10 weirdest things that happen when you leave Las Vegas
We’ve all been caught off guard when we travel by something that just “isn’t the same” as it is at home. We’ve taken a look at the weirdest things that happen when you move to Las Vegas. Now, we took to Facebook to see what’s most weird about leaving Las Vegas. Here’s what you had to say:
1. You have to pay for parking
Paying for parking is awful. Sure, we don’t have a metro or expansive light rail system, but at least we can find free parking pretty much anywhere. Leave Las Vegas and suddenly your transportation costs skyrocket. No, we’re not entitled. We just don’t like living life by the meter.
2. You realize almost nothing is open 24 hours
Pull into town at 3 a.m. and realize you need cough medicine? Better hope the local Walmart isn’t one that closes at 10 p.m., or you’re stuck.
“It was a depressing realization,” Katherine Knott said on Facebook.
3. You get tripped up by last call
This was a big one on Facebook. Good luck keeping the party going all night long when you leave Las Vegas. Most states or counties set the last call between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. “But what if I want to buy alcohol at 5 a.m.?” you may ask. If you’re outside of Las Vegas, you better hope you’re somewhere like the Miami entertainment district or Atlantic City.
4. You try to go out after 10 p.m. and realize there’s not much going on
We’ll let Las Vegan Ellen LaPenna explain: “I moved to Vegas in 1998 and having all stores open 24/7 was incredible … In (New York) back then everything closed by 9 p.m. … They say New York is the city that never sleeps, but they have it all wrong … It’s Vegas!”
5. You realize humidity isn’t something to play around with
Humidity is gross. It leaves you sticky and grumpy and with weird-looking hair. It might get hot in Las Vegas, but at least we’re not drowning in the heat.
“I’d take the dry 110-degree weather any day than 90 degrees and humidity at 85%,” Shannon Harding told us on Facebook.
6. Everyone thinks they know everything about your hometown
What’s the first thing you hear when you tell someone you’re from Las Vegas? A lame joke about how we all live on the Strip or a tirade about what an awful city we just came from.
“The weirdest thing was people thinking everyone worked in casinos,” Carolyn Pinther told us. “They couldn’t believe I had a normal office job in an insurance agency.”
7. You start to enjoy the shocked look on people’s faces when you say where you’re from
Back to the lame hotel jokes. Or “Wait, do people actually live in Las Vegas??” Yes, and a lot of them. Not as many as New York or San Francisco, to be sure, but enough to have built a good-sized city outside of the Strip.
8. You get looked at like you’re crazy by a cashier at least once because you’re used to being able to find everything, all the time
Is it too much to ask to be able to find whatever we want, whenever we want it? Apparently.
“What do you mean you can’t buy beer and wine in the same store? This happened when I visited Pennsylvania,” Kary Nguyen posted on Facebook. “Apparently there’s some old law you can’t sell both in the same store.”
9. You’ll be caught completely off guard by the weather at some point
Whether you’ve lived in Las Vegas your entire life or have been here a few months, it doesn’t take long to get used to never never needing an ice scraper. Chances are at some point you’ll get on a plane during a seemingly harmless month like November or April only to find that you’re wildly underdressed for the weather on the other side.
10. You’ll get asked how many celebrities you’ve met
Sometimes you’ll have stories about “running into celebrities while shopping off the Strip. I’ve seen FlavaFlav at Silverado Ranch Target. Mike Tyson at the PetSmart across the way, and several other celebs at various grocery stores,” Jennifer Renee said on Facebook.
Most of the time you won’t. Or it’ll be a story about that time you saw a B-list celeb at Target but you took so long to figure out who it was you didn’t get a chance to say hi. Or you couldn’t care less about where celebrities shop, so stop asking.
Contact Stephanie Grimes at sgrimes@reviewjournal.com. Find her on Twitter: @stephgrimes