Fremont Street Experiences

Downtown has always felt a little more familiar to me than the Strip. Downtown VEGA$ people are my people. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy classy things; I'm in awe every time I enter Caesars Palace, but I'm just a little too... informal for most of the fancy strip places. I'm most comfortable wearing a Hawaiian shirt and no pants. Because of certain societal conventions, I'm usually forced to at least wear short pants when I'm gambling. I also hate the whole distance thing on the strip. Say you want to go from New York, New York to The Mirage, first you have to locate the valet (I don't even consider self parking!) wait for your car, battle the impossible strip traffic for 40 minutes to go the ½ mile to the Mirage, then do battle with ITS' parking lot! You're liable to waste the better part of the day just dealing with your car!!! When staying downtown, you park your car upon arrival and that's it! Want someplace seedy? El Cortez, The Plaza, The Golden Gate and many others are right there waiting for you. Want a step up? Try Fitzgeralds, Fremont, or the Four Queens! Hankering for a classy joint? The Nugget is smack in the middle of everything.

I am heartsick over the recent events related to my all-time favorite place to shoot craps, Binion’s Horseshoe. Binion’s is easily worthy of an entire posting all to itself, so stay tuned.

One trip we were lured into the horrible Coin Castle Casino. This was one of those slot joints between The Golden Gate and The Pioneer Club, in the same vein as Sassy Sally’s with all sorts of gimmicks to get you inside. We were lured into the bowels of the Coin Castle with the promise of a free key chain or some other doodad, and Charley decided to waste a few quarters at an ancient slot machine. Amazingly enough he quickly lined up 3 plumbs and the quarters just started pouring out of that thing like there was no tomorrow! Charley quickly filled up one bucket, and was reaching for another one, when the security guard / slot mechanic / manager on duty came up and told Charley to get out of the way. He explained that Charley was the victim of a “runaway jackpot” and that he was only entitled to 25 quarters! Charley was crestfallen! He was of a mind to dump the bucket of quarters onto the geezer’s head, but he took his meager winnings and we left, never to return for our key chains.

On another trip we were staying downtown at Fitzgerald’s. It had been a hectic day and we were up in our rooms relaxing in the late afternoon. There was an advertising card in the room talking up the Fitzgerald’s Personal Pizza room-service special. For only $9.99 you could have an 8-inch, “pizza for one” delivered to the room. We were hungry, and contemplating making a call to room service, when I remembered seeing an ad across the street at Sassy Sally’s for a 12 inch “Family Sized” pizza for $3.99! “Why don’t I just walk across the street and get 4 big pizza’s for $16?” The boys laughed at me, which only made me want to do it more! I picked up the tray that was underneath our ice bucket and water glasses, tucked it under my arm and headed out! I waited my turn deep inside the nightmarish Sassy Sally’s (Where it’s Double Jackpot Time every 10 minutes, and they’re not afraid to let you know it!) When I got to the front of the line I ordered my four pepperoni pizzas. The surly order taker looked around, “Who are all those pizzas for?” I told her they were for me and my friends. She explained that the pizzas were for people who were there gambling, that they didn’t do take-out! We went back and forth, and finally I told her that my buddies were on their way, that I’d just been sent ahead to order the pizza. She grudgingly took my money and placed the order. When they called my number, she looked around the casino searching for the 3 additional gamblers that I had promised her. I quickly balanced the four pies onto my tray and got the hell outta there! I did receive a lot of strange looks walking down Fremont Street with a tray full of pizzas, and one man offered to buy one from me. I was met with more dirty looks as I traversed through the busy Fitzgerald’s casino floor towards the elevator. It was all worthwhile when I got back to the room and received a standing O from my fellow VEGA$ CLUB members. We had a cooler full of cold beer to accompany the pizza, and it was one great meal! The pizza itself wasn’t the best, as you can imagine, but that didn’t matter. We had said “SCREW YOU” to both the price gouging room-service people, AND to greedy Sassy Sally who was attempting to lure in hungry slot players!