State by State

by Matt Weiland

  As I circle home again, I read the silk-screened messages on the T-shirts in the windows of souvenir shops—“I lost my [graphic of donkey] in Las Vegas!” and “Greetings from Lost Wages, Nevada!” Outside some of the smaller, nickel-and-dime joints, women in skimpy outfits hand out fun books with coupons for free shrimp cocktails, twenty-five-cent hot dogs, and a five-dollar blackjack bet where you only have to pay two dollars. Usually I’ll get my parents lunch from McDonald’s—it’s about three blocks closer than the coffee shop where I sometimes play pinball. I’m often the shortest person waiting in line there. Along with burgers and fries, I always bring back two large coffees, black, and make sure to ask for cream packets for my mom. Then I head back, balancing the bags of food, the coffees, and my large Coke on the little cardboard tray.

  People ask what’s it like growing up in Vegas. And later, once I’d been away, I started to realize that life in Vegas is not the norm, most junior high school girls aren’t taking Stripping 101 as a required course. Ha. I kid. Except most fifth graders don’t have a teacher who regularly hocks his gold necklaces with your parents. And, at the time, Las Vegas—specifically the happenings inside John’s Loan and Jewelry, that little box of a storefront on Third Street, half a block from Fremont, tucked neatly between the Tiger Room strip club and a six-floor parking structure where prostitutes sometimes worked—that was the world I knew.

  When I was in seventh grade, Dad lost his lease and had to pay for the construction of a new store, on First, next to another pawnshop, Stoney’s. Where the old John’s Loan had been directly across the street from the Golden Nugget’s front entrance, the new shop—a square bunker of cinderblock and cement—was across the street from the Nugget’s backside, by their employee entrance. Still, my parents made the best of it. After all, this space had parking, and they could send any jerk they didn’t want to deal with next door (naturally Stoney’s did the same thing to them). Eventually the space on the other side of Stoney’s became available, and my dad put a liquor store there. Later, Dad split the liquor store in half, opening a men’s clothing shop. In keeping with his sense of humor, he put a humongous stuffed gorilla in the front window and dressed it in a Hawaiian shirt. The clientele of casino workers who needed Sansabelt slacks and alterations seemed to get a kick out of this.

  By the time I was fourteen, in 1983 or so, my father had gotten his neighbors to go in with him on a new stucco façade and the neon sobriquet PAWNSHOP PLAZA; my brothers—Yale and Anthony—had gotten their driver’s licenses. Each afternoon, one of them was responsible for bringing me and my twelve-year-old sister downtown after school.

  On a typical fall day, Anthony had football practice and Crystal had some rhetoric competition or drama club, so Yale and I would arrive at around 4:30 on the Mint clock. Before heading into the pawnshop, we’d grab sodas and chocolate at the liquor store. Then after receiving a hearty “Hey, hey, there they are,” from my dad, we’d settle in the back of John’s, try to ignore his occasional and well-meaning pop-ins, and leaf through the sports and entertainment pages of the out-of-town newspapers that Dad had already read through. My father stocked these papers in the liquor store because the hardcore gamblers over at Leroy’s—where all the point spreads got calculated—believed that local sports coverage from other cities would give them tips on teams that might help their bets.

  At five, All Things Considered echoed through stereo speakers—a sign that closing time was approaching. While my parents finished up with whoever had raced in to beat the clock and get their jewelry out of hock, Yale and I hit the front windows, clapping together the small felt boxes that held all the rings for sale. We also emptied the showcases, stacking the trays of necklaces, watches, charms, and bracelets, and depositing everything in the huge walk-in safe.

  When there weren’t any tourists hanging around, looking at goods they had no intention of buying, Dad would let Mom go early; she’d head off to unwind in a casino while we locked up the store and activated the alarms. Fifteen minutes later, we’d find her at a nickel slot machine, cracking a roll of nickels against the edge of the metal payout tray. All around us would be the sounds of coins rushing into steel tins, that sudden metallic rainfall. I wanted so badly to sneak a play at a slot machine, to be old enough—or brave enough—to try. But I was too afraid of what my parents would do if they found out.

  Once we scooped up Mom, all of us would head to the coffee shop inside the Vegas Club. Even more than the steak and seafood place at the California Hotel, the Vegas Club’s coffee shop was my favorite place to eat downtown—its walls were covered with autographed photos and memorabilia from sports legends, and the paper placemats were lined with the dimensions of all the major league parks. As at most of the downtown restaurants, the waitstaff knew my parents—a lot of the waiters were customers at the pawnshop. They called my dad John, and my mom Mrs. John. Prime rib specials ($5.95 with a salad and a baked potato) were our usual.

  “The city pawn unit keeps calling about the serial numbers for that gun,” Mom might say, once she’d gotten a refill of coffee. “I keep telling them we don’t have it.”

  “Someone must have complained,” Dad would answer, exhaustion in his voice. He’d break apart a roll, slather on butter.

  “They should do me a favor,” Mom said, “and drop dead.”

  “Can we talk about anything else?” asked Yale.

  The majority of downtown hotels had been established by men who became the heads of Vegas’s big gambling families—Benny Binion (Horseshoe), Sam Boyd (the Mint), Jackie Gaughan (Vegas Club and Plaza Hotel). Like them, my dad dreamed big. Just as the Four Queens had been named for the four daughters of the casino’s original owner, my dad, in honor of his kids, named his liquor store Four Aces. By the early eighties, however, the downtown casino owners had become complacent, milking the properties for every cent they could get without reinvesting. By contrast, my father, for all his affable nature and warm smiles, still had ambitions. The business was his shot, so he was always planning, coming up with something that would make things just a little better for the stores—which meant better for us. He slaved to get the liquor shop a license for video poker games. For a short while, the shop even sold microwaved breakfast sandwiches, which my dad gamely named Egg McBagels.

  But gradually we realized that Dad wasn’t the only one downtown with ambition. During midnight movies and late-night rebroadcasts of UNLV basketball, between the extemporized commercials with the motor-mouthed guy in a referee’s outfit who eventually got to the point about the midnight menu over at the Castaways and the constant barrage about Jai Lai, the world’s fastest game (“only at the MGM”), you can bet on it, someone new started popping up. Tall. Tailored suits. Subdued pompadour of black hair. His name was Steve Wynn.

  Wynn was the new owner and president of the Golden Nugget. In one commercial for his “new” Nugget, he appeared with Wayne Newton. In another, he walked Sinatra through the lobby and up to a master suite, explaining all the improvements he had in store for this hotel, only to get treated like a bellboy at the end. The commercials were always understated, with sly humor. As a kicker, Wynn would promise: The Golden Nugget: We’re going to make Las Vegas famous.

  Wynn once explained his agenda in an interview. “I always wanted to build beautiful hotels. Places that were better than the outside world.” In 1984, he set to work on the Golden Nugget. Down came the giant bright-yellow rock that was lit with hundreds of bulbs on the corner of Fremont and First. Then the hotel was repainted, this time a gleaming and classy white. A luxurious pool, which took about six months to install, boasted a fancy lagoon area, exotic deck chairs, strategic mist nozzles, and a glass partition, so that on your way to the casino or the hotel front desk you could watch the sunbathers and swimmers. The Golden Nugget’s renovation also involved palm trees and a big white brick wall to delineate exactly where that outside world ended and Wynn’s fantasy began. The wall also happened to be just high enough to prevent any of the hot
el guests from spotting PAWNSHOP PLAZA just across the way.

  My dad looked out at that wall and stewed. Soon, true to his entrepreneurial spirit, he’d rented out a small orange and yellow hot-air balloon—maybe ten feet by ten feet. My dad had a sign printed up for John’s Loan and Jewelry, which he attached to the balloon. The balloon master—i.e. the retired airline pilot who owned the thing—then attached the balloon to the top of the pawnshop with a series of strong hooks and ropes. Dad’s multicolored balloon floated above the store, clearly visible beyond the Golden Nugget’s palm trees and wall. An automatic pump kept the balloon inflated twenty-four hours a day, and a small electric interior light illuminated it at night.

  If you prompt my father enough, he might tell you about the time Steve Wynn stormed down from his penthouse office and entered the pawnshop. Perhaps he exaggerated the tale. Perhaps he told me not to write about it—“I don’t want to be sued,” he might have said. So I have to tell you that in a fictional alternative universe, a created place where there are no lawsuits, Wynn might have thrust his finger into my dad’s face. “I’m going to get rid of you,” he might have threatened. “How much do you want to bet that you’re not going to be here this time next year?”

  As it turned out, neither my father nor Steve Wynn was going anywhere anytime soon. Outside of the Nugget’s high brick wall, Fremont Street still had its own gritty spirit, and that spirit was never more in evidence than it was every December 31. In preparation for the long night ahead, Dad would have ordered twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars worth of beer and champagne. He’d take a nap early in the day but by three o’clock he’d be standing in the middle of the liquor store, waving his arms and directing traffic.

  First we’d empty the T-shirt bins and clear out anything that could be stolen (travel sundries, souvenir dice clocks), making a big empty space out of the central floor area. All soda was removed from the coolers and replaced with beer. Metal tubs were placed at strategic points along the floor, then filled with hundreds of pounds of ice, more beer, and ten-dollar champagne. Finally, Crystal, Yale, Anthony, and all of the senior citizens and former customers who worked at the liquor store would put on glittery party hats—you can’t work at a downtown Vegas liquor store on New Year’s Eve without your glittery party hat.

  Long before seven, when the cops put up barriers and Fremont Street closed to traffic, the parking lots were overflowing. The store was already busy, the first wave stopping in for their pre-celebration libations. An Omaha housewife in an evening gown bought whiskey, which she poured into a silver flask; college kids in plaid shirts and backward baseball caps bought 40s of malt liquor and twelve-packs of Bud; a raucous Hispanic couple—she in a skimpy party dress, he in a slick leather trench—stood on line to buy a few bottles of champagne. Happy. Polite. Enthusiastic. Rowdy. Waiting. Ready to cut loose. Getting their party on.

  New Year’s rockin’ Eve, as the ageless Dick Clark called it, was broadcast live from downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. Almost one and a half tons of custom-made fireworks were deployed, shot from the top of the Union Plaza Hotel, in a choreographed celebration—er, make that celebrations. The first, for the East Coast feed at nine, featured a countdown—three, two, one—and a fireworks show that was less a practice run than an excuse to take the party up a level, to count and whoop and cheer, to whirl noisemakers and pop corks and make out with strangers while two hundred cops circulated, passing out plastic cups to replace any open bottles they saw. Tens of thousands of people annually crammed into the mouth of Fremont Street. Revelers barely had space to stand. People killed time from the fake countdown to the real one, then killed brain cells from the real countdown until they blacked out. Think Times Square without the frostbite. Think Mardi Gras without the midnight shutdown. Think Caligula without a declaration of war on the sea.

  If you were partying downtown that night and wanted alcohol, the Four Aces Liquor Emporium was the closest place to get it. From eight p.m. until past two in the morning, our store was packed five deep around every cash register. My dad wore four jackets at once and would circulate, visiting each register for the take, then jamming his pockets with money. When all four coats were stuffed, Dad would run to the safe in the back room and dump out one pocket at a time. Meanwhile, “girls would just come up and hit on you,” according to my incredulous brother, Anthony. “The funnest thing of all time,” Yale, his twin, called the yearly event. My sister, then a blue-haired punk, also worked a cash register each year. She called the celebrations “as good a party as there could possibly be,” with guys constantly trying to pick her up, and she being at an age when, “honestly, that was kind of cool.”

  By the late eighties, however, big changes were underway. In case you haven’t heard, tourists don’t tend to arrive in Las Vegas by train anymore. Now, to get to downtown from McCarran International Airport, a person has to pass the Strip. Driving in from California—the source of Vegas’s major road traffic—you also hit the Strip before downtown. Of course, the city had been evolving for years, with large and swanky resorts like Caesar’s Palace and the Riviera becoming entrenched power brokers, but Steve Wynn, fresh off his success at turning around the Golden Nugget, pushed everything forward at warp speed, providing the blueprint for the future: spectacles, where the full experience was more important than gambling alone. The Mirage and then Treasure Island were financed by Michael Milken’s junk bonds to the tune of a reported $530 million. The former boasted a rainforest in the middle of the casino. It had white tigers on display behind glass partitions. From one angle, the flourishes came off as classy. From another, they were ridiculous.

  Meanwhile, downtown became a haven for penny-ante grinds and quickie tour packages. Maybe once a month AlarmCo called in the middle of the night. My bleary-eyed father would drive down, check on the latest break-in attempt, and call in with an update (Yeah. It looks like they tried to climb in through the vents). Barbed wire soon went up on the roof. Each morning someone hosed down the area behind the liquor store to get rid of the piss and stench and trash left by derelicts. My mom had to call to pester the garbagemen into coming by and emptying the Dumpster—We pay taxes don’t we? Don’t we have the right to have our trash picked up? My dad dutifully shooed away beggars, as well as the poor schmucks who hadn’t been able to unload their goods in the store and tried to sell them right on the sidewalk.

  I remember being seventeen, waiting at a traffic light after helping to close up the shop, when a guy ran from across the street, up to the driver’s side window of my junky Cougar. “Hey man, you need some smoke? You need anything?” This was literally across the street from my parents’ store.

  I also remember a December visit back from the fancy private college that my parents’ toil in the pawnshop had paid for. Across the table from me in the coffee shop of the Vegas Club, my mother and father slumped in their seats, hungry and beat, just trying to hang on until the food came. Meanwhile the waiters could not have cared less. Forget knowing my parents by name, they didn’t even know where our dinners were, and they didn’t give a damn. I remember looking down at those placemats—still the ones with the ballparks around the edges—and realizing that years had passed since any major league baseball had been played in Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium or Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium. When the food finally came, it was glazed, leathery, inedible. The whole experience was a slap in the face; no, actually, it was like watching my mother and father get slapped in the face. This was their life, and I was helpless to do anything about it.

  Eventually, there was a bureaucratic answer to downtown’s urban free-fall: “The Fremont Street Experience.” Fremont Street became an open-air pedestrian mall, closed permanently to vehicular traffic. A long, lightweight metal roof was built, arcing over the street, with a digital screen on its underside—the same kind they have at sporting events, only running five blocks. Starting at nightfall, animated shows ran above the heads of gawking pedestrians—I recall a series of jets flying down the
length of the street, trailing an American flag. Part of the renovations shut off traffic for side streets as well, including the side street that was home to my parents’ shops.

  When Vegas Vic needed repairing—his mechanical arm had stopped moving, his voice was garbled—the execs who ran the Fremont Street Experience told the Pioneer’s owner, Too bad, we can’t have anything get in the way of our animated light show, sorry. Even worse, stores that had been on Fremont for decades—including a jeweler, a luggage store, and the Coronet Drug on the corner of Fourth—places whose owners had invested their livelihoods in downtown and were relying on its renovation, were condemned as urban blight. The city confiscated properties, paid the owners a paltry sum and relocated them, whether they wanted to move or not.

  My parents were terrified. It wasn’t hard for my dad to envision the property being gift-wrapped and handed to his nemesis, Steve Wynn. But Wynn, as it turned out had other plans. Rather than taking over downtown, he was withdrawing from it all together.