Bravo in the Flesh

I’d arrived in Vegas for the last day of BravoCon, knowing that the excitement had somewhat dampened, the voices now hoarse. During a cab ride from the airport, I watched a clip of something that had happened the previous day: one Bravolebrity, Brynn Whitfield, a new cast member on the “Real Housewives of New York City” reboot, had a mishap as she was walking to her panel. Her Christian Louboutin heels got stuck in the escalator, and she had gone to her talk barefoot, her heels left behind, like the remnants of a crushed wicked witch. The taxi-driver apologized for the unusual morning traffic. Preparation for the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, scheduled for mid-November, snarled Koval Lane, on the way to the Strip. Unions representing thousands of hospitality workers had threatened to strike, jeopardizing millions of dollars in race revenue, if the casino operators did not meet their demands. (The unions and the resorts have since reached a provisional deal.) The transience of the tourist, the intractability of the laborer. In comparison to the Grand Prix, and to the Super Bowl, which will take place at Vegas’s Allegiant Stadium, in February, BravoCon is a modest intrusion.

Bravo itself has been embroiled in a labor dispute of its own. The novelty of the network, once pilloried for the sins of sexism, exploitation, and artlessness, has long dissipated; Bravo is now a synecdoche for a recognizable postmodern entertainment. The company’s retooling of what we know as women’s media has betrayed its ultimate function as a workplace. Bethenny Frankel, a former star of “The Real Housewives of New York City,” has been garnering support for a union, which doesn’t exist for reality-show performers. And so the Con, this year, served double duty: an expensive party, and a distraction from the distraction of a potential uprising.

Labor was on my mind as I approached the Forum. It was the contract workers, hired out to Caesars by event-staffing companies, who greeted me at the entrance, and who provided the first faces of the BravoCon experience—faces, I’d learned, from a contractor who cheerfully violated the no-talking-to-press rule, that had been asked to adopt a cataract of friendly forgettability. Vegas P.D. officers, avoiding eye contact, briefly upped the anxiety around the reality of mass gathering. I walked to security, where I was asked if I was carrying any knives or guns. Stanchions created separate processing lines for the V.I.P.s and the standard-admission guests. The former got the best seats and the shortest lines. You could also pay for entrance to BravoPalooza, a lounge experience at the Forum, where the miniature burgers and margaritas were free and where one could rub shoulders with the Bravolebrities. The night before I arrived, guests who had either snuck in or paid four hundred and forty-nine dollars had gone to “BravoCon After Dark,” at the OMNIA Nightclub.