Good things about Downtown Vegas

Maybe I overthink these things.  As long as a hotel room is clean and the shower is hot I can be pretty comfortable in a hotel room, but after probably too much hemming and hawing, I have a hotel room booked for my April trip to Las Vegas.

I'll be staying at The D Hotel  on Fremont Street downtown. 

I had originally planned to stay on the strip, where most tourists stay, but the prices were higher than I expected.  So I kicked around some options and ended up at the D.  Some people hate downtown, but I've stayed there a few times and have been perfectly comfortable. 

Here are just a taste of random things to like about downtown Vegas:

• Cheaper.  Everything in downtown is cheaper.  The hotels, the restaurants, the booze, the gambling, everything.  I suspect the hookers might be cheaper too, but outside my expertise on that one.
• The Fremont Street Experience light show is cheesy.  It's also pretty cool, and something that you won't see again.  So go see it.  Really.  My favorite is the American Pie show, especially the later shows, when the drunk and tipsy sing along with the last verse.
• The Fremont East district has really taken off, it seems.  The new bars have brought the young and hip to downtown.  Being neither young nor hip, I don't know too much about the area, but I remember when the walk from the canopy to the El Cortez Casino was downright scary.  It isn't anymore.  Well, not so much.
• The Mob Museum - Where else would it be?
• The Shipping Container Park - OK, so this one isn't open yet.  It looks pretty awesome though.

Just a few random thoughts for now. 

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day.

BTW, not sure why, but I haven't been able to load pictures here lately.  Sorry, I'm trying.

I Want to See What's Up at the D

In downtown Las Vegas there is a hotel and casino that used to be Fitzgerald's, now it's "The D."  Kind of a lousy name for a hotel/casino, but apparently it's now a "resort".  As in "The D Resort".  Still a lousy name.

I liked the old place just fine, it had a fake/creepy Irish theme and a nice balcony bar upstairs that looked out on the Fremont Street Experience.  It was a fun enough place, good dealers at least.  I stayed there once years ago, the rooms were fine enough in a Howard Johnson-type way.

Last year, Fitzgeralds was bought out by the guys that own the Golden Gate.  I haven't been there since, but these guys did a great job fixing up the old Golden Gate, so I'm optimistic here.  They built the Long Bar, supposedly the longest bar in Nevada (and who am I to argue), which looks like a pretty cool place to hang out in the pictures.  I'm also excited about Sigma Derby and "vintage" gaming on the second floor (Vegaschatter.com  tell you what sigma derby is).  If nothing else, the news coming out of the place makes me damn curious.

Oh, and Vegaschatter also reports that The D is hiring 100 party pit dancers.  Which also makes me curious.

But I think I'll still call the place the Fitz.

Places I'll go in Vegas, part 6

A bit more than a day to go, a long flight, and I'll be in Fabulous Las Vegas, NV.  So today I thought I would make a quick post in my amazingly unpopular series, Places I'll go in Vegas.  

I will take some time during the day and head off the strip to visit the Palms, the Rio, and the Gold Coast.  Why, you probably didn't ask?  Because I have never been there.

The three casinos are clustered a little ways off the strip.  Way too far to walk, but there is a free shuttle bus that leaves from Bally's.  I honestly don't know much about them.  I know the Palms is a classy, upscale joint for the hipsters, I know that Rio has a popular nightclub for the over 40 crowd, and I know that Gold Coast is part of the Boyd group, meaning it's a decent low-roller place.  I've also heard that the buffet at Gold Caost is cheap and pretty good, so maybe I'll do that too.

Oh, and I've heard that the cocktail waitresess at the Rio wear very skimpy outfits.  I will investigate this rumor thoroughly.

So, once again, as a free service to all my stalkers, here is my itinerary thus far:

1. Holsteins at the Cosmopolitan
2. The Mob Museum downtown
3. Margaritaville at the Flamingo
4. Public House at the Venetian
5. Canevale at the Palazzo
6. Rio/Gold Coast/Palms

Well, once again, thanks for reading.  And wish me some luck, eh?

Rebuilding the Lady Luck

Really?

I went to the Lady Luck once. After a having a good time on Fremont Street, I'm a bit hazy on the fine points, but mostly I remember the place was smoky. 

One of the sites I check pretty regularly is Vegaschatter.  It's a great site.  Today there was an article about the old Lady Luck, which was recently rebranded the Downtown Grand.  Personally, I think Lady Luck is a way better name, but so it goes.  The article talks about how the place is being refurbished, and offers some speculation as to when it might open up again.

I'm sorry, but I just don't believe it. 

The Lady Luck closed for renovations in 2006.  It hasn't opened the doors since.  Anyone who has been downtown has seen it, it's big, white, and takes up a whole lot of space between the Fremont Street Experience and the new Mob Museum.  Whenever I'm downtown, I walk by the place just to see what's happening.  I've never seen much.  While work has certainly taken place on Third Street in front of the old hotel, I've never seen any real action at the hotel itself.  I haven't been there in a year, of course, so my observations are dated, but if the owners really are gearing up for an opening, they are certainly taking their own sweet time.

Maybe this wouldn't bother me so much if the owners didn't keep saying they were working on it.  People understand why the Echelon and the Fontainebleau were mothballed, people get that the money doesn't add up to reopen the place.  But these guys just keep throwing out plans, artists renditions, and pretend re-opening dates (vegaschatter sites five different dates).  Ex-Mayor Oscar Goodman has called the place a "blight", a "rotting corpse", a "disaster" and a "carcass"  Through it all, the owners, Third Street Gaming,  have kept talking about renovations, reopenings, rebrandings, and all the great things that were coming.

And yet the place still sits. Empty.  Hulking.  Just plane ugly. 

I hope I'm wrong.  When I go in July, I'll again walk down to the old Lady Luck.  I'll look for trucks, cranes, some signs of life.  Then maybe I'll believe.

Maybe.

When Binion's was the Horseshoe

From the archives - an old picture I have of Binion's back when it was the Horseshoe.

The worst casino in Vegas just got a little worse

Many years ago, I used to like the Las Vegas Club.  I liked the gambling, I liked the sports memorabilia, I liked the Great Moments restaurant upstairs, and the friendly staff.  I liked the bar with cheap drinks and good bartenders, where you could sit for a while and watch the crowd on Fremont Street.  Later I liked the R & B singers in the back lounge.

Alas, all those things are gone now.  Every time I visit, one more piece has disappeared.  The bar is still there, but nothing else, and the staff generally seems like they would rather be somewhere else. 

I just found out that Tinoco's Restaurant is closed.  It was a very good place, crammed into the back of a very bad casino.  The room was bright and pleasant, the portions were big, and the price was good.  I'm not saying the food was the best in town, but you could tell that the people at Tinoco's cared about their product, their restaurant and their customers.  Everything the Vegas Club seems to have lost interest in.  And now Tinoco's is gone.

The Vegas Club is owned by the same people who own the recently remade Plaza across the street and the recently closed Western Casino on the far end of downtown Las Vegas.  The Vegaschatter website has speculated a bit that the Vegas Club might be in line for a makeover as well.  They also noted that the hotel portion mostly seems to be closed.  All the activity by the owners on the three properties makes me think that the owners maybe actually have a plan.  Maybe.

As of right now, the Vegas Club casino has one thing going for it: location.  It's on the corner of Fremont and Main, surrounded by the newly remodeled Plaza, the expanding Golden Gate, and the never-ending luau that is the California.  Maybe they will sell the place, although I can't imagine who would buy it as it is. 

The sad fact is that the place is falling down, and no one seems to give a crap.  Not too long ago, the same could have been said about the Plaza and the Western.  The owners fixed the Plaza and closed the Western, so I'm guessing some kind of change is coming soon for the Vegas Club. 

Maybe.

Oh, the Places I'll Go, #2

This is item numero dos on places I'm planning on visiting during my July trip to Las Vegas. 

The Mob Museum - It seems like it took forever to build this place, but apparently it's ex-mayor (and ex-mob lawyer) Oscar Goodman's dream come true.  People seem to be saying it's worth the trip.  Hey, it won't be the first time in Vegas history that the mob livened up downtown.

I really have no idea what to expect, and I'm certainly no mafia-groupie or anything, but it actually looks pretty cool.  I've scheduled this for my travel day (also known as my sobering-up day).  I have a late flight and generally plan to just hang around downtown for the day, and this seems like a good way to kill a couple of hours before hopping on a plane and heading back to my real life. 

I took this picture years ago before they started construction.  Pretty building, eh?



So if you are keeping track(and I can't believe you would be),  my list so far is:

     1. Holsteins Shakes and Buns



     2. The Mob Museum

Changes in downtown

Late night on Fremont

One of the great things about Vegas is that it changes all the time.  While the big construction projects won't be happening again for the foreseeable future, things still change there, and pretty quick too.

Half my stay will be downtown, and there have actually been a lot of changes since I was there last summer.  Here's what I'm curious about:

The Plaza - Recently renovated, new restaurants, new food court.  I am curious to see how they fixed (or tried to fix) what was probably the most low-rent, smoke-filled, depressing casinos downtown.  That distinction now belongs to the Las Vegas Club, which is actually owned by the same people.
     I always thought that the Plaza could have the best sportsbook downtown - it's big and well laid out, so I'm hoping they got the redo right there.

The D resort - Used to be Fitzgeralds, which was a decent enough low-roller place.  I stayed there once years ago, rooms were good sized, I had a decent view, Howard Johnson-like decor.  The whole place was bought out by the people that own the Golden Gate.  These guys did a great job spiffing up the GG, so I'm excited to see what they have going on down at the old Fitz.  I know they put in a big new bar that looks interesting.
Incidently, I searched "D resort vegas" on both google and bing, niether brought me the new website.  It's here, www.thed.com , if you are looking.

Golden Gate - Always one of my favorite places to play, by the time I get there in July they should be finished with their renovation/expansion.  I don't see anything really breathtaking in the plans, but I'm interested in seeing it anyway.  Between buying and rebranding Fitzgeralds and the expansion here, these guys have been busy.

Drink & Drag - Last time I was downtown (actually, for the past ten years or so) Neonopolis has been a big empty hulk of a place in the middle of Fremont Street.  Now it actually seems like it actually has some life to it, with a whole bunch of new businesses.  One of them is Drink & Drag, which just opened this month.  It's a bowling alley, with dartboards and everything.  Staffed by drag queens. 
     No, it doesn't make sense to me either, and it's not really my scene, but where else on earth can you go bowling with drag queens?  I can't say I know a lot about drag queens, but it's hard to imagine they put on the bowling shoes.  We can file this under "Only Vegas."

I've also been reading about new bars opening up at Binion's and the Golden Nugget, neither of which look particularly exciting to me, but I'll certainly check them out.

www.fremontstreetbars.com - A good website about the bar scene, and downtown info in general.  www.vegaschatter.com  also has some good info on downtown once in a while.

Until next time............

Why did I pick the California?

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm splitting hotels for my July trip - three nights on the strip, two nights downtown.  For my downtown stay, I picked the California.

I'm not from Hawaii.  I'm from Boston, which is close to as far as you can get from Hawaii.  So why would a grumpy Bostonian choose a hotel that pretty much caters to Hawaiians? 

I looked at a few different places downtown - the Plaza, The D (formally Fitzgeralds), the Gold Spike, and all of the Boyd properties - Fremont, Main Street Station, and the Cal. 

As I said before, I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to hotel rooms.  I decided that I wanted a pool, especially since it will be towards the end of my trip, so I might need to wash some of the booze out of me. 

In the end, it came down to price.  I had a good deal from the Boyd companies through the Bconnected players' club.  I've stayed at the Fremont before, and liked it fine.  Boyd might not have the fanciest properties, but I've always gotten such good service there.  I was about to book the Fremont again, but just figured I'd try someplace new. 

So I'm set - three days Planet Hollywood, two days at the California.  It feels nice to be a bit settled.