Category: travel

Yesterday, I wrote about the new Las Vegas, and how I didn’t like it. Today was a day to revisit the old Las Vegas.

We started off at the Las Vegas Premium Outlets (North), where my wife wanted to do some shopping at Le Sportsac. Once that errand was dispatched and my pocketbook was lighter, it was off to downtown Las Vegas.

The first stop was lunch at the Paradise Buffet in the Fremont Hotel. We chose there because it was cheap, and we were looking for cheap eats that you can’t find on the strip. It was good, but I miss the days of casino coffee shops, the keno board working, and keno girls and cocktail waitresses in the cocktail bars. There was none of that; the keno displays were on but not running,and there were no crayons at the table. We walked around Fremont St. for a bit afterwards, and even found a few classic coin slots at the “D”. I lost all of 4 quarters.

After that, we walked over to Stewart Ave to visit the Mob Museum. This is a three story museum that studies the history of organized crime in America, and the role of organized crime in Las Vegas. Very detailed and excellent presentations. It does cover the early days of Vegas quite well, and even touches on what ended the mob era in Vegas — a man named Howard Hughes. The museum is relatively up to date, including information on Whitey Bulger. Note that this is different than The Mob Attraction at the Tropicanan, which is twice the price and glorifies the mob more.

After the Mob Museum, it was off to the Neon Museum. This was extremely neat. It included a guided tour around the boneyard (and the tourguide was really good and put up with all my interruptions). I took loads of pictures, but I’m not uploading them all yet (but I am uploading one for the post). There were signs from most of the major hotels in Vegas, including early signs from the Sahara, Stardust, Royal Nevada, Golden Nugget, numerous small motels, Caesars, the Desert Inn, the Aladdin, Treasure Island, and much more. Well worth the money.

Now it was time for dinner, and we found a really good Venezuelian place near the Stratosphere. Some of the best BBQ chicken I’ve had. Yum.

Lastly, it was off to the Pinball Hall of Fame. This was less a museum and more a gigantic pinball arcade. Each pinball machine had a small card explaining its history, and most of them were working. Now this was a good excuse to spend some quarters! It took me back to the days of Music Odyssey in West LA, and going upstairs to play pinball in the 1970s. I played about $6 worth for old time sakes. I may go back.

From there, it was back to the hotel and writing this up. Tomorrow… nothing during the day, Zumanity in the evening, and then picking up Erin at the airport.

If you hadn’t figured it out by my last post, I’m on vacation in Las Vegas. Everytime I visit Las Vegas, I’m struck by how much the Vegas of today is not the Vegas of old. I have fond memories of visiting Las Vegas with my parents in the 1970s (I might have gone in the 1960s, but I don’t remember that), and staying in hotels like the Sahara and the Aladdin. That Vegas is long gone, baby.

Here’s example number one. I’m not a big gambler; hell, I’m not a gambler. Still, when I visit Las Vegas, I normally go through my coin jar and bring a bag of quarters to play with. Today, we went down to the MGM Grand and I thought I might play a little. Guess what? Not a single machine takes coins. They all take bills. Loads of penny slots…. with a $1 minimum. Hell, there are $100 slots. But no coin slots. Why? This saves the casinos money. No change girls required. No maintenance of machines and coin counting. No coin cups. I’m surprised that they haven’t yet designed machines that just take the credit cards, but perhaps they aren’t there solely because of the compulsive gamblers. Of course, the plus side of this is that my bag of quarters remains unspent.

Example number two. My, how the casinos have changed. In the old days, everything serviced the casino. The hotel floor ran through through the casino. There were perhaps one or two restaurants: a coffee shop and a fancy steakhouse (I certainly remember that at the Sahara). There was a simple pool with lounges. There were a few resort shops. Today? There are loads and loads of fancier and fancier restaurants. There are loads and loads of shops. There are nightclubs and dayclubs galore. You can even avoid the casino if you want. Every component of the hotel is its own profit center, and stands on its own. I, for one, don’t like it.

Example number three. In the old days, showrooms had headliners. Current stars of the day would play the showrooms, and you would have dinner and a show. Tickets were affordably priced, and you could get great seats for a little tipping. Today? There are sit-down (as in production) shows everyone (half of them Cirque). No plot — just tired-businessman-and-women shows (read “good looking gals and gents”) doing various forms of jukebox variety shows and dance. Your “headliners” are either on their way up or on their way down, not people at the top of their game. Comics aren’t headlining, they are in the comedy clubs. Show prices are through the roof, but most people get discounts. They do this either through half-price outlets on the strip, or the way we did it. How did we do it? Read on, McDuff.

Example number four. Timeshares. Vegas used to be a hotel town. Now it is timeshares everywhere. Of course, the timeshare market has tanked as the housing bubble crashed, so the timeshare pitch is different. How do we know. Simple: We got $17.50/person tickets to Zumanity (which are normally $55/person tickets) by sitting through a timeshare pitch for foreclosed timeshares. In some ways, it reminded me of the old days in college where we would bait the Moonies or the J4Js. This pitch was attempting to get you to purchase a timeshare by paying off the balance of the loan that a bank had acquired through foreclosure. Didn’t make a difference where the timeshare was, for you would exchange it using RCI Points. They kept trying to say that this would get you a vacation for the exchange fee, when the truth was that the vacation would cost you the exchange fee plus your annual HOA fees plus the annual RCI membership fee plus the amortized cost of the balance of the timeshare. As engineers we both saw this, but I’m sure most of the suckers don’t. We had no strong desire to acquire another timeshare — I already have two weeks at year at The Whaler in Kaanapali HI, and am using Interval International to exchange those weeks when we can’t make it. In any case, the timeshare folks are everywhere! We were walking from MGM Grand down towards Ballys, and we were acosted by numerous timeshare folks offering us discounted tickets if we would only listen to their pitches. Sorry, but one a day is enough. [ETA: While looking into the history of the place we are staying, I found some interesting numbers:  According to David Saxe, who operates the V Theatres in the Miracle Mile shops, when someone takes a tour or sits through a timeshare sales pitch, they receive a voucher which they then bring to the box office. The theatre operator then adds up the voucher and bills the timeshare operator (so, in our case, the timeshare operator paid $55 less $17.50 for our ticket). Saxe estimates time shares account for 20 percent of total show tickets bought in Las Vegas; for some small shows, it can be up to 50% of the business — without a cash outlay for advertising.]

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to try to discover the old Vegas. I’m hoping to see the Mob Museum and the Neon Graveyard, and perhaps the original rooms that are left at the heart of the Riviera.

Yesterday, we drove out to Las Vegas via the high desert route (138-18). A few observations from that trip:

• Caltrans has done a very nice job with rebuilding CA 138. Smooth roadbed and much wider. The same, alas, cannot be said for CA 18, which is still the up-and-down roller-coaster washboard of yore.
• Victorville is having some bad times. The former Holiday Inn at Route 18 and I-15 has gone independent, and I think the Apple Valley Inn changed its name. We ate at Richie’s Diner in Victorville (which was very good — I recalled they used to be in Perris but were replaced by Jennys)
• Up in Baker, we stopped by Alien Fresh Jerky. They were selling invisible alien jerky for $1.50. Amazing what people will buy. There was also a Valero down the road with one of those claw games. As an illustration of the odds, they had rubber-banded $20 and $100 bills to some of the stuffed animals.
• What is it with white or black trucks and aggressive driving? All along I-15 it was these oversized white or black pickup trucks that would zoom up behind you (whatever your speed), and ride your bumper until you got out of the way.
• There are now so few billboards along the way. I have strong memories of all the casinos — but in particular Foxys and the Sahara — advertising all along I-15 once you left Barstow. Now there is nothing, save a few ads for M (a casino on the outskirts of Vegas) and the Orleans.
• Last night we drove along the strip. Again, it is very depressing. On the North end, there are large holes-in-the-ground and empty spaces. No one has yet built where the El Rancho Vegas was, and there are large vacant swatches where the Stardust and Frontier were, and where the water park was. The Sahara is gone and being remodeled into the SLS. I hope the Northern end comes back. In the middle are all the mega-resorts, none with the character of the old places and all overbuilt. Nothing is left of old Vegas save the old hotel portion of the Riviera. I don’t think the newer hotels have the same character. At the southern end there is still the Tropicana, but it and the Mandalay Bay (former Hacienda site) are no longer the end of the strip.