It made no economic sense to have a Chevrolet dealer on the corner of Glebe and Wilson in the 21st century, which is why Bob Peck Chevrolet sold the space for $20-$26 million (depending on the press account), but one will miss the Googie architecture, seen here, here (#4), and at 0:04 in this impressively lame 2005 tv ad. The Staples next door, with the world's worst parking lot, appears to be headed a few blocks closer to us on Wilson Boulevard, where the pet store that was never open used to be.

Question to Chicago blog readers: I couldn't help but notice walking to and from my hotel that the Agam in front of the Smurfit-Stone building was no longer there. Where did it go?

So Slim and I went paragliding in Interlaken today (photos to be posted in a week or so). As the van takes a group of five customers up to the top of the hill, the leader explains that we'll each get to pick our tandem pilot.

I consulted my inner economist. "I want the one with the gray hair," I said.

The pilot, Robi, gave me a form. "Regulations. Just like any air flight, we need to have the name and destination recorded. The liability is just like Continental Airlines," handing me a ticket to sign. I read the back, expressly disclaiming that Air Transport laws applied, and stating maximum liability would be 72,500 francs. And since it's Switzerland, the law of contract is probably respected, so that's a real waiver. Fair enough--if I do not fly, so much as plummet, my ability to recover in civil court is perhaps the last thing on my mind. My pilot has plenty of economic incentive to land safely such that civil liability does not add much at the margin. And Coase teaches us that the limited liability permits the price to be as low as it is. I accept the benefit of the bargain, and assume good faith that the professional paraglider is just unfamiliar with the nature of the forms rather than trying to snow me.

The fact that I'm posting suggested that I survived. But I'm pretty confident that one is not supposed to bounce on the side of the hill during takeoff. (Slim, whose launch was after mine, reports that one of the other pilots crossed himself at the time.) And, hey, fun.

Switzerland as a whole has been, if not quite disappointing, not quite wondrous, however. Nothing really wowing in the museums, and I'm not the Hodler fan Slim is, so my patience with Swiss artists is usually exhausted a couple of rooms into an art museum. (Did see a nice Lichtenstein in Zurich.)

Everyone talked up the food, which, other than some remarkable hot cocoa in a hotel in Zermatt (which, in any event, was from a mix--I bought a kilogram's worth), has been mediocre. "Rosti" appears to be German (French?) for "fifteen-dollar hash browns." Fondue is fun, but only for about a third of a meal, and wasn't notably superior to my American experience nineteen or so years ago, and I can quite likely go another nineteen years without having fondue again. Everything is bland, including the sausages.

Even in Zurich, when we asked ourselves what Tyler Cowen would do, Slim and I went off the beaten track to a little-traversed, and probably sketchy, ethnic neighborhood, where we stopped at the eighth doner kabob shop we saw, and had a mediocre doner kabob. So much for competition. And something in my genes makes me anxious when I'm on a train with a bunch of German-speaking people; I keep waiting for the shouts of "Achtung! Juden!" Zermatt had beautiful scenery, and I broke my personal land-height record at the top of the Klein Matterhorn. And I did enjoy the parasailing. But nothing here is going to make me want to come back, the way I felt about London or even Paris.

Wine and cheese parties just aren't the same (via Wonkette). At least the police took fingerprints, rather than saying that attempted robbery wasn't a crime.

Update: see also Mark Steyn on the same incident.

Another North Korean tourism account. Though I can frankly believe that Jimmy Carter "once said Kim Il Sung was greater than Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln combined."

1. Before expenses, I came out ahead over $5500 on the gaming end of matters in under 48 hours of Las Vegas; Slim picked up $700 on her own, though much of that was spent on an Escada for the AEI formal. At $3k a day between the two of us, that works out to a million dollars a year. A shame that wouldn't be sustainable: we had above-average luck on the blackjack tables, and, while I'm a decent poker player, there are only twenty hours of stretches a week when I would find certain poker rooms to have a profitable mix of tourists and professionals. Plus, I'd really get sick of playing poker if I were doing it full time.

1a. When I lived in Los Angeles, and played limit poker, waking up early Sunday morning was a good way to make some money; not only was there no traffic on the way to the poker rooms, but there were a lot of people who had been playing all night and were now stuck and on tilt. This strategem does not work for no-limit poker, where the people who have been playing all night are the ones good enough not to have gone broke yet. Fortunately, this lesson only cost me a $500 buy-in before I realized my mistake and found something else to do. The better time to go is when the football games are on, and the other players are watching the plasma screens concentrating on tracking the sports bets they don't have any control over, rather than the poker game they can conceivably influence.

2. One side effect of feeling that flush with money coming in at a millionaires' rate is a willingness to spend. Much to my surprise, my first $130 bottle of wine was not a disappointment. And it did make the food taste better, and, at Aureole (Mandalay Bay), the food is excellent to begin with. A seared truffle-encrusted scallop was perfect; Slim's squab with foie gras was marvelously matched; I had bass with wild mushrooms, two things I'm not especially fond of on their own, but the quality of the ingredients made the dish. Even small touches, like the light lobster bisque amuse bouche, the freshly baked rolls, and the desserts (cheese plate for me, grape tart for Slim), were excellent. The service was impeccable, other than the waiter hanging over my shoulder as I tried to experiment with the gimmicky electronic-tablet-and-stylus that substituted for a wine list. (That appealed to my inner gadget-head, but the execution made it less desireable than a big book—though perhaps the advantage is the instantly updated menus. Maybe they even take advantage of the software to price discriminate on weekends; Maestro in DC also price discriminates on weekends, but it comes across as clumsy in their printed menus.) Not sure if it measures up to our meal at Taillevent, but it was close, and certainly cheaper than the latter.

3. We enjoyed Craftsteak, but perhaps not the chef's tasting menu as much as the a la carte we ordered the previous year. The MGM Grand buffet was mediocre; even with it being comped, it wasn't worth it.

4. Did you know that if you take a cell-phone photo with really bad lighting and contrast, it looks like I have hair? Of course, Philip Welch's analysis is probably the correct one.

5. Separately, Slim and I can confirm that, contrary to one's expectations, Ms. Mackie Paisley Passey actually looks hotter in real life than in her professional photo. Las Vegas seems like the perfect environment for her, though she's still figuring out traffic patterns.

6. I much prefer the Wynn to the MGM Grand. Whatever benefit the latter might have for having cheaper rooms is almost entirely overridden by the fact that they wanted to charge us $70/day to use the tiny gym. That reflects congestion pricing, to be sure, but it's not like the Grand isn't the most cavernous hotel in Las Vegas to begin with and couldn't spare a few extra square feet to build a gym large enough to house the needs of its occupants. MGM Mirage doesn't seem to have their act together in many ways: they never assigned us a casino host; we had $8000 on the table betting purple and black at the utterly empty New York New York high limit table, and no one came over to recruit us; Mandalay Bay has really run downhill since they took it over; and the comps the Grand offers are awfully flimsy compared to what I was able to get five or six years ago when I played much smaller stakes.

7. There are no more single-deck blackjack games on the Las Vegas strip. There's something they call blackjack, and is played with a single-deck, but pays 6:5 for blackjacks. People were playing this game. You may sic the Compulsive Gamblers Anonymous on me if you catch me sitting down at it.

8. For some reason, people in Las Vegas like to guess your background. A cab driver thought I was a fellow aboriginal American; a street hustler for time-share resorts pegged Slim as a Texan; an Israeli blackjack dealer correctly identified me as a Jewish attorney.

Dubai: Las Vegas without the fun. [Slate]

Dear Powers That Be:

Please provide "Clear" for Washington, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Houston, and make my travel more pleasant for only $28 $100/year.

Thank you kindly,

Teddy Frank
Age 6

I wonder if I can talk Slim into three trips to New York to see The Coast of Utopia. Part One is in previews now.