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The problem with being a full-time host, Maloof has discovered, is that you have to be approachable. As teams of strippers practice water volleyball for the upcoming $10,000 tournament, women in mermaid tails splash in a tank behind him and go-go dancers cut loose inside a giant clear balloon at the poolside bar, Maloof is approached by a parade of personalities: a guy who wants him to invest in a pizza restaurant; a middle-aged Arab who wants to be reimbursed for part of the $10,000 he just lost in blackjack; a singer who wants Maloof to hear his act; a scary-looking guy who needs to borrow $500 for 24 hours. Not only does the guy not pay him back the next day but he also pops up on FOX's The Casino the following week. His name is Ernie, and he got kicked out of the Golden Nugget after convincing a young blond to work with him entertaining a high roller. Everybody in Vegas, Maloof explains, is looking out for only themselves. "You can't have a real relationship here," he says. "Not just romantically," he says. "The only people I trust are my brothers."
Maloof made the Palms--whose casino floor is full of the older locals who played in his previous hotel--into a hipster draw by housing the 2002 MTV's Real World inside a suite in the hotel, a risky move the rest of Vegas thought was suicide (having cameras inside a hotel was believed to be like asking the gaming commission to shut you down). But the Real World scheme worked better than expected. It made the hotel and its steak house, nightclubs and tattoo parlor the hottest spots for the barely legal. It is Britney Spears' home away from home whenever she's in town to get married. "I have friends of friends who are 17 years old, and they can't wait to go to Vegas," says Maloof. "The trust-fund babies will do anything they can do to go to our clubs."
With the Palms' success, the once secretive Vegas is courting the media. The Golden Nugget is the focus of The Casino; the Discovery Channel's American Casino follows the Green Valley Ranch hotel; Extra has regular Vegas segments. Vegas even has its own impressively attended comedy and film festivals. "The whole entertainment industry is looking to Las Vegas," says Trevor Groth, the director of programming of CineVegas, who persuaded Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn and Dennis Hopper to show up for last month's sixth annual festival. "It's a suburb of Los Angeles now."
The young people of New Vegas mostly come from L.A., and they spend most of their time at the clubs, which have sprung up in the desert like stripper poles. Every hotel has at least one disco and an ultralounge, the Vegas term for a Eurotrash bar with overpriced drinks. The clubs are a big draw for women, who outnumber the men. "We give women some empowerment. Let them dance on a table and feel like a star for a minute," says Jennifer Worthington, 32, who co-owns Coyote Ugly, BiKiNiS and Tangerine. "You have people coming from all over the country who, if they went to New York, wouldn't feel comfortable going to a club [like this], but here they'll do it. We give them a safe, contained environment to act out their own fantasies."