A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Vegas '07 - Part II

"Crackton! Next stop: Crackton!

Vegas doesn't lack for accommodations. Except, as it turns out, on rodeo weekend. We were scrambling for lodgings on less than two months notice, and while we were planning on staying downtown anyway, none of us were prepared for the unique charms of the El Cortez.

Better writers than myself have discussed the dichotomy between the public face of Las Vegas and the seamy reality, and if you've ever been there yourself, you get that in the first 30 minutes on the ground. Your surly cabby drives you past the 100-ft neon billboards advertising Cirque du Soleil's "Mystere" and Carrot Top at the Luxor (no shit) on I-15, where you get a tantalizing glimpse of the places like the Bellagio and the Palms, where people who can afford to ante more than $2.50 for Caribbean poker tend to stay, until you make the exit onto S. Las Vegas Blvd and get that first whiff of the real Vegas, an aroma reminiscent of desperation layered over abject failure.

The ElCo occupied a unique space, however. It's downtown, like Fitzgerald's and the Four Queens (two other places I've stayed), but just barely. Situated at Fremont and 6th, it is literally the last hotel/casino before the charming neighborhood we referred to all weekend as Crackton, where all-day buffets give way to discount hourly rates and wizened 20-something broads refer to passers-by as "Daddy" (as Cujo discovered on his daily forays for Gatorade). Put it this way: if Fremont Street is the lower intestine of Vegas' alimentary canal, then the El Cortez is the spincter. Here's the view from outside our 5th floor room:

"Where the wave broke, and rolled back."

The ElCo was also where we met The Dave, the only one of those aforementioned grad school friends I still keep in touch with (and this in spite of his being an Oakland Raiders fan). He's been with me on all but two of my Vegas trips, including the time we drove from Houston to San Diego in his antiquated, un-air conditioned Ford Probe in the summer of '98. But that's a tale for another time.

We spent an hour or so shooting the shit in the ElCo's luxurious casino. No picture can do it justice, but trust me when I say it had the highest concentration of gamblers lugging oxygen tanks or tooling about on their Rascals that I have ever seen.

Not pictured: the multiple Elizabeth Taylor slot machines.

Impressed as we were by our $30 a night hotel, we were eager to head back up Fremont and hit a casino where the grim specter of Death didn't haunt our every echoing step. And so, after depositing our bags in our room (and trying not imagine the place under an ultraviolet light), we made our way up to the main drag.

The Greatest American Hero

We gambled some at Fitzgerald's and the new -and-improved Golden Nugget ("Now With 40% Fewer Suicides!"). I soured quickly on blackjack while TTTWLAM went up and down at the game in a dizzying display that would become emblematic of the weekend. I burned through about $100 in fairly short order, so rather than risk blowing my entire budget the first few hours - and less than enchanted with the slow drink service at Fitz's, I made a few runs back and forth between the casino and a gift store next door. 24 oz. beers could be had for $1.25, along with other, more outstanding items one could only find in Vegas.

For instance, if you were asked to name two of our nation's greatest icons, who would you choose? One might very well be one of our founding fathers; an inventor and statesman whom many credit with discovering electricity. Another, an orphan from the streets of New York City, who undergoes a remarkable metamorphosis after getting bitten by a radioactive arachnid.

Now imagine you were some sort of mad scientist and could combine the two. The result might very well look like this:

This t-shirt is so "full of win," as the kids say, I can't stand it. The head (and, presumably, brain) of Ben Franklin on Spider-Man's body. Spider-Ben would be nigh unstoppable. And his webbing? Money, motherfucker!

We were hypnotized by this shirt...with good reason, I might add. I have TTTWLAM to thank for surreptitiously buying this for me, because the shaky cell phone pics I took of it in the store didn't quite come out. It's also worth mentioning that the smallest size available was XXXL, though I'm not sure why.

That was the high point of the first night, as we eventually staggered back to the ElCo (TTTWLAM and Cujo a little later, thanks to the latter's desire for $1.25 pizza and blatant ignorance of his surroundings) and collapsed around 4 AM.

Next up: The Girls of Glitter Gulch and Spice, Spice, Baby.