I hiked Angels Landing for the second time this summer...The first time I went to Zion National Park, I was 18 years old, and the imagery of the place has never left my mind. It's also an amazing getaway from Las Vegas (an easy three hour drive), and a perfect break from the WSOP which I hadn't fully utilized until this summer, my sixth in this city.
I've said it before, but one of the disappointments of the WSOP as it is structured now is how frustrating it can be to connect with one's poker friends and acquaintances despite our geographical proximity.
The first year I was here, 2005, there were a fraction of the events scheduled and few, if any, that began at 5PM. As a result there were many occasions where poker players randomly socialized, and, looking back, I think a lot of my most cohesive friendships in the poker world were formed right there at that first WSOP.
Nowadays, there are 50-plus events, two a day, and the result of the increased action is a decreased probability that your friends will be free for dinner or tennis. This is, of course, overall a very good thing for our profession. Despite its flaws, the WSOP brings more poker players together than anything in the non-virtual poker world. Players from all around the planet converge in this patch of desert to compete in every form of tournament poker (except certain forms of poker like rebuy tournaments and badugi).
So, the modern, beefed-up WSOP simply provides more opportunities for more players to experience success during this six week stretch (ignoring the increasing level of skill in the fields and the burnout factor). But the other result is that it makes it difficult, often impossible, to make solid dinner plans with friends. There are good friends of mine with whom I have had made vague dinner plans but haven't even laid eyes on during the past five weeks at the Rio!
This dynamic contrasts to my Spring experience traveling the European Poker Tour, during which people are more in sync with each others' poker schedule. As a result of the logistics, and the buzz and momentum of traveling itself, people are more open, able and willing to meet each other, and the process of communing with other poker players is a more organic and productive experience.
In the end, I'm grateful to have a core group of friends here in Vegas with whom I can hang out with, break bread with, and share the severe ups and downs of WSOP quotidian. One of my best friends, Owen Crowe, took second place for over $300K in a late-Series prelim, and I feel a genuine sense of pride and happiness for his success (or maybe just my proximity to it). Also a sense that things are just better when the money gets shipped to my immediate family within this poker tribe, even if I don't get my hands of any myself (this will be my third consecutive lame Series barring a run in the Main Event and Crowe's third successful one regardless of if he makes a deep run in the Main Event for the third straight year or not). ***
I am also grateful to see a friend who flies in just for the Main Event, like my friend Tall Good Looking Jason (pictured below, right) whom I've known since the days at the 14th Street Playstation, playing $40 rebuy tournaments, a couple years before I even knew what the term "professional poker player" really meant.
We left at 10:30AM, drove the three hours up to Utah, endured the physically taxing hike to the summit of Angels Landing, which took about 1:20, and we were back in Vegas by 9:30PM, in time for a shower, a meal, and a good night's rest before the first day of the grand finale of this insane poker festival.
My friend Adam put me in contact with his French friend, Julien, while I was visiting Paris, correctly recognizing that our shared interest in hip-hop and smoking would create plenty of common ground. It was an invaluable connection, and the Tartiflette his girlfriend cooked for us one night was probably the highlight of the entire trip, since the only thing better than a home-cooked meal after six weeks traveling is a home-cooked meal consisting of potatoes smothered in cream and baked in cheese.
One Friday night, Julien and I went up to a venue near Montmartre to see a show consisting of three highly accomplished hip-hop producers, Just Blaze and Alchemist opening for DJ Premier (for whom "highly accomplished" doesn't really say enough).
There was a thick line creeping around the block by the time we got to the venue, which was already somewhat close to the time doors were supposed to open, around 11:30PM. To pass some time, Julien took me up the formidable steps to the foot of the famous monument, where a crowd spread out in patches over the steps, people smoking spliffs and screaming at the moon. Paris knows how to party.
When we got back down the steps an hour or so later, the line showed exactly zero signs of movement, and I almost turned around and gave up right there considering a) I am usually uncomfortable in crowds b) seeing live music doesn't hold quite the same thrill it did when I was in my 20s. Not that the latter is a good thing necessarily, but most times I would rather just listen to the NYGz album on the stereo at home. Julien was not about to let me go home, though.
It turned out that the line consisted of people who didn't have tickets yet or didn't realize that the way to get in, as Julien demonstrated, was to squeeze into the front of the mass of bodies and wave the ticket in the air until one of the bouncers allowed for our entrance.
Just Blaze and Alchemist shared the stage as an opening act, and their set was just way too fucking long. At one point, I just thought to myself, C'mon guys, you do not have to play every single song you ever produced. The worst part was they remained onstage for a solid 20-30 minutes after giving some initial hype for Premier and, by the end of the set, Alchemist was standing in front of the stage, in front of the turntables, doing an act that vaguely resembled what a proper MC would do. But Alchemist is not a proper MC, and singing along to raps that other artists wrote, whether you produced the beat or not, made the end of their performance super loose and anti-climactic.
However, I did not realize that Just Blaze produced Kanye West's "Touch the Sky," probably because looping "Move on Up" by Curtis Mayfield as the basis for a beat is the sort of superlative use of soul samples that Kanye himself is known for.
I also never knew where the sample for Jay-Z's classic "U Don't Know" came from, which is this Bobby Byrd track "I'm Not to Blame," nor could I make out the lyrics sampled in the remix, but now I can. Filling in the gaps in hip-hop sampledom still does hold plenty of thrill for me for some reason:
By the time Premier came on, which had to be well past 3AM, I was forcing myself to stay up on my feet, which was a pity since I had been on a Premier kick, listening to a lot of the legendary producer's work since March.
Premier acknowledged the insane timing of the show by saying something to the effect of, "So this is how you do it in Paris, this three-to-five AM shit? Alright!" and then began his set in tribute to his former Gang Starr collaborator, Guru, who had recently died.
Premier spun "Full Clip," during which he asked the audience to scream out "Guru, rest in peace" where the "Big L, rest in peace" refrain usually exists. I stayed until "Who Got Gunz," which is a Gang Starr track featuring Fat Joe and M.O.P. that I had never heard but loved, and that was it.
The Parisians loved Premier, and as much as I was loving seeing the European audience connect to the quintessential NYC hip-hop producer's live performance, my neurotic brain was overwhelmed at the prospect of fighting for a cab at 6AM. So I said goodbye to Julien and found a taxi driver across the street fixing his broken meter. He agreed to a flat rate of 10-Euros and got me back to my sublet before dawn, where I downloaded "Who Got Gunz" and smoked a joint before going to sleep.
