Las Vegas, Nevada attempts to change itself and be a peddler of family-friendly activities caused it to stumble. The MGM Grand replaced its amusement park with two nightclubs with a third one opening soon.  All of the Las Vegas hotels are following suit.

Vegas has reinvented itself by returning to the biggest, nicest place to sin ever imagined. People come to Vegas to do what they can do at home but to do it in a more ostentatious way. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas is their town logo. The fact is that “What happens in Vegas” is bragged about at home for months afterward.

The reinvented Vegas has room rates up 40% in 2004 from the same period last year. It’s the fastest-growing major U.S. city. 7,000 people move to Clark County each month. The population is 1.6 million.

Vegas is the top tourist and convention spot with the city taking in $6.5 billion in conventions, which is more than the $6.1 billion taken in gambling.

A good chunk of this gambling money is received from the under 30 crowd. Young people seem to be better educated, have more disposable income and are less averse to travel than the typical Vegas customer.

If you haven’t been to Vegas within the year odds are you won’t recognize the place because Vegas literally transforms itself while you are away.

Seattle: for most people, the first thing to come to mind is the rain. But that’s not the only thing worth mentioning.

Seattle is a relatively young metro area that has reached true “big city” population numbers only in the last half-century, with relatively steady growth since the 1980’s. The city proper is home to about 600,000 people, while the Seattle metro area includes about 2.5 million people, and the greater Puget Sound region holds closer to 3.5 million. Most the growth can be traced to the companies and industries that have driven employment opportunity in the area: software, aerospace, electronics and computer-related products, biomedical, and telecommunications.

The region has an overblown reputation for poor weather, but the real emotional downer isn’t the rain, it’s the number of overcast days. Yet, in spite of the darker shorter winter days, for residents, it’s all about the “everything else” that outweighs the weather. Recreationally, there are almost limitless options, whether you are into hiking, biking, skiing, sports games, climbing, gambling, camping, or fishing. With Portland, Oregon only three hours drive to the south, the San Juan Islands only an hour to the west, Vancouver, BC only three hours north, and excellent skiing a quick forty-five minutes to the east, get-away opportunities are in all directions and come in many flavors.

For metro-focused people, downtown Seattle is a great place to live and play. The relatively well blended mix of cultures results in a variety of cuisines if food is your thing. The city has a professional sports team for most fanatics, with one of the last remaining absentees being professional hockey, and in any given year, at least one of the teams has got a chance to go the distance. The downtown neighborhoods all have their own feel. For dancing and nightclubbing, head to Belltown, Capitol Hill, or Pioneer Square. For a casual beer or a chat over coffee and people-watching, head up to Queen Anne, or over the hill to Fremont and Ballard.

So if L.A. and New York move a bit too fast or seem a bit too crowded, Chicago, Boston and Detroit seem too old, Miami seems too humid, Portland seems to small, Minneapolis seems too cold, and Phoenix and Dallas seem too dry… swing through Seattle, see Pike Place Market, drive out to Snoqualmie Falls and play golf at Mount Si, take a ferry over to Whidbey Island, and grab coffee up on Queen Anne Hill. And leave your umbrella at home, because after a few days of “maybe it’s a drizzle, maybe that’s a real cloud, maybe it will clear up”, you’ll realize you don’t really need it. Trust me.

Another interesting fact is that Seattle has the largest percentage of teeth implants in the US.