While it feels like a lifetime and a half ago now, there was a time when I spent my daily 9 to 5 working in one of the strangest places in the world. In between meetings, I’d be weaving through street performers, and on my way to photoshoots I’d give out directions to lost tourists.
You see, I used to work on Fremont Street at one of the oldest casinos in the city. My particular property was part of something called the Downtown Vegas Alliance. This is a group of people, properties, and businesses that, in their words, “work together to drive the vision for a thriving Downtown Las Vegas, making it a better place to work, live, and visit.”
Of course, with a mission statement like that, you can imagine the group knows how to throw a party. For one reason or another, I often found myself being sent as a delegate to various events including concerts, premieres, and at one point a zipline tester.
One of my favorite memories of all time was when I was able to attend the world premiere of a Viva Vision show. If you’re not familiar, Viva Vision is the formal name given to the music themed shows that play overhead on the Fremont Street canopy. My work crew was invited to attend the premiere of the Imagine Dragons light show. For the special premiere, organizers set up tables underneath the canopy, smack dab in the middle of the action. Members from various other casinos and prominent Vegas figures were also invited to grab a seat and watch the show after a few words of dedication.
Now, when it comes to the strangest activity I ever got roped into, let me tell you about my friend (not at all my friend), Steve Aoki. First and foremost, Steve Aoki is a very, very famous DJ that also happens to call Las Vegas home. A fan favorite part of his act involves throwing a cake from his DJ booth into the crowd with all of the strength he can muster. His fans call it getting “cakefaced,” and there is even a song named for it.
As if creating a song to launch cake directly into someone’s face wasn’t enough, the plot thickens when it comes to the “secret sauce” behind the dessert’s creation. Steve Aoki has a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that comes along with the creation of this instrumental cake. Along with his team, Steve Aoki has figured out the perfect ratio of fluffy icing to cake to ensure the weight is there to reach the target, but not enough to knock them off their feet.
Don’t worry the people in the crowd make it known if they want the honor of being beamed with the cake. Fans will often climb on top of someone else’s shoulders or display signs with a bullseye that lines up over a cutout for their faces.
While a cake coming with an NDA might sound surprising at first, when you think about it, it actually does make sense. The DJ is literally hurling this cake with all his might, and he is FIT, towards someone’s face. He, presumably, doesn’t want to hurt any of the fans in the crowd, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say he also doesn’t want to get sued should the cake somehow hurt someone in attendance.
When you have a cake that comes with an NDA, you need a trustworthy bakery. Thankfully for Steve Aoki and his cake hungry fans, the property that I worked at had an in-house bakery (hint) which meant that we had the pleasure of creating the cake to the super secret specifications. This is where my involvement in the story was meant to end, but the universe had different plans that involved me getting far more involved.
From what I remember, and this was almost ten years ago now, I was working the day away, ready to head home, when the time came instead to stick around Fremont. Sometime around lunch I heard rumblings that there was a hiccup in the concert plan. Someone from our property had already agreed to go on stage with Steve Aoki and some other DVA members but when he was asked to wear a property branded t-shirt, he was getting second thoughts so much to the point that he changed his mind. Enter moi.
I will do nearly anything for the plot, so I trotted myself to the gift shop and procured myself a brand new, glittery t-shirt that loudly proclaimed my property name. This was also the first time one of my upper level managers took me on a shopping trip with the company card. I was feeling unstoppable.
I was very stoppable, however, when it came to actually getting to where I needed to be. As is show business, no one told me how to get backstage to the Steve Aoki area and I had to push my way through hundreds of people until I got to the barricade and ushered over security. I like to think I am young now, but I was even younger then and was pleading with security to believe I was supposed to be there while waving my company phone and pointing at my t-shirt and name badge. Thankfully, security believed me and let me backstage. Fun fact: the backstage are for the particular stage we were using that day is literally below the zipline unloading area.
After all the rigamarole of getting the t-shirt and fighting my way backstage, we didn’t even go out on stage and I was totally OK with that. Instead, I took a breather in the air conditioning, watched some of the set from backstage and made small talk with the crew. It was surprisingly fitting for a regular day at work.
