Here is New York

I came to Las Vegas for the nightlife and gambling; my wife came for the farmer’s market.

If you’ve been reading my blog carefully, you know that Susan loves nothing so much as a good farmer’s market. I think I’m the only person who went to Kauai, Hawaii and learned more about the farmer’s markets than surfing. Fast forward to Vegas. After one night at a mind-numbing all you can eat buffet, Susan decided she wanted to spend her birthday last Thursday admiring fresh radicchio.

Accommodating guy that I am, off we went on the most unlikely day in Vegas any tourist has ever had. It began with a trip to that farmer’s market where Susan could barely contain herself. It was like watching a member of gambler’s anonymous enter the Bellagio with a fistful of money. She didn’t know what to grab first — the orange-yolked organic eggs or the teeny-weeny baby avocados. It was an orgy of fresh food ending in the purchase of a handful of limequats! (I know, I never heard of them before either.)

After the market, we went on a tour of a cactus garden at a preserve, followed by a lunch featuring vegan burgers. Yum.

Did I mention it was her birthday?

We moved on, touring a chocolate factory and then, yes, another cactus garden. (Do I even have to mention the word emasculation in this column?)

But the day began to look up when we enjoyed mojitos while in the jacuzzi and then off we went to have a dinner with a Facebook friend of mine and her husband. Now mind you, we had never met before and did not know each other except through Facebook. I’ve been doing this here and there and it’s kind of fun so far. Not a serial killer in the bunch.

The FB couple was great and dinner was going well at a fancy, white-tablecloth restaurant when, of all things, a fight broke out. And not just one of those fights where the two guys don’t really want to hit each other — this was a brawl! Two men, fighting over a buxom blonde with the tiniest, tightest dress imaginable, went at it, one of them getting bloodied. Three tables near by stormed out.

Twenty minutes went by and then, another fight broke out. The police were called. Talk about a floor show! Now THIS was the nightlife in Vegas I had always heard about. I nearly threw a couple of punches myself just to recover from that vegan burger. But I thought better of it. Instead, I was reduced to throwing a couple of limequats at the miscreants.