It's not my Vegas anymore.
I still have a vivid memory of my first trip to Las Vegas. It was a family trip. My parents and my little sister and I drove up to Las Vegas. My father had been regaling us with tales of his last adventure to the "Entertainment Capital of the World" and the best one was that he'd won a jackpot of $100 on a nickel slot machine. My sister and I wanted part of those riches and so we each gave Dad $2 from our allowances.
We were able to sit on chairs not too far from where he was playing this five-coin nickel slot machine at the old Sands hotel. We watched as our $4 investment disappeared in what seemed like an instant. One minute he was pumping nickels into the slot and the next he shrugged his shoulders as if to say "easy come, easy go."
Las Vegas became "mine" in my mind when I moved there in July of 1985. The Air Force sent me there and I found an apartment within walking distance of the old Showboat Hotel and Casino on Boulder Highway. Well, walking distance as long as it wasn't one of the nine or ten months during the year when it is way too hot to walk anywhere except from inside an air conditioned building to your car. At the time I owned the last car I would ever own that didn't have air conditioning and it was not fun to drive around town when the temperature rose above 90 degrees.
I didn't care. I made that town my own. I learned the ins and outs of all the bargain meal specials, the places locals hung out and the layout of every single casino in town. I knew them all. From the big joints on the Strip to tiny hole-in-the-wall places like the Opera House and its semi-neighbor, the Poker Palace. I knew how to park in self-parking in all of them to be under the cover of a roof (if there was one) and yet be at the closest walking point to an entrance.
Even after I moved back home to L. A. in late 1987, I went to Vegas frequently. My soon to be second wife (not long after that to become the second ex-wife) was born and raised there. She moved in with me in Santa Monica in June of 1988. The following January we moved to the El Segundo apartment complex that would become my home for two plus decades.
But she missed her dad. A lot. She missed her brother. A lot. Whether he was living with her dad or in a prison cell as he often was, she wanted to go visit. We went up there on holiday weekends and others where possible. One year we had an early Thanksgiving meal with my family here and then sped our way to Las Vegas in time to join her father for another family feast.
My last visit to Las Vegas before this past weekend was in 2005. I still knew where everything was. I'd gambled in/visited every single hotel casino around the town. When I drove in early Friday afternoon, I felt like a stranger in a strange land.
The Imperial Palace is gone and something called The Linq is where it stood. I've seen commercials for The Cosmopolitan and Aria.
The Mandarin Oriental and the Vdara on either side of Aria don't even have casino space. Steve Wynn built the Encore as a twin to his Wynn hotel casino that stands on what was once the Desert Inn. I could go on all night about what's changed about Las Vegas but it's depressing.
I will definitely go back next year if there's another NTL tournament final for us to compete in, but I don't see any reason why I'd go back otherwise.
One reason, aside from the physical changes and my discomfiture at feeling a bit lost, is that the way hotel/casinos make money has changed. Food and beverages were always an affordable plus about visiting that city. We were stuck in a meeting hall for over four hours for our tournament competition. The Rio was happy to have us there, gave players a good rate on the room, but they made serious bank on us during the competition itself. A 12 ounce bottle of Pepsi was $3.50. So was an identically sized bottle of water. I didn't bother checking the pricing of the snacks, I knew I wasn't going to allow myself to pay that kind of money for stuff that's under $2 at 7-11.
I also ordered a room service meal at one point because I was so damn tired. $45 including tip for a burger, fries and two of those 12 ounce diet sodas. They were overpriced to begin with and they added an $8 service charge. Hell, a 20 ounce diet soda and a $1.99 bag of nuts here is less than $5. At the Rio's gift shop it was almost double that amount.
Plus the coffee shops are all gone. Great places to dine and if you are so inclined, to play Keno, they've disappeared.
* * *
On my way home, I was searching for something to listen to on the radio before leaving the range of Las Vegas radio stations and being limited to what little radio can be heard between the top of the Baker grade until getting back into range of Los Angeles radio stations. I was amazed to find a rebroadcast of an old Casey Kasem's American Top 40. This one was from August 26, 1972 and listening to it was like having stepped into a time machine. Here, in ascending order are the top ten from this broadcast:
And now, the new number one song in all of the land for the week of August 26th, 1972:
Some notes on these musicians. You Don't Mess Around With Jim was the first big hit for Jim Croce, who would die in a plane crash less than 13 months after this edition of AT40 aired. Kasem told a story about how Croce had been a school teacher in a rough neighborhood of South Philadelphia. The story was how a 260 lb junior high school girl shoved the 5'7" 150 lb Croce across a room and that was what sent him back in pursuit of a music career.
Coconut was the last of Harry Nilsson's three big hit records. What made him a real rarity among successful musicians was the almost complete lack of live concert performances. Ironically, while he was a tremendously talented songwriter, his two biggest hits, Everybody's Talkin (At Me) and Without You) were written by others. He did write One, a top five hit for Three Dog Night.
More than enough words have already been written about the death of Karen Carpenter from anorexia nervosa and the speculation that ingesting ipecac to induce vomiting was the real cause of the cardiotoxicity that killed her. It was a tragedy no matter what happened.
Looking Glass' only big hit, Brandy, spent 4 weeks at #2 behind Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again. The very next week, Brandy fell to #4 and Alone Again regained the top spot on the charts.
I remember this particular edition of AT40 so well as I listened to it in its entirety that very weekend. It was the weekend before my Bar Mitzvah.
We were able to sit on chairs not too far from where he was playing this five-coin nickel slot machine at the old Sands hotel. We watched as our $4 investment disappeared in what seemed like an instant. One minute he was pumping nickels into the slot and the next he shrugged his shoulders as if to say "easy come, easy go."
Las Vegas became "mine" in my mind when I moved there in July of 1985. The Air Force sent me there and I found an apartment within walking distance of the old Showboat Hotel and Casino on Boulder Highway. Well, walking distance as long as it wasn't one of the nine or ten months during the year when it is way too hot to walk anywhere except from inside an air conditioned building to your car. At the time I owned the last car I would ever own that didn't have air conditioning and it was not fun to drive around town when the temperature rose above 90 degrees.
I didn't care. I made that town my own. I learned the ins and outs of all the bargain meal specials, the places locals hung out and the layout of every single casino in town. I knew them all. From the big joints on the Strip to tiny hole-in-the-wall places like the Opera House and its semi-neighbor, the Poker Palace. I knew how to park in self-parking in all of them to be under the cover of a roof (if there was one) and yet be at the closest walking point to an entrance.
Even after I moved back home to L. A. in late 1987, I went to Vegas frequently. My soon to be second wife (not long after that to become the second ex-wife) was born and raised there. She moved in with me in Santa Monica in June of 1988. The following January we moved to the El Segundo apartment complex that would become my home for two plus decades.
But she missed her dad. A lot. She missed her brother. A lot. Whether he was living with her dad or in a prison cell as he often was, she wanted to go visit. We went up there on holiday weekends and others where possible. One year we had an early Thanksgiving meal with my family here and then sped our way to Las Vegas in time to join her father for another family feast.
My last visit to Las Vegas before this past weekend was in 2005. I still knew where everything was. I'd gambled in/visited every single hotel casino around the town. When I drove in early Friday afternoon, I felt like a stranger in a strange land.
The Imperial Palace is gone and something called The Linq is where it stood. I've seen commercials for The Cosmopolitan and Aria.
The Mandarin Oriental and the Vdara on either side of Aria don't even have casino space. Steve Wynn built the Encore as a twin to his Wynn hotel casino that stands on what was once the Desert Inn. I could go on all night about what's changed about Las Vegas but it's depressing.
I will definitely go back next year if there's another NTL tournament final for us to compete in, but I don't see any reason why I'd go back otherwise.
One reason, aside from the physical changes and my discomfiture at feeling a bit lost, is that the way hotel/casinos make money has changed. Food and beverages were always an affordable plus about visiting that city. We were stuck in a meeting hall for over four hours for our tournament competition. The Rio was happy to have us there, gave players a good rate on the room, but they made serious bank on us during the competition itself. A 12 ounce bottle of Pepsi was $3.50. So was an identically sized bottle of water. I didn't bother checking the pricing of the snacks, I knew I wasn't going to allow myself to pay that kind of money for stuff that's under $2 at 7-11.
I also ordered a room service meal at one point because I was so damn tired. $45 including tip for a burger, fries and two of those 12 ounce diet sodas. They were overpriced to begin with and they added an $8 service charge. Hell, a 20 ounce diet soda and a $1.99 bag of nuts here is less than $5. At the Rio's gift shop it was almost double that amount.
Plus the coffee shops are all gone. Great places to dine and if you are so inclined, to play Keno, they've disappeared.
* * *
On my way home, I was searching for something to listen to on the radio before leaving the range of Las Vegas radio stations and being limited to what little radio can be heard between the top of the Baker grade until getting back into range of Los Angeles radio stations. I was amazed to find a rebroadcast of an old Casey Kasem's American Top 40. This one was from August 26, 1972 and listening to it was like having stepped into a time machine. Here, in ascending order are the top ten from this broadcast:
And now, the new number one song in all of the land for the week of August 26th, 1972:
Some notes on these musicians. You Don't Mess Around With Jim was the first big hit for Jim Croce, who would die in a plane crash less than 13 months after this edition of AT40 aired. Kasem told a story about how Croce had been a school teacher in a rough neighborhood of South Philadelphia. The story was how a 260 lb junior high school girl shoved the 5'7" 150 lb Croce across a room and that was what sent him back in pursuit of a music career.
Coconut was the last of Harry Nilsson's three big hit records. What made him a real rarity among successful musicians was the almost complete lack of live concert performances. Ironically, while he was a tremendously talented songwriter, his two biggest hits, Everybody's Talkin (At Me) and Without You) were written by others. He did write One, a top five hit for Three Dog Night.
More than enough words have already been written about the death of Karen Carpenter from anorexia nervosa and the speculation that ingesting ipecac to induce vomiting was the real cause of the cardiotoxicity that killed her. It was a tragedy no matter what happened.
Looking Glass' only big hit, Brandy, spent 4 weeks at #2 behind Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again. The very next week, Brandy fell to #4 and Alone Again regained the top spot on the charts.
I remember this particular edition of AT40 so well as I listened to it in its entirety that very weekend. It was the weekend before my Bar Mitzvah.
posted by me at 8:22 PM
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