Attaché Dispatches No. 5

Welcome to Issue 5 of Attaché Dispatches. I appear to have ruffled some feathers with my thoughts on San Francisco in the last issue. Good. I think some people read it as an obituary rather than the first chapter of a redemption story. I was also intrigued by some commenters who were shocked (even appalled) that I had an opinion on the matter - that I was being “too political”. I always try to be as reflective as possible when discussing a complicated place or idea, particularly in this case. San Francisco is personal, and my frustration and anger with its situation are real, not political. But hey, I have a lot more to say about “The City”, so stay tuned.

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Las Vegas is a confounding city. On the face of it, it shouldn’t exist at all. It’s effectively a city built in a desert by Mormons, mobsters, and mathematicians. It gets so hot in the summer that car interiors melt. On average there are nearly eighty days a year that top 100°F/38°C, and the average rainfall is a paltry four inches per year. And yet we, as a species, ignored all that and decided to build a mecca to money, music, food, and sex in the basin of the Mojave desert.

I’ve always bristled slightly when people dismiss Las Vegas out of hand because it’s “garish” or “grotesque” or “over the top”. Of course it’s those things, it’s obviously those things. But that’s also taking this place at face value, which is missing the point of somewhere like Las Vegas entirely. It also reduces the entirety of the city, all 1,500 square miles of it, to a sliver of its total area. The Strip, while unavoidably synonymous with Las Vegas, is at once the lure and the repellent. Most visitors to Las Vegas have neither the time nor the inclination to escape the gravitational pull of the Sphere, and explore Las Vegas beyond the Eiffel Tower, the Canals of Venice, or the castles of Camelot. And I get it. It is undeniably an utterly unique spectacle that needs to be seen and experienced at least once. And those that are put off by what they witness on the Strip assume that the rest of the city will be the same or, heaven forfend, worse. But visiting Las Vegas and only experiencing the Strip does this city and your time there a disservice.

While I have come here as a tourist, most of my visits to Las Vegas are for work. Work trips are almost always brief, tantalising glimpses of places that I rarely get a chance to properly experience or appreciate. An Attaché shoot is no different but on this occasion we were working with locals whose professional obligations brought them to the Strip on a daily basis but when they clocked out for the day, they scattered. And where they scattered to was some of the best destination intel I’ve ever received.

Hearing “this is where we all hang out in the evenings” or “if you go there, tell Max the bartender I said hi” makes my ears prick up instantly. Being given directions to a small snatch of bars in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it neighbourhood between the Strip and Fremont, or an earnest suggestion to walk from appointment A to appointment B instead of taking a taxi revealed a side of Las Vegas I had never experienced before. Friendly dive bars humming with welcoming locals, extraordinary but affordable restaurants that put anything I’ve ever eaten on the Strip to shame, and a sense that we were experiencing a side of Las Vegas that was hiding in plain view. There were art galleries and blues bars, breweries and taquerias. Revelatory.

Look, I don’t gamble - I don’t know how to AND I’m bad at it….I guess the former explains the latter, now that I think about it. I’m also not at my best amongst throngs of people, and most of the musical residencies are lost on me. But I don’t hate Las Vegas. I did, for a long time, and I became entrenched in a lazy assumption. But this trip offered me a Las Vegas that I had a feeling existed. That I hoped existed. But I was never brave enough to try and find on my own. I am grateful to the Las Vegans, both lifers and transplants, who were generous and trusting enough to share their secret spots and regular haunts with us. I have, with their blessing, shared a few of those places in the Food section below in the hopes that if you are, like I was, a Vegas cynic, that you might give it one more shot. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

How I find great food spots - I often get asked how we find the restaurants we feature in the show. And the answer is simple - the same way I find places when I’m travelling for leisure - by following my nose and, most importantly, my friends’ noses. There is an art and a science to finding places to eat when you travel. Research beforehand is always fine but it comes with a few huge caveats. I don’t trust Google Maps reviews. Or Tripadvisor. Because those ratings are based on someone else’s criteria - what is amazing to them might be pedestrian to you, service you experience as efficient they might perceive as brusque or rude. Yes a 2.3 in a sea of 4.0+ can be a red flag but generic review platforms rarely yield gems. Instead I rely on a few people whose taste I inherently trust. Greg is one, without question. My wife is another - her eye for hidden gems is unparalleled. My brother Will also has an excellent hit rate. And while I don’t know them personally, I trust the recommendations of Eric Wareheim and James Dimitri implicitly. But the reason I do trust those people is because we generally like and appreciate the same food and food experiences. They, like I, appreciate the food first and foremost - the location or the decor or the service are irrelevant if the food isn’t good, even if the place looks good on camera. I’m not going to wherever is trending on TikTok and Instagram (I’ll actively avoid those places), and I’ve found Top 25 articles to be very hit and miss. But the opinions and enthusiasm of those that you break bread with on a regular basis will almost always yield gold. So find those people and have dinner with them - just make sure they pick the spot.

Everywhere I ate - This idea seems to have gone down well with you so let’s keep it going. Here’s everywhere I ate in Las Vegas, warts and all.

Tipping - After teeing it up in the last issue I don’t think I can avoid it any longer. We need to talk about tipping. Tipping in the US remains a thing. A big thing. 15-20% minimum. It’s dumb, it shouldn’t be, but it is. So we do it. Especially in Vegas. Here's why: service workers in Vegas have taxes deducted from their pay on the assumption that they will be tipped. They are, in effect, pre-taxed on your generosity. It’s an asinine and unfair system - I agree - but it’s not your bartender’s or hotel housekeeper’s fault, so bear that in mind. Here’s a rule of thumb: tip anyone who helps you with your bags, anyone who serves you food or drink, table game dealers, hotel housekeepers, and drivers. Anything beyond that is up to you. Now, can we please smother this awful habit and pay people a living wage?

Spirit - Regardless of what you thought of them, Spirit’s demise is sad. It’s the first major US airline failure in 25 years (and we all know what happened in the US 25 years ago). There have been myriad post-mortems plastered across LinkedIn by people who love the sound of their own voice. I don’t know exactly why Spirit failed - and neither do the armchair CEOs on LinkedIn. But I do know this; 17,000+ people are out of a job, the US lost an airline which added to the competitive landscape, and Spirit will not be the last US airline to disappear in the near future. Expect US domestic fares to go up, at least in certain markets, and fees to compound. Spirit was the last bastion of affordable air travel in the US - we should all be mourning that.

Next episode - Shortly after the release of this issue, we’ll be flying to Hong Kong. Not for an Attaché episode but to film the pilot of the new show I have been teasing you with so unfairly. In the next issue I will be able to reveal a lot more detail about this new project and, tantalisingly, how you can be involved.

A travel read I enjoyed recently - Craig Mod is a bit of an enigma. He’s an American writer and photographer based in Japan. His essays and books are captivating but he’s found a particular métier in documenting his walks through Japan and published via his newsletter, Ridgeline. His latest offering is a break from the norm though - an essay capturing his (and other’s) walk along Portugal’s coastal Camino. Beautifully captured, well worth a read.

📚 Got a travel read you think I and the Attaché community would enjoy? Reply to this email and let me know!

Thanks again to those who continue to get in touch with feedback and suggestions. Please keep it coming; I welcome and encourage your thoughts, so as always, hit the reply button and let me know what’s on your mind.

📩 Reader Mail - Thanks to all of you who submitted questions, there were some gems. Please keep them coming and we’ll start answering them in the next issue. You can send a question on Instagram, YouTube, or simply by replying to this email.

Until next time…