I'm John Batchel. I welcome my good colleague of many years informing me of the West Coast.

Jeff Bliss is Pacific Watch.

And we begin at Las Vegas, of course.

Jeff and I have adopted Las Vegas as a city that is building a future that is not based on gambling,

nor the legends of various gangsters who stop there on their way to California.

But it's in fact based on the idea that people want to be entertained, especially family members.

And you've got to have all services all the time.

We've talked about the sphere and Jeff has attempted F1.

Jeff's driven the F1 roadway at the speed of correct speed, not the one that they generate in their big cars.

However, we begin in Las Vegas because of the nickel and dime story.

Jeff, a very good day to you.

What is the nickel and dime and what is the most recent solution? Good evening.

Good evening, John. Well, nickel and diming is what the opposite of Vegas used to be. It used to be

that you could go to Vegas, you know, drop all the money you wanted at the slot machines or at the

poker tables, you name it. But along the way you had usually very reasonable lodging, shows were not that expensive.

If you gambled enough, which wasn't a high bar there, you could get free tickets to shows.

And it was quite often that as you were gambling in a casino, you would be treated to free drinks for as long as you were there, as long as you were gambling.

Now things have taken a change. They've taken a turn, and that's that they've started charging for everything. And part of that is because you've had the big corporations move in, and they've decided to monetize anything that moves and anything that doesn't. And, you know, everything's got a view toward, you know, the next quarterly report. So what they're doing is they're charging for things like parking, which was always free.

They're putting resort fees, which nobody understands what those are.

It's just a way to get more money out of people.

They could be $50 or $100 a night or more tacked onto your bill.

They'll charge people for using swimming pools.

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