This night started out the way most amazing Vegas nights do, completely by chance and accident. It's really hard to MAKE an incredible night happen anywhere, and Vegas seems to be especially stubborn in this regard. It either happens or it doesn't-and oh wow, did it…it started with anger and confusion (another thing synonymous with Vegas.)
Just when things were looking doomed, I asked Jessie-my all-time, superhero, star partner in crime if she trusted me. She said yes of course, so I told her to take a left and head to Main St. at which point we immediately ran into the Golden Nugget because apparently I have already forgotten my way around downtown. So, after going around the nugget we headed for Main and took a right.
I should preface this with a few things. The first being I grew up in the heart of downtown Las Vegas-literally. (Some jackass kid yelled something snide at me earlier in the week about "it being my first time to Vegas" when she came upon me staring lovingly at the Plaza. It took all of my adult willpower not to grab her by her ratty hair and smack her a few times.) I have a definitive love and appreciation for downtown, old Vegas. It's in my blood, going all the way back to my grandparents on both sides. Grandpa on my dads' side moved there when Vegas started booming, in the early 40's I believe. He bought a lot of real estate and built a name for himself in town. On my mom's side, my great-grandmother left an alcoholic husband in Ohio and moved her entire family west. They stopped to spend a few days there and never left. Her son, my grandpa became the fire chief for the city for many years till he moved to Florida. I have cool old jacketed pictures of my family having dinner at the Mint-when a photographer would come by your table, take your picture, and present it to you at the conclusion of your meal. When I was a teenager I used to wear this cheap drugstore perfume called "downtown girl." The guys I hung out teased me but it smelled great and my boyfriend loved it. Sadly, it was discontinued or I would probably still be wearing it. The point is I WAS a downtown girl. Some kids are mallrats, some rink rats-I was a Fremont-rat. I would ditch school, or sneak out at night and walk over to downtown. No one ever bothered me-not once. I found niches, places I could go and be alone in the middle of everything. I love Vegas dearly; it pains me to be there because it's a place full of ghosts for me now. But once in a great while, when it's meant to be, you can be rewarded with such a night there it's unreal.
I had Jess pull into the Golden Gate casino. It is the oldest hotel casino in Las Vegas with a rich history. They had the first telephone in the city installed there. The phone number was literally 1. The place is beautiful with all dark wood and huge old pics of baby Vegas on the walls. The original rooms are still in operation, and they have a $.99 shrimp cocktail bar that has won awards every year forever. There is a piano in the bar area so you can listen to things such as "Wind Beneath My Wings" and "Mama Told Me Not To Come" while you eat your shrimp. Truly amazing. However at that point we were only interested in the most convenient parking with access to Fremont. And GG is the best. For a buck you can easily valet, walk through and be at the top of Fremont St.
I steered us to the Plaza first. Another interesting old Vegas place. Several parts of the movie Casino were filmed there. On the second floor they had a really cool restaurant that looks all the way down the strip called the Center Stage that was quite the sweet, fancy place. Now it's called the Dome (or the dumb-as I have been thinking it) in an assumed attempt to modernize it and capitalize on the growing trend of downtown hotspots. (The only true "hotspot" with any merit in my humble opinion is the Griffin which is such a magical, great place you feel like you are in a European dungeon bar.)
We went to the 16th floor. The plaza is shaped basically as a Y, leaving the elevator and going to any of the termination points will bring you to a door marked (nonsensically) exit. Don't worry, the alarm wont go off-I promise. What you get is a tiny strip with a wee railing and an incredible view. It's so quiet up there all you really hear is an electrical hum from all the neon and the occasional drunken shout. I used to go there all the time when I needed or wanted to be alone as a teenager. I would sit Indian style and smoke one cigarette after another and listen to the hum of the city till I felt calm enough to go down. Jess was a little freaked by the height (and lack of anything really holding you in) but as soon as she sat down she heard the hum. Then we walked around the third floor which is so quiet and empty it's freaky. I showed her the old beauty parlor that I always wanted to go to, and told her about the great arcade they used to have. There were several pinball machines, including bride of pinbot and rollergames, where I would spend several stoned hours. (Yes-I was a pinball geek.) After leaving the Plaza we headed over to the La Bayou where I insisted on us buying one of those crazy two foot tall drinks. I think we got the hurricane and "for only one dollar more" the extra rum shot. It tasted like candy-yummy. We hit the streets once more. As we passed the Glitter Gulch, Jess reminded me as she always does about the time we went there with her ex and I was offered a job. It's also like how when we are together almost inevitably the "Doors" will start playing and she doesn't have to say anything, she just starts laughing at me. That's for when I had the two-night stand with the Jim Morrison impersonator. We definitely have ALL the dirt on each other. We went into the Golden Nugget which has the most amazing pool. They built a shark tank with a pool around it and there is a water slide that goes through the tank! At this point it started to rain, which is interesting for the simple fact it hardly EVER rains in Las Vegas. And it was a nice, soft rain. The kind that makes things seem dreamy and romantic. We hung out at the pool for awhile then headed back out to the street. I showed her the El Portal Indian Goods store where I bought my second cactus (my first being a gift from the flea market when I was sixteen that died as soon as I married after years of healthy thriving. Hmmmm…) the El Portal is also my second favorite gift shop after the World's Largest Gift Shop (that's its name) on Sahara and LV Blvd. We talked about Binions Horseshoe we passed it. They used to have a huge clear case of money with a giant horseshoe around it that for a few bucks you could stand in front of and get a black and white photo. It was funny because her parents have one of those photos, and when my hippieloverboy first got to Vegas after hitching cross country one of the first things he did was go in there and get one of those pics. I was 16 and wouldn't meet him for another several months, but I remember when he gave me that picture of himself. Binions also has a mechanical bull which we both rode during a 13 bars of Christmas bar crawl, but that's another story. We decided against taking another go at it since we had literally been there, done that, and got the tee-shirts to prove it already. By this point Jess was starting to freeze as she tends to be very sensitive to the elements. She needs a permanent heat lamp installed above her head.
It sounds too funny to be true but when we walked into the Fitzgerald's so we could warm up for a minute we took to the first seat inside the door which happened to be the huge wheel of fortune game. Ironic. We sat there for about an hour talking about life, sipping our colossal "tourist drink" as we had taken to calling it. I told her the riddle of the Fitzgerald. Its weird, I did this twice when I was a teenager, but it's like trying to find cathedral canyon-good luck unless you've done it several times and tattooed a map on your body. Puzzles within puzzles, anyone who has been in the underbelly of a casino knows this. If you take a certain elevator, get off at a certain floor, take a right, go to either the 2nd or 3rd door on the right (unmarked of course) go in and take the door to the left you will be rewarded with a stair case that takes you directly to the roof with which you get an incredible view all over the valley. It's like a video game to find it though, I swear. And so you understand-these were in the days before they had clubs on roofs, when the only way you got views like that was paying for a penthouse suite. I still don't understand my friends and my own obsession with finding our way onto the roofs of everything possible other than some symbolic crap of wanting to rise above it all (whatever.) I think we just wanted to see what we could pull off.
Anyways, Jess and I spoke of our favorite Vegas "stuff." She is the best person to talk, to laugh with. She has so many great Vegas stories of her own. She told me how she used to live by the clock tower on the Las Vegas Club because when she was a swimmer when she was younger she could see that clock from where she trained. She told me about waking in the El Cortez with no memory of how she got there. We talked about how children can be invisible in this city and the abnormal amount of freedom it gives. We talked about our favorite places in this weird city. I have a handful of them: cathedral canyon-can't find it, can't explain it really well-it's a memorial a man built in memory of his daughter in a canyon out in the middle of the desert outside of town. You go out there at night and have the "new" person to the experience walk out fifty or so feet on a suspension bridge above pitch black-it's fucking scary and it takes some faith. Then the person who brought you will flip on the main switch flooding the huge canyon below you with light. You savor this moment. Afterwards there are stairs to walk down into it and explore. I heard recently it had been dismantled due to vandalism (so sad) but this is unconfirmed because no one can find it. The old Mormon fort just outside of downtown-wild cotton still grows there. Next door is the museum of natural history which has one incredibly cool room with nothing in it but every animal conceivable from a barn mouse to a polar bear. I could spend daaays in this room. Another middle of the desert gem is the sekmet temple, built by women as a personal place of worship. Head towards Indian springs and a few miles out of town start looking to your left. Easy to miss, hard to forget once you have walked through it. Its open air so if a desert wind is blowing it makes for an interesting vortex within. Lorenzi Park. It has a pond, a rose garden that my great grandma loved, a Las Vegas history museum, a community center where my rose-loving grandma was named grandmother of the year for the city when I was eight. Yes-it's in a "bad" neighborhood now, but don't worry about it. It's lovely. The pinball museum on Tropicana. Bonnie Springs out past Red Rock. They have an old west town, a petting zoo, a restaurant than runs along their duck pond and a hotel. The whole time I was growing up I wanted to live in a trailer out there and work in the old west town gift shop. Bonnie is a real person, a retired showgirl who put her money into creating this sanctuary for animals and people who are "being looked for" in Vegas. You can still see her daily with her walker going around and talking to her favorite animals. She is my ultimate hero. Last, but not least, Champagnes. As far as bars go this is it. Numero uno for me. Across from the Blvd Mall, it's a hole in the wall. Original red velveteen wallpaper lines the place. I have so many memories here I could write a book about it. This was a place the rat pack would stop by if they needed to get off the strip for a bit. The biggest celebrities to the lowliest old drunks have graced this place. When you go, say hello to the bartender Charlie for me. He's the best bartender anywhere and a sweet man. Champagnes is also, like Vegas, the place where anything can happen.
After the Fitz (as they have started calling it) we headed back towards the plaza. Our drink was almost toast (as were we) and we knew food was a priority before trying to get home. We went to the Las Vegas Club but were told the second floor café had closed just a few months ago. So we ended up at the classic. The Bay City Diner inside the Golden Gate. I insisted on sitting in the front by a window since it was still raining even though the hostess looked like she wanted to throw our asses out. We ate grilled cheese and I waxed poetic about my love hate relationship for the city while Jess's head rested in her crumbs on the table. Then she gave me the news-there would be no driving this night. She is a faithful and steady partner in crime but at some point everyone's head hits the wall (except mine apparently.) Though this part is a bit fuzzy I know I procured us a room in the hotel, which is another great irony. Shan and I had been there two days earlier having shrimp cocktail listening to "Here Comes Your Man" by piano (that piano man has skills), when I told her I was sad I had never stayed in the GG and that I had always wanted to. Oh, powers of manifestation.
When we got into the room the first thing I declared was that this was the room they save for the 3am drunks! Dim lighting cannot hide faded wallpaper and shabby bedspreads. From the window I could see the neon sign of the casino that looks down to valet. I ran over to the window-NO WAY was this window going to open onto the roof of the casino. But it did! And it was the only room with a window looking onto this stretch of roof. I was out the window so fast I could barely hear Jess saying she thought she might be sick. There was a ladder on the roof and for one sick second I considered pushing myself further and going to the next level of roof (visions of S Hunter Thompson dancing in my head.) But, the rain was staring to come down harder and I felt I should draw a line. I walked over to the edge and stood next to the first neon G. From my vantage I could see clear over to the strip. I thanked the city for an amazing night and all the memories that had flooded me. I crawled back in the window and scrawled pages of notes by the neon light through the window, wanting nothing to be lost when the morning came upon us.
When I finally laid my head down the backs of my eyes burned neon red. I left the window open so I could hear the rain and feel the cool breeze of my mothers hand across my back as I drifted off.
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