-- Sure, the Venetian offers guest suites and hot doughnuts, but only the classy spots like the Tam O'Shanter Motel offer a pool four feet from the sidewalk and cheap beer nearby! July 14, 2003 - Downtown Las Vegas And Flying Home The Final Insult    • Prizefights are common in Las Vegas, and really, they're a good way to measure every trip one takes to the city. Sports Guy Bill Simmons once did this in comparison to a wrestling match, but really, the line between boxing and wrestling is getting irrevocably blurred.    I suppose I should have seen coming that, given how much I enjoyed his writeup about getting relatively killed in the city, it was going to happen to me. But really, I'm 23. Got most of my life ahead of me. I believe I'm invincible. And yes, I believed it would never happen to me.    I woke up Monday morning -- the morning I swore on about four different occasions that I'd never stay in Vegas long enough to see -- well aware that I wouldn't be able to go the whole day without gambling again. By this point, I clearly understood there was to be no saving me. I was going to spend an entire day in the city with nothing to do, spend it in the company of someone (Shawn) who enjoys gambling, and spend it in some way that would involve spending. I knew there was an ATM trip ahead of me ... I just didn't know there was two ATM trips ahead of me.    Admittedly, I'm one of those people who would make three $50 trips to the ATM in a week instead of one $150 one, just because if there's money in my pocket, I'm much more likely to spend it freely. But looking at the old checkbook register weeks later and seeing those two $80+ transactions less than 12 hours apart ... it was the "getting hit in the nuts shot" before being thrown out of the club door by the bouncer.    Checking out on the TV screen, thus eliminating the need for me to have to face the friendly Oklahoman at the desk who'd undoubtedly ask, "How'd you do?," we made our way out of the MGM to meet Shawn. Loading our luggage in the car, we headed to really the only touristy parts of Vegas we hadn't yet hit: The North Strip and Downtown. Stratosphere Money Lost on Premises: Relatively, Not That Much    The Strat is the northernmost point on what's considered by most The Strip. The question is not whether there's anything after it ... and we'll get to that in a minute ... but whether it actually technically qualifies as connected to what's south of it. It's less than a block from the site of what was the first Strip resort, the now-departed El Rancho Las Vegas, but the nerve center of everything has moved south from the Stardust, Riviera, Sahara and what else was up this end.    Shawn gave us a history lesson about the Strat on our drive up there. For lack of taking notes about just what he said, I'll now quote the Las Vegas Review-Journal because they told a good story here:    With his own cash and dollars raised from his father's friends, Stupak acquired a homely 1.5-acre parcel north of Sahara Avenue at Las Vegas Boulevard South that once was home to a car lot. What rose in its place and opened on March 31, 1974, was a small slot joint absurdly named Bob Stupak's World Famous Historic Gambling Museum.    On May 21, an air conditioner caught fire and burned the joint down. Arson was suspected, but the insurance company eventually settled the claim.    By then, Stupak was on his way to creating Vegas World, a testament to Stupak's persistence in the financial marketplace. By the late 1970s, Las Vegas casino culture had become populated with college graduates and experienced hoteliers who dressed more like bankers than pit bosses. With his wild sport coats and nonstop patter, Stupak was a brother from another planet. Yet he managed to persuade Valley Bank legends Ken Sullivan and E. Parry Thomas to part with more than $1 million to get Vegas World, a 20-story tower, off the ground.    It opened on a Friday the 13th, 1979. Stupak not only suffered from a mediocre location and a scrawny bankroll -- he was neither downtown nor on the Strip, and the cost of construction had eaten up all his reserve funds -- but the only thing his club offered the curious was his unique personality and gift of promotion. His motto was plastered across the building: "The Sky's the Limit."    For the next decade, that would be enough. Stupak developed quirky and interesting angles on traditional games such as blackjack and craps. Double Exposure 21 and Experto became well-known to avid players and card counters. There were Crapless Craps and Polish Roulette. He accepted high-limit wagers at the tables and in his sports book, where he sometimes recklessly shifted the odds in order to generate action. His coupon promotions, which would return to haunt him and generate big fines and reprimands from Nevada gaming regulators and the Missouri attorney general's office, would bring tens of thousands of customers to town for Bob Stupak's Vegas World Vacation.    At its peak, Bob Stupak's Vegas World generated more than $100 million in annual gambling revenues. Ever the gambler, in the late 1980s Stupak began devising a way to make an even bigger mark in Las Vegas.    His idea was the Strat, the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River at 1,139 feet. By the time it was done, he wasn't the guy in charge of it anymore, and it's since gone bankrupt and been rebought, but it's all today pretty much pinned to the guy who first made his presence in Vegas by having stuff like napkins Marilyn Monroe used on display.    The obvious attraction here is the tower, which offers the best view in the city for half the price of the Eiffel Tower at Paris. The actual casino and World's Fair-like shopping area was quiet when we were there -- it was 9 a.m. on a Monday -- but the tower proved to be everything one could ever want out of an observation deck. For $8, the inside was well signed to show what you were looking, offered full views of everything and had an exterior portion where you could actually reach your arm up and TOUCH THE M_THE_-_UC_IN_ SUN. -- To downtown, to Striptown and to the Stratosphere ... literally.    The top of the tower also has amusement rides -- a 160-foot drop ride for the kids and a lazy "roller coaster" for the adults -- but I kept my adventure seeking to the low-limit craps tables, where I had my best rolls of the whole trip. I hit two points twice, held the dice for maybe 5-10 minutes a pair of times ... and still lost the $40 I'd bought in with on the $2 table. But hey, at least I enjoyed myself, he rationalized.    From there, we left the mysticism of the Strip ... and entered the part of Vegas you knew there had to be. You know all those drive-thru wedding chapels they always make out to be so cute on the Travel Channel? Well, they're all located on the part of Las Vegas Boulevard between the Strip and downtown ... across the street from some of the seediest housing and strip malls of bail bond shops you could ever possibly imagine.    We're talking about an area where it's not safe to walk through during the day ... mostly concrete duplexes, but some houses and cars that look straight out of Havana. And it's sad, because you know these are people who probably work at the casinos, then spend their paychecks at the casinos and stab on the side. It's like having a friend who gets a job at McDonald's, then starts telling you how the burgers are made. You always suspected, and may even have kind of known, but to have the palpable truth butterflied out in front of you is just something nobody ever needs.    I suppose if you're reading looking for affirmation about a drive-thru Vegas wedding, well, they do put a whole lot of palm trees in the roadway's median. And if you get married in the evening, it's not like you'll able to see anything across the street ... even the pluckiest light couldn't escape the black hole on the west side of that piece of LV Boulevard.    Downtown Las Vegas is, really, not all that much different that the downtown of most American cities ... if you ignore the conspicuous presence of some of the largest bank headquarters you've ever seen. It's in a struggle to draw tourism dollars from the "suburbs," which have a great deal going for them. Downtown Boston cam up with the Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall area, turning it into a pedestrian mall and historical space.    Downtown Las Vegas came up with the Fremont Street Experience. In a city based on the largest, the tallest, the best and the brightest, the Fremont Street Experience is a truly one-of-a-kind show. Ninety feet above a four-block section of Fremont Street, a canopy serves as a display system for the shows. "The canopy houses 2.1 million lights, capable of producing millions of color combinations and 540,000 watts of concert-quality sound. The shows are run by 36 computers and are accompanied by 218 speakers. In addition, the canopy houses 180 computer-programmed high-intensity strobe lights, 64 variable color lighting fixtures, and eight robotics mirrors per block that pan and tilt to reflect light, all of which aid in the miraculous display of each six minute Light and Sound show presentation."    I can only imagine how much more impressive it is at night. -- Though admittedly, the thing does knock the temperature down a good 10 degrees.    There's about a dozen casinos that are partners in the Experience, and while we didn't hit them all, we did go to a good deal of them: Golden Nugget Money Lost on Premises: None    The Nugget is one of the few casinos downtown nice enough to draw patrons on its own ... it can't command Strip prices, but it can probably command the most. More so than even the other places around, the Golden Nugget has a connection to the elderly. If there were awards to be given for "Casino Where You're Most Likely To See Slot Machines With Oxygen Tanks," the Nugget would win.    It's a classy place, with a lot of white and gold trim, but it's the large golden nuggets above that logically give the place its name. The largest piece is the Hand of Faith, weighing 27.2 kg, found in Australia and bought by the casino for a million Australian dollars. And depending on how your trip is going gaming wise, you can either say it's shape is the Lord's way of assuring you are supposed to win, or fate's way of giving you what looks to be a giant middle finger with mirrors putting your face next to it. Binion's Horseshoe Money Lost on Premises: Lunch    Binion's is the home to each year's World Series of Poker, and is roundly remarked as the place you go if you really, really don't want anything to get in the way of you gambling. It ought to be ... Binion's was the first place in the city to make big-time gaming the priority.    The whole place is dark hardwoods one you get past the gaudy lights of outside ... like a hunting club in Maine if that state needed to pump the air conditioning 25 hours a day. We had lunch in their coffee shop, which is buried so far in the back of the complex, it almost seems like they purposely made it so you have to walk past all their cheap table games to get to it.    Benny Binion is one of only two in Las Vegas to be depicted, via a statue, riding a horse. The other was Rafael Rivera, who did little more than discover the Las Vegas Valley. Suffice to say it's not Rivera's statue that's sitting in the middle of downtown. Four Queens Money Lost on Premises: Many Chips, Few Dollars    If Hampton Beach in New Hampshire, with it's aging boardwalk buildings and casino ballroom ever actually secures a gaming license, I'm pretty sure the facility that they open up will have the feel of the Four Queens.    It's not so much a knock against the place as the kind of decor they seem to have set up ... while most places where you can walk in open entryways from off the street have a lot of slots and such before you get to the table games, the Four Queens just dumps into this large room where all the tables are.    We played a little 50 cent roulette there. It's fun, because there's that split second when the dealer's handing you that stack of 50 chips that, 'Oh my goodness, this trip hasn't been a fiscal failure!' And then you remember that stack is five bucks. It was fun to play for a little while though.    Of course, the fun ended when the dealer ended up with all my $20 dollars. But that goes without saying. California Money Lost on Premises: Pineapple ... No Cash    The California doesn't actually sit on the Fremont Street Experience, but it's close enough that it can draw people in with some unique promotions and quirks. The place might be the freshest-looking casino I saw the whole time I was there, with the small size of the cheapo joints and the cleanliness and professional feeling of the larger ones. Everything was well lit, and they had their large homage to those who had rolled the craps dice for longer than an hour ... the longest being a 3 hour, 6 minute roll streak.    But what I found odd is apparently within the borders of California are all the world's Polynesian islands.    There are casinos that have found their niche with the young, the old, the tourists, the cheap and the locals. The Cal has found their niche with Hawaiians and Polynesians, to the point of where they run special shuttles to the islands to get people to come. Kid you not ... all of the clientele is Polynesian. The dealers, the waitresses, everything. It's like getting really drunk one night and waking up in Fiji.    Sadly though we couldn't hit all the downtown highlights, or even the kinds of things that beg to be visited. -- If only they had more than just jerked beef ...    For we had a date as Vegas' current favorite son. Bellagio Money Lost on Premises: Amazingly, None    We'd made visits to the Bellagio several times during this trip -- Friday morning to look around and get Charlie's $4.83 breakfast of water and a banana, Friday night to see the fountain show, other times or something -- but this afternoon we actually got to see its money shot. Shawn and his wife were actually staying the end of their trip at the hotel, so we got to make our way past the guards and into a guest room. And not your normal guest room ... one at the end of one of the places' floors, so we had the full-out view. The not-fountain-side view, but the view nonetheless. -- Amazing how enhancing humongous panes of glass can be.    If there's a knock to be made about the Bellagio, it's that for the common person, things are almost too opulent. The lobby's humongous ceiling display of glass flowers instantly makes you look yourself over and how you're dressed compared to everyone else around you. The conservatory has fountains that shoot controlled jets of water crashing into each other, making quite the beautiful clatter as they fall to the rocks below. The bathrooms all have jacuzzi tubs, and the toilet is placed in a separate room with its own little door. Even the bottled water they sell ... it may be only Las Vegas tap water, but it's put through carbon filtration, reverse osmosis, microfiltration, UV treatment -and- ozonation before it ever touches your lips! Kinda makes you wonder why the TVs are just boring old Zeniths, right?    But who would ever watch TV at Bellagio when there's so much else to see? And I'm not even talking about the fountain shows, the art galleries, the exorbitant restaurants, the weddings, the conservatories, the boutiques ... all of it. I'm talking about the guy playing craps that's so important, he not only gets his own entire side of the table for his chips, they plastic-wrap his own personal chairs for him when he finishes playing for the day. I'm talking about the guy who'd been at the pool the day before ... so eccentric, he swims with his sneakers on as though it's the most normal thing in the world. I'm talking about the Italian girl sitting next to me at the buffet, who had the milkiest-white legs I've ever seen just drippingly end with perfectly manicured toes. Sure, she may have caught me peeking glances at her whenever I could ... like I had a chance anyway!    In short, the Bellagio is the place to go if you're really going to do Vegas right. And that's even before you find out their buffet has peeled shrimp. For real. Not to mention nineteen kinds of cake. Dude, nineteen.    At least. Harrah's Money Lost on Premises: The Last Of It, Thankfully    After we left the Bellagio buffet, having eaten such exotic things as vegetables, we made our way to what would be our last stop prior to McCarran, our hosts' favorite place to gamble. It's not hard to understand why ... Harrah's has tapped into the whole Mardi Gras vibe, and in a city where everyone's trying to portray the image of party-time fun, Harrah's actually seems to hit it.    Don't misunderstand what I'm saying ... I still lost there. Walked in, went to the ATM, took out some cash, put some down at a table game, and lost it with a speed you don't even normally expect to see in Las Vegas. But it was at a combination game that you can't find at the other casinos -- "Triple Spot Bonus," which combines Casino War, Blackjack and Poker in a "Let It Ride" kind of game -- with a dealer who was both very amiable and gave the best description of blackjack basic strategy that I've ever heard.    Shawn's wife did exceedingly well at this game, a couple times winning the 6-to-1 bonus you could net for winning your war hand (your first dealt card beats the dealer's), your blackjack hand (played out blackjack) and your poker hand (netting a jacks or better from total cards dealt to you up to six, with better than even money payouts for better hands).    Shawn went out even faster than I did, but he found his way to a craps table and won some of it back. Charlie and I, meanwhile, watched. It's quite a depressing thing to do when all you really want to do is play for the sake of playing, but that last $20 in my wallet was getting me dinner at the airport, and it damn sure did.    It was a Quizno's sub that I ended up tasting until well past our landing in Hartford on Tuesday morning, but damnit, I went home with money in my pocket.    We got ourselves to the airport exceeding early given our flight time -- yeah, the security lines are as short as you'd think they'd be at 10:30-11 p.m. -- so we got to watch a fitting conclusion to our journey. Both losers, and me well bored of sitting in the McCarran sports bar watching highlights of the All-Star Home Run Derby, we watched a man play slots at the bank of machines by our gate. It was amazing enough that he hit for $250 on a Wheel of Fortune machine, and downright criminal to see him hit for $150 a few minutes later on a machine down the block. But to see him then keep pouring quarters into a third as we left, well, that's Vegas in a nutshell.    And as I sat there with Charlie, reminiscing on how happy we were to be facing a lost day of air travel, I wrote the following final note in my Five Star notebook:    Seeing so many couples and so many girls with so many traits that remind me of Meg ... it sucked, and I'm glad to be going home. Just ready to be going home. Mercifully, the end. Next ... But Wait, It's Not The End! [ Hit. ] [ July 10 ] [ July 11 ] [+] [ July 12 ] [ July 13 ] [+] [ July 14 ] [ Etc. ] Intro! THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY MONDAY EXTRAS

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