Maybe She Always Goes Shopping Dressed Like This

This happened quite a few months ago. It must have happened when I was staying at Imperial Palace in the spring, as that would be the only reason I’d have been driving where I was when this happened.  My pal Norm (the same Norm who has made quite a few comments on the blog) and I used to stay at Imperial Palace all the time back in the day, but this was the first time in maybe 10-15 years that I’d been a guest at this establishment.

The room was actually quite decent, probably better than I remember it.  But it was a rather bad experience staying there because of all the construction going on.  I believe they had just closed O’Sheas next door as part of the The Linq.project being undertaken by Caesars Entertainment for that whole part of the Strip.  It was quite a trick to drive in and out of the parking structure due to all the construction.  The traffic mess this caused actually is relevant to the story.

One day, in the early afternoon—in other words, in broad daylight, on a warm day, I had managed to escape the parking lot and was driving southbound on a little side street, Audrie.  Audrie runs behind Bills, Flamingo, Imperial Palace, Harrah’s, etc, parallel to the Strip.  It ends at Flamingo Rd, because if didn’t, it would run straight through Bally’s on the other side.  If you cross Flamingo on foot at Audrie, there’s an entrance to Bally’s right there, which is at the east end of the shopping arcade.  You can walk through the arcade and get to the casino in Bally’s from there.  Norm and I did that many a time when we stayed either at Imperial Palace or at casino called The Maxim that used to be on Flamingo, across from Bally’s employee parking lot, which is now known as the Westin Casuarina.

Anyway, I was stopped at the light on Audrie, waiting to to turn on to Flamingo.  It was a long light, because Audrie is a tiny street and Flamingo is a major route.  Suddenly, I looked up and saw something you could pretty much only see in Vegas.  Coming out of that Bally’s entrance was a showgirl, dressed something like this:

I assumed she was from the big production show they have at Bally’s, Jubilee which has been running for over 30 years.  I can tell you that Norm and did indeed see that show, probably pretty close to the time it opened. I’m guessing they’ve changed some of the numbers since we saw it.  Also pretty sure they’ve changed some of the showgirls since then.

Now, truth be told, there are some places where you might actually expect to see a Vegas showgirl, and I don’t just mean on a stage.  There are girls dressed like this downtown, on Fremont Street, posing for pictures and handing out fliers.  I’ve seen “showgirls” doing the same thing in various Strip casinos too.  In fact, somewhere, I have a picture of myself with a “showgirl” that was taken at Harrah’s not too long ago.

But this girl was not working.  She came out of Bally’s, got to the corner, waited for the light to change and crossed the street.  Traffic was jammed, so I was stuck there long enough to see where she was headed. Across from Bally’s, at the corner of Audrie and Flamingo, is an establishment called “The Stage Door.”  It’s actually in a little strip mall.  I guess you would call it a bar, as it has a bar and they serve bar drinks and also some food (they advertise cheap hot dogs, I dunno if they serve any other cooked food).  But it’s also sort of a convenience store, as they sell snacks and beer (in bottles and cans) and sodas and stuff.  So it’s sorta like putting a bar in a 7-11.  And since it’s Vegas, there are slots and Video Poker machines in there too.  In fact, it might actually call itself a casino, although that would be really be very generous interpretation of that word.

The Stage Door was where she was headed.  She seemed to be carrying something in her hand, but it was really too small to be a purse.  Perhaps a wallet or even just some cash.  So she was presumably taking a break from rehearsing the show—a full dress rehearsal, obviously—and heading to The Stage Door to buy something on her break.  I dunno why, since I never saw what she came out of there with, but my best guess is she was going to buy cigarettes. 

The funny thing to me was that here was this gal dressed in a feather boa, a huge headdress and basically a bikini, just walking the streets of Vegas as if there was nothing unusual about it.  And I’ll bet when she walked into The Stage Door, she was far from the first woman dressed like that to have patronized this place. 

Only in Vegas.