Las Vegas Roll Call

[upprdeck]

there is one in the LINQ experience area mid way down towards the High Roller.  

I would go to the Brooklyn Bowl or the Barley Pizza or Gordan Ramseys fish place way before i ever go back to in-n-out burger again.

Always hit up the Ghirardelli ice cream shop there though..

[Swampy]

I would go to the Brooklyn Bowl or the Barley Pizza or Gordan Ramseys fish place way before i ever go back to in-n-out burger again.

Yeah, IIRC, In-N-Out Burger is roughly on par with Jack-in-the-Box, which I avoid like the plague.

[Trotsky]

Wait until the relaxed FDA standards.

[marty]

Wait until the relaxed FDA standards.

Bovine-ist?

[Beeeej]

I'll be there in one of the GA sections. Note that there is an official alumni reception before the Friday game if you feel like spending $50 for hot dogs and popcorn (a relative bargain for the Strip!)

Huh?

15 Places For Cheap Food for Under $20 in Las Vegas

I thought the whole point of food on the Strip is bring in suckers customers to lose money gambling to experience the thrills and excitement of gaming.

If they still have nickle slots, one way to stay within budget is to buy a roll of nickles and pass a couple of hours playing the slots, while the casino offers you free drinks. It's a fun cocktail hour. The last time I did it I came out about $35 ahead.

I mean, the "cheap" places on that list are no bargain. The pizza place, for example, is about $6 a slice. I was mostly joking about the reception being a bargain, but the fact is that the cheap food days of the Strip are largely long gone.

I guess it's been almost 20 years since I drove through Vegas, but isn't there an In-n-Out Burger on the strip?  Back when I was living in Salt Lake, it was the first In-n-Out on the drive to Southern California.

There are apparently 5 In-and-Outs in Vegas.  There's one on the far side of the freeway from the arena.

Not that I understand the fascination.  Their burgers are bland and their fries are usually too dry.

In dss28's and my opinion the Fatburger on the Strip is excellent as far as quick-casual burger places go. For steak, we highly recommend The Steakhouse at Circus Circus; as long as you can stand to walk through the horrible casino floor to get there, it's totally worth it.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

I'll be there in one of the GA sections. Note that there is an official alumni reception before the Friday game if you feel like spending $50 for hot dogs and popcorn (a relative bargain for the Strip!)

Huh?

15 Places For Cheap Food for Under $20 in Las Vegas

I thought the whole point of food on the Strip is bring in suckers customers to lose money gambling to experience the thrills and excitement of gaming.

If they still have nickle slots, one way to stay within budget is to buy a roll of nickles and pass a couple of hours playing the slots, while the casino offers you free drinks. It's a fun cocktail hour. The last time I did it I came out about $35 ahead.

I mean, the "cheap" places on that list are no bargain. The pizza place, for example, is about $6 a slice. I was mostly joking about the reception being a bargain, but the fact is that the cheap food days of the Strip are largely long gone.

I guess it's been almost 20 years since I drove through Vegas, but isn't there an In-n-Out Burger on the strip?  Back when I was living in Salt Lake, it was the first In-n-Out on the drive to Southern California.

There are apparently 5 In-and-Outs in Vegas.  There's one on the far side of the freeway from the arena.

Not that I understand the fascination.  Their burgers are bland and their fries are usually too dry.

In dss28's and my opinion the Fatburger on the Strip is excellent as far as quick-casual burger places go. For steak, we highly recommend The Steakhouse at Circus Circus; as long as you can stand to walk through the horrible casino floor to get there, it's totally worth it.

Any recommendations for good ethnic restaurants, e.g. Thai, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Jamaican, Sichuan?

[Beeeej]

In dss28's and my opinion the Fatburger on the Strip is excellent as far as quick-casual burger places go. For steak, we highly recommend The Steakhouse at Circus Circus; as long as you can stand to walk through the horrible casino floor to get there, it's totally worth it.

Any recommendations for good ethnic restaurants, e.g. Thai, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Jamaican, Sichuan?

Not really - we had some good (but not spectacular) "revolving sushi" in Chinatown last time we were there in September, but we don't tend to go out of our way to find the others you mentioned. The one I really wish I could recommend is a sushi place where we had an absolutely amazing, creative Omakase for a friend's birthday several years ago, but we've never been able to remember the name of the place or figure out what it was (nor can the friend and his wife, who now live there, so it's especially frustrating for them), to our detriment and yours. Sorry.

[Trotsky]

For steak, we highly recommend The Steakhouse at Circus Circus; as long as you can stand to walk through the horrible casino floor to get there, it's totally worth it.

"The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the Sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos ... but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space. Right above the gambling tables the Forty Flying Carazito Brothers are doing a high-wire trapeze act, along with four muzzled Wolverines and the Six Nymphet Sisters from San Diego ... so you're down on the main floor playing blackjack, and the stakes are getting high when suddenly you chance to look up, and there, right smack above your head is a half-naked 14-year-old girl being chased through the air by a snarling wolverine, which is suddenly locked in a death battle with two silver-painted Polacks who come swinging down from opposite balconies and meet in mid-air on the wolverine's neck ... both Polacks seize the animal as they fall straight down towards the crap tables – but they bounce off the net; they separate and spring back up towards the roof in three different directions, and just as they're about to fall again they are grabbed out of the air by three Korean Kittens and trapezed off to one of the balconies." -- HST

[Trotsky]

Roy's Seafood used to be great.  The Clintons ate there when they were in town (make of that what you will) and it was always inundated with the thousands of Hawaiian tourists who rent entire floors of Vegas hotels to gamble their savings away at the tables.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

For steak, we highly recommend The Steakhouse at Circus Circus; as long as you can stand to walk through the horrible casino floor to get there, it's totally worth it.

"The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the Sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos ... but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space. Right above the gambling tables the Forty Flying Carazito Brothers are doing a high-wire trapeze act, along with four muzzled Wolverines and the Six Nymphet Sisters from San Diego ... so you're down on the main floor playing blackjack, and the stakes are getting high when suddenly you chance to look up, and there, right smack above your head is a half-naked 14-year-old girl being chased through the air by a snarling wolverine, which is suddenly locked in a death battle with two silver-painted Polacks who come swinging down from opposite balconies and meet in mid-air on the wolverine's neck ... both Polacks seize the animal as they fall straight down towards the crap tables – but they bounce off the net; they separate and spring back up towards the roof in three different directions, and just as they're about to fall again they are grabbed out of the air by three Korean Kittens and trapezed off to one of the balconies." -- HST

Haven't read that in years.  Maybe I should get a copy for the flight.

[Beeeej]

For steak, we highly recommend The Steakhouse at Circus Circus; as long as you can stand to walk through the horrible casino floor to get there, it's totally worth it.

"The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the Sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos ... but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space. Right above the gambling tables the Forty Flying Carazito Brothers are doing a high-wire trapeze act, along with four muzzled Wolverines and the Six Nymphet Sisters from San Diego ... so you're down on the main floor playing blackjack, and the stakes are getting high when suddenly you chance to look up, and there, right smack above your head is a half-naked 14-year-old girl being chased through the air by a snarling wolverine, which is suddenly locked in a death battle with two silver-painted Polacks who come swinging down from opposite balconies and meet in mid-air on the wolverine's neck ... both Polacks seize the animal as they fall straight down towards the crap tables – but they bounce off the net; they separate and spring back up towards the roof in three different directions, and just as they're about to fall again they are grabbed out of the air by three Korean Kittens and trapezed off to one of the balconies." -- HST

Pretty much - plus add about nine hundred screaming, spoiled children and their six hundred yelling parents.

But if you can get to the other end, The Steakhouse is a quiet, delicious oasis.

[Trotsky]

Haven't read that in years.  Maybe I should get a copy for the flight.

Unlike a lot of Hunter (and the man himself), it's aged well.  The Pulitzer murder dispatches are still the best, though.  "She slept with a trumpet.  I told her it was wrong."

Also contains this, for my money his best writing, and so significant now.

"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

[andyw2100]

In dss28's and my opinion the Fatburger on the Strip is excellent as far as quick-casual burger places go. For steak, we highly recommend The Steakhouse at Circus Circus; as long as you can stand to walk through the horrible casino floor to get there, it's totally worth it.

Any recommendations for good ethnic restaurants, e.g. Thai, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Jamaican, Sichuan?

Not really - we had some good (but not spectacular) "revolving sushi" in Chinatown last time we were there in September, but we don't tend to go out of our way to find the others you mentioned. The one I really wish I could recommend is a sushi place where we had an absolutely amazing, creative Omakase for a friend's birthday several years ago, but we've never been able to remember the name of the place or figure out what it was (nor can the friend and his wife, who now live there, so it's especially frustrating for them), to our detriment and yours. Sorry.

Friends in Vegas who consider themselves sushi aficionados swear by a place on Sahara called Sushi Fever. http://www.sushifevervegas.com/ I have been there and have enjoyed their chicken katsu, but I'm not a sushi eater. Perhaps this is the place you are thinking of. It's been there at least fifteen years, and perhaps longer.

[Swampy]

Haven't read that in years.  Maybe I should get a copy for the flight.

Unlike a lot of Hunter (and the man himself), it's aged well.  The Pulitzer murder dispatches are still the best, though.  "She slept with a trumpet.  I told her it was wrong."

Also contains this, for my money his best writing, and so significant now.

"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

Agreed, great writing. Thanks.

But, OK Boomer, there's too much irony in using SOCIAL MEDIA to be nostalgic for HST's nostalgia for the Sixties. It's just wrong.

[Trotsky]

Piss on Eddie Shore, and piss on the 60's.  It's just good writing.  And HST, truth be told, was usually on the wrong side in the Creeping Meatballism War.  Not for nothing did he run with the Angels, Bothsider politics, and die surrounded by gunz in his Aspen Freehold.  He was a fucking idiot with a nice turn of phrase when not sober -- a cut rate de Maistre cosplaying Nietzsche.

The fact that we're now turning into the hellscape he so often invoked in his writing is in some part due to the fact that he and the talented people of his generation had the emotional and moral depth of a Dump speech.

When the creative and savvy people take three decades off to stare into their own assholes, we're left to the mercies of financiers and technocrats, and get... this.  Hopefully the Millennials have learned the lesson.  From what I've seen, they have, and it's not going to go particularly well for us, as we richly deserve.

This way to the ice floe.