Tag Archives: Prive nightclub

Apart from some staunch Las Vegans who feel – and sincerely hope – that “Sin City” will change its long-standing dastardly moniker and morph into a hotbed for bio-med and other non-sordid industries, it’s not going to happen, at least according to many Las Vegas authorities, including casino mogul Sheldon Addison and his many cohorts. 

Las Vegas has, is, and apparently always will be all about entertainment oozing from its every eclectic pore.   Tourists, the Las Vegas lifeblood, come to entertain and be entertained– and, like the advertising slogans oft allude to, not always in the most savory of pursuits.  

Having a drink- or ten – staying up to the wee hours, while chasing microscopic skirts or quaffed GQ gents is the regular modus operandi for many in Las Vegas.

But could that historic Las Vegas lifestyle be facing evolutionary, if not revolutionary, pressure to change? 

Taking the cue from pop entertainment icon visitors Brit-Brit, Paris Hilton, LiLo, and others, perhaps that decadent, yet strangely renewing lifestyle of old is, like life itself,  changing– is guzzling chic water and partaking in only good clean fun becoming the evolving new order ruling the night? 

Enter Prive Nightclub, the current poster child for potentially a ‘New Deal’ in Vegas.  The nightclub reopened late last Friday night to throngs of partygoers waiting for hours to get in after the club was shut down and a $500,000 fine paid by Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in July to Nevada gambling regulators for the private Las Vegas nightclub’s many prior indiscretions, including hiring employees with criminal records, allowing minors inside the club and permitting underage drinking, drug use, taking dangerously drunk customers and dropping them off unattended in the casino, and physical and sexual assault by nightclub employees. [July 19 Las Vegas Backstage Access article.] 

It was almost like the past never happened.  In fact, many party going tourists from outside Las Vegas, didn’t even know the trendy club and sister ultralounge, The Living Room, had been shut down.   Once one was lucky (and skillful) enough fight the throng of hundreds waiting behind the entry ropes and get the inside, they found the club didn’t miss a single thundering beat, testified by the quaking, packed dance floor and eye-candy go-go dancers aplenty shaking their overflowing assets like no tomorrow.  Rapper and music producer Jermaine Dupri took to the turntables later in the evening, seemingly possessed and oblivious to the prior entertainment history lesson. 

What was different, though, was that topless and otherwise lewd and somewhat lascivious activity – the stuff that made Las Vegas a leading “no tell” tourist destination – was curiously absent.  Add to the fact, hotel-casino staffs were also allowed to enter unencumbered, not escorted by Prive security, as was the customary practice before, presumably to catch sin before it starts. 

Prive is encouraged to remain in good graces, as their temporary opening license is good only through Sept. 20, unless it is extended by the county.   Before that, on Sept. 1, club officials are scheduled to appear before the Clark County Commission to check to see if they are remaining nice and not naughty. 

Before you think this Prive incident is a statistical rare anomaly, think again.  Much like the H1N1 pandemic virus, club actions similar to Prive are all pervasive in Las Vegas– it’s just that similar nightclubs haven’t been caught- yet. 

While Las Vegas Backstage Access doesn’t ever condone actions that hurt anyone, intentionally or unintentionally, save this, we feel that partying and risqué fun in the spirit of Las Vegas isn’t such a bad thing.  Las Vegas is not Olathe, Kansas. 

In the final analysis, is Las Vegas squeezing the “sin” out of Sin City?   

Will late night milk and cookies, and an occasional Stevie D trendy gourmet sucker, rule the New Vegas scene, much to the detriment and demise of a unique lifestyle- and contribute to further waning of club revenues?