El Cheapo Vegas

Two of my sisters, their husbands and their just-turned-21 sons are in Vegas right now, staying downtown at the Golden Nugget for free thanks to a casino host and having a good time. The Nugget is a really nice place, but most of downtown is all about the El Cheapo, and El Cheapo Vegas is the Vegas I love.

Some of my favorite El Cheapo Vegas experiences:

1. The deli in the back of the Golden Gate. This is the home of the famous 99-cent shrimp cocktail, but you can get much better sandwiches back here on the cheap if you’re willing to grab a tray and wait in a cafeteria line. One of the best pastramis I’ve had anywhere was here a few years ago, although there are at least four places on the Strip that can top anything downtown these days on the pastrami front.

2. The craps table at Slots-a-Fun, a dumpy little clip joint outside of Circus Circus on the north Strip. This table sits right at the door-less entrance, has $3 minimums (with bad 2x odds, but who cares?) and if you can get on the west side of it, you can look out on Las Vegas Boulevard as all sorts of intersting slices of humanity pass by. I was there last August, and there was a group of frat boys having a fabulous time at the table, along with a gambling junkie who hauled along her kids. She made her kids wait outside, just a few legal feet away, while she gambled away what probably was the rent for that month. I tried to have fun with the frat boys and ignore the junkie, although that’s the problem with the north strip in general — it’s where dreams and dreamers go to die. Still, with the right crowd, I love this table.

3. Anything involving the El Cortez. There are people who have gone to Vegas every year for decades, and they still haven’t been to downtown’s El Cortez, which has a loveable bunch of customers who range from bargain hunters to dangerous psychotics. It has a fine cheap craps table and is a fine and lovely dive — at least, it is when it’s not too dark outside. That two-block walk from the ElCo back to the Fremont Street Experience can be the longest walk on the planet at the wrong time of day.

4. Big Elvis. Google him.

5. The diner in the back of the Barbary Coast. The BC won’t be there much longer — it’s a too-small-for-modern-standards hotel with a smoky little casino at the best gambling corner on Planet Earth — and I have had many a good meal in the rear diner over the years. I think I’ve paid for about half of them and the BC has been generous enough to provide me with the rest.

A winnah

One of the places where I occasionally hang out online is The Virtual Weber Bullet. This is an entire website dedicated to the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker, the best vertical “bullet” smoker made and my personal choice for everyday BBQ creation (I also have a barrel grill/smoker, but that only comes out when I’m cooking for a big gang). I just won one of the cooler prizes in the site’s annual holiday giveaway: A Tojiro santoku knife. I own a Calphalon santoku now — it’s my main chef’s knife and it did a fine job of nearly removing my fingertip a couple of years ago — but it’s a bit on the cheap side and has trouble holding an edge. This Tojiro won’t have that problem!

The game fantastic

I stayed up hopelessly late last night watching the Boise State-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl game. I actually didn’t watch a chunk of the middle of the game, when Boise State seemed in control and appeared poised to rain justice upon the Sooners, but I decided to check the score one more time before bed…and that was a mistake. The game was somehow a tie at that point, but the real drama was just beginning.

What followed was one of the greatest college football game endings of recent years, filled with so much drama and trickery that it bordered on the absurd. And at the end, when Boise State’s running back had scored the winning two-point conversion on yet another trick play, the significance of the game went to another level — the running back trotted over to his cheerleader girlfriend, dropped to one knee and proposed to her right then and there. Unbelieveable.

2007 has arrived

I’ve done many things on New Year’s Eve. I’ve had hot dates, gone to tremendous parties, sat in a lonely apartment, and many times have provided the entertainment while others partied the night away.

This year, for the first time since we were forced to stay home on call because of the Year 2000 scare, my wife and I spent New Year’s Eve at our house, watching movies, popping popcorn and just relaxing. And at this moment, while some dumbass knuckleheads in my neighborhood set off drunken midnight fireworks and terrify my dog (and perhaps cost themselves a digit or two), I say to you: Best wishes for 2007. Happy New Year.