December 24, 2021
Where to Go in 2022: Las Vegas Wins Big With LGBTQ Travelers
Jim Gladstone READ TIME: 6 MIN.
At the Flamingo, Las Vegas' oldest casino, founded by mobster Bugsy Siegel in 1946, topless showgirls once strutted their stuff. Since 2020, it's where the queens of "RuPaul's Drag Race Live" now sashay the night away.
Though the pandemic's evolution is as unpredictable as a game of craps, Las Vegas is betting on an enthusiastic return of domestic travel fueled by a spate of new attractions that will raise the city's cred with gender-fluid post-Boomer generations and send the Rat Pack crowd scurrying. From louche resorts to overtly inclusive stage spectacles to the immersively trippy new Area 15 entertainment complex with its oddball art and virtual reality experiences, the party is back on, with more youthful queer appeal than ever before.
Grown-Up Fun
Source: Jim Gladstone
Cirque du Soleil? So passé! The sticky-fingered new kid on the block is Atomic Saloon at the Venetian, which premiered in late 2019 before a 14-month pandemic hiatus.
The acrobats and variety performers are very much in the vein of Cirque, but instead of New Age music and kid-friendly clowns, there's raunchy pansexual humor and an adults-only policy. In the opening number, a singing cowboy encourages audiences to sing along with a jingle extolling the joys of analingus. And they do – with impressive gusto.
Rethinking Dinner Theater
At the Cosmopolitan's new "Italian American Psychedelic" restaurant Superfrico, your senses will be as overloaded as your pesto-pistachio-stracciatella-mortadella pizza. In an amiably chaotic dining room with walls adorned in funky contemporary art, your dinner will be occasionally interrupted by impromptu performances ranging from a tableside magic act to a dance routine that erupts atop the bar.
Retail Conspiracy
Source: Omega Mart Las Vegas
Omega Mart, part of the Area 15 complex, at first appears to be a run-of-the-mill grocery store. But wait...the chickens are covered in tattoos and a featured Lacroix flavor is Mashed Potato.
Now open the refrigerator case to step through a portal into a sinister world of industrial conspiracy. It's all part of a conceptual funhouse that simultaneously celebrates and skewers mass consumption.
Across a Day-Glo indoor park from the market, you can pick up some award-winning booze at the Lost Spirits Distillery, where tasting rooms are designed to evoke submarine travel and a candlelit forest.
Mark Your Calendar
There's always a mega-event happening in Vegas, and for queer travelers who love to revel in celebration, a year-round roster of Las Vegas special events and concerts offers plenty of finds to anchor your trip.
HustlaBall (January 13-16, 2022) returns for its eighth year of sex positivity with a complete takeover at the Artisan Hotel. For balls of a different sort, the largest annual LGBTQ+ sports event Sin City Classic takes place simultaneously. Las Vegas PRIDE is scheduled to return in October 2022, as well as Clexacon, "the first and largest multi-fandom event for LGBTQ+ women, trans and non-binary fans, and creators."
Upcoming can't-miss concerts include Melissa Errico celebrates Stephen Sondheim (February 25), Todrick Hall (March 18), Ben Platt (April 2) and Katy Perry (multiple dates).
Where to Stay
Source: Virgin Hotels Las Vegas
After a full year's closure and a down-to-the-studs renovation, the once bro-dacious Hard Rock Hotel is now the stylish, LGBTQ+-welcoming Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. The resort, wrapped around more than five acres of al fresco dining, a Mykonos-themed day club, and a spacious green lawn, is a soothing remove from the thronged Vegas sidewalks. Dining highlights include an outpost of Los Angeles' Thai sensation Night + Market, which pulls no punches when it comes to its fiery dishes. Spicy, too, is the Shag Room, a luxe '70s-inspired lounge tucked away from the casino floor.
The Takeaway
Las Vegas has long been a favorite LGBTQ+ getaway destination thanks to gay-centric offerings like the Luxor's Temptation Sundays pool party and the city's famous Fruit Loop, a cluster of off-Strip gay bars along Naples Drive. But it's exciting to see a contemporary queer sensibility taking hold in some of the city's newest mainstream attractions.
Jim Gladstone is a San Francisco-based writer and creative strategist.
