Part One:
Vegas Crash
Course
Written and "drawn" by Don Fields
“Kid, Las Vegas turns women into men and men into idiots.”
-Benjamin Siegel (as quoted by Alan King)
Where do I begin with my Las Vegas obsession without babbling off like a Star Trek fanboy or, at worse, a Disney-era Star Wars nut? Does it matter? At this point in my life, worrying about any level of self consciousness is redundant. I’ve been carrying this monkey-with-a-slot-machine on my back for the past 45 plus years with no sign of relief. So, for better or worse, it’s stuck there inside my obsessive head and soul, so I better get comfortable with it by now….
….and that now includes you, too, dear reader. Strap in. It could have been worse….Baby Yoda/Slave Lea fan-fic zine, anyone?
Looking back, there were a few traits that were in play in my DNA; first, Vegas was the first place I been to that was more hyper than my obnoxiously hyperactive 14-year old brat self. Sure, I had my fill of Disneyland, three times before, but by the last Disneyland trip, just 3 months before that first and fateful Vegas trip, I was beginning to notice some cracks within this Happiest Place On Earth; small space, paying Disney prices just for a snack, the expensive and class politics complications dealing with the ticket book (or lack thereof), etc. I suspect boredom was setting in through my demanding (again hyperactive) tastes.
Second, I had just bloomed into an urban explorer, a. k. a. ‘Urban Rat’. A trait that grew out of knowing almost every block in my old Santa Monica/Ocean Park neighborhood; between Pico Blvd (north) to Rose Ave. (south) and Lincoln Blvd. (east) all the way to the Pacific Ocean was my turf. From that point on, any city I visited, I scanned the place to search out it’s individuality and uniqueness.
In the summer of 1977, I had just moved to Northridge, California, a corner of one of the most influential suburb in American history, The San Fernando Valley and believe me, there was more than enough that kept me busy there; a radio station (KGIL-AM) and a collage within walking distance, further down the road was pre-1994 earthquake Northridge Fashion Center (probably the most 1970’s shopping mall ever built!) and all the other details that city junkies would go goofy over and bore regular city dwellers to death (I got into this in detail with Twilight World #22: ‘My L. A.’ issue and Space Age Ash Tray zine series, so I’ll leave that mountain alone here).
One small detail that mattered a lot here was the fact that I spent the 2 previous years living in Roy, Utah thanks to my dad and his own paranoia (much longer story). Brief description of Roy, Utah in 1975-76; a boondock town with mormons who did NOT like the outside world. Stories of backward living like the city banning fireworks on the 4th of July and installed curfews on the night of our countries bicentennial are plentiful enough. From one extreme setting to another…..
Even at that age, I have heard of Vegas; seeing pictures on TV and movies, reading about it in newspapers and magazines and stops at travel agencies where Vegas brochures got the most attention thanks to its elaborate design and bulkiness (even the cheap ones had a certain boldness and flair to them). This noise level only increased when I moved back into Southern California.
It was an August weekend when my Mom and her then-boyfriend decided to take me along for their Vegas weekend. I suspect they didn’t want me alone in Northridge, much less in the apartment, or the little hyper money boy would end up setting fire to the place and township out of joyous accident. Looking back, I don’t blame them.
We made reservations for the Tropicana for a couple of nights and planned our drive there…..the later, rather poorly as the boyfriend thought the ride in his 1974 Beetle to Vegas would be 9 hours, so we ended up waking up a 3 a. m. and made our sleepy eyed way to our weekend. The ride ended up being only 5 hours and we arrived at the Trop around 10 am, about 4 hours before our room would be ready.
Despite the grogginess, the ride into Vegas was pumping me up; first with the usual anticipation you experience with any start of a trip and, second, little warnings like the billboards (some more elaborate than others) and when we made a pit stop, there were pieces of Vegas unofficially welcoming us with signs and what not.
However, at our arrival we spent the first four hours of my fabulous Vegas experience sitting in the lobby, half-asleep waiting for our room while Vegas was spilling all around us….well, more like me as I understood I was too young for the casino and pretty much 90% of this town. Making this more cumbersome, the boyfriend told me about the mob on the way up there and I suddenly had visions of walking down in front of the Stardust and then getting pushed into a black car with murder doors where my kidnappers would make me “disappear”. All of this enthusiasm and gullibility was a double headed sword that almost killed me.
After 4 hours of being sequestered in that small open lobby, we finally got our room and for the first hour, I bounced around the resort and my interest was certainly perked, I even bumped into the voice of Bill Cosby; it wasn’t a visual contact as he was on the other side of a wall in the indoor tennis court area. Some kid asked Cosby for an autograph and he happily obliged. Thinking fast I went out looking for some sort of a pen and paper. The best I can scrounge up in hast was a crayon and cheap paper from the keno lounge. Well, he was far gone by the end of my run.
Sometime later, my mom gave me her room key and told me I could go up the strip and look around, but I had to be back for dinner. There isn’t much I can remember that day and admittedly, the rest of that trip. All I knew was when I crossed Tropicana Blvd. to head northbound, I was lost in urban enchantment! Everything. Vegas was now washing all these suggestions, notions and ideas I had picked up to this point out my system and I loved it. I didn’t flip out, go nuts with panic and excitement; I just rode with the waves as if I reached a new level of zen!
Sure, the adage of ‘Adult Disneyland’ may sound like a clique, but for this time and place, this was a hard fact I relished in! Yes, THIS was better and bigger than Disneyland! (...and cheaper, too!) So much energy, nuttiness and details. I couldn’t believe my senses. Any further details is lost in a fog of insanity that was and still is Vegas! That’s all I know….other than I didn’t trip out. Remember, this was my first run-in with urban zen. Ommmm, Baby!!
When we got back from the trip, I had become obnoxiously obsessed by Vegas and as you might guess, I wouldn’t shut up about it, anytime, anywhere! While everyone at had their usual pop culture favorites like Charlie’s Angles and Star Wars, I was doing things like drawing casino logos on my Trapper Keeper and littered my wind breaker with patches from the MGM Grand and Aladdin. One kid gave me a cheap freebie from a recent Vegas trip; a 2 color poster that was nothing but copyright-free clip art of adults playing various casino games with the words ‘ROXY’S’ on top and ‘LAS VEGAS, NV’ on the bottom. I though this was a gift of the covenant! I suspect I didn’t bother thanking the poor kid for this cheap yet generous offer but I DO remember freaking out about that.
….and soon, Vegas was stalking me in return, thanks to the bookstores in my area. The first four Vegas books I picked up within those early impressionable years were Las Vegas Is My Beat by Ralph Pearl, Inside Las Vegas by Mario Puzo, Only In Las Vegas by Hardy-Roberts Enterprises and the self-published Las Vegas 1979 by Eddie Anderson (which I bought at the Stardust gift shop). I would have bought ANY book with Las Vegas on it cover and/or title, which turn out to be counterproductive as I was too young to read anything beyond the page count of Mad Magazine.
In a strange way, my Vegas geekiness sort of protected me from a lot of the usual school yard politics geeks with thick glasses like me went through. Once my Vegas Freak flag was flying, many bullies largely stayed away from me as they were use to the standard geek stereotypes that fed their alpha ego…...but this?! Some geek who obsessed with showgirls, slot machines and casinos?!?! THIS was too obscure and odd for them to deal with it. They might try to hit me, buuut I may freak out and stab them in the neck with a ink pen I just bought at the MGM Grand?!?! Well, it was now their problem, not mine.
Making this matter more thicker, I found out about a 50,000 watt A. M. radio station KDWN, a. k. a. K-Dawn. The station format was music of 40’s and 50’s, mainly big band music. I could put up with the playlist, but the big pull for my ears were the commercials from local business like the hotel and casinos, motels that littered the Strip and other local places like the mall The Boulevard, the department store Wonder World, etc.,. Plus, the station had Vegas shows like Your Weekend In Las Vegas with Charles Supin, the weekly Breakfast In Las Vegas and the nightly Stardust Sports Line With Lee Pete. On one special night I managed to get a live broadcast of the opening of the Orbit Inn and Casino; a cheap sci-fi themed motel just three couple of blocks from Gilter Gultch…..or as loudly advertised in their radio spot “at the heart of Downtown” (oh, yea and they also said that their new sign was “9 stories high” and “can be seen 40 miles away”. It was really only 4 stories high and I never saw the damned thing until I was only two blocks away. Ah, the days when you could get away with high-volumed advertising like that!!)
On top of all THAT, the station’s studios and offices were located next to the old pool area of the Union Plaza which was located above the hotel’s entrance. The pool area had a grand view straight down Fremont Blvd. with each side of the Gulch looking like neon Grand Canyon with the studios window over looking this grand view. I remember taking a sojourn to the pool area and the views over downtown and through the large windows into the station were mind boggling. I’ve seen more than enough stations located in the middle of nowhere or in a heavily industrial area on the outskirts of any given city, but, here, Vegas had a small tradition of some resorts hosting radio stations.
The oddity of recording these tapes was they weren’t done IN Vegas as I was too busy bouncing around all over the city to sit still and monitor whatever portable Sears boom box I had at the time inside a hotel room. So, I ended up doing the recording inside a bedroom of my grandmothers house in Grover Beach, CA with all the radio frequency noises included. I certainly couldn’t do this in L. A. as there was another 50,000 AM station located next to KDWN’s frequency and the air space in this big bulky city was too cluttered other radio waves.
…..and then there was the televised Runnin’ Rebels basketball games broadcasts over KHJ-TV in Los Angeles! Normally, I didn’t care for sports of any kind, but the team was making waves and they were from Vegas, so why not! I got a Rebels shirt and hat and I know I got a photo of me wearing this set in front of Benny Binnon’s old million dollar display. (to your left)
What really got my attention was the fact that these broadcasts were largely sponsored by the Las Vegas Convention And Visitors Authority and, because of which, 2/3rds of the ads were for hotels and casinos like Desert Inn, Sands, Dunes and such. I first heard about these shows during my Northridge days and I managed to hold my poor boom box against the TV speakers and slam that record button when those spots popped on and then halftime came around, the LVCVA would roll their own 5 minute spot; it’s theme song at the time, ‘Las Vegas: Star Of The USA’ is now burned into my endless loop play list in-between my ears.
For the next 3 years, we made semi-regular return visits; sometimes monthly or bi-weekly and with each visit I became more obsessed as I was trying to cover this town as much as I could with the limited time I had; sometimes we stayed over night or two nights. Either way, I put enough pressure on myself to get in as much as I can and I’m surprised that I didn’t burn out so quickly.
One of the many ways I flew that freak flag was collecting each hotel/casino like if they were sports trading cards; brochures, stationary, coupon books and what ever freebie I could get my hands on. This pressure probably lead me away from doing some actual gambling when I was old enough. I couldn’t see myself stand or sit in one spot more then a few minutes inside a casino without getting edgy feet aching to go explore the insanity and its humanity.
After this trail period, we moved from Northridge to El Segundo and going to Las Vegas wasn’t much of a priority anymore. Still, I needed more Vegas, so I did some research about the history of this city to keep the monkey at bay. I even seriously considered subscribing to one of the city’s newspapers by mail, but I’m glad I left that in the fanboy fantasy stage.
The old MGM Grand was my favorite hotel/casino as it was the most modern glamorous 70’s resort ever. Much like the old Northridge Fashion Center, it was certainly a product of its time. The place made use of their ownership of the MGM movie studio by plastering lit signs of its starts and movie everywhere, plus they even had a movie theater to play these treasures. Another interesting touch was their insistence of plastering their Leo The Lion logo damn well everywhere to the point I felt it stalked me well into my home.
By the way, my second favorite hotel/casino was the Maxim which was located across the street from the MGM. The location across the street to the MGM made sense as it was certainly the most over-the-top 70’s place in the city. I remember sometime later I had a Maxim room to myself and noticed the wallpaper over the bed board was a gigantic photo of the strip at night and felt another level of nirvana. When I asked my mom and her new boyfriend what their room was like, they said said it was nothing but mirrors and plastered Vegas wallpaper like mine. Yup, 1970’s Vegas was not for whimps…..and non-romantics
Outside of the sad fact of sweating in public thanks to the summers, I learned many Vegas lessons. First of which is never go to Vegas with relatives. My grandmother offered to take me and a cousin to Vegas with her: the first warning sign as when she mentioned the trip, I got so excited that she then changed her mind. Second, the grandmother was a drama queens control freak so the first part of the trip was her playing the slots and yelling at me to “stand still” while the cousin and I was forced to watch her play the slots for a few hours. The other half of the trip was spent yours truly baby sitting the cousin on the strip as I was ordered to walk him to the great babysitting capitol of Circus Circus. Well, we never made it as the cousin was endlessly complaining about his feet and wanted me to wait for his feet to stop hurting. When he innocently ask me to carry him, I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back to our hotel room at the south strip Travel Lodge….with him screaming about everything else BUT his feet. Once we got there, I pushed him into the room with my grandmother to let the drama queens fight it out. My grandmother cut this trip short as punishment…..which was fine by me.
Another slice of knowledge was one shouldn’t trust Circus Circus with your kids and anything else, like appetite because of its buffet. This town had always tried to make room for families (mainly the children) but I suspect something like this clown palace and casino has been created out of spite; kids on top of the cement tent hurting themselves at the arcades while their parents below in the casino desperately going broke and drunk. I do have memories of adults (mainly mothers) running up the stairs, thinking they heard one of their kids getting hurt, or yelling at them to shut up as their dad has a stacked hand in the porker room.
…..and as for the buffet? Don’t ask. It was worse than getting stuck in a fake pink tent with screaming kids.
Speaking of which, it was around this time I finally got around to reading ‘Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas’ after the boyfriend, a former juvenile corrections officer, forbidden me reading it for years…...(but he had no problem with me and those ‘Coffee, Tea Or Me’ books….THAT is a whole other perzine issue). Anyways, after Raoul Duke laid waste to this clown palace with just one line, this joyously tacky place lost their humor and got testy with the books connection. When Universal Studios announced the movie adaptation in 1997, Circus Circus sent a cease and desist order to warn them not to use their name and likeness. I suspect that big-ass clown in front of this tacky palace is really a raging alcoholic after one too many kids in that pink echo chamber.
However, I DO have a more pleasant memories of riding the “Space Age Sky Shuttle”, the semi-mini-peoplemover that connected the main building to the hotel tower in the back of the property.
Another, more important lesson was NEVER go to Vegas without room reservations during three day week holidays….especially New Years Eve!! Making a long story short, my sister and her family invited themselves for X-mas decided to extend their stay into new years, so mom’s new boyfriend devised a plan (more like a lie) to kick the sister and her clan to leave. He gave mom and I a Vegas package for New Years, but we had to leave immediately. That got rid of the sister, but what were we REALLY going to do? Well, we ended up going to Vegas for a week anyways….and it almost killed us.
There was a bit of family drama with as we drove to the city and we ended up bouncing from one motel to another (4 of them) and we finally ended up at the old Gateway Motel on LV Blvd near the end of the trip. New Year’s countdown was the final night of our trip and I welcomed the new year under neath the Union Plaza Fremont Street canopy and almost lost my hearing for 2 seconds. When I arrived to our hotel room, I was in charge of re-stuffing the towels under the front door because there was a 2 inch gap at the bottom and the tempter was in the 30’s. Needless to day, the ride back was quiet and no further blood was shed.
As the 90’s approached, my Vegas trips dropped off considerably. There were only two trips I can recall and they were with friends….with room reservations! A couple of lessons were certainly learned by then!!
There were two reasons for the drop off and one of them was real life and other obsessions were demanding my attention. The second was below the surface, but had more impact on me as this decade brought the onslaught of the mega-resorts…..and its demands for more real estate to fit them all in.
When The Mirage opened in 1989 and became quick mega success, the starting mega gun was shot and many of these XXL palaces began to be built and opened. Unlike the resorts of the past, a lot of the new ones demand even more real estate and that called for some of the old guards to make room; Castaways made room for The Mirage, Sands went away for The Venetian, Marina and the Tropicana Golf Course made way for MGM Grand Mark 2 and so on... Even worse, The Landmark was blown up to make way for a parking lot….how humiliating and embarrassing for that version of “The Future” as it once billed at the Space Age Hotel/Casino...….
Sure, Vegas has always stayed ahead of the demanding tourist dollar by shedding its skin but now the pace was coming fast and furious as old favorites bit the dust hard to make room for the new bigger kings of the strip and in typical Vegas fashion, they were blowing them up real good spectacular fashion all over television. Watching these glorious destruction on a frequent basis kinda rubbed me out and I took a vacation from what Vegas was quickly changing into.