For years I’ve enjoyed Downtown Las Vegas in a way that I think is lost on a lot of people. I actually have always kind of dug the old, kitschy vibe, the stuff with a little history, the stuff with a little character (and a lot of characters, at that…) I like walking into casinos (at least the clean ones, anyways) that have low ceilings with antique lighting fixtures and wood paneling - cashier’s cages with cute little brass bars. It’s sort of like the Old West. Do I go down there all the time? No, of course not. Do I feel a sense a security knowing that at least some things never change? Hell yes.
…But things change. Nowhere do things change as often or as quickly as they do here in Las Vegas, Nevada. Downtown Las Vegas has been one of the few places that has remained relatively the same in some of its Fremont Street casinos near or under the Fremont Street Experience. Progress is something that I embrace but at the same time I can appreciate the fact that on Fremont Street the way that some things are old is actually the very way that they are differentiated from any other area in Las Vegas - doing things the old school way is actually part of the experience that is a draw.
When I first started coming out to Las Vegas with my girlfriend, late on slow nights, we’d sometimes find ourselves wanting to go downtown to the Golden Gate Hotel and Casino to grab a couple of the Las Vegas original $.99 shrimp cocktails that they serve there.. The cafe was open 24-7 and they also had little side salads and good sandwiches. After eating a bite, we’d almost invariably end up getting $10-20 in nickels or quarters and playing the slot machines for awhile, having a few Malibu-and-pineapples along the way. Good, cheap fun, that was.
Sometime in the last year or year two the cafe stopped staying open twenty-four hours a day. They close at 3am now, which might sound plenty late, but our schedules, like a lot of people in Las Vegas, usually have us busy until after that time, and for the longest time we always forgot exactly when it was that they closed. We went a few times and the cafe was not open so it was kind of a wasted trip - so we stopped going as much.
Tonight it was earlier and I was with a few friends and we said “hey let’s go get some shrimp cocktails down at the Golden Gate!” So we went. We had our shrimp and drinks and being satisfied, wandered like moths toward the proverbial flame to the slot machines. I got confused for a minute when I went to the change booth that I’ve gone to for years to be directed by a club card lady to the main cashier cage - the change booth had apparently been moved somewhere.
I made my way back to the cashier’s cage and asked for $10 in nickels - I know, I was high rollin’ it tonight, huh? To my dismay she said, “you know our machines don’t take coins, right?” My heart sank. I was kind of speechless so she explained that they were all changed out back in June. Look: if I want to do some serious gaming, $25-100+ a hand blackjack or bigger limit slots - I’ll go to the Bellagio or the Wynn, in all likelihood. There is a level of entertainment you expect from a certain place and you want all the trappings that go with it. Downtown, I just want a quick, cheap, fun time with a few friends. I want to feel the little coins in my fingers; I want to hear them hitting the metal at the bottom of the tray. I want to use “moist towelettes” to clean the silvery coin-goo off of my fingers. I want women with blue hair making me watered down drinks because I know I didn’t pay $18 for the big-as-your-index-finger shrimp cocktail at Raffles Cafe inside Mandalay Bay and if I was being hand-poured a great martini by one of the hotties at Tryst in the Wynn it would be costing me $19 a pop. I can afford to roll however I want to. Tonight, I felt like ballin’ on a budget! Why? Because it’s fun, sometimes! There were four people in my group tonight all ready to spend another $20 or so over the next thirty minutes in their casino. After we found out about the coins being taken away everyone started sort of meandering towards to the parking lot. No one spent a dime. Something tells me those 99 cent shrimp cocktails aren’t going to be paying for themselves for much longer…
I know you are probably thinking “it’s just taking the coins out… It’s not that big of a deal - they are doing it everywhere.” It’s an incremental thing, though! First the cafe, then the coins - who knows what’s next? I just want the old school experience if I am going to go Downtown. If you make the machines and games the same and work the same way as on the Strip, then you just have the same stuff in an old building - which makes it potentially less appealing to people - especially your niche demographic - than say, Bally’s, which is definitely showing it’s age and has lost most of whatever appeal it ever had. You are either brand new - the biggest and the brightest and the best - or you are antique and quaint - or you are irrelevant. Just being kind of average with no unique qualities has no merit. So now there’s no 24-7 $.99 shrimp cocktails. There’s no real coin slot machines - not even in the oldest existing hotel in all of Las Vegas. What’s the draw? …so we probably won’t go as much.
Tags:
blackjack,
cheap Las Vegas,
classic Vegas,
Downtown Las Vegas,
Entertainment,
Fremont Street,
gambling,
gaming
