It's VEGAS BABY!

Not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Take my cousin Bill, for example...

Bill Copper just left my house in San Diego this morning. He had been staying with my wife and I for a few days while he took care of some business in the area, but around 8 AM he pointed the Jaguar toward the East and returned to the world's largest sandtrap...Las Vegas. Bill has lived there for almost thirty years now and doesn't see himself ever leaving. Why should he? It really is a great place to live.

I should point out that I do have some expertise on the very subjective choice of great places to live. The radio business took me to many cities over the years and I developed definite opinions on the desirability of each one. Some I loved...and others still retain signs of the smoking patch of rubber I laid leaving their corporate limits. Las Vegas is one that I arrived in accidentally and grew to love. Before we packed up the kids, dogs and cats to move there I think we had visited the place a grand total of once and hadn't been that impressed with it. It's funny how you can grow to love a place for reasons unimagined before you arrived.

Most folks only experience the Las Vegas strip and, maybe, Glitter Gulch , as downtown is referred to by the Chamber of Commerce. But, Las Vegas is so much more. It has wonderful parks, good schools, Lake Mead, Mt. Charleston and like New York...ANYTHING you want twenty-four hours a day. Also, typical of the West, it's loaded with residents bearing great stories of how they arrived. Our family spent almost four years there and would have stayed longer if my partners and I hadn't sold the radio station we owned for a handsome profit.

Sure, it's growing too fast. (When we left in 1986 the population was around 600,000 and today it's over 1,600,000.) However, there is no state income tax and the price of a house is still reasonable. Oh yeah, it's hotter than seven hundred hells from June through September, but like a microwave oven, it's a dry heat.

Next time you have a little time, give Las Vegas some consideration...Rent a car and get away from the Strip.

It's VEGAS BABY!