The New York Times puts the tit back in titillation

« The high art of losing slowly: Station Casinos says it shouldn’t suck to be a sucker | Home

August 25, 2007

It’s the newspaper of record, so you know it’s gotta be important:

In recent years the Mirage, Wynn Las Vegas, Caesars Palace and Mandalay Bay have introduced what they call European sunbathing. It takes place in sequestered pools, often requires an additional admission, and men always pay more than women (as much as $50 a day, and with day beds or cabanas, costs can easily reach $1,000 for an afternoon). The policy is part capitalism and part crowd control. As one pool manager says, during the busy Cinco de Mayo weekend, “I turned away $15,000 worth of business because we didn’t want too many guys in here.”

At the Mirage, the top-optional pool club is known as Bare. There, one weekend afternoon, the N.B.A. star Devon George hung out with friends in an elevated V.I.P. area with its private, glass-walled pool while, on a nearby lounge, a half-dozen out-of-town girlfriends debate doffing their tops.

One of them casually takes the plunge, and others follow. The lone holdout, Libby Chansky, of Santa Cruz, Calif., who is here on vacation, suddenly finds herself in what resembles a female rugby scrum. She emerges topless. Looking slightly abashed, she says she hasn’t had any work done so told her friends that she didn’t want to remove her top. Pointing to the ringleader, she says, “But my friend whipped it off anyway.”

As potential visitors are endlessly told, being a little naughty is part of Sin City’s allure, and Las Vegas’s pool scene works hard to feed into that.

“Las Vegas is about creating experiences that people cannot have at home,” says Scott Sibella, president of the Mirage and the force behind Bare. “You see the girl next door here and know that she would not go topless at home.”

Toplessness may be the latest tactic in the Las Vegas pool wars, but not for all. Palms and Rehab have never gone that way (“I like having something left to the imagination,” says Mr. Pallas); Tao Beach did it for a while before retreating.

The manager of a rival pool maintains that Tao’s new modesty stems from the fact that it stays open after dark as part of Tao Nightclub and that it was hard to persuade guests to cover up after sunset. “The way it was going, they would have had to change their designation to topless bar,” says the competitor.

Mr. Wolf explains it differently: “We ultimately decided that it would be better, in terms of being a classy, fun, hip beach-club, to not be topless. It was a hard decision but it was a good decision.”

Whatever the case, it apparently has not hurt business. As Sunday evening encroaches, Rehab winds down and the party kicks up at Tao Beach. A drummer from “Stomp” plays on top of a D.J.’s beats, and a trumpeter roams among the Buddhas meant to imbue an exotic air. A bride-to-be in a monokini rubs lotion into a muscle-boy’s biceps, and Mr. Wolf marvels over a man with the Tao logo tattooed on his stomach.

For the people behind this pool-club-cum-disco, it all adds up to profits. But, looking around, even among the fabulousness, a pall sets upon Mr. Wolf’s face. What’s wrong?

“I’m noticing that as it gets later on Sunday, the crowd shifts,” he says. “It seems that we have more guys and fewer girls. And, to be honest, it concerns me.”

Then he bucks up and declares, “But, don’t worry, I’m going to fix it.”