As some of you may remember, Animated Meat first came to life in 2008 as a way to document some sights that managed to slip through the cracks of most popular travel websites. You may also remember that the original website was built on Apple's now defunct iWeb. From there, it migrated over to WordPress where it met an untimely demise at the hands of Russian hackers. Many of those old, pre-2012 entries have found a new home here in the Before the Now section. I would consider these posts as my starting place as a writer, probably comparable to a musician's first demo tapes. They are very rough, but I took them all seriously and wrote each one with passion. While I would like to believe that I have matured in my abilities as a writer, it is my hope that I carry this same blind passion into all of my new efforts.

Gardens at the Bellagio - Originally Published 2010

September 23, 2018

A garden. In Las Vegas. Right next to the hotel lobby. I’m serious.

When The Bellagio was constructed, a space was set aside in the tradition of the European gardens. A crew of 140 horticulturalists updates the garden five times a year and deal with the day-to-day maintenance.

Let’s analyze this for a moment. The garden is expansive. It easily occupies the same amount of space as a few football fields. It doesn’t cost a dime to enter.

The Bellagio could have just as easily put another bank of slot machines in the same space. But they didn’t. They took it upon themselves to secure a little bit of real estate just so they could put in something nice to look at. Figuring labor and the cost of plants compounded by the fact that there is nowhere to shove a quarter, it must cost them a fortune to operate it. And yet they do.