Heres the thing about Las Vegas: At least once an hour, if not more, you see something that makes you say, Only in America.

Theres the parent, pushing a baby in a stroller down Fremont Street at 11:30 at night, while revelers walk around drinking from two-foot-tall margarita glasses. Theres Fremont Street itself in downtown Vegas, covered by a canopy stretching a couple of blocks on which, once an hour, a light show is projected paying tribute to various entertainment acts. The night we were there we saw tributes to The Doors, Queen and KISS; it occurred to me that given his hippie ethos, Jim Morrison wouldnt have found Las Vegas to his taste, but hes been dead a long time and the other boys know a good merchandising deal when they see one. My favorite thing, though, was the museum dedicated to the Mafia and its role in founding modern Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas Mob Experience, which opened in March, is located in the Tropicana on the strip. Its so new that virtually nobody I asked, including hotel employees and cabbies, knew anything about it, although there are billboards all over town touting it.

Its a state-of-the-art, interactive museum; part of that is that youre guided around by films of James Caan, Mickey Rourke or a couple of actors from The Sopranos, your choice. Being a big fan of The Godfather I, of course, picked Caan. There are recreations of everything from an old police station to a casino counting room to famous gangsters living rooms. Part of the experience also is interactions with actors playing gangsters, cops and FBI agents. There are exhibits ranging from an electronic version of Meyer Lanskys diary to actual artifacts like a noted gangsters brass knuckles.

It is way cool. If youre an aficionado of gangsters, gangster movies or even American popular culture, its something you dont want to miss.

And what better spot than Las Vegas? Its current incarnation as a gambling mecca was the brainchild of Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, who was a true visionary of vice and unfortunately, paid the price for spending too much money building his Vegas casino by getting a bullet through the eye. Before Siegel came along, Vegas was little more than a bump in the highway; after Siegel, it became a dream of wealth, a feverish chimera where few prospered but all could imagine doing so.

And the museum doesnt really romanticize the black hats who created Las Vegas. Its a fairly balanced portrait of them, although its not difficult to maintain balance when nearly every biographical panel ends with was killed in (insert year here). The mockup of Siegels Las Vegas living room looks comfy but isnt overly opulent; the ritziest recreated room is Meyer Lanskys library, with his dark-wood desk and bookcases (Lansky was not formally educated, but was a learned man mostly through his own efforts).

Still, the only in America aspect comes when you give it some thought. The museum is good, and tastefully done, to the extent the subject can be treated with taste. But if you think about it, a museum to one of historys most brutal organizations is kind of a weird thing conceptually. As much as I love The Godfather, which is one of those rare movies that uses an extreme example to say some profound things about the American character, I also recognize its a very romanticized portrait. Mafiosi have never been men of honor, though they like to see themselves that way. Even in its palmier days, when Mafiosi followed some elaborate rules of conduct, it was a collection of brutal, ugly, greedy thugs. These were guys whose default position, ultimately, was to solve problems with homicide. Siegel himself famously said, We only kill each other and that was mostly true. But they killed each other often. They werent nice people. They didnt have some sort of hidden nobility. They were slime. They still are.

It was interesting, though, that many people I talked to in Vegas said they actually preferred the city when the mob ran it. It actually was notably street-crime free, because the mob knew it had a good deal going income-wise and wanted to keep the place safe so non-gangsters would come and pour money into their pockets.

We heard that a lot from the cabbies (who were, by and large, fabulous people). One older cabbie told us that while Siegel gets the credit for building Las Vegas first casino, that actually was done by a less well-known mobster. It was fascinating to hear the cabbie talk about that guy, whom he got to know toward the end of his life. And you could tell, from the way the guy was talking, that he wasnt snowing us.

(Another cabbie told us a great factoid. The term to 86 something, to get rid of it, started as a mob term in Vegas. It meant to drive somebody eight miles out of town and put them six feet under. Mafiosi might be scum, but theyre verbally colorful scum.)

So Karon and I got to flirt with being mobsters. She was actually much more hard-core than I was; at one point, we had to decide what to do with a guy who cheated the casino out of $47,000; I favored just breaking his hands, but she said to, well, 86 him. She won. Im not going to irritate her from now on.

But the key phrase above is flirt with. Im deeply gratified that it was all play to us. Unlike a lot of the real thing, we got to get on a plane and fly home with nothing but a few souvenirs some laughs.