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chance they won’t return. To create excitement, Rockwell turned what many thought of as a weakness—the property’s small, 8.7-acre footprint—into a real strength. Most casinos are warehouses, football fields of tables, slot machines, wandering drunks. At Cosmopolitan, in case you haven’t been, everything is actually jammed together, but on several levels. “I thought the verticality was an asset. You want to go level to level,” Rockwell says. He tells me he absolutely loves riding the escalators from floor to floor. Then the big brainstorm—an object at the center that embodies what the place is about. A 45-foot chandelier that’s also like a tree house with a bar on each level. “A chandelier has sparkle, and your perception of it changes constantly depending on the light and where you are. And it’s a symbol of celebration. It would be the ultimate people watching place and have an urban sensibility,” he says. And like exploring a big city for the first time, the Cosmopolitan offers surprises. And there are quite a few | 13 JUNE 2011 | THE LOBBY In the resort lobby, guests are greeted by pillars of video boards playing art by Digital Kitchen and David Rockwell Studio produced exclusively for the Cosmopolitan. Red Louis XIV-style registration desks replace the long check- in counters found in most hotels, a feature that CEO John Unwin says will add to a more personalized experience. The lobby is centered around eight giant central columns wrapped with mirrors and LCD screens. The creators of the lobby installed 384 displays on the columns and 26 behind the registration desk to create a platform for a variety of customized, immersive, digital experiences in the space. of them, especially for a casino. The vending machine with miniature art pieces (Art-O-Mat). The pool tables in common areas. The rooms with the Phaidon books and the now famous terraces that offer panoramic views. The restaurant “porches” that give a feeling of open cafes. The hidden (and delicious) New York City-style pizza joint with Pabst Blue Ribbon to boot. At the free Book and Stage, the indie pop of Best Coast, the bluesy jams of Robert Randolph & The Family Band and soul stylings of Fitz & The Tantrums. Or, Girl Talk, the mashup DJ of the moment, spinning a show at the pool, which works surprisingly well as a converted music venue. Another big surprise about the Cosmopolitan: Locals are flocking to the place. I’ve been a number of times for work or concerts, and nearly every time I run into someone I know, including on Christmas Eve. I knew something was up when Vegas native and downtown lawyer and advocate Dayvid Figler told me it was the first place he and friends were going to on the Strip regularly since they inhabited a tiki place at the Venetian more than a decade ago. And the biggest surprise of all about Cosmopolitan? No Cirque nor magicians nor impressionists nor past-their-prime rockers nor country nor pop stars. And no Prada. And no chefs who phone it in at some other resort. You know why? This will sound pretentious, but I’m pretty certain this is the Cosmopolitan’s thinking: Those things are no longer cool if they ever were. Or as Marchese delicately puts it, for certain people, Vegas “wasn’t relevant.” Even Marquee, the hot spot most vulnerable to lowest common denominator thinking because of its potential to be a cash cow as a superclub, has gone off in a surprising direction by choosing cutting-edge electronic music over hip-hop and top 40. On a Monday night this year, I saw people who looked like they might be veterans of the Burning Man art festival in the Black Rock Desert in Northern Nevada. But even when it went against the grain, Marquee managed to hit the zeitgeist dead on, as Vegas has suddenly become one of the leading 21