Has Tiger Put the 'Sin' back in Sin City?
Posted:
12/14/09
Mayor Oscar Goodman is delighted that Tiger Woods' alleged mistresses include at least three with ties to Las Vegas.
Referring to the legendary slogan "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas," Goodman told local blogger John Katsilometes that the tawdry sex scandal is "a great reminder that you can have fun in Las Vegas. Adult fun, that it's a playground for adults. It's salacious, and there's nothing wrong with that." Recent decades saw the Strip catering more to families than to high rollers. But with gambling stocks plummeting more than 50 percent in the past two years, and the current recession in Nevada expected to surpass the economic devastation of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Goodman is eager to return his city to its rightful place as the capital of anything goes. "It's great for the city to have its name out there, as long as they spell it right," Goodman said at the recent ceremonial lighting of the Las Vegas Christmas tree on Fremont Street.
Three of the women linked to Woods are familiar faces in town. Rachel Uchitel owns a condominium at Turnberry Place. (Ironically, it was at another Turnberry, north of Miami, where Donna Rice met then-presidential candidate Gary Hart in 1987 in another sex scandal that had far-reaching political consequences.) Uchitel, who has denied the affair, is a former hostess at Tao -- a 10,000-square-foot nightclub at the Venetian. The two other Las Vegas women have been identified as cocktail waitress Janine Grubbs, who appeared on the VH1 reality show "Tool Academy," and Kalika Moaquin -- current marketing director of The Bank nightclub at the Bellagio and formerly with the Bare Pool Lounge at the Mirage.
As it turns out, extramarital dating isn't all Woods was reportedly up to in Las Vegas. For several years, Woods has been known on the Strip as a whale -- the term reserved for the gamblers who bet at least $25,000 a hand. According to Las Vegas Review Journal gaming reporter Norm Clarke, Woods was "a regular at the MGM Grand's ultra-exclusive Mansion, where high rollers can keep a low profile," and where the richest athlete in the world had a million-dollar limit. In fact, he's been a familiar sight at the city's gaming tables since 1996, when he won his first professional golf tournament there. Clarke reported this week that Woods regularly gambled with his high-stakes friends, basketball stars Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, and that he was frequently accompanied by beautiful women provided as escorts by the casinos. Now, as more women continue to come forward and claim to have had sexual encounters with Woods -- and with some Las Vegas columnists predicting there are many more who have not yet been identified -- the Woods affair has unleashed what Clarke calls "media scrutiny to the roles of VIP casino and nightclub hosts and whether they are involved in hooking up clients with sex partners." Though some might be "shocked shocked!" that prostitution is going on in Las Vegas, charges that casinos provide high rollers with women are hardly new. What's unprecedented is the number of women who are going public about a practice that once fell under the city's unofficial mantra of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." With the New York Daily News reporting a connection between Woods and infamous Hollywood madam Michelle Braun, who was arrested by the FBI last summer and accused of running a high-class prostitution ring, Las Vegas insiders are speculating that Woods might have turned up in Braun's black book of clients that she provided the federal agency.
In yet another bizarre twist to Tigergate, it seems that Woods is best known in Vegas not for sex, golf or gambling but for being cheap. As Review Journal political columnist John L. Smith wrote this week, Woods is "not the first sports or entertainment world celebrity to be full of himself, and Las Vegas is a magnet for the wealthy horse's ass who forgets that casino employees put up a fuss for customers as part of their job description. But . . . the next time Woods comes to Las Vegas on a gambling foray or a hunt for starlets, someone should remind him that it's impolite to use a limousine driver for several hours and then tip him only $10."
Not that any of this will hurt Mayor Goodman if he decides to run for governor in the only state in the Union where prostitution is legal. Though Goodman is being cagey about his political future -- except to say that if he decides to run for governor it will be as an Independent - a poll released Saturday shows him beating both Republican Brian Sandoval and Democrat Rory Reid, son of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Meanwhile, if Goodman decides to set his sights on the governor's race, conventional wisdom in Las Vegas would indicate that his wife, Carolyn, is gearing up to run for her husband's mayoral seat. Maybe the old adage is true: All roads lead to Vegas.