Yo, listen up, ’cause this here’s important stuff! We all love Las Vegas, right? Well, can youse believe it’s been 65 years since the first modern resort was built there? Yep, it was our “pal” Bugsy Siegel who opened the Flamingo way back in 1946, paving the way for the world-famous Strip we know today.

Too bad ol’ Bugsy didn’t live long enough to see the town grow up. Just a few months after he welcomed some Hollywood celebs to his joint, somebody whacked him in the living room of his mistress’s house over in Beverly Hills.

Yeah, it was in all the papers. And it happened while the missus was sound asleep back in Brooklyn! Somebody must’ve been really steamed, huh?

People have been taking risks—some much bigger than others—along Las Vegas Boulevard for decades. Never content with the status quo, Sin City is always reinventing itself, looking for the next big thing to draw a crowd. So what’s “big” these days?

The Next Big Things in Las Vegas

Well, how about a gigantic new bridge (officially the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge) across the Colorado River, just south of Hoover Dam? Sure, the dam’s been attracting visitors since it opened in 1935.

But now folks can get a bird’s-eye look from a walkway that’s part of the bridge’s 580-metre (1,900-foot) span. The views from 90 storeys above the river are spectacular, unless you’re afraid of heights.

And if you are acrophobic, you’ll probably want to pass on the new thrill ride atop the Stratosphere tower. SkyJump is like a vertical zipline where brave souls get strapped in and plummet 260 m (855 ft.) down “North America’s highest jump.”

You don’t, however, have to be a thrill-seeker to have a good time on the Strip. Nope, you just gotta think big. So big, in fact, that we’ve created a two-part series on Vegas.

Pick up May’s issue and discover what it takes to be an Elvis Presley heavyweight. Plus, read this month's online feature about the strip's newest hotel, Cosmopolitan. But on with the show…

The Mob Made Las Vegas

Old-timers in Las Vegas say they miss the good old days when they were greeted by name upon walking into a casino and treated like family. It’s true—so long as you behaved yourself, the early Strip resorts were welcoming places.

But cross the wrong person and your skeletal remains might not be found for years, since, in those good old days, the “family” was the mob.

For decades, gangsters skimmed off countless millions of dollars from casino profits and delivered the cash to their bosses in Chicago and New York. That is, until the gun-toting pencil-pushers at the FBI began crunching the numbers and putting the bad guys behind bars.

Although the old school mob has been gone for a quarter century, the gang is making a comeback in Sin City—not in the flesh, but through tourist attractions featuring da’ boys.

Best known among them is Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who—along with fellow mobster Meyer Lansky—used syndicate money to prop up the failing Flamingo when it was under construction. When it opened in 1946, catering to an upscale crowd from California and beyond, it was unlike anything ever before built in Vegas.

“He energized Vegas,” says Millicent Siegel Rosen, Bugsy’s daughter. “He pushed Vegas to become what it is today.”

At age 80, Rosen has never known her father as anything other than “Dad.” She says he loathed the moniker “Bugsy”—so much so that some allege physical harm often came to those who dared use it in his presence.

To her, Siegel—one of America’s most-notorious gangsters—was simply a loving parent. Rosen knew nothing of his underworld life and, to this day, does her best to change the course of conversation away from her father’s infamy.

“I adored my father… I was raised like a princess,” she says.

The Vegas Mob Experience

Who better than Rosen, then, to be a consultant on The Vegas Mob Experience, Las Vegas’ newest visitor attraction that opened in February inside the recently renovated Tropicana resort?

Complete with three-dimensional holograms and other sensory surprises, the show leads visitors through various exhibits, where they interact with actors as they decide whether to take a bribe and, later, whether to let a n’er-do-well live—or get whacked.

Using special effects created by former Disney imagineers, guests see apparitions of Siegel and Lansky standing next to Bugsy’s real car, discussing the Flamingo project. Suddenly, the ground shakes. The smells of dust and sage fill the heat-seared air. Rocks fly as a six-m-high (18-ft.) hologram of the resort rises from the desert floor.

“This particular scene is my favourite,” says founder Jay Bloom. “It’s kind of the ‘Eureka!’ moment for the mob in Las Vegas, and for the city itself.

“We’re neither glorifying nor vilifying the mob. Some of them really were vicious killers… but at the same time, they were incredibly generous. They had their own moral compass.”

The Mob Experience is open daily at the Tropicana. US$30 for adults.

The Vegas Mob Tour

The gardens behind the high-rise Flamingo hotel now include live pink flamingos and giant fake waterfalls. But as guests on The Vegas Mob Tour find out, this is the site where Siegel used to keep an apartment.

And what an abode it was—with multiple escape routes and a ladder hidden within a hall closet. At its base was an underground tunnel, in which sat a getaway car, with a driver on duty 24/7.

Frank Cullotta, a mob hit man who went into the government’s witness protection program about 20 years ago after testifying against his underworld colleagues, joins the tour on rare occasions.

The Vegas Mob Tour operates seven nights a week. Tickets are US$66.25.

Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement

Cullotta is also sharing his insider knowledge with the curators of the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, which is slated to open this fall in the former downtown federal courthouse and post office.

The Mob Museum, as it’s more succinctly known, is the pet project of Las Vegas’ outgoing mayor, Oscar Goodman, a lawyer who used to defend mobsters. Like a proud parent, the mayor, however, bristles when asked whether Sin City can sustain yet another new attraction devoted to the mob.

“This is a museum,” he responds. “The other is a quick fix.” Bloom disagrees. “The stories are so fantastic and so dynamic that a static museum doesn’t do them justice.”

Follow the progress of the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement online at themobmuseum.org.

Photos by Shane Kuhn