| Wherein the Boys Expand Their Gambling Budgets Using the American Casino Guide Coupons Part
1 We talk a big game about being cheapskates here at the Big Empire. That's because we are. We don't know anyone else so cheap they'll make a shirt out of public restroom toilet paper just to save a buck. Hey, it works! The only catch is, don't wash it. When we're in Vegas, we double up in cheap rooms, seek out $1.49 breakfasts and willingly load the miles onto a $10 a day rental car to save a buck here or there. We travel to the far reaches of the Valley for $1 craps and blackjack. We push our way through the crack whores and bums to get to the Western's 99-cent Value Menu quesadillas. That's why we love the American Casino Guide. Sure, it's a good book for basic information about casinos throughout the United States. To us, though, the real value is the last big chunk of pages. That's the coupons. A crapload of coupons. For all over, but mostly for Las Vegas. Two-for-ones, free slot play, matchplays, free drinks, free eats and room discounts. In January 2009, we challenged ourselves tosee how much we actually could make or save using the 2009 American Casino Guide. Each member of the Big Empire crew had one day to see how much money he could milk his copy for. The amount you won was your gambling budget for Friday night. You could not gamble more than you won using the book. Without further ado, here are the results, followed by one of our long, long--and hopefully amusing--trip reports.Join us, won't you, on a journey into the heart of value?
Wednesday The trip started like most do, with a flight from Denver to Las Vegas. This time I sat seated next to a young blonde woman on the second leg of her journey from Texas. She was not quite as smart as my dog but smelled better. Before we took off, I overheard her arguing with her boyfriend, a professional bullrider. He was already in Las Vegas and in their room at the South Point Hotel with a case of Bud Light. He was drinking heavily. She asked him to please wait until she arrived, so they could feel bloated and crappy together. I got the chance to speak with Lacey when she asked me if they had taxis in Las Vegas. And then, would there be some at the airport. Did taxis take cash, or credit cards? Would the driver would wait at the hotel while she went in to find her boyfriend, find their room, go up, got some cash, have a drink and then come back down to pay him. I told her yes to everything, but I doubt she was listening. Her focus was on Hong Kong Fooey on the TV in the seatback in front of her. The young Texan told me she'd traveled the entire globe. First with her very short, very jealous ex-boyfriend, and now with her very short, equally jealous current boyfriend. Both are bullriders on the pro circuit. The globe she's traveled included Oklahoma and Colorado, but not California, New York, any other East or West Coast states, not any foreign countries, nor any libraries or institutions of higher learning. She had been to a T.J. Maxx, though, and some of the people there "were talkin' reeaaalll weird, you know?" Being a product of Texas public schools, Lacey may have been to all the globe she knew about. I enjoyed Lacey's company so much I offered her a ride to meet her fightin' drunk beau at the South Point. I didn't have a car. Jerry did, though, and he picked me up at the airport. It wouldn't be the first or last time I inconvenienced him for my own gain. After all, that's why I have friends. On the drive south from the airport to her hotel, our new friend explained her worldview to Jerry and me, shaped by the photos in People and even some of the words in Us and In Touch. We got her political opinions and the reasons she exclusively dated hard-drinking midgets who punched walls. I gave Lacey my ACG coupons for two free drinks at any South Point bar, just in case her date Shrinky Drinky didn't want to share. At the hotel's porte cochere, she got out and Jerry punched it, the entry-model Kia's skinny tires chirping like doves in a blender while a man with a belt buckle as tall as he was threw empty Budweiser bottles at us. Jerry and I went north to the Silverton, an upscale-redneck-themed hotel below the Strip at I-15 and Blue Diamond Highway. The ACG had a coupon for ten dollars of free slot play for new slot club members, from which I netted $7.50. The hotel also offered half-off entrees in its restaurants, and I was in the mood for Mexican food at the Mi Casa Mexican Cantina. The casino has since modified the discount offer to exclude carpetbaggers like us. The food was bad. My chimichanga was just a burrito stuffed with filler like beans and rice, and the green chile was bland. Jerry's grub wasn't much better. Our table was in the back of the mostly empty eatery. It was next to the servers' entrance and we watched a young woman with her ample flesh pooching out between her miniskirt and halter top carry a tray and totter back and forth on high heels, looking cold and unhappy. After dinner, we visited the casino's giant aquarium to look at the sharks, rays, tangs and eels swimming among the pink and blue coral. They looked so carefree. I wondered if fish could gamble would they still dart in and out among the crags and canyons of the tank, or would we be watching them sitting in rows, pulling handles on itty-bitty machines, smoking tiny fish cigarettes and secretly hoping one pull would grant them escape from their misery. In that moment, I was so glad to be human. Stupid, carefree fish. A drunk bumped into Jerry and me and started talking. He told us he had a tank like this in his room as a kid. A 117,000-gallon tank... in his room. Full of sharks. Oh, wait, no, he only had one goldfish, and it died when he tried putting a sweater on it. Close enough, though, for the drunk to make a bond with us. He talked about politics, kids, food, family, tickets for a raffle and plantar warts. It took Jerry and I a few minutes to escape.
The plan for tonight was to go easy and hit the hay at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow, the rest of our crew would roll in. We'd work during the day and stay up late drinking free beer and believing that craps dealers and waitresses found us as funny as we did. We had taken advantage of an Expedia deal with a three-night minimum and resulted in rooms costing $3.65 a night. Ony Jerry and I would be there Wednesday night, with seven of us on Thursday and Friday nights. So, for Wednesday we had three rooms between the two of us: one at Binions and two at the Four Queens. Jerry and I each took our own Four Queens rooms. I used the Binions room for taking dumps. It was a bit of a hike, but nice to keep the smell at a different hotel. The Four Queens were revamped a few years ago, but our second floor South Tower digs were apparently themed to look like an 80s Holiday Inn. The carpet and drapes were as loud as a crack addict at a Bar Mitzvah. The furniture was mostly cheap. The only nod to the modern day was the flat screen TV, displaying low-resolution broadcasts. They were better than the Binions room, though. It was threadbare in every respect. The carpet told the story of 10,000 bad nights, the bedspreads were ancient and crusty. The bathroom was small and nicked up. After we dropped our bags and I used the Binions room the best way I knew, Jerry and I lit out to investigate the changes to downtown. Down Fremont Street, we stopped in at the (Las) Vegas Club. The hotel is ahead of its time in that it fell into disrepair and disorganization long before the recession began. The front area of the casino was quiet, dirty and grim. But there were gamblers. I used my ACG coupon at the roulette wheel and scored a quick $20 win. Then I walked toward the back half of the casino, past the little avenue that used to house the eateries. There was not a single operating restaurant in the hotel. Not the Great Moments Room, not the Dugout, not the upper Deck. Even the snack bar appeared vacant. Where the Dugout used to be, a cheap magic show was moving in.
The large back half of the casino was empty. It once had a decent sports book, even a few gaming tables and some very good video poker. Then the Club's owners tried some sort of "extreme" circus with contortionists and guys on BMX bikes. That didn't last long. Low-budget Karaoke followed, and a flimsy dance floor was installed to cover some of the faded carpet. The cheap-ass floor remained, but the karaoke was gone. The most interesting thing to see back here was a load of unused chairs tossed onto a pile. Walking back toward Fremont Street, I looked at a few of the many sports memorabilia displays that dot the casino's walls. There once were historic photos, Hank Aaron baseballs, Babe Ruth bats, hockey sticks and Roger Staubach footballs in the cases. Now, the artifacts looked as though they were being sold off piecemeal. The cases were half-empty. I guess all those Jackie Robinson photos might buy a rabbit or some top hats for the magic show. Maybe even those big silver rings that magically interlock and unlock. Saddened by the (Las) Vegas Club's state of disrepair, Jerry and I headed over to the jewel in downtown's crown, the Plaza. Standing at the head of Fremont, the Plaza looms over the rest of the downtown casinos. It once had the largest casino floor in the world, a glittering rooftop pool and tennis courts, the Center Stage gourmet restaurant looking down over Fremont, and a huge poker room with the most action downtown. If owners Tamares weren't putting money into the (Las) Vegas Club, they must be sinking it into their baby, right?
Wrong. The Plaza was every bit as dilapidated as the Club. Where the Omaha Lounge used to be is now a terrible, cheap buffet. The only other sit-down restaurant in the entire 1,037-room casino is an Italian joint that's only open 25 hours a week. Rather than pay musicians, the casino had karaoke on Wednesday night. A heavy woman warbled the worst, most nervous version of Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces" I'd ever heard. I don't know if this was supposed to encourage people to gamble or go out to the parking garage and beg to be run over. I hit up one of the Plaza's blackjack tables with my $10 matchplay and quickly lost. That's okay, I may live in a basement studio apartment with my wife, twelve cats and some mice, but the Plaza needs the sawbuck more than I do. We left and walked past the still boarded-up Lady Luck, and on to the Gold Spike. The little hotel that was home to many of my fondest and seediest memories had new owners with big plans. At this time, the joint was still mostly inoperative. The two blackjack and one roulette tables were on the floor, but not manned. The coffee shop was cleaned up, but not open. The bar area was closed off with black cloth screens that begged us to push them aside and wander around. So we did. The horseshoe-shaped bar is as big as a Lincoln Continental limousine. It seems to take up about one-third the 10,000 s.f. casino floor. I give the Siegel Group credit for knowing their target market: folks looking to drown their troubles in a sea of cheap booze.
From the Gold Spike, we sauntered past the backside of the Skidrow Heights luxury condominium experiment called Streamline Towers. I don't know who bankrolled this dull monstrosity, but it was the product of wild optimism. Someone with deep pockets thought downtown would get cleaned up and fancified enough that these hardwood-floor, granite countertop condos would fit right in. When we were there, only 10% of its units had sold and none of its ground floor retail space had tenants. Of the 27 sold units, not all were populated. Some owners were speculators who thought they would flip the units quickly for a profit. Oops. "Good evening." A doorman startled us. He stood at the entrance to the Streamline's very elegant lobby full of leather furniture. He was cheerfully alone with his thoughts. We spoke to him briefly and he confirmed that indeed, business was "slooooooooow." I couldn't imagine paying condo fees that included a 1/27th share in 24-hour door service. We continued on to the El Cortez to use another ACG coupon for $10 in free slot play for all slot club members. This time, I netted $11.25. Little has changed at the El Co since my last visit, and that's as it should be. The joint still exudes delightful, old school charm, even with an ugly Thunderbird-turquoise Smart Car parked in the lobby. An elderly man still tickles the ivories of a tiny electric piano in the lounge, and the marble spiral stairs still lead to an underutilized banquet hall on the second floor.
What was once the Southwestern equivalent of the Bataan Death March used to await anyone who dared to walk east from the El Cortez to the Western Casino. In the old days (three years ago) we would get hit up by disfigured prostitutes and aggressive crack dealers in the short three block walk. Now, thanks to some public works dough, this stretch of Fremont Street is relatively clean and lit with new neon signs. No hookers and no pushers in sight. Luckily, the government money ran out before they got to the Western. It remains the dingiest, saddest casino in the Las Vegas valley. Although, we did visit a competitor two days later. The fake wood floor has decades of crud ground into its nooks and crannies. The break-in dealers at the $3 blackjack tables already look bored at the beginning of their careers. The snack bar is dingy and grim under fluorescent bulbs. Some unhappy couple in a booth squabbles, and there is a lingering odor of tobacco and grease. The snack bar now has a new 99-cent menu featuring quesadillas and baked potatoes. As we left, we noticed that two doors had been strapped shut using police crime scene tape. It was about 12:30 a.m. now. Usually, this is when we kick into high gear. But because the trip had two more nights and we had to get Burt at the airport early the following morning, Jerry and I went back to our rooms. I spent the next three hours doing what I always do on my first night in a hotel, in a strange bed in a strange city: trying to figure out how to get porn for free. My futile attempts at rewiring the television exhausted me, and I finallyslept heavily, dreaming of large-breasted women, scrambled and buzzing. |
