I’ve spent almost every Christmas
season in Vegas for more years than I care to admit. So of course I’m spending the season in Vegas
again this year. Due to both professional
and personal reasons, I arrived in Vegas for the season earlier than
usual. But that was fine, as it meant an
extra weekend in Vegas. An extra weekend
of poker. An extra weekend of enjoying
what I lovingly refer to as The Slut Parade.
So there I was, on the Thursday night
before Christmas, playing poker at the MGM, waiting for the young, engaging, minimally
dressed young hotties to arrive. But
they didn’t. An investigation revealed that club was apparently not going to
open that night. WTF? When I returned to my room, I checked their
website. The club was dark the entire
weekend before Christmas. Oh, the
horror. Don’t they know that nothing
would bring me more Christmas joy than seeing the young attractive girls
wearing dresses that are too short, too tight, and too low-cut to be allowed in
public in any other locality than Vegas?
Bah humbug.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. For years my pal Norm and I would go to Vegas
every holiday season and we knew that for all its reputation as a 24-hour town,
there would be certain things that would be closed until Christmas was in the
rear view mirror.
Of course certain things don’t
close. You can be sure that the casino
itself and all its gaming operations are available 24/7. No Christmas holiday for that!
But most if not all of the showrooms
were dark the two weeks or so before Christmas.
Although I almost never go to a show these days, back in the day, Norm
and I went to many a show. In fact we
saw almost all of the big shows on the Strip at one point or another. And many headliners as well. But when we went for Christmas, we were
mostly out of luck.
We were even surprised to find that
many of our favorite eateries were closed.
That was a shock but we sort of got used to it. Some buffets actually closed, and our
favorite dives as well.
We liked certain snack bars (this was before
they all had food courts). Frequently
when in Vegas, we’d stuff ourselves to excess at a buffet for lunch and then
would only need a light snack at night.
We found all the best places for a light nosh.
I recall one of our favorites was the
snack bar at El Rancho. Before it was El
Rancho, this casino was known as the Thunderbird and the Silverbird (I forget
which was first). With El Rancho, they
went with a western theme. It was just
south of the Sahara on the same side of the Strip. It is long gone.
One of the things we liked about the
place was that they had lower limits for their table games than most of the
places on the Strip. We were cheap and
really appreciated that. Then they
opened our favorite snack bar. I’m not
sure if the food was really that good or we loved the fact that they had a
boatload of video games there that we enjoyed.
We were arcade game enthusiasts back in those days. As I recall, after we got tired of Pac-Man,
our favorite game became Burger Time. We
played an awful lot of Burger Time at that snack bar at El Rancho.
There was one time when we had to wait
to play Burger Time. There was a kid
there playing it, with his buddy watching, urging him on. I do mean kid—I’m thinking he was probably
too young to be in the casino itself. He
had a slice of pizza on a nearby machine or a stool or something that he couldn’t
eat because his hands were busy playing the game. He was breaking the high score for the machine
and was quite proud of that fact.
Still, he was worried about his slice
of pizza. He kept telling his friend, “Don’t
touch my pizza, dude.” There was just
something about the way he said that, the tone in his voice, the use of the
word “dude”—which was not a particularly popular word back at this time—that totally
cracked Norm and I up. He repeated it a few times as he continued to play the game--one eye toward the pizza to make sure his friend wasn't helping himself to it--and it got funnier every time he said it. We started
quoting, “Don’t touch my pizza, dude” to each other the rest of the trip. It became a long running catch-phrase between
us. We never missed a chance to quote
this phrase, whether it fit in our current context or not.
So the Christmas after the pizza dude,
we were bitterly disappointed to go to El Rancho and see that our favorite
snack bar was closed for the holidays, and would not reopen until we were back
in Los Angeles. Rats.
The arcade games were still there and
working, and I think we played them, but it just wasn’t the same. We both commiserated that there was no chance
of hearing that kid once again warn his buddy, “Don’t Touch My Pizza, Dude”
even if he did somehow miraculously show up while we were there. Besides, we
had to find another place for our much needed snack.
On my current visit, of course, it isn’t
just Hakassan that was closed for Christmas.
I was surprised to see that MGM’s signature restaurant, Craftsteak, is
also closed until after Christmas. This
is not an issue for me, because the place is so expensive I couldn’t afford to
eat there anyway even with my comps.
And when I went downtown last weekend
to play in that Binion’s weekend Deepstack (a very good decision, see here), I saw a big sign at the Fremont that
their buffet was closed until Christmas.
Fortunately for me, I remembered that the deli right next to the poker
room at Binion’s was closed the last two years I played in the tournament before
Christmas. I made sure I ate lunch
before I got there, and I had food with me in case I needed to eat during the
tournament.
So I was pleasantly surprised that
this year, they remained opened. That
was really nice for me, because I was able to eat a couple of hot dogs from
there for dinner, instead of just a bunch of nuts I had with me. I might not have made it all 11-1/2 hours in
the tournament without that Deli being surprisingly open!
But that was a lucky break, and as I’ll
eventually reveal, I had a few lucky breaks during the tournament. Be warned if you plan to visit Vegas right
before Christmas—Vegas does somewhat close down a little bit this time of the
year.
And that’s why that, unlike for Halloween, there’ll be no post
entitled “The Christmas Slut Parade" to follow.
