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I remember first visiting the “Las Vegas Sign” back in 1999.

It was a cool sight, but it was an absolute mess to try and get out to take a picture.

You risked a few things:

1. Not having any place to park your vehicle
2. Parking illegally and getting hit by other vehicles
3. Parking illegally and getting ticketed for parking illegally

It’s amazing, but for the past 50 years (the sign has been around since 1959), there has been absolutely no LEGAL way to visit the Las Vegas sign.

With a few exceptions, anyone who has had their picture taken in front of the sign has done so in violation of the law.

To me, this is absolutely amazing. Millions upon millions of people have stopped at this icon, and all of those millions of people brazenly broke the law.

This year, Las Vegas decided to end the madness and actually install a safe, legal parking spot in front of the sign, which officially opened yesterday.

Why did it take them 50 years to do so?

I have absolutely no freaking idea.

Observe my comical attempt to find the parking lot:

The stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard that the sign sits in the middle of is actually a high speed, low light, dangerous stretch of road. The fact that large amounts of people had not been killed is nothing short of amazing.

Let’s face it, parking lots are not exactly architectural wonders. It would have been inconsequential to put a lot in say, 1972.

But hey, better late than never I suppose.

In order to test the new parking lot, I visited the Las Vegas sign early this morning. The lot is still adorned with traffic cones, and I missed the southbound approach.

No problem, I figured, I’ll just make a u-turn and enter it from the northbound lanes … but this was not possible.

You can only access the parking lot from the southbound lanes of Las Vegas Boulevard.

This means that I had to, once again, make another u-turn back up near Mandalay Bay.

I’ve got to be honest, it’s poorly marked, narrow, and a bit confusing. Unless they get some kind of traffic control system in place, this thing may actually cause more accidents than it prevents as people try to navigate the thing late at night with several beers already in their system.

Once you finally find the entrance, and begin to pull into the first parking space, you see that you cannot … because there are two huge handicapped spaces.

Now, I will spare you my full rant about handicapped parking spaces and why I think they are useless and a poor idea.  This parking lot is not that large. If you can walk to the sign from one spot, you can walk to the sign from another.

The sign is about a 45 second walk from the parking lot.

I can’t see anyone with a bad knee pulling up and saying “Oh well, the space at the end is 20 feet further from the sign than the handicapped space … so never mind, I’m not going to get out!”

This is coming from someone with two bad knees.

Having already made it that far, which space you get is inconsequential. All these handicapped spaces do is ensure that there will be two, huge, mostly-unused spaces in an already small lot. I’m sure it’s mandated by law, but I think that it’s a stupid law.

I digress …

Once you park, there is a little serpentine path that leads up to the sign. Directly in front of the sign, they put a little pitcher’s mound type of thing. I’m not sure what the purpose of the mound serves, but my guess is that it exists to elevate people a little higher for better photo opportunities. It’s a nice touch. If you have people of varying heights, you can make the taller people stand in front, have the short people stand on the mound behind them, or vise versa if you have kids along, and everyone will look to be about the same height.

It’s too bad that the mound did not exist while Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were still married.  Tom could have used the mound and it may have saved the marriage.

Anyway, they turned the rest of the median into a little park, and you can wander around and see the sign from a variety of angles, or even sit down and have a picnic if you are so inclined.

When you leave the park, you have to follow another little curvy exit, and you can only exit to the southbound lanes. Once again, this introduces another slight hazard, because if you want to return to The Strip, you will need to do a u-turn on a high-speed road.

Again, this may cause traffic and is a safety concern … but probably not any moreso than existed before the parking lot had been built. Making a left out of the parking lot also takes some time, as there is no light, and oncoming traffic is traveling fast.

They could have made the entry/exit a little more safe, but nothing is perfect.

Overall, it was a much needed project, and I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. It’s a safe and secure area to actually get out and see the sign, and is a very attractive mini-park.

It does the sign justice.

I would say that it is worth visiting, at least once.

Now you can get all the pictures you want, and take your time getting them, without risking life and limb to do so.

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