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As I've written here before, I used to spend a lot of my time in Las Vegas but now it's gotten so expensive and tourist-trappy (if that isn't a word, it should be) that I have zero desire to set foot in that town. The message of the city used to be "Come here and play" and now it's more like "Come here and empty your wallet, max out your credit cards, lose your kids' college money…"

As of today, the MGM group of hotels is raising parking fees and, even worse, resort fees. The latter are these mandatory charges added to the bill for your room. They advertise it'll cost you a reasonable $50 or $100 a night to stay there but now at the MGM hotels, there's this resort fee of $45 to $55 dollars, ostensibly for things like access to the gym or other services you don't want and won't use. Almost all the hotels have resort fees and the ones that aren't that high will probably be that high shortly.

It's a shame. That used to be such a fun place to go. I think I still have some comps for free rooms there but no desire to use them.

When it first opened its doors in 1950, Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn in Las Vegas was more like a motel than the giant hotel of the same name that would soon stand on that choice hunk of real estate.  The complex had been built with mob money and for a time, was probably the nicest place you could stay in that town. The above photo was taken in 1951 and as you can see, the star attraction then was Tom Ball's China Doll Revue, "direct from Broadway." That would make you think the China Dolls came from a Broadway theater. They did not. They came from Tom Ball's China Doll nightclub located in New York on 51st Street near Broadway. More on that place and them in another, upcoming post.

The photo of the Desert Inn may not seem like a very interesting photo to you but it is to me.  My parents were married at the Desert Inn in March of 1951 and honeymooned there.  For all I know, they might have been staying there when this pic was snapped.  One of those cars out front could even have been my father's car. I have no idea what he was driving then.

The morning of March 3, he drove it — whatever it was — to the L.A. Airport and picked up my mother, who had flown all night from Hartford, Connecticut to get there.  The two of them then drove to Las Vegas where they picked up a marriage license, which they said was about as easy to do in Vegas then as buying a Hershey Bar.

Next, they drove to the Desert Inn. Compared to the kind of mega-resorts they're building these days in Vegas, the Desert Inn probably looked like an outhouse with a couple of slot machines in it. There, they checked into a room and visited a little wedding chapel on the premises to say their "I do"s. My mother recalled they had to wait in line because there were three couples ahead of them.

Once they were joined in holy matrimony 'til death would them part, they had dinner in the hotel's fanciest restaurant, then retired to their room for the night.  When they told me about all this, they didn't mention anything about seeing Tom Ball's China Doll Revue but maybe they took it in the next evening.

Come to think of it, probably not. And no, I was not conceived at the Desert Inn.  I was born exactly one year later. They were enormously happily-married until my father died in 1991, nine days after they celebrated forty years of marriage.

The Desert Inn, which some of you saw in the Albert Brooks film, Lost in America (and other movies) was torn down in 2000 soon after its fifty year anniversary celebration. A few years before they did that to it, I took my mother there for dinner and a show, and we got to talking with a waitress who'd worked there for twenty-plus years.

My mother asked if any part of the original structure still remained. The waitress said no and my mother said, "That's too bad. I left a red sock here in 1951 and I was hoping it might still be around someplace." The waitress said, "Well, you're welcome to check the Lost and Found but I don't think it'll do you much good."

The Desert Inn was replaced by the Wynn Las Vegas, which cost $2.7 billion to build. If you ever stay there and you happen to see a red sock lying around…

A few weeks ago here, I was talking about the Silver Slipper, a long-defunct casino in Las Vegas where I won a few bucks shortly before it was rased in 1988. Let's take a look at a sign that they had in front of the place in, I'm guessing, 1966.

They're luring people in with "The Show That Made America Blush," Minsky's Burlesque.  It promises a "stageful [sic] of exciting girls" and given that the show was free — "no cover" — I'm guessing a "stageful" was no more than four.  They did three shows a night — at 10 PM, half past Midnight and 2-friggin'-thirty in the morning.  Note that the sign does not say the show is dark (i.e., closed) any night of the week.

There still are free shows in Vegas but none for any price at that hour.  The free shows are usually in lounges full of drunk people and feature one or two performers and maybe, if you're lucky, a live piano player, plus you're expected to spring for a drink or two.

Then you have the Silver Slipper's "World Famous Buffet" for $1.57 or if you stick around or are up for breakfast, you can get one for 59 cents.  $1.57 in 1966 is roughly equivalent to $15.30 today.  Today, the cheapest dinner buffet in town is $27 and they run as high as $84.99 a person.  If today, you saw a buffet offered for $15.30, I think you'd stay far away, figuring it had to be, like, a steam table full of week-old Hamburger Helper and ramen noodles left over from the Korean War.  But I'll bet you that in '66, they put out a decent spread.  After all, it was there to lure you in, not gross you out.

So you could have gone there at 11 PM, eaten all you could eat, seen the 12:30 show and had two drinks for, let's say, $20 in today's money and that's including tips.  (The cheapest non-lounge show currently in Vegas at the moment seems to be Jen Kramer's magic show at the Westgate — which I hear is excellent.  It's $38.46 a seat, though it's not hard to find a two-for-the-price-of-one coupon.  But that's with no buffet and the drinks are extra.)  Or you could have hit the 2:30 AM show at the Slipper and stuck around after until they started serving the cheapo breakfast.

Either way, on your way out of the Silver Slipper, you could pick up a pair of free nylons.  That would come in handy if you wanted to make your legs look better or you needed a stocking mask so you could rob a liquor store. Or both.

The Minsky's show probably wasn't very risqué and if it had an old pro comedian or two in it — Hank Henry or Irv Benson or Tommy "Moe" Raft — it was probably a darn good show.  And it was free as long as you didn't cash your payroll check on the way in and blow it all on the roulette wheel on your way out.  I'm sorry I wasn't around for those days.

I often on this site talk about my fondness and interest for "old Las Vegas," which has prompted a few folks to write in and ask what "old Las Vegas" is and how it differs from current Las Vegas. Old Las Vegas had big stars at affordable prices, cheap food, cheaper morals, better gambling, loads more free stuff and an all-day/all-night party atmosphere. Okay, so it also had a little organized crime. It wasn't perfect. But it was in some ways better than what's there now.

One thing I liked about what I was able to see of it was the big signs. Today, they just tell you the name of the place, the name of any overpriced superstar who plays there and perhaps the names of a few overpriced restaurants that will charge you a fortune to dine. They used to advertise high (but not over) priced performers and sometimes a lot of free stuff. I see photos now of big signs from the past and there are amazing double bills of acts that I wish I'd been able to see. I'm going to post a few of them on this blog from time to time starting with this one…

I'm going to guess this was around 1972…The star attraction was Johnny Carson, his opening act was Bette Midler and her conductor — whose name you may be able to make out in tiny letters — was some guy named Barry Manilow. Twice a year or so, Mr. Carson would use a two-week vacation from The Tonight Show to play Las Vegas…and Vegas probably felt like more of a vacation for him than it would have a few years later when he moved his late night series from New York to L.A. It was rumored that he wasn't so much trying to vacation from The Tonight Show as he was trying to vacation from the current Mrs. Carson.

I would have liked to have seen that show. Heck, I wouldn't have minded seeing Stanley Myron Handelman and maybe even Little Anthony and the Imperials if they were still Little Anthony and the Imperials. That was one of those groups that kept changing who was in and who was out. There were periods when even Little Anthony wasn't in Little Anthony and the Imperials.

Stanley Myron Handelman, I remember as a comedian who was pretty funny when you saw him in person, not as funny on TV…one of those guys who needed time on stage and couldn't be at his best in a five-minute set. He passed away in 2007 and for the last few years of his life, he had a little school teaching stand-up comedy in Los Angeles.

The Sahara is one of the oldest casino-hotels in Las Vegas, having opened in October of 1952.  It has changed hands constantly over the years and it actually closed down in 2011.  The property then underwent a complete renovation and opened again in 2014 as the SLS Las Vegas.  It didn't do well and was sold and re-renovated, opening again in 2019 as Sahara Las Vegas, which is what it is today.  The big attraction in its showroom now is "Magic Mike," a show with a lot of shirtless bodybuilders replicating the mood of the movie of the same name. Me, I'd rather see Johnny and Bette but I don't imagine they'll be playing there soon. And if they did, good seats would be a thousand and up.

So one day I was in Vegas, playing Blackjack at the Barbary Coast — a pretty good place to play back then. This was the early nineties and the Barbary Coast was located on the northeast corner of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard South (aka "The Strip"). Since then, it's been sold and bought and sold and bought and sold and bought and finally remodeled into a much fancier place called The Cromwell. It's probably a much worse place to play Blackjack now but I can't be sure since I gave up the game several decades ago and the city several years ago. I also, on the day I'm describing, decided to never go into the Barbary Coast again.

That day, I was counting cards but, as per my modus operandi, not winning so much that anyone would notice. I'd get a few hundred ahead — enough to cover the cost of the trip and a little more — and then it was on to another casino or back to my room to work. They only stop you when you accumulate enough chips that it might not be sheer luck. I was a few bucks shy of quitting and had just put out a twenty dollar bet when an Asian guy came outta nowhere, leaned over me, called out "Money plays!" and threw ten thousand dollars down on the table.

Translation: He wanted in on the next hand and was wagering cash…a lot of it.

This is a standard move by gamblers who are either card counting as spectators or have been signaled by someone who is counting. You do it when the count is extremely good for the player…but the casinos, for obvious reasons, usually don't allow it. What's odd though was that I was counting and one of the reasons I was about to leave was that the count wasn't especially good. It was a strange time for someone to be doing this.

The dealer turned to the pit boss — the guy in a suit and tie who keeps an eye on all the gaming — and repeated "Money plays" and he checked the stack of bills on the table and announced "Ten thousand." That was over the table limit at the moment but the pit boss nodded to okay it all. I still don't know why. If he'd been playing more attention to our table, I might have thought he was counting and he knew there was no advantage at the moment. Or maybe he knew the Asian gent as a frequent loser. Or something.

The dealer dealt. I got a soft 18 — an ace and a seven — and the Asian gent, who would play his hand after I played mine, got a hard 12 — not a good hand. The size of his wager had caused a small crowd to instantly assemble at our table and they all winced audibly at the guy's bad luck.

Then again, the dealer's up card was a two. So the dealer's going to have to hit at least once. The dealer hasn't won…yet.

With the count near zero, I was playing Basic Strategy which meant doubling my bet, which they let you do on any two cards at the Barbary Coast. That's one of the rules that usually works to the player's advantage, which is why most casinos in Vegas no longer allow it. They've made the game much harder to win in the last few years, which you'd think would make for fewer players. Or at least, you'd think that if you don't know gamblers. For every me who's given up the game, there are a thousand folks who can't wait to play, no matter how bad the rules are.

I hesitated momentarily before doubling. I've seen it happen that a player in my position takes another card and it's a card that might help the next guy win and he gets mad. This makes no sense because I could just as easily be taking a card that would make him lose but gamblers are sometimes illogical about this kind of thing. So I doubled and got one more card — face down. Now it was the Asian gent's turn to play his hand.

Basic Strategy said he should hit. He did and got a ten so he busted out and lost his bet. When the dealer flipped over his own hole card, it was also a ten so he had twelve, which meant he had to take another card. He did and got a ten — so he busted and I won. My face-down card, not that it mattered at that point, was a five.

Everyone looked at the fellow who had just lost ten thousand dollars. How did he feel? What would he do now? He didn't seem all that bothered that he just lost ten thousand dollars on one play of the cards. Instead, showing no particular emotion, he pulled out another ten thousand and announced, "Money plays…again!" There was a big gasp from the spectators.

I decided to stop right there but I had to stay and see how he did. Answer: Much, much better.  He got a Blackjack — an ace and ten-value card — and there was a big cheer from the onlookers. Blackjack then paid three-to-two, meaning that he won back what he'd lost on the previous hand plus 50%. A lot of casinos now pay six-to-five on Blackjacks — another rule change which works against the players but doesn't seem to have made fewer of them play the game.

He threw out a nice tip for the dealer then walked away from the table as I did. We exchanged a few words — me congratulating him, him thanking me for congratulating him — then we parted ways and I never saw him again. But what I did see was two beefy men in suits coming up and briefly detaining me, asking if that man was a friend of mine. Obviously, they thought we might be in collusion — maybe me signaling him that the count was high so he should leap into the game at that moment.

I couldn't say "The count was not good at that moment" because that would have been admitting I was counting.  I did say, "I never saw that guy before in my life," which was true.  They asked me a few more questions: Where was I staying? Where was I from? Did I gamble a lot in that town? There was no reason not to give them honest answers so I did. After a bit more interrogation, they decided they had no reason to hassle me so I went over, turned my chips into cash and never set foot in the Barbary Coast again…just in case the same kind of thing happened again.

In my years of playing Blackjack, that was pretty much the closest I came to getting into trouble but it was not the main reason I quit. The rule changes and my growing boredom with Vegas and Blackjack (even when I won) were of greater importance and those are the ones I've mentioned here in the past when this topic arose. But now that I think of it, maybe that day at the Barbary Coast was a factor. I won about $300 that day there. That wasn't worth having any more trouble with them.

Roger Green writes to ask the following…

I have never been to Las Vegas (or the state of Nevada). But a friend and I decided we could go this fall for three or four days in September or October. I have no preconceived notion of what to do except that gambling doesn't interest me. I ask you, as someone who has been there a lot: what would you consider are the must-sees (if any) and avoid that like the plagues in 2023?

Well, I haven't been there for several years and have very little interest in returning to a city that for many years was like a second home to me. I actually don't have much desire to travel at all but Vegas is not what it used to be. It used to be possible to get a cheap room, eat cheap (but good) food and see cheap shows. A few years ago — and especially after the town reopened after the worst of The Pandemic — the casinos and other businesses discovered that if they raised prices, they didn't lose enough customers to regret the increase.

So they raised prices and raised prices and raised prices and they're still raising them. They've also changed the payoff rates on many of their games so you stand less chance of winning than you once did. Apparently, it hasn't enough people to cause them to change the rules back.

Some things in this world are worth paying big for but there are times you just feel like you're being treated like a rube; like they saw you coming and said, "Hey! That guy looks stupid! Let's triple the price of a tuna salad sandwich!" I've come to feel that way too often about Vegas.

That said, it's still a place full of amazing things to see and do. I think the best thing about the city is just to walk around, look at all the amazing architecture and exhibits that are offered to lure people in, and to be around so many people that are enjoying themselves. As with Comic-Con and Disneyland, I like being around happy human beings and in Vegas, even the big losers are usually happy.

But I have some tips: Don't go on a weekend. Everything's more expensive with longer lines. Don't go when there's a big convention or other citywide event. In mid-November, there's a Formula One Grand Prix in the streets there that has sent room rates into the ionosphere. If you like to walk, it's a great city to not rent a car. (Most hotels have also discovered that charging for parking doesn't drive guests away.)

When you book your room online, as you probably will, watch out for mandatory resort fees. That $20-a-night room may come with a $39.95 per night resort fee.

For a first time visitor, I'd suggest staying in one of the hotels that's amidst a cluster of big hotels — like the area around Caesars Palace — and you can probably walk to enough interesting places to fill your days. Perhaps take a cab downtown some evening to experience the partying and The Fremont Street Experience.

Perhaps take in a show. They've gotten way outta hand price-wise but in many of those hotel clusters, you'll find booths with names like Tix 4 Tonight that sell same-day tickets for reduced prices. You can also sometimes find deals through Groupon. Unfortunately, the real superstars who play the city usually only play on the weekend…when I told you not to go.

There are zillions of homemade Vegas Tour Videos on YouTube. My favorites are the ones made by Norma Geli but almost any of them can give you valuable info. And since I started going to the town, I've been a subscriber to The Las Vegas Advisor, a newsletter that owes no allegiance to any casino or business there so it reviews them honestly. I've also long recommended their website as a great source of free info but apparently, most of it's going behind a paywall soon.

But not everything costs money. Walking around and sightseeing doesn't…yet. So you can have a good time…and one final tip: Avoid (1) street performers who want you to pay them to pose for a photo, (2) prostitutes and (3) the folks who are trying to sell you time-share deal. Actually, (2) and (3) aren't are all that different except that with (3), the screwing is way more expensive and goes on forever.

Slowly but surely, life is drifting towards normal in a world where The Pandemic is of less and less concern. It's still out there. People are still catching it. People are still dying or being seriously hospitalized. Nothing in this post should suggest that masks aren't a good idea in some situations, hands should not be washed or COVID is no longer a concern. But if you're like me, you're now doing some things you refrained from doing before we all heard the word "coronavirus." I have gone to a party, gone to a movie, gone to a comic book convention.

I have not gone to Las Vegas and it may be a long time before I do.

Oh, wait. I misspelled a word in that previous paragraph. I should have written "lonnnnnnnngggggg." And this not so much because of disease but because I now have no reason to go there and plenty of reasons not to.

I used to go to Las Vegas a lot. There were a few months in the nineties when I was there as much as I was in my home in Los Angeles. Here are some of the reasons why I went there and why those reasons no longer apply…

• I got hooked on Blackjack and more specifically on counting cards in Blackjack.  It was not so much a money thing with me. I never tried to win that much. I just wanted to see how many times I could leave a Blackjack table with more money than I had when I sat down…and once I'd done that enough times, I decided to quit while I was ahead. Why does this reason no longer apply? Because I quit, because I have no reason to start again (it was hard work) and because I'd have to learn how to do it all over again. I've forgotten all the little formulas and a lot of rules have changed, like so many casinos now pay 6-to-5 on a natural, whereas they used to pay 3-to-2. (A "natural" is when the dealer deals you an ace plus a ten-value card.)
• I love "old show business" and in Vegas, I could go see and often meet comedians and variety acts who'd been at it for years. I got to hang out with Dave Barry and Pete Barbutti and Irv Benson and so many other comics I knew from television. There were also longtime hotel employees around with great stories about Vegas in the fifties and sixties. Why does this reason no longer apply? Such people are all either dead or retired.
• I liked going to buffets, not so much for the volume as the variety. When you have as many food allergies as I do, you tend not to be adventurous in your ordering. But at a buffet, I can see the food before I put it in my mouth and often get a sense of how risky it might be…and I can have one bite of it on my plate instead of a whole order. Why does this reason no longer apply? Because since I had gastric bypass surgery in 2006, it is physically impossible for me to consume enough food at any buffet to feel I got my money's worth. That's especially true because of what buffets in Vegas now cost but I'll get to that topic in a moment.
• For part of my Vegas visiting, I was dating a showgirl in a show at one of the casinos. Apart from liking her a lot, I liked hanging out backstage at the show, talking with all the performers and the stage crew and everyone. Why does this reason no longer apply? Because that show is no longer in Vegas and neither is she. In fact, they imploded the entire hotel and built a new one on that land, and the lady I was seeing is now in another state, happily married with several children.
• I was occasionally there on business, writing for some comedian who was playing there or meeting with someone about a TV project…or something. At least three times, I was there to help a producer "pitch" a proposal for a Vegas show which they would produce and I would write. Why does this reason no longer apply? The "pitched" shows were never bought and I haven't had any business there lately.
• After my father died, I took my mother to Vegas three times because she loved going there but needed someone to get her onto the plane, off the plane, through the airports, into her room, etc. Why does this reason no longer apply? Eventually, her health would not allow her even that luxury and even more eventually, she passed away.

And also, for much of the time I was commuting to Las Vegas, I had a lot of "comped" free rooms, some because of all that Blackjack I was playing. I don't get those anymore.

But maybe the biggest reason I'm not going to Vegas is this: It's become incredibly — almost insultingly — expensive.

I'm on a few message boards where people in the "business" end of Las Vegas discuss the business. During The Pandemic when the casinos were as dead as one of those corpses they keep finding in Lake Mead as the water level drops, this was the consensus: "When COVID ends, we're going to have to spread around a lot of comps and discounts to lure vacationers back to Vegas." That turned out to be a very bad prediction. When the hotels reopened, mobs stampeded back to fill them.

No incentives were necessary. Suddenly, everything was selling out and when they raised prices — which is what you do when you're selling out — people were still stampeding. The most popular buffet in town at the moment seems to be the Wednesday night Lobster Buffet at the Palms. Last time I looked, admission to it was $64.99 per person and waits of more than four hours have been reported. Every week or two, they raise the price some more and they still have four-hour waits to get in.

It's like that all over Vegas. The most expensive buffet is the Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars. That's $69.99 and there are several others in that price range. Shows are the same way. Here are the top and lowest prices of some of them…

A seat to Penn & Teller runs $106.47 to $239.48. Rod Stewart at Caesars Palace is $75.00 to $323.10. Shania Twain's new show will run you $99.21 to $1,259.79. The Michael Jackson-themed Cirque du Soleil® show at Mandalay Bay has seats from a low of $131.13 to a high of $283.73. Barry Manilow at the Westgate gets $94.42 up to a top of $422.98. And you don't want to know what it will cost to take in Adele's upcoming Vegas residency. Just sign your house over to her and that might (might!) get you into the rear balcony.

Some of those top prices include a meet-'n'-greet and/or souvenirs but the point is that good seats are not cheap these days. They're also not empty. It's like that all over the city and lately, all sorts of hidden fees are being added to hotel bills and restaurant checks. And yes, yes, I understand why they're doing it and frankly, if you and I had a business and we could double our prices without losing a single customer, we'd probably do the same thing. (Well, I might. You're much nicer than I am.)

But you get the point: I don't know how to go there without feeling like I'm Tourist-Trapped and being played for a sucker. I'm not going to say it's the principle, not the money, because frankly it's both. No matter how much wealth you have, there are moments when you just feel you're being treated like a pigeon and not an especially smart one at that. That city used to be so much fun.

Add in the fact that every time I see video or photos of present-day crowds downtown or on The Strip, I think, "Gee, if I was eager to catch COVID, that looks like a dandy place to catch it," and…well, it may be a long time before you see me there.

Downtown, a few blocks from The Fremont Street Experience, there's an alley into which I once blundered. It was full of homeless people, many of them practically sleeping on top of each other. Vegas has a large homeless population and it makes sense: It's warm most of the year, much of it's open 24/7, a lot of food gets thrown away or donated to missions, and big winners have been known to be generous with street folks who ask for spare change or Bitcoins.

But the folks in that alley were such a contrast to the opulence and riches you see elsewhere in that city. I sometimes think of them all sleeping in that alley and I just know that whoever owns that alley is now charging them a $39.95-per-night resort fee. Plus tax.

It's official. It was a rumor when we reported it back here but now it's been announced that a Peter Luger Steak House will open at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas around the end of 2022. That's fine for me because I doubt I'll be in Las Vegas before then. The Peter Luger in Brooklyn is probably my favorite restaurant…though I must admit I haven't been to it in a long time.

Why? Because it's in Brooklyn…and even when I'm in New York, it's a difficult place to get to. First off, you have to make reservations way in advance. Secondly, to get out there, have dinner and get back to Manhattan means giving up the idea of going to a Broadway show that evening. So it comes down to: Do I want to have dinner at my favorite restaurant? Or do I want to have dinner at a really good restaurant closer to the theater district and see a show? I usually opt for the latter.

Here's an excerpt from the press release…

Operating for nearly 135 years, Peter Luger is New York's top-rated steak house and a favorite among locals and tourists alike. The iconic German beer-hall setting has become a world-famous choice for family gatherings, deal-making, and special occasion celebrations. With its notoriously gruff, bow-tied waitstaff, old-world charm, and on-site dry-aging of legendary USDA-Prime steaks, dining at Peter Luger has become a culinary rite of passage.

A Peter Luger in Vegas will be so much more convenient. I'm just hoping they can properly replicate what makes it special. The meat shouldn't be a problem but where are they going to find sufficiently-gruff waiters?

Alex J., who I assume is not Alex Jones, writes to ask…

It would seem you've been going to Las Vegas for quite some time. What was it at the time that attracted you to the city then and how has it changed?

Well, it seems to have changed a lot since COVID-19 descended upon this world but I haven't been to Vegas to see what it's like now there because of that. It sure doesn't look enticing from afar and here's one of many reasons: Something I liked about the town was that when you were there, it was like being on a different planet where nothing mattered except gambling, food and entertainment. You could just turn off the part of your brain that might have to even think about anything else.

I doubt I could do that in an environment of who's wearing a mask and who isn't and "What's open?" and "Where do I sit to eat?" and "I just touched that so I need some hand sanitizer" and so on. And I really don't want to fly either.

Going back to before The Pandemic: Las Vegas got more expensive. There were lots of bizarre-sounding shows that one could go to that were nine bucks with a coupon so I'd take a chance. Now, they were thirty or forty bucks so I didn't take that chance.

There were also acts playing Vegas that had been around for years. I love Old Show Biz and when I started going to Vegas, they had plenty of Old Show Biz in their showrooms. My pal Pete Barbutti was playing somewhere. Dave Barry was at The Mint. Jackie Vernon was at the Marina. The last two burlesque comics — Dexter Maitland and Irv Benson — were at the Hacienda…and they were followed in there by Lance Burton. Lance was a (relatively) new guy but he had a wonderfully-intimate and classic magic show that was $15 with a coupon.

I knew a lot of folks who could get me backstage. All the time I've worked in television, I've rarely felt surrounded by "Show Business" the way I felt it backstage at the Union Plaza or the Paddlewheel or the Stardust. It was not just the showgirls walking around naked, though I doubt any male would be indifferent to that. It was the immediacy of what was going on there: Live performances, live audience, live applause…

There's not as much of that anymore. When they replaced the Sands with the Venetian, they kept the gaming but not the history.

Blackjack has even changed…or is changing. When I was playing a lot and counting cards, a "natural" (an Ace plus one card worth 10) got you a 3:2 payout. Now, casinos are increasingly changing it to a 6:5 payout. Doesn't seem like much I know but the old way, the casino only had about a 0.5% advantage over the players. 6:5 gives them more like a 2% advantage and that just kills even the remote possibility that I would ever get back into that game.

Blackjack was the only game in town that interested me. It was not the money. It was that it was a game where skill mattered, especially if you were counting cards. I gave it up once I satisfied myself that I was playing it well enough to give me that microscopic advantage over The House instead of the other way around. I got "ahead" but I was well aware that if I kept playing, I'd eventually hit a streak of bad hands and lose all that I'd won. It was impossible that that would not happen.

Then I'd have a choice: Commit to playing until I got ahead again and then quit…or end my Blackjack binging as a loser. It seemed easier to quit while I was ahead. It was getting to feel like work anyway. The way I played, it took long hours at the tables, much of it surrounded by cigarette smoke which I can't stand. I could have made the same money in that amount of time (and breathed more easily) by going up to my room and writing a comic book script on my laptop.

I quit Blackjack. I lost my access to (and much of my interest in) "going backstage." The ladies I knew there all stopped performing and married and/or moved outta town. Writing in hotel rooms got to seem like a little less fun.

I still like Las Vegas — or at least, pre-Pandemic Vegas — and I'm sure I'll be back there when/if it's like that again. I like exploring the corners of it I've never visited. I like watching the people. I like keeping my own hours and eating when I feel like it…and I know some great places to eat there. I like the air of excitement and the fact that you can wallow in it and then when you've had enough, shut it off by going back to your hotel room.

But I don't like it as much as when I was younger and there was more of what I call "Old Show Biz" and I could go backstage and feel a certain glamour that I rarely felt in television. It went away for me somewhere between the time they imploded the Hacienda and they opened the fifth or sixth Cirque du Soleil show in town.

Any day now, the Clarion Hotel in Las Vegas will be imploded. The specific date seems to be in flux but it's coming, it's coming. The latest in an endless series of owners, developer Lorenzo Doumani, plans to erect a luxury resort in the $500 million to $1 billion price range.

You probably never stayed at the Clarion, which is located on Convention Center Drive as a mid-point between The Strip and the big Vegas convention center. It started life as the Royal Inn in 1970 and thereafter always seemed to be changing names, owners or formats. It became the Royal Americana at one point owned by Horn and Hardart, the folks who used to operate cafeterias and Automats in New York, then it closed in 1982.

A few years later, it was remodeled so it looked like a riverboat and it reopened as the Paddlewheel. That didn't last long and in '92, Debbie Reynolds bought it and it morphed into the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel, a combination movie museum and casino. The big paddlewheel on the side of the building was repainted to look like a reel of movie film and inside, you could see Ms. Reynolds perform, get a glimpse of Clark Gable's shirt and lose yours. The effort, though intriguing, did not catch on. In '97, Ms. Reynolds filed for bankruptcy and later sold the property…to the World Wrestling Federation.

We're not done yet. The W.W.F. tried to convert it into a wrestling-themed hotel — make up your own joke — but they weren't able to pull that together and it was briefly called the Convention Center Drive Hotel. After a year or so, they sold it to a company that rebranded it Greek Isles. I'm not sure why. Maybe some marketing survey told them there were a lot of folks of Greek extraction wandering around Vegas with money protruding from their pockets, looking for a place to stay. By 2009, those owners were gone, the Clarion people were in…and now it's over, it's all over. The place closed last Labor Day and is expected to be a parcel of dirt by the close of this month as the developers try to pull together financing for their luxury resort.

My experiences with the building were all when it was the Paddlewheel. In the late eighties, I was commuting often to Las Vegas for about eleven varying reasons, one of which was that I liked the town. I liked the pace and the energy and the friendliness and all the show businessy type things and whole 24-hour lifestyle.

Another, which I've written about, was that I was fascinated by Blackjack and the not-quite-cheating practice known as Card Counting. Less to make money and more as a personal challenge, I wanted to see if I could master the skill to my own satisfaction. I did, I gave it up…but I still went to Vegas every few weeks. It was a fun place to be then.

Not that it isn't now but, well, it's different.

I have here a Vegas magazine I picked up at the peak of my semi-residency there. The date is March of 1988 and let's see what's going on at the major hotels there, in alphabetical order. You'll note that not one of the shows is or even vaguely resembles Cirque du Soleil. I'm not saying that's a bad thing but it is a thing…

• At the Aladdin, you could see a magical review called "Abracadabra" (I did; it was pretty good) or see Johnny Cash perform (I didn't; it was pretty expensive). That Aladdin has since been torn down and replaced by a totally new hotel which had that name but later changed to Planet Hollywood.
• At Bally's, which is still there, you could see at various times throughout the month, the following headliners: Tom Jones, Jackie Mason, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Frank Sinatra and Smokey Robinson. There was also their big production show, "Jubilee," which just closed for renovations. At the time, it was one of several shows in town featuring classic showgirls. When it recently went on hiatus, it was the only one of its kind remaining.
• Caesars Palace was then about half its current size but still plenty big. In their showroom that month, they had Rodney Dangerfield, Reba McIntire, The Pointer Sisters, Jay Leno, The Beach Boys and a parlay of Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach. Reba still plays there a few weeks a year and her top ticket price is $205 a seat, which is less than half of the top price Elton John gets when he plays there.
• Circus Circus was the same place it is now, the same place it will always be.
• The Desert Inn had as its headliners, Suzanne Somers (with Louie Anderson as her opening act), Rich Little (with Anthony Newley), Charley Pride, Ray Stevens, Roseanne Barr and Larry Gatlin. The Desert Inn was torn down so they could build Wynn. Suzanne Somers is now appearing in commercials on MeTV selling the Three-Way Poncho.
• The Dunes had a Comedy Store outlet with (that month) Jimmie Walker, Damon Wayans, George Miller, Steve Oedekerk, Felicia Michaels (Hi, Felicia!) and others. They tore the Dunes down so they could build the Bellagio.
• The Flamingo Hilton had a revue called "City Lites." The hotel's still there with different shows, one starring Osmonds.
• The Frontier had a show called "Beyond Belief" starring Siegfried and Roy before they were *SIEGFRIED AND ROY!!!* Developers tore the Frontier down in 2007 to build, so far, nothing. About once a year, they announce a new mega-resort of some sort but it's still a mega-empty lot.
• At the Golden Nugget, you could see Paul Anka, Don Rickles, Lou Rawls, Diahann Carroll, Vic Damone, David Brenner or Yakov Smirnoff. The Nugget is still there and Rickles still plays Vegas (though not the Golden Nugget) once or twice a year for a few days, calling people hockey pucks, pointing out black men in the front row and, of course, dropping his pants and firing a rocket.
• At the Hacienda, you could see a "Minsky's Burlesque Show" starring the last two surviving comedians from Minsky's Burlesque, Irv Benson and Dexter Maitland. Minsky's Burlesque is gone…and pretty much was then. The Hacienda is gone and replaced by Mandalay Bay. Dexter Maitland is gone and replaced by no one. And as far as I know, Irv Benson is still alive and if so, he'll be 101 at the end of this month.
• The Las Vegas Hilton is no longer the Las Vegas Hilton. Its latest in a series of names is the Westgate and it's slated for a major renovation. In March of '88, you could see Barry Manilow or Wayne Newton there. I suspect if you see Wayne on the premises again, he'll have a belt sander and be part of the crew doing that major renovation.
• The Holiday Inn in '88 was featuring the "Roarin' 20's Revue." Before the Paddlewheel looked like a riverboat, the Holiday Inn did. Now, the building's been redesigned so it no longer looks like a riverboat and it's Harrah's.
• The Imperial Palace in '88 was featuring "Legends in Concert" and it did for a long, long time. Now, "Legends in Concert" is over at the Flamingo Hilton while the Imperial Palace has been completely remade into The Linq.
• The Landmark was featuring "Melinda, the First Lady of Magic." Both are gone.
• The Marina was featuring "Beatle Magic." Where the Marina once stood is now the MGM Grand.
• The Riviera was pretty much the same place then that it is now and last time I was in it, it didn't look like it had been cleaned since then and I recognized some of the food in the buffet from '88. Incidentally, in March of 1988, their comedy club there was featuring a kid named David Spade.
• The Sahara Hotel housed Redd Foxx, as did about half the hotels on this list at one time or another. The Sahara has been completely remodeled to become a resort called SLS Las Vegas. Redd Foxx has been completely remodeled to become Tyler Perry.
• The Sands was featuring Gallagher, Paul Revere & The Raiders and Sha Na Na, which was quite a change from the days when it featured Frank, Dino and Sammy, though perhaps more in dress than in content. The Sands was torn down and The Venetian now occupies that plot of desert.
• The Stardust was offering "Lido de Paris" featuring Bobby Berosini and his Orangutans. Someday here, I have to tell you a story about that odd, controversial act. Anyway, the Stardust was imploded in 2007 to make way for a grand resort called Echelon Place which, last I heard, was a set of blueprints and a lot of press releases.
• The Tropicana had the "Folies Bergere." The show's no longer there but amazingly, the Tropicana is. For years, it kept being announced that the Trop was going to be nuked and replaced by a new, zillion-dollar resort. Somehow, the place has survived and even undergone renovation. Looks like it'll be around for a while.
• The Union Plaza downtown was featuring "Nudes on Ice," which I didn't see but which one reviewer then said should have been retitled, "One Semi-Nude on an Ice Cube." It's now just The Plaza and in its showroom, you can see Louie Anderson who I presume is neither nude nor on ice.
• Vegas World was offering "The Robert Allen Show." I don't know who he was either but the hotel he played has been revamped into the Stratosphere.

And the Paddlewheel had two shows. One was "Hot Lips," which featured comedian Pete Barbutti, a jazz quartet, six great-looking mostly-naked women and a magician. The other was "The Heat is On," which starred six great-looking mostly-naked men. I spent a couple of interesting nights at the Paddlewheel and no, it wasn't because of the latter show. I'll tell you about those nights one of these days.

A lot of websites and social media posts are saying that resort fees, especially in Las Vegas, have been outlawed and are gone. This is not so as a peek at any hotel's site or travel site will show you. There have been new laws prohibiting bookers from hiding them but pretty much everyone was already in compliance with those rules before they went into effect. They can still advertise a room for $30 but before you go to book it, you'd have to look real hard not to notice that there's also a $45.00 resort fee.

Some folks wonder: "Why don't the hotels just admit the room is $75?" And the reason is that if they did it that way, when some travel site booked you into that room and collected its commission, that commission would be calculated based on the $75 price. If they break it down to a $30 room with a $45 resort fee, the travel site collects its commission off the $30, not $75. So the hotel gets to keep more of what you pay.

Resort fees are one of the many reasons I no longer go to Las Vegas. Another is that the bigger picture is that Vegas businesses are now largely ruled by the belief that no matter how much they raise prices, someone will pay them. It's unbelievable how much prices have soared there. I'd really feel like a rube if I went there and paid them…which is a shame.

I used to go to Las Vegas a lot but when I look at current pricing, I see very few places to dine or shows to attend that I think are worth what they're asking. It's also getting harder to win there or play at modest levels…and that doesn't seem to be causing very many people to not gamble; at least not enough to get the casinos to not keep doing everything they can think of to increase their cash intakes.

Every casino in Las Vegas — and probably every casino anywhere — has one or more employees who work the phones to try and lure big gamblers to come play. These employees are referred to by various titles but "Casino Host" is a very common one. An uncommon one I've heard is "Captain Ahab" because a big gambler is often referred to as a "whale" and…well, you understand.

In all my trips to Vegas, even when I was playing (and often winning) Blackjack, I never came close to the level of wagering that would classify me as even a medium-sized gambler, let along a Moby Dick-sized one. Also, those gambling days were long ago and the casino hosts of that era are probably long gone. They did not call me then and offer me free rooms, free flights and free meals to come stay at their hotels.

Despite this, I've had three calls in the last week or so from three different "casino hosts" (maybe) at three different hotels who say that they miss me, want me back and will shower me with freebees to make that happen. One of them made it sound like the entire staff at the New York, New York hotel is wandering about, deeply depressed because they don't see Mark Evanier at their slot machines.

That was my first tip-off that this was a total scam and not just a little one. I've never stayed at that hotel, nor put even one coin into any of their one-armed bandits.

I stayed on the line with the guy long enough to realize he was trying to sell me a vacation package disguised as a high-roller's comp. To get my free flight, free room and free meals, I would have to give them my credit card number for any "incidentals" I incurred above and beyond what their package of gifts would include. I think we can all figure out how things would go after that. That last caller was even offering to put a limousine at my disposal and to arrange comps to any show in town I wanted to see. Yeah, right.

The thing is: I wouldn't have taken this guy up on his offer even if it had been legit. I used to love Las Vegas but I have zero interest in going there now. The Pandemic has killed much of my interest in going anywhere, especially by plane, and so have the problems I've been having with my knees. Also, Vegas has become a beastly-expensive, higher-than-ever-hustle place: No more cheap shows, no more cheap buffets.

The room rates aren't bad on some dates even if you factor in the mandatory, quietly-disclosed Resort Fees…but I don't see anyplace there I want to be or dine. Even if I still remembered how to count cards at Blackjack, I wouldn't play with some of the new rules adjustments.

They're now repaving and reconfiguring most of the streets there to get ready for the Formula One racing event that's going to take place there in November. The cars will do fifty laps around a 3.8-mile circuit up and around The Strip. To get a hotel room and a good seat for the event will cost thousands of dollars per night…which is why I was immediately suspicious when that first "casino host" called me. That town doesn't care about tourists like me anymore.

Further proof: It was announced today that the Oakland Athletics will relocate to Vegas, perhaps as soon as 2027. Ground will soon be broken on a 35,000-seat baseball stadium with a retractable roof. Total estimated price: One billion dollars. Everything in that city just got even more expensive. Gee, that was a wonderful place to visit Once Upon a Time.