Adorned with lip stud, bellybutton ring, star tattoos and perfect makeup, off-duty exotic dancer Erika Murphy leaps into the pool at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino like a happy seal and flutters her bikini-covered tush to hip-hop music blaring on the mega-sound system. Another woman struts poolside showing off a tattoo above her low-riding swimsuit bottom that reads: "Lucky You."
Around them, several thousand attending the weekly "Rehab" party toss back beer or fruity drinks in plastic cups, smooch on daybeds, troll for hookups or merely gape at a level of revelry usually not reached at 2 p.m. on a Sunday.
"I've never seen anything like this, ever," says Detroit-area financial adviser Jeremy Bachusz, 30, watching from the sidelines with pals on a Vegas getaway. "It's not going to happen anywhere else."
You can bet on that. Sin City, the adult fantasyland where almost anything goes, is taking pool parties to a new level — or new depths, depending on your point of view.
Using the same strategies that have made its nightclubs tabloid-headline hotspots, resorts and club owners are focusing on what they call "daylife." It's not about swimming. Adult pools and pool parties are making a splash with reserved cabanas renting for hundreds or thousands daily, pricey bottle service and scantily clad servers awaiting beyond the velvet (or hemp) ropes at the entrance.
A few years back, a handful of watery hangouts wooed the over-21 crowd. Now there are more than a dozen, with more to come. About half allow what's euphemistically promoted as "European" sunbathing. Translation: topless.
Like Vegas nightspots do, adult pools (some run by nightclub groups) charge admission and often use celebrity "hosts" as bait. The Hills reality-TV starlet Heidi Montag revealed her eye-popping plastic-surgery overhaul at the new LIQUID Pool Lounge at CityCenter's ARIA resort.
On a recent Saturday, The Hills' Audrina Patridge celebrated her 25th birthday in the primo cabana at LIQUID. Attired in a fringed bikini, she sweetly held court on a banquette while regular folk gaped from the general pool area.
Pronouncing daytime pool parties "better than nighttime, because you're in the sun," the über-tan brunette went through her paces to publicize LIQUID. She squealed as singer boyfriend Ryan Cabrera interrupted his Super Soaker squirt gun fight in the cabana's private plunge pool to plop into her lap for a photogenic display of affection.
The day before, mohawked Jamaican music star Sean Paul headlined a more raucous pool party — the season's grand opening of "Ditch Fridays" at Palms Casino Resort. Started four years ago to coax locals to leave work early to blow off steam and money on Fridays, the bash now is a Vegas institution. Before going onstage, Paul, 37, watched two go-go dancers in bikinis and thigh-high stiletto boots warm up the crowd, packed shoulder-to-shoulder.
"A lot of drunk people," he observed with a smile, adding that "I'm holding my drunk awhile" until after performing. While he belted out lyrics, partiers belted down beer or had sunscreen sprayed on by roving Hawaiian Tropic models. Their bikinis seemed modest next to the plunging lamé suits, spike heels and surgically-enhanced décolleté displayed by more than a few Ditch Fridays attendees. "Yo, sexy ladies!" Sean Paul yelled.
Where tops are doffed
Deejays spin at most Vegas adult pools, including TAO Beach at The Venetian and WET REPUBLIC at the MGM Grand resort. The two are happening spots in the spring, summer and early-fall pool season.
But there are more tranquil waters with eye candy you can't get at most U.S. swimming holes.
At the AZURE pool at The Palazzo, guests and outsiders can get massages or nibble on Wolfgang Puck's $35 lobster salad served by young ladies in white bikinis. At the Fortuna pool in the just-expanded Garden of the Gods at Caesars Palace, gamers play at swim-up blackjack tables.
Those expecting rowdy orgies at topless pools are in for a surprise. The one at Wynn Las Vegas is for guests only, and owner Steve Wynn bans rap there, staffers say. An older, upscale crowd — all but one fully clothed on a recent day — lounges on in-pool "lily pads" or gambles at tables by the bar.
Topless venues are far less titillating than most imagine. Women aren't required to doff tops, and many choose not to. Behavior often is more refined than at big party pools (but what goes on behind closed curtains of pricey cabanas with daybeds at Vegas adult pools is a different story).
The most licentious behavior seen on a recent tour: a man caressing his companion's upper region at the Bare Pool Lounge at The Mirage. Pool managers say X-rated acts aren't tolerated: A topless pool at the Rio resort run by the Sapphire Gentlemen's Club voluntarily closed last summer after undercover police reported being solicited.
'Spring break on steroids'
The monster party is Rehab, which has been described as "spring break on steroids," even though bare breasts are taboo. Now in its seventh season, it started for locals who worked in casinos and elsewhere to let loose on their day off, says Vegas Hard Rock chief marketing officer Phil Shalala, 37, sipping a Red Bull energy drink. Word spread, and now "we might get 4,000 on an average day. Last year, in one of the worst years for this economy, Rehab (revenue) was up 20%."
This season, it's up 19.6% over last year, he says. Admission typically runs $50 for non-local men; $20 for women who don't live in Vegas. Locals get discounts or get in free.
Shalala credits Rehab with turning on the spigot for Vegas adult pool parties. The trend is "a positive one for this town," he says, "helping everyone out" with revenue to supplement gaming, dining, clubbing and shopping. Indeed, pools keep popping up, from the just-opened Encore Beach Club (a party pool at the Encore resort) to the Nikki Beach pool complex, due at the Tropicana resort next season.
Over at Rehab, the bathing-suited are cavorting in the Hard Rock's 3-acre pool complex. They include bachelor partiers and swingers' convention attendees. Murphy, 29, who says she was not brought in to entertain (as is said to occur at some Vegas pools), engages in sexy dance moves with just-made male and female friends. Up on cabana row, a brunette in yet another bikini — tips stuffed into her cleavage — pours free Grey Goose vodka samples.
It's not even 3 p.m., but Rehab rages on.
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