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Editorial by Gene Pitts
Owner and editor of the audiophile voice.Show, Not So Slow
I have to say, more than a month
clown the time-line from the end of the
Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas, that my feet still hurt. There’s
still blood under my left big toenail and the skin
over the blister on the bottom of the right foot still
wiggles. The other blister healed quickly. I figure
that F walked between 50 and 80 miles, carrying a
backpack with 25 to 40 pounds of magazines,
press kits, and camera gear loaded into it. There
was parking across Paradise from the Convention
Center, but it was also up Convention Drive by
about a New York “uptown” block. Somebody
had the bright idea that the Mercedes “Go-Kart”
track belonged on the corner, as it would get bet-
ter attention. While I am not a betting man, I
would wager that all of the Mercedes cars would
still have been in full-time use even if the track
was not on the corner. Once, I came late in the
morning and the parking lot was full; I decided
that I wasn’t going to give $20 to the Hilton’s
valet. I wound up in the free parking lot of the
cathedral on Las Vegas Boulevard, 30 minutes
walk down Desert Inn. And, no, the jitney busses
don’t come anywhere close to cutting it, too slow
and they don’t go where I have needed to go any
year. Cabs are too expensive (remember
Chicago!), and there has always been a big line
whenever this editor really had a tight schedule.So, was there any good news? Yeah, the CES
people claim 100,000 people attended. I don’t do
head-counts, but from what I saw at the
Convention Center, especially in the VAST South
Hall, that number seems about right. Most
exhibitors also said it was a “buying show,”
though not all the buyers showed up, especially
those from South America. Some of the folk in the
Alexis Park, perennial home of the high-end gear
makers, complained about not enough traffic. The
AP didn’t seem all that “underpopulated” to me,
though I couldn’t truly say the same about the
Tuscany Hotel where The Home Entertainment
Show was held this year. (The St. Tropez, on
Harmon and immediately adjacent to the Alexis
Park, had been the venue in previous years.) For
2002, entrepreneur Mike Maloney had originally
decided on the grander Rio, located to west of the
expressway, but moved to the Tuscany, a new
hotel which was MUCH closer to the AP. but not
quite finished with the painting, phones or warm
water for the showers. Still, the Tuscany inhabi-
tants told me they were happy enough, as was I,
and to my ears, the rooms were acoustically better
than anything else in town with the possible
exception of the handful in the Golden Nugget,
that bastion of high-end “our way” in downtown
Vegas.
