and I sat in a crowded room, aggressively refreshing our screens to select classes for our first quarter. A few weeks later, Tony, a third friend, and I were drinking vodka out of a thermos I’d brought from home. “It’s gonna last us the whole quarter,” I foolishly claimed. That night, our third friend invited two girls to hang with us. One of those girls was Kaitlyn, and Tony took quite a liking to her. Ice cream was painfully awkward for me as the fifth wheel, but in hindsight, it was a small price to pay to meet two of my closest friends.

Years passed, and I have fond memories of knocking out homework in Tony’s apartment while Kaitlyn gave us weird looks as we yelled about the Navier-Stokes equation or the coefficient of static friction. We all took ski trips together, weekend getaways to SF and LA, worked on cool engineering projects, and eventually walked across the stage together at graduation.

That’s a long-winded way of saying that I was pretty excited to catch up.

I slept through the plane journey, and the Espinosa family sent a car for me to the airport. Their driver Kevin picked me up and asked where I was coming in from, and I responded, “San Francisco”. He told me his son is majoring in Computer Science, to which I responded that he is cooked and should think about entering the trades. Kidding, I gave him the cookie-cutter advice about how he should just build things and put them out and the days of grinding LinkedIn for a job are over. I hate when people ask me for advice, I am grossly underqualified to give any but too proud to admit it.

Quick pid - stop at Tony’s parents, then off to the Venetian Resort. Tony’s parents are some sort of platinum, sapphire, and various other rare earth metals status members of the Venetian resort; instead of waiting in the check-in line like plebs, we took these side doors into a VIP area where a guy in a suit vest asked me if I needed anything. I looked at my watch (11:15AM), held back the urge to say vodka soda, and said cappuccino instead.

I’m on a fashion journey, so I filled my suitcase more adventurously than I normally would. I looked up a YouTube video on ironing clothes (my mom usually does this step) and pressed the wrinkles out of my white shirt.

This is pre-ironing don’t come at me

I sent a fit check picture to some friends back home, and they rejected the outfit, but I vetoed their opinion. Looking at my outfit in the elevator in the mirror reinvigorated my confidence, and I felt good walking into Tony and Kaitlyn’s room.

Wait no it wasn’t a room, it was a penthouse. Like the one from The Hangover (Mike Tyson's tiger could have fit in the bathroom comfortably).

Pre-drinks at the room were always a joyful 45 minutes for all 3 nights of the trip. Me and Aiden would show up on time, none of the girls would be ready, and we would have between 1 and 3 drinks with Tony. Then the rest of the group would slowly trickle in, and we would have more drinks and snacks. The contrast between the drinks and snacks did a great job of encapsulating the extremes of the American Economy. We were drinking 18-year-old scotch, while eating Doritos, Ruffles, and Nutter Butters. It’s always important to stay grounded.

At dinner, I caught up with my college friends ate sushi, and did Sake bombs; the table went through the typical ritual.

Sake Sake Sake!

Bomb Bomb Bomb!

As a turban-wearing man, my anxiety went through the roof because I was taught to avoid yelling the word 'bomb' in a public place. I kept my eyes on the sushi and ate through the anxiety.

One of my favorite meals was lunch with four of my closest college friends; being boys we talked about index funds, 401k vs Roth IRA, and the financialization of the American Economy and its impact on the true value of goods and services. The girls smartly decided to sit separately from us. These are the only pictures that survived, you can kinda see us in the background. I wonder what the girls chatted about.

Dinner was at a steakhouse, where they blow-torched the steak in front of us. I didn’t realize this was steak cooking’s standard operating procedure. As a safety measure, I put on my eye protection as I always do when heavy machinery is in use nearby.

At the club, I usually sigh at the abomination of the line at the front door and get anxious about the inflated cover charge that’s in my near future. This time around, thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Espinosa and the various rare earth metal status, we walked around the line, into a new queue with just our group.

They check us in, stamp us twice, and I put my hands to the side instinctively ready for a little pat down the guard laughs. He fist-bumps me, and goes, “First time at a table”. “Yeah”, I respond in a bewildered tone. Then he gives me a pat on the back, motions me forward, and gives me a look that roughly translates into, “Do all the drugs you want in there dawg”. I don’t do drugs, but good to know.

I hate to be cliche, but getting a table at the club in Vegas was the best experience ever. Elevated platforms are currency in a nightclub, the higher up you are, the better. We were at the same altitude as headlining DJ Zedd! Maybe even a little higher.

There were two bottles of Vodka on our table, I grabbed a glass scooped some ice into it, and felt a tug behind my left shoulder. As I turned, a lady wearing laced leggings, grabbed the glass out of my hand almost angrily. Confused, I tried to form a sentence. She explained that she was working our table and would love to make me my drink. "Fantastic", I replied; this experience was a stark contrast with having to flag down a disgruntled bartender for a $20 drink. Minutes later I was back on the edge of the balcony, looking out onto the crowd, sipping my drink, and evaluating the economics of nightclubs. But as the nice lady made me more vodka sodas, the economy slipped out of my conscious thoughts, I let loose, enjoyed the music, and built anticipation for Zedd, the main performer of the night, to come out.

I’m back home now. And this weekend seems like a fever dream. A reunited group of college friends, tearing things up in Sin City. I often sit at my desk and start snickering, remembering random moments from this trip.

These snickers are a reminder that doing fun things with your friends is what life is all about. Making memories with the people closest to me scratches a primal itch; After all, humans were meant to live in tribes.

As I dive deeper and deeper into my twenties, I realize that building and maintaining a great tribe around you is what life is all about. Most readers of Bicoastal are friends and family. If you want to hang out, comment on this post, or shoot me a text.

Let's hang more, it’ll be fun.

-Raj