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August 2008
(or Livin' Below Average In Las Vegas)
I got fired last year in Las Vegas from the Frontier Hotel for saying ‘shit’ in a town where the big game is called ‘crap’-George Carlin
Maybe it was the year and a half I previously spent in Boondocks, Utah, or I was so much of an impressionable kid that the gullibility factor should of killed me years ago or I was becoming bored with the pop culture aimed at kids my particular age and it sure wasn’t drugs that altered my brain as I didn’t take ‘em, unless you count the chemical residue from my old diet of eating cake frosting straight out of the can and Strawberry Pop Tarts.
For whatever the reasons and excuses I can scrape up, I’ve always had this love affair with Las Vegas since my first trip at the age of 13! Despite the oblivious fact that I was too young to enjoy 95% of this town (mind you, this was way before family value guilt engulf the strip in the 90’s), I loved the town.
I might easily have written this ‘affair’ off as youthful enthusiasm, but even as this was burning off in the ensuing years, not only the interest remained, but expanded a bit. I had graduated from picking up cheap souvenirs and raiding the hotels for their brochures and stationary to reading closely related books for behind the scenes information and appreciating the towns urban ‘warts and all’ aspect for the behind the facade interest.
Of course, Hunter S. Thompson’s classic ‘Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas’ melded both the front and behind, the heaven and hell into one boiling pot I felt a deep respect for. Sure, I laughed with Gonzo and Duke and their drug-infested rampage slicing through the casinos where Spiro Agnew and Bob Hope populated, but I also noted the book’s deep moral implications: all that fear and loathing around us had a price tag that most of us are still trying to ignore. A fine American book about a very American town.
Even though I knew the lavender surface of ‘old Vegas’ was changing and evolving, the 90’s was a bit of a challenge for me as the pace was coming on in such a nose bleeding speed. I had underestimated Vegas’ embedded impulsive need to change for survival and its willingness to replace its own history and traditions to keep the tourist and their dollars coming. This was the part of that ‘warts and all’ I didn’t fully understand until recently.
My Vegas interest waned during the late 90’s and early fake millennium and it wasn’t until around 2004 when I went back that I finally developed a thick skin and made peace with the pace. Still the adjustment wasn’t easy.
In August of this year, my Mom and I were going to stay at her Las Vegas timeshare called The Jockey Club to meet my sister from Arizona so she can get away from her year of hell, which started off when her idiot husband died. Unfortunately, on the morning before our arrival in Vegas, my sister was arrested for DUI with no car insurance. Being that Arizona has strict laws against no car insurance mixed in with too much booze, we instantly knew she wouldn’t be joining us anytime soon.
LEFT:
a close up of the Jockey Club sandwiched in the belly of the Cosmopolitan.
RIGHT:
a more scenic view of the Sandwich.
Still, we made the reservations weeks ago and weren’t in the mood to go through the politics of canceling the hotel and plane, so we were willing to tolerate the weather, which was forecast for 100 to 110 degrees for the high and 80 to 85 degrees for the low with the occasional 20 and 30 percent chance for thundershowers during our stay.
One of the plans that were made before the trip began and my sister’s invite from the People’s Republic of Arizona was to see Cher at Caesars Palace, $250 ticket prices be damned. I was a little hyper myself as I got a new digital camera to take picture of old Vegas. However, due to the intensity of the weather, this enthusiasm was watered down to mild fits of inspiration between buckets of sweat as many of the pictures I wanted to take where outdoors…...damn it.
The Jockey Club might have major bonus points for its strip location, but, as of late, it had been playing a serious price as it felt victim to the condominium explosion from last couple of years and the mortgage-related fall-out of this year (so far). A couple of years ago, the property in front and the south side of the Club was sold to a company that made plans to build The Cosmopolitan, a billion-dollar condo/hotel/casino project, thus leaving the Club with no parking and no view of the south Strip, only of concrete and steel. Even though the Cosmopolitan is still not finished, the owner of the project is facing a foreclosure with construction to be halted soon.
Sadly, this was a noticeable pattern that is spreading up and down the strip. A much larger multi-billion dollar/purpose project, CityPark, had recently planned to halt construction due to the economy. Adding to the Clubs predicament, both CityPark and the Cosmopolitan are located next to each other and both dwarfs the Club’s 15-story towers like a weed to a forest of steel with a mere three feet separating the Club from this forest.
Other heavyweight projects fell victim to this fallout, couple of which where to be built over the ‘Old Vegas’ grave sites of the Stardust and the Frontier. For a town that has been described as “the last stand of the American Century”, this can be easily referred to as the “fall of Rome”. Not a good sign!Fortunately, in our little corner of the word, we were spared the view of steel and concrete from our hotel windows as Mom called the Club up and asked for a room on the north side that over looks the Bellagio. We might of gotten some of the behind the scene of the hotel next door, but we also got a nice view of the intersection of Flamingo Blvd. and the Strip and its inhabitant (Flamingo, Bally’s, Paris, Bill’s [formally Barbary Coast], Caesars Palace and the Bellagio) and the Bellagio’s dancing fountains.
Another change to our area of the Strip was the addition of Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino, which was semi-built from the ashes of the “new” Aladdin which didn’t stay “new” for long. In late 1998, a British company bought the old Aladdin and tore it down to build a “new” one in its place to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars.
Well, this “new” version was an instant bomb as the designers went against conventional casino wisdom by not only placing the casino further back from Strip foot traffic, but building a shopping center all around the casino, thus forcing the foot traffic to go through the mall to get to the casino, the money making machine to EVERY gambling hotel/casino on the planet! Needless to say, after a botched grand opening, the Aladdin was quickly sinking and after bleeding money for a couple more years, they were bought out by Planet Hollywood in 2003.
If this passes for Old Vegas, I'm screwed!
Despite the weather, I managed to get a few shots of old Vegas on the first full day, I did managed to get a few old Vegas shots in; the Frontier sign was still up and the Somerset Center on Convention Center Drive was still in one piece.
I then took the bus that runs between the strip and downtown called The Duce. This bus is terribly convenient (especially with the heat) but it comes with a warning: not only can the Strip traffic be slower than the Santa Monica Freeway filled with snails, almost 95% of the passengers (almost 99% of whom are out-of-towners) have never seen a transit bus before and get generally confused with all its nuances like exact change, looking for a seat, and the subtle politics of sitting next to a stranger. The line of novices crowding the bus and dealing with public transit and the lone overworked bus driver adds another 10 minutes at each Strip bus stop. So, bring a book and pray for a bus with working air conditioning, it’s going to be a long ride!
Once in downtown, I soaked in all the old Vegas this area offered. However, from the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of an old Vegas relic that I never though would came true. This relic was actually one of the many ‘fears’ described by Thompson in his Vegas book. In it, he encounters a deadly vision of people’s faces projected largely on the side of a hotel tower, staring through his hotel window and right down on him. I never been that paranoid while traveling, but I can see some trepidation of, say, faces of goobers and suckers trying to have a good time by unintentionally show the fear and gullibility while forcing a smile a few feat high and wide for world of other suckers to see.
Thompson and physical chunks of the book (like that hotel tower) are no longer around, but The Fear was still in the air and I was watching it unfold underneath the Fremont Street Experience canopy. Mid section of the Fremont, a man named Karl was interviewing unsuspecting tourists that was being broadcasted on a large section of the digital canopy and everywhere else on the audio speakers.
It didn’t come off as fearful as Thompson described it, but it did relentlessly bounce between confusion and boredom. Where Karl, his camera crew and his interviewees were positioned, they couldn’t see their “fun” broadcasted on the canopy behind them. Even worse, this was an off night and the crowd wasn’t as big and interesting as, I suspect, Karl was hoping for. Any attempt to pump up the crowd from either Karl or his subjects where met with more echoes than reactions.
From here, the rest of the trip continued on its relaxed and casual way with the occasional raw Vegas moments to keep things interesting and on my toes:
1) While at a sports memorabilia store in the Rio, I saw a signed baseball by Pete Rose. The inscription read “Sorry I Betted On Baseball, Pete Rose”. Price tag: $425
2) The themed slot machine of this trip was E-Bay! It was a huge elaborate machine that was the most expensive. Mom played it at the Bellagio with a few gay guys and almost got wiped out, but she had far better luck with the one at Planet Hollywood where she won up to 150 bucks and I with 35 bucks!
3) On the second Downtown trip, I ended up talking to a lounge piano player named Bob Williams at the El Cortez. Between playing the keys, he was telling me about his days when he was playing lounges all over “Hollyweird” and the San Fernando Valley. I enjoyed his set enough to buy one of his home made CD. (See the record cover below)
4) I saw a Trader Vic’s at Planet Hollywood, but after reading its menu, this old Polynesian restaurant was turned into an all-too fancy ‘hip’ restaurant where the food is smaller and the plates are bigger. There’s always a downside to the Vegas influence.
5) I actually saw Pete Rose himself sitting at a table just outside a sports store in Caesar Palace Forum. I was ready to take a quick picture, but the small army of bodyguards surrounding Rose and the table, looking down on everybody passing through, counter balancing the homely look in Poor Pete’s face and eyes.
Cher closet part 396 to you LEFT and part 690 to your RIGHT.
Then, like a book end of the trip, Wednesday arrived and my Mom was ready to hunt down Cher tickets. Luckily, we had our cell phones to do some improvised coordination.
I called mom from the Tickets-4 Less both to tell her that they finally had Cher tickets for $179 each, but you had to be a Tickets 4-Less VIP member, which means you had to pay another $25 bucks for membership. Even with that, it was iffy we could get good seats as 4-Less was a third party. As timing would have it, Mom was in Caesars Palace and was making her way to the ticket office to check out their prices. Between the 3rd and 4th call between ourselves, Mom was told that a pair of tickets, seated on the front center row on the 2nd mezzanine had just cropped up, going for $140 a piece. After the shock that they were cheaper than Tickets 4 Less, Mom picked them up.
As we arrived for the show, many of Cher’s wardrobe was on display at the front entrance to keep the line preoccupied while everybody was going through metal detectors, which made me think who were more dangerous; the terrorists, anti-Cher League or a bootlegger recording the show.
Our seats had a great view of the stage and pretty much everything around it; the speakers, lights, the front section of people who either can afford it and/or major Cher fanboys and girls. A large moving starfield was projected through the front of the theatre with some moody/new age spacey BGM playing quietly, adding to the atmosphere.
However, this mood changed when the scheduled 8 pm showtime came and went and the audience took over by chanting and clapping their demands to get the show going. The starfield responded by blasting Bee Gees’ ‘You Should Be Dancin’’ which settled everybody down.
A few minutes later, the show started with a crack band and dancers, then came Cher, coming down from the upper corner of the building in a bubble. This entrance went down well and drove the Cher crowd nuts.
The rest of this 90 minute show was obviously all things Cher: the music, the career, the Sonny Bono years, the outlandish and the occasional skimpy outfits (she sure knows how to take care of herself), the video montages, the dancers, the fans crowding the stage and so on. Even the Village People showed up during Cher’s disco era segment…..well, puppets of them anyways, but weren’t they always?
Cher was clearly determined to put on a good show and she didn’t disappoint, especially for us in particular as she warned during her opening monologue that her voice was not in good shape and she thought of canceling tonight's show. It was even more to the point as she canceled the next night and they flew in Jerry Seinfeld to cover. I also felt sorry for the Cher fans holding the tickets for THAT gig.
Afterward, I did the usual aimless people-watching until I saw the commotion at the blackjack area near the entrance of the Flamingo. They turned a row of card tables into a strip show, complete with very skinny models in skinnier bras and panties, make-up on overdrive, shaking their moneymakers on top of some of the tables while some where trying concentrate on their cards with dealers who where also dressed in similar lack of outfits. To keep things equal, they had one male model card dealer for the ladies, but he was just standing there looking bored while the guys where keeping the gal dealers busy by stuffing their loses into their panties.
Being a straight guy, I found this scene annoying and was getting a headache from it. I then realized that I was eye-to-eye with a loud sloppy yet aggressive form of The Fear, so I cut the wandering short and got the hell out of there for another Banana shake at the Fatburger.
Far more stranger things had happen in this town and will continue to do so as my little non-lethal drop in the bucket is nothing but filler in this town’s collective legacy. That’s one hard fact that you have to accept about this town, no matter what you do here, you’re only one of the countless dreamers who continue to feed off and sucked into this legacy. However, there was one Vegas dream that I was reminded of while I was heading back home that I’m glad it didn’t happen.
Soon after my initial Vegas discovery and when my obsession just kicked into gear, I dreamed about living and working in Las Vegas…...particularly in the casino business, like a card dealer. Like any kid’s dream of the future, it was feed by the media and any other forms of misconceptions that blocked out the black cock of reality that was waiting to kill the dream and mangling the dreamer’s ego.
Over the years, I slowly leaned that card dealers are pretty much the plankton of the casino food chain and, thus, pay is incredibly low and the job pressure is incredibly high with pit bosses looking over your shoulder with none to little hope of promotion. Only a fast food cook gets more respect…...though not by much.
Then there’s what’s currently happening to that ’small town’ I first fell in love with back in 1978: the population explosion feed by the towns booming economy and bottoming out economy pretty much everywhere else and all of it’s domino effects. One UNLV history professor in one of the Vegas documentaries I saw mentioned that he didn’t want to be around should the population hit the 2 million mark.
This nice little Vegas trip had one more subtly left in its arsenal though. As we were flying closer to our airport at Santa Maria, I casually looked out the window from my battered copy of Literary Las Vegas and saw nothing but grass!...two seconds later, nothing but sky. Then a loud hard thud! Apparently, our pilot, Evil Kenevil Jr. II, flew in so fast and hard that he had to make a few steep turns to properly line up with the runway and kept lowering the plane until the wheels found the runway.
Maybe I should of taken up commercial aviation pilot. If he can get away with banging up the plane like that, maybe there’s hope for me and my dreams yet.
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