Norma

I'm a fan of a lady named Norma Geli who is probably the most popular of the vast array of Vegas Bloggers. There are dozens (if not hundreds) of Vegas-based folks who produce YouTube-type videos about their town — where to stay, where to dine, where to play, etc. Oddly enough, very few of them cover the primary industry of Las Vegas, that being gambling.

But there are an awful lot of them and I think most were inspired by Norma's success. She was a concierge at the now-extinct Mirage hotel and she took her skill at telling tourists where to eat and play, put it on the Internet and invented a small, self-starting industry, I dunno how much she makes but she has tons of followers and tons of imitators so I'm guessing a lot.

She puts up a new tour of some aspect of Sin City every Friday and you can find those here. There are hundreds of episodes online but Vegas is constantly changing, especially lately when restaurants are opening and closing faster than Charlie Sheen's fly. So the older videos may not be of much help, info-wise. One or more nights a week, she wanders out into the Vegas night air and walks around doing a live broadcast about what she sees and who she runs into. Those are at the same URL.

And she also has a site called Life of a Norma Geli which is basically her making videos to show you what she does when she's not making videos.

I don't watch her for info. She spends an awful lot of her Friday videos reviewing fancy restaurants — the kind I don't go to because of my food allergies — and especially places to drink. I don't drink. But I find her charming and I admire how hard she works to entertain and enlighten her many followers. If you're contemplating a visit to her fair city, you may want to become one of those followers. Her latest video (see below) is about things to do in Vegas that are free. There aren't a lot that are worth the time and effort it takes to get to them…