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Las Vegas Sun
Paris Hilton in that famous dress, at the Palms opening in November 2001.
Paris Hilton in November 2008.
Sun Archives
There was a time when I didn’t know Paris Hilton from former 49ers offensive lineman Bubba Paris, and that time was in the summer of 2001. I was the features editor of the LV Sun at the time, and we had been informed –- an exclusive! -- that Paris Hilton would be walking the red carpet at the opening of the Palms.
“Paris Hilton?” I said. “Is that a building or a person?” “Paris Hilton,” one of my colleagues said. “She’s the queen of Page Six.” Correct! It was in the NY Post’s famed gossip column, and other comparatively salacious celeb-news outlets, where we learned all about the vapidly alluring Ms. Hilton, famous first for being born into the Hilton Hotels hierarchy. Paris’s great-grandfather is Hilton founder Conrad Hilton, a fact often forgotten amid sex-tape distribution and farcical presidential campaign commercials (see attached YouTube video; Paris is quite good in this).
I saw Paris for the first time the night the Palms opened that night in November 2001, wearing a dress adorned with $1 million in Palms playing chips. I remember wondering why this Paris Hilton, who seemed not much older than a schoolgirl (she was 20 that night), merited such attention. She was friends with hotel owner George Maloof, yes, but he has a lot of friends who are infinitely more interesting than Paris Hilton. She’s cute, but this was the opening night of the Palms. Beauty abounded. I’m not sure anyone who observed Paris that night, during what turned out to be her Vegas coming-out party, would have expected she would still be red-carpet hot nearly eight years later.
Paris for prez
But she is back, Saturday night, this time at the Hard Rock Hotel’s Body English nightclub, celebrating her 28th birthday a few weeks late (her for-real natal date is Feb. 17, 1981). Paris is scheduled to prance the carpet at midnight, and in these instances she’s a hired gun –- hitting the carpet, heading inside, partying, preening and generally drawing attention to herself. And Paris is not a cheap date. She was reportedly offered $200,000 to celebrate her 24th birthday at Pure, but the Body English gig, in this economic climate, should be somewhat less lucrative. If not, maybe the nightclub industry really is recession-proof.
What’s amazing, and somewhat sad, is that Las Vegas has become financially dependent on these types of visits from Paris Hilton. It looks like a party, but it is all business with Paris. She draws a crowd, her name drives traffic, and people who might be willfully ignorant about the news of the day are sure to be informed that Paris Hilton is celebrating her birthday in Las Vegas. Paris says she doesn’t read any news about herself, which makes no difference in her world -- but she does scan the photos to make sure she looks good.
Eight years after cutting the tape at the Palms, Paris still looks good to us. Like a million bucks, even.
anyone who goes to a party bc paris HILTON is there isnt someone who is going to CONTRIBUTE ANYTHING POSITIVE TO SOCIETY EVER
PEOPLE ARE PATHETIC MEN AND WOMAN WOMAN USED TO BE THE ONES TO FOLLOW HOLLLYWOOD NOW SOME GUYS ARE EVEN MORE PATHETIC
heck, Paris Hilton is a stimulus package I can get behind, God bless her!
incredibly plain in appearance, i would not pay any of my hard earned cash to sit or be near a convicted drunk driver, she's an idiot and a discredit to hardworking people, she is the joke, not the amusement. And since when is a hustler like george maloof interesting? let the birds of a feather flock together, i'll keep my money.
Oh ya, what's her 'star' quality, what's her talent - oh I get it - she's very good at running daddy's credit cards thru the machine.
You know what else I remember about that night? How scant those Palms chips seemed on her dress. I was expecting many more chips in lower denominations, and her body to be totally covered in chips. I guess she would have surrendered some dazzling design elements if they'd gone that route.
californiagrl is jealous;
azsk8fan, you can bet she's got her own bucks now.
As lon as she spends money in Vegas who cares? We need to separate more celebs like her from their cash, by any means necessary.
Paris Hilton does about as much for this economy as the cream filling in Twinkies does for rectal cancer.
she is so ugly.
can't we get catherine zeta-jones or jessica alba here?
and vegas needs to quickly move past this style of promotion. it's old, it's stale, and the well of 20 somethings with $500 to blow on a bottle of grey goose is getting dry.
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Oh, she definitely stimulates the local economy:
There's a boost in Cipro sales as many take preventive measures from acquiring a flesh-eating microbe, one to which Ms. Hilton is immune because all the pathogens within her take all their time battling each other.
Hazmat teams must come in to fumigate and detoxify whole floors of hotels and casinos where Ms. Hilton has trodden.
Ophthalmologists see a spike in patients who burned their retinas after leering at Ms. Hilton for too long.
Oh, the list is loooooong.
Well, I'm not going to have a Twinkie in a while ... but LemonSky, that's some funny stuff. The point here is, if Paris Hilton helps even one resort casino draw visitors in one weekend, hiring her to appear at a club does make good business sense.
And some of us do find her very HOT! Seen her tape several times...MMMMMMMM
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i have to say i hate everything about her but I could put that aside for an hour. nice photo
The symbol of Vegas, Paris Hilton. Wow, Las Vegas, you have so much to be proud of. I guess you can show all of those thousands of high school dropouts that you have there that they can be just like her. I swear, the smartest people ever come out of Vegas. Did'nt you vote Kevin Federline as father of the year before?
Yea! Paris rocks. Haters go home, or go to Yucca. Has anybody seen the latest AP headlines? Yucca is dead!