Brian's Top Things To Do in Las Vegas — Psychedelic Edition

Brian’s Top Things To Do in Las Vegas — Psychedelic Edition

April 12th, 2025 · 1 Comment · Grateful Dead, Real-life Adventure Tales

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I’d never given Las Vegas a moment’s thought in my life. I checked in with some cultural colleagues I’ve been jamming the arts with for 40+ years and none of us can remember the city ever coming up for any reason. In fact, it was kind of looked down upon as this superficial wasteland of has-beens trying to prop themselves up one last time in front of drunk white-trash tourists with free tickets.

The one thing that made me even consider the place was Cirque du Soleil doing The Beatles LOVE show there starting in 2006. Every account of it was an over-the-top rave, and the video snippets made it look like the Sgt Pepper cover come to life with every character morphing into a flying acrobat. The show was created at George Harrison’s instigation and the music put together by George & Giles Martin blending 120 songs and outtakes into an audio-visual orgy. But even THAT couldn’t get me to Vegas thru 18 years of it blowing people’s minds!

Being a concert venue and architecture guy, I’d been reading about the Sphere since before it ever broke ground. It sounded too fantastic to be true, and I remember salivating at the thought, “IMAGINE seeing a Dead show show there!! They are just MADE for this place!!”

Then BOOM! It finally opens (at a cost of two billion dollars!) and sure as shit the Dead are one of the first acts booked to make use of the arena-sized screen in 16k and 167,000 speakers creating a literal surround-sound.

Thus began my deep dive into a town I knew nothing about and its gems have kept revealing themselves like an endlessly-opening lotus.

Heading back in 2025 for a second 9-day residency I figured I’d put some of my findings on a webpage that I’ll add to as new discoveries are uncovered.

These are all things that you can ONLY do in Las Vegas, and this is only scratching the surface, but it’ll give you some good leads for one-of-a-kind mind-blowing fun.

Pro tip — anything you’re considering experiencing in Vegas will have multiple videos of it on YouTube so you can check it out to decide if you want to do it or not.

Photo Credit: Alive Coverage — and note: there *is* a band on a stage in this photo 🙂

Roughly in order of must-dos . . . [prices & deets as of April 2025]

The Sphere – at a cost of two billion dollars this is the most technologically advanced venue ever built — with a 16k (!) immersive screen surrounding you — 20-times the size of the largest IMAX screen — and 167,000 speakers built in so the volume does not need to be loud but is crystal-clear wherever you are. If any band you remotely like is playing there, GO! Plus there are two custom-made for the Sphere films that play there — Darren Aronofsky’s Postcards From Earth and V-U2 An Immersive Concert Film. Or here’s my Facebook photo album from my first visit there in 2024.

Cirque du Soleil in Cirque City, as I like to call Vegas. Cirque is to theater what the Sphere is to concert venues. There’s nothing else like it in the world. And in Vegas they’re performing in custom-built theaters — unlike when you may see them touring in a town near you. THIS is the place to experience a Cirque show. Tickets might seem expensive at first blush, but they’re less than half (and maybe a quarter) of what you pay at the Sphere. There’s nothing else like these shows staged anywhere else on the planet. To my eyes, the gymnastics I see at a Cirque show makes me wonder how anyone takes the Olympics seriously. 😅

As of 2025 they have five shows running. Sadly their crown-jewel Beatles LOVE closed (after 18 years) during the Dead’s first residency in 2024, after which its home at the Mirage was demolished to make way for the next super-resort.

But you can still experience Mystère which is best show in Las Vegas after the Dead at the Sphere. The multi-genre music is played live by a killer jazz-level 10-piece band, and it’s staged in their first custom-build theater — at the Sphere-near Treasure Island. It’s so stunning it’s been playing nonstop for 30+ years.

“O“, the water Cirque, takes place in a 1.5 million-gallon pool in a custom-built theater at the Bellagio with 85 acrobats. It’s also been a hit in Vegas since it first premiered in 1998.

If you like Michael Jackson, there’s their One show with 25 of his songs set to actors & acrobatics at Mandalay Bay.

KÀ at the MGM Grand is to staging what the Sphere is to the screen with a multiple moving platform stages that span 15 stories in height (!)

The newest show, Mad Apple opened in the New York New York resort in 2022 and brings to life a night out in Manhattan including music (played by a huge super-diverse crackerjack band, as befitting New York standards), comedy, dancing, street performers, sports, magic and the downtown bar scene. I have tickets for the night before my Sphere run this year.

The Eiffel Tower 46th-floor observation deck — I find it very helpful to have a firsthand aerial perspective of the landscape I’m living in. The Strip is roughly 4 miles long — from Mandalay Bay to the south to the Strat on the north end — with the Eiffel Tower kind of in the middle. You ride up in a glass-walled elevator thru the center of the tower, then there’s a metal grill screen but it has nice holes for taking pictures. Tickets are $25 in the lobby gift shop.

Arte Museum at Aria — this is the greatest art space you can experience in Vegas. It’s roughly a dozen rooms where you experience a 360º aural & visual sensory immersion of different natural spaces from forests to oceanfronts. Then they have a main “great room” that fills with giant Impressionist paintings including Van Goghs, Reniors, Gauguins and the like. It uses cutting-edge technology to create the imagery, and this is the only place you can experience it outside of Asia. On the oceanfront the water from the waves washes across the floor, and in the forest psychedelic animals appear and disappear. I walked thru the whole thing three times when I first went! Here’s my Facebook photo album with a bunch of images. Tickets are $40 for the early bird entry (10–11:30AM) and $50 from noon to 9PM. You need to buy them in advance here.

Meow Wolf (aka Omega Mart) is the super-trippy sculpted indoor playground over an acre in size with multiple levels and things to play with. There’s cave holes you can crawl through to new spaces, and and wild visual light shows going on everywhere designed for people who clearly see colors vividly. It’s located in a massive complex called Area 15 (a play on nearby Area 51) which features all sorts of other trippy attractions including The Illuminarium which is currently featuring a new 50-minute 360º immersive history of rock movie called “Amplified,” plus a huge outdoor sculpture garden, numerous restaurants and one-of-a-kind indoor sculptures. It’s open daily 11AM to 11PM and you can/should buy timed entry tickets in advance here for $54. I would plan for at least a couple of hours to do this right.

Fremont Street aka “The Fremont Street Experience” is the original strip in downtown Vegas and the place where the locals celebrate, leaving the regular Strip near the Sphere to the tourists. This is my go-to after Dead at the Sphere shows because the circus is in full swing on weekend nights. It has the largest LED screen in the world covering fully four city blocks — so it’s sorta the closest thing to the Sphere — and on weekend nights they have full bands playing non-stop on 3 different stages, plus buskers and street performers of all sorts from one end to the other. It also has the original Golden Nugget casino and the famous original Vegas Vic neon sign — the giant cowboy beckoning people into the old Pioneer Club. Put up in 1951 — before rock n roll was even invented (!) it was sort of Vegas’s first Sphere in that it was a pioneering cutting-edge light creation that changed the world — sparking the neon signage we take for granted today. There’s also the Golden Gate — the oldest still-function hotel in Vegas [dating from 1906] which is FULL of historic artifacts including century-old slot machines and Vegas’s very first telephone! Plus there’s a zip-line so you can fly the length of the street for $50 if you’re so inclined. Tickets here. Of course walking the street is free, but it’s a bit like the old Times Square so be mindful of hustlers and pickpockets.

Bellagio glass sculpture ceiling & flower conservatory – like Fremont Street this is another Free thing to experience — the largest glass sculpture in the world (!) 2,000 glass flowers spanning 2,000 sq. feet backlit in the ceiling. Then right near it is their famous enormous indoor conservatory that creates sculptures out of living flowers. Both are open 24-hours and are you-can’t-believe-it kind of things. I have a Facebook photo album on the two sites here.

Absinthe is a take-off on Cirque du Soleil but is more of a comic risqué burlesque and adult-oriented show. It’s been playing since 2011 in-the-round in a big 750-capacity tent in front of Caesar’s Palace. It’s sort of a low-budget Cirque show — modeled after a traveling circus, without Cirque’s elaborate sets, music or costumes. All sorts of interesting people have done cameos in it over the years from Daniel Radcliffe to Olivia Newton-John. You can get tickets here.

The rollercoaster atop New York New York. When was the last time you rode a rollercoaster. Right? Why not do it on the roof of the New York building with all of Las Vegas around you as you whirl past the Statue of Liberty and other New York landmarks? It’s $25, you get tickets at the site.

The Neon Sign Boneyard Museum is the home of over 800 neon signs from throughout Vegas history, 250 of which are on display in “the boneyard.” The La Concha Motel donated their entire shell-shaped lobby which became the visitor’s center. You can walk among prime historic pieces (dating back to the 1930s) of hand-blown light-as-art which eventually evolved into the Sphere and the 4-block LED screen covering Fremont St. There’s also a 40-min. 360º audiovisual show called “Brilliant” that re-animates the old signs and history of Vegas using 3D-sound speakers and 3D photogrammetry to bring everything to life. This started as just a ‘graveyard’ of old neon signs, but people kept wanting to come and see them, so it grew slowly and organically into a ‘museum’ for visitors which now number 200,000 per year. It’s open from 3PM till 11PM and tickets are $35 after 6PM when you want to see it with the signs lit up. You can get the tickets here.

A photo-op at the iconic “Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas” sign is a cab/ride-share away in the median of Las Vegas Blvd South at the southern tip of the Strip. Erected in 1959, it was designed by Betty Willis awho also did the famous Moulin Rouge lettering marquee that’s now in the Neon Sign Museum. And in more cool news, all the bulbs on the sign are lit by solar power. 💖 There’s a parking lot right there in the median where you can be dropped off & picked up. It’s another one of the cool Free things to do in town — except for the cab rides. Also — always have cash to pay for the cabs/ride-shares. There’s an automatic significant surcharge (that tourists don’t know about) if you use plastic.

Then there’s the nearby out-of-town options. Car rentals are pretty cheap in Vegas.

The Hoover Dam — time & distance: 45 mins / 35 miles East

Red Rock Canyon — time & distance: 30 mins / 20 miles West. Can be both a driving and/or hiking experience. Timed reservations are required – one-hour entry time-slots — available here. $20 per car.

Valley of Fire — time & distance: 45 mins / 45 miles. Kind like Bryce Canyon in Utah with Aztec sandstone outcroppings and 2,000 year old petroglyphs. It’s free to go to the State Park, but many of the trails are closed from May 15th to Sept 30th due to the desert heat.

The Seven Magic Mountains — time & distance: 15 mins / 10 miles South — large free outdoor art installation by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone — seven large cool colorful 30-foot-high monoliths in the desert just south of town.

Restaurants:

Peppermill Restaurant — historic, in lots of movies & TV shows, on the Strip one mile north of Treasure Island.
When Jerry Seinfeld met up with his old friend George Wallace in Vegas, the Peppermill is where they chose to go.

Blueberry Hill Family Restaurant — A family-owned and operated Las Vegas institution known for its great homecooked food. The main location is just a little bit east of the Strip at 1505 East Flamingo Rd — and is open 24 hours! Here’s the menu.

In-N-Out Burger — The famous family-owned California burger chain has a location on the fun & active pedestrian promenade in between the LINQ and the Flamingo.

I’ve heard there’ great Chinese food in Chinatown but I’ve yet to hit it. If anybody has any specific tips, lemme know.

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In other trips . . . here’s where I take the reader to a Grateful Dead show at Red Rocks in my book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac.