At the Colorado River Overlook

Since June I've been participating in meetup.com events around town. It's a great site. My three favorites are a hiking group, from whence the above pic was taken, a running group, with whom I'm training for the Vegas marathon in December, and a singles group, with whom I like to check out local bars and have a drink or two. This hike was near the Hoover Dam on the Arizona side, overlooking the Colorado River. It was a beautiful fall day in the 60s, this is the nice time of the year here in Vegas, very mild and reasonable.

It's nice to get out in the fresh air and just appreciate being healthy and alive, every once in a while.

Dick's Last Resort

Ok so the Excalibur castle casino has been open since the late 80s, and overall I'd say it's quite worn down at this point and in need of a major renovation. But there are a few reasons to check it out. It's location is decent, near the middle of the south end of the Strip, rates are way down these days because of the collapsing economy, it just got a new poker room with all electronic dealerless tables - which is worthy of a visit purely to geek out at the technology, and finally it's got a fairly entertaining restaurant called "Dick's Last Resort" where all the waiters are quite rude to the customers, a refreshing change from the usual tired obsequious behavior you get from waiters who silently seeth at you while they try to score that big tip. At Dick's they're actively hostile, and if you're with a group, it makes for a lot of fun. For example, they give select members of the party paper hats with nasty insulting comments on them. Above, you'll see that in our group, Matt proudly wore his gift from the waitress, "Hey Ladies I Waxed My Anus for This Event". Good times! Probably the best is when you have a father with teenage daughters - there was a family like that next to our table, I won't go there.

Crisis in Local Strip Club Talent Pool

It's just so hard to find qualified help these days.

The Green Shack

I love this beat up old stretch of Boulder Highway in east Vegas. You can tell at one time in maybe the mid 70s it used to be quite hip and popular, in a tawdry cheap and glaring neon lights way. But since those heady days of whiskey fueled decadence and $20 street walkers, this section of Vegas has faded. This sign sort of feels like the mascot for the area to me - the husk remains, yet it's not plugged in and the place it advertised is long gone.

But hey - I'm sure you can still find a $20 hooker if you look hard enough! But for gods sakes man use a condom if you're going to sink to that level.

Pepe's Tacos! Ay!

At the oddly shaped corner where Charleston and Fremont Street become Boulder Highway, in one of the older and more dangerous parts of east Vegas, you can find a great taco 24 hours a day at Pepe's! For 7 or 8 dollars you'll get a huge pile of authentic Mexican food. I'm partial to the Super Burrito, or the huevos rancheros - yes they serve breakfast all day! Que gusta! Very authentic joint. Makes a great contrast to the Strip casinos if you want to cruise down Charleston for a break from the contrived slot palaces of MGM and Harrahs.

You might even see a real live mugging - just be careful it isn't you!

Nuttier than a Box of Chocolates

I drive by this nutty old mansion on the way to the gym a couple of times a week. From the pic it's hard to tell, but this house is in an older, nicer neighborhood ($1 million +) in Vegas and the back fronts onto a major street - from which this picture was taken. The owner apparently is bat shit crazy. There are bits of a roller coaster stuck on there, a statue of liberty arm, parts of the old Boardwalk casino, you know the usual tchochkes you might pick up while vacationing and have shipped home to bolt onto your house. I wish I knew more about the owner - he's really working the Salvador Dali crazy artist angle. Can you imagine having this guy as your neighbor?

QUITTRS

Saw this hearse parked outside the In N Out next to UNLV and had to grab a shot of it:



That is an effin lovely sense of humor right there.

New Casino in Town

They've opened a new joint on the Boulder Strip on the east side of town, about 10 miles from the Strip. It's called the Eastside Cannery and it has a funky 50's post war theme, pretty cool. Beats the new "office park" glass box theme they're using for all the new big Strip projects, in my humble opinion:



Everything is nice and new and sparkly, which is refreshing. A nice enough vibe to the place:



I enjoy coming here for the sports book to get my NFL fix. One thing I will never understand though, honestly, is slots. I've never enjoyed them and never seen them as anything but a game completely and utterly rigged in favor of the casino - so why play them? Here is a massive Ebay slots machine:



I'm not trying to be condescending, but wouldn't it just be more fun to play roulette, if you were going to commit to a game of total and complete chance? At least then there's a social angle?

Elko

Here's a couple shots of a small mountain town in the northeast corner of Nevada that hasn't changed much since the 60s. I visited with a friend earlier this summer who was applying for a job with the local high school. She got the job and I got a break from the relentless August heat of Vegas!

The White King Casino:



Hard to imagine MGM Mirage naming their newest casino "The White King" in this day and age - not sure why you would want to, I'm just sayin'.

The Stockmen's Casino, where a large steak is $7, and bikers and cowboys seem to intermingle:



The Thunderbird Hotel, not a particularly great shot but I like this old school sign:



Elko is a very odd little town, the sort of place you could easily imagine being the background locale for the Bates Motel - but it has it's quiet charms.

The Gun Store

The Gun Store is a firing range about ten minutes east of the MGM Grand on Tropicana that lets you fire just about any gun you have ever seen in any movie. They've got handguns to automatic rifles to shotguns to large scary machine guns. I like to go once every couple of weeks to work on my handgun accuracy, I'm partial to the Glock 9mm, especially the smaller one, the 26 "Baby Glock" that will fit in an ankle holster. Anyway, this pic is from the main entrance, I found it mildly amusing.