As I sit here eating my lunch from the salad bar, my thoughts turn to a Planet Money article about salad bars, which itself is a riff from a NYTimes article on the same subject. The jist of the article is that if you are going to pay outrageous prices per pound for that salad bar, at least make it worthwhile. Pile on the expensive items (i.e., those great than the per-pound price), and eschew the cheap items. That works fine if there are such items on your salad bar; alas, at work, we have little exotic or pricey out for selection :-(.
But I digress. The point of my lunchtime post today is to talk about hotels… starting with one particular hotel: the Sahara in Las Vegas. The Sahara is closing in May, and there are two nice retrospectives from the OC Register and the Las Vegas Sun. These mention the stars and the facilities, but forget some of the other aspects. If you look at the development of the strip, the first hotels were on the northern end… beginning with the El Rancho Vegas, which was across the street from what became the Sahara. Next was the Last Frontier (approx. where the Frontier was built), and then, far to the south, was the Flamingo. The Sahara was part of the big 1950s expansion that included places like the Hacienda, Dunes, Sands, Riviera, Tropicana, Thunderbird, and the Sahara. Of these, only the Riviera remains with any 1950s infrastructure [the 9-story hotel at the heart of the Riv is the original… and was the first high-rise on the strip]… (I think they just tore down the old low-rise wings at the Trop; the Flamingo has been completely rebuilt in stages). I like the notion that was floated in one of the articles that the Sahara should be remodeled as an idealized 1950s Strip Hotel, reflecting the mob and rat pack days. Of course, I wouldn’t be economical. the truth is that the northern end of the strip is dead: all that is left there is the Riviera, some condos, and the Stratosphere. With the real estate downturn, it’s going to be dead for a while. Perhaps they could make money by operating ghost tours of the Sahara 🙂
Another interesting hotel related article has to do with amenities: in particular, how hotel amenities have changed over the years. This discusses how they’ve moved to name brand shampoos, flat screen TVs, and away from shoe cloths and mending kits. Interesting read.
Lastly: Need some amusement. Here’s a gallery of diaramas made from everyone’s favorite spring candy, Peeps.
