Las Vegas baby!! After a restful night recovering from my ordeal, I hooked up with my old High School pal Kevin who has been living in Vegas since he went there to deal Blackjack for the summer back in 1990. I asked him to show me the real Vegas. I understand if you are on vacation, the resorts, the shows, the gambling, etc... but what do the people that live here do? Or, if I can be so blunt, why would anyone live in this run down, crack house urine soaked mattress of a town? I'm looking for the "there there" as Gertrude Stein puts it.
We started the afternoon by getting some lunch over at the excellent Crown and Anchor British pub. Excellent British style pub food and beer. In fact, if wasn’t in a strip mall and on an eight lane thoroughfare, I would swear that I was in England. OK, so that is something. Seriously.
Next we headed over to the Pinball Hall of Fame. This was in a different strip mall about a mile away but was by far the highlight of the Vegas adventure. I’ve never been good at pinball but I’ve always loved to play and enjoyed the idea of it. I don’t know if it’s true or not but it always seemed so American. This place was amazing, like a shrine to the art. Check out the link cause I won’t be able to do this place justice. Every game I can remember playing as a kid was there and meticulously restored. I was also told that this is only a fraction of his collection. I mean these are serious pinball nerds. They had index cards on each machine explaining the significance and history of the specific unit, the artist that drew the back panel, the year make and model. Here’s a tip guys, get real signs made. I was reading one on the Superman game and they mentioned they had replaced the Atari (yes that Atari! they used to make pinball games) bumpers with Bally ones because they were clearly better as everyone knows… Nerd! Go to this place! and spend a quarter just to play and hear that loud “thwack” sound as you win an extra game. It was like a time machine.
At this point Kevin left to work the late shift at the Hilton as the Pit Boss and I decided to check out the Vegas Hookah district. To be fair, there are only a few Hookah bars but these two were blocks away from each other (and UNLV): Hookah Lounge and Café Hookah. I won’t bore you with the details but let's just say a good Hookah was had by all and that you don’t need to worry about going to Café Hookah.
Now off to an art house movie theater to watch… wait, there isn’t one. They show “those” movies at the local library. OK, a nice quite coffee house… well, I can’t find any and it isn’t mentioned in either local weekly (which were almost impossible to find themselves). The Starbucks guy or the Hookah mistress (is there such a thing?) didn’t know of any either. Whatever. I set myself up for a letdown it seems. OK back to the run down “new” Frontier, packing and a good night’s sleep for tomorrow's ride to Tucson. I had a good time but I don’t think I need to come back anytime soon. If I’m wrong, let me know, but there is no there there.
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