We resolved to see as many of the (apparently) doomed old casinos in Las Vegas as we can. Yesterday (Tuesday) we concentrated on the north- to mid-Strip area.
According to the Las Vegas Casino Death Watch, re-development will probably doom most of these hotels at some point in the near future. I already mentioned the recent demise of the Stardust, whose rubble I can see directly from my hotel window while typing this.
Here is the defunct sign of the Stardust, still standing behind the barrier that separates the curious public from the continuing work of hauling away debris.
The pile of debris from the demolition was the thing most visible from the window of our hotel room. Here it is looking through the fence, just past the sign depicted above.
As we walked down the Strip toward the defunct Stardust, we passed a very impressive sign. This is the sign from the old Westward Ho–which apparently was not all that impressive a hotel. The sign sure is cool, though.
Down the Strip from these two ruins is the Frontier (currently called the New Frontier). This has, as you can tell, a Western theme. Gilley’s nightclub offers mud wrestling every evening. It looked somewhat cheesy and sleazy from the outside, but inside it was rather charming. (Barbara was not waiting for the mud wrestling, but rather for me to snap the picture and move on up the Strip.)
We experienced our first Las Vegas buffet here, a breakfast buffet. As we were standing in line for the buffet, I noticed this interesting sign, which tells you a lot about the Las Vegas economy. They use U.S. money, but they also seem to have their own.
There are more “heritage” hotels to be reported on, but I’ll do that when I get home. This is being typed and posted in McCarran Airport, which has better WiFi than the hotel did.
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