Nevada   I’m going to discuss Nevada in general before discussing Las Vegas. I never realized before researching the Southwest how unusual the Nevada story is. Vegas wouldn’t have been Vegas without Nevada being what it is, and in a way it all goes back to Abraham Lincoln, who set in motion a series of events that led, very indirectly, to a gambler being able to pull the lever on that slot machine.

Nevada, whose name is short for Sierra Nevada “Snow-Covered Mountain Range”, became a state in 1864, when Lincoln was up for reëlection toward the end of the Civil War. The story is often told that Nevada became a state to be able to supply gold and silver to the Union, but not only is that a myth, it’s illogical. Congress had unlimited access to Nevada’s minerals while Nevada was a federal territory, while after statehood that access was much more limited.

The fact of the matter was—surprise!—political. In order to assure Lincoln’s reelection, statehood for Nevada was rushed through. Just eight days before the presidential election of 1864 Nevada became the 36th state, and promptly gave its three electoral votes to Lincoln, in support of his moderate reconstruction policies for the South and of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.

The problem with this rush to statehood was that Nevada wasn’t ready. The requirement of 60,000 inhabitants to form a state was winked at at the time, and the lack of population plagued the state for a long time. Nevada’s location didn’t help, either. For people crossing the continent, it was the last state before California, and those who had made it this far often wanted to go all the way. Nevada being in California’s “back yard” has always affected the course of its history.

Even today, an amazing 87% of Nevada land is owned by the federal government, further restricting population growth. Nevada’s early low population is also indicated by the fact that the city chosen to be the capital was tiny Carson City, a silver mining center of the day and apparently the largest town available.

In 1900, Nevada’s population was the smallest of all the states, and shrinking, as the difficulties of living in the barren desert began to outweigh the lure of silver. Even natural wonders were at a minimum. Lake Tahoe is the leading natural attraction, but Nevada only owns about a third of that. Utah got numerous National Parks, Arizona just to the east got the Grand Canyon, and Death Valley is almost totally located in California over that diagonal state line. That its population today of 2.5 million makes it the 35th state out of 50 in population shows that the wily Nevadans must have done something right. It’s what they did to ensure growth that makes Nevada’s story so unique.

Starting in the early 20C, there was a burst of ingenuity to build the economy by exploiting Nevada’s sovereignty as a state. This being before today’s rapid transportation, the only nearby population center worth exploiting was its old rival, California, and Nevada decided to legalize all sorts of things that were illegal in California (as well as elsewhere) in an effort to attract people to come there. Some of their solutions later affected the entire country. I’ll discuss four Nevada innovations in reverse order of success.

The least successful of their innovations was, surprisingly, the legalization of the sexual services industry. The reason it’s had so little success is the heavy restrictions put on it. Any county with a population under 400,000 can license brothels. That population limit was put on to purposely eliminate Clark County (Las Vegas), and will soon eliminate Washoe County (Reno), although that is moot because those counties are among the six that have restricted the practice anyway, leaving eleven counties where sex-for-pay is legal. The thing is, these are very rural counties in a very underpopulated (except for the two big cities) state. But the absolute kiss of death is that advertising in a neighboring county where the sexual services industry is illegal is forbidden, so the result is that visitors to Nevada who could have been potential customers are usually totally unaware that the possibility even exists.

The second innovation is of less importance today because of the success this Nevada innovation eventually had around the country, and I’m referring to easy divorce. Divorce was next to impossible in most states at the time, and Nevada once again decided to use its sovereignty to do something about it to attract people, but it was limited as to what it could do. There was no way it could dissolve marriages for residents of other states, only its own, and so it made divorce easy for Nevada residents. Therefore, the crux of the matter became, how to become a resident of Nevada, at least long enough to be granted a divorce.

Early on, you had to live in Nevada a full year to become a resident, at which time you could be divorced. It’s possible that even this draconian rule attracted people, given the divorce laws elsewhere at the time, but certainly not many. Remember that at the time, Las Vegas would have been nothing more than a dry crossroads in the desert and the capital of Carson City was small and of little importance. But just north of Carson City and also not far from Lake Tahoe, Reno, which had developed along the California Trail off the Oregon Trail, had blossomed into the major city in Nevada, and by 1910, Reno had already become known as the divorce capital. In 1915 the residency requirement was dropped to six months, then in 1927 to three months, with some improvement of visitors. Finally, in 1931 the requirement to become a resident was dropped to just six weeks, which opened the flood gates. The results were amazing, and divorces soared. By today’s standards, going somewhere else for as “long” as six weeks still might seem a lot, but given the times, it was a minor price to pay. Wealthy women were drawn not only from California, which was the original intent, but from across the country. By 1940, 49 out of every 1000 divorces in the US took place in Nevada. Given the meager “real” population of the state, especially at that time, that figure is amazing.

I mentioned “wealthy women” and those two words are significant. Few working-class women could afford to go off to Nevada for six weeks, and given the customs of the time, most husbands worked and most wives stayed at home, so it was the wife who went to Reno. At the time saying that “They’re not getting along, so she’s going to Reno” was a perfectly understandable phrase. Flocks of women descended on Reno boarding houses, and a perfectly American institution developed: divorce ranches, where women could relax in more of a resort atmosphere. After six weeks, your landlady or hotel clerk signed papers attesting to your residency, that you had “become a Nevadan”, and off you went to the divorce office, and then back to your home state. Notables in the entertainment world and in society who got divorced in Reno were Mary Pickford, Rita Hayworth, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Bobo Rockefeller. So did Jack Dempsey; it’s my guess that he just set up a training camp near Reno. The concept of Reno as a divorce capital was a theme of the time, such as the film “A Reno Divorce” in 1927 and “The Merry Wives of Reno” in 1934.

Probably most notable was the play Clare Boothe Luce wrote in 1936 for Broadway “The Women”, a satire on the idleness of wealthy wives and divorcees. It was made into a film in 1939 directed by George Cukor, with a powerhouse all-female cast including Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Marjorie Main, Ruth Hussey, Butterfly McQueen and Hedda Hopper. In the play and film, men are only referred to, but do not appear, and all 130 speaking roles in the film are female. The story is set in their glamorous Manhattan apartments and in Reno, where they obtain their divorces.

Reno was a cultural phenomenon of the time, but by 1970, no-fault divorces became common across the country, surely as a result of Nevada’s policies, at which time going to Reno for six weeks was no longer of interest. I have read, though, that Reno is trying to landmark a boarding house popular in the Reno divorce heyday.

The third innovation was simple, and its affects remain to this day: easy marriage. Most states had/have at least some rules, including waiting a couple of days between getting the license and actually getting married, but Nevada cut that all to zero--cross the border and get married--and to this day, wedding chapels abound in the state.

The fourth innovation is the real biggie: casino gambling. In 1909 there was a nationwide crusade to outlaw casino gambling, and Nevada went along with it. But on March 19, 1931 Nevada re-legalized it, and the state hasn’t been the same since. Actually, neither has the country, since, once Nevada’s success with casino gambling became evident, in recent decades it has again spread virtually nationwide.

It becomes very obvious on analysis that the growth of Nevada’s two population centers, Reno (Washoe County) and Las Vegas (Clark County) goes directly back to the original design of attracting suckers—er, visitors—from California. Reno had always been the major city in the state, and continues to be the closest access for San Franciscans and Northern Californians, with gambling activity centered on and near Virginia Street downtown. Until the 1960’s, Reno was the gambling capital of the US, at which point Las Vegas took the title.

The Las Vegas area had never been quite on any major travel route, since the southern route to the west coast went from New Mexico to Arizona and directly to California, just south of the southernmost point of the state. But Las Vegas did still have the advantage of location, being in the southernmost part of the state, Clark County, and therefore closest to attract—visitors—from the population center of Los Angeles and Southern California. The building of Hoover Dam on the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona in the 1930’s though, brought electricity and water, and transformed the region, so that Las Vegas, and also Henderson in Clark County, are now each larger than Reno.

Before discussing the two areas of Las Vegas, but while on the subject of Clark County, the newest development should be brought up, Laughlin (it looks unpronounceable, and don’t laugh/LAFF, because Laughlin is LAW.flin). If Las Vegas is relatively south in the county, Laughlin’s location is about as far south as you can get, and very near to where I-40 crosses the Colorado River directly between Arizona and California. There are access roads coming up on the Arizona (east) side of the river to Bullhead City, as well as to Laughlin, up the California (west) side and to where Nevada starts, also on the west side. Laughlin is the newest gambling center in Nevada. It “feeds” not only off of traffic on the Interstate, but also from Bullhead City across the river, which is four times its size and provides most of its workers, as well as much of its clientele. Laughlin was founded as recently as 1968 by Don Laughlin from Minnesota. Unlike Bullhead City, also founded in 1968, it isn’t even a municipality, but is run as an unincorporated area of, and by, Clark County.

When I just recently stopped by the area, I first drove down the main street of Bullhead City, just off the Colorado River, which had speedboats zipping up and down it. It seems to be an average, blue-collar town. Across on the Laughlin side, eight casinos stood like sentinels looking down from the bluffs, starting with the Riverside, founded by Don Laughlin himself, at the north end, down to Harrah’s at the south end. Crossing over to Laughlin, whose population is just 8600, you find that the main street that the casinos are on is appropriately Casino Drive. Business must be good, since another casino seems to have now appeared on the inland side of the road.

Laughlin is much in the news. The BBC had had a successful show called “Blackpool”, named after the British seaside resort. Later episodes were then renamed “Viva Blackpool”, primarily for the American market. Now, this October, CBS, in collaboration with the BBC and Sony, is starting an entirely redone version named—you guessed it—“Viva Laughlin”, to run Sundays after “60 Minutes”. Hugh Jackman is heavily involved in the project, whose story line involves opening a casino in Laughlin. There will be simultaneous broadcasts in Australia and Canada. So, in the absolutely literal sense, stay tuned. But do notice what the underpopulated backwater known as Nevada has now become. Talk about being given lemons and making lemonade.

Well, the oldest Nevada gambling center is Reno, and the newest is Laughlin, so let’s get down to the one that developed in between, Las Vegas, which, quite unusually, has two gambling centers. Why there are two I find of utmost interest, and is a mirror of 20C automobile age affecting American life. Most people refer to three Nevada gambling centers, I like to refer to four, counting the two in Las Vegas separately.

When gambling started up again in 1931, Las Vegas was little more than a railroad stop and village, which the downtown still is. Let’s start there. Picture the letter H leaning to the right. The rail line and Main Street are the left bar of the leaning H. The crossbar is Fremont Street running SE, and whose first five blocks are of significance. Then comes the right bar of the leaning H, the equivalent of 5th Street, but known instead, prophetically, as Las Vegas Boulevard.

Fremont Street was the perfect location for growth. People would arrive largely by train, and a couple of blocks from the station were five blocks of casinos, hotels, restaurants, all in a traditional, downtown, PEDESTRIAN-ORIENTED, setting.

To quickly jump to the present time, in order to try to compete with the casinos, hotels, and restaurants on the Strip and to attract people downtown, in 2004 Fremont Street was roofed over, with a sound-and-light show called the Fremont Experience projected on the street’s “ceiling”. It certainly must be hard to compete with the worldwide phenomenon of the Strip, and I wish them well, but the two areas are quite different, which is why I like to count them separately, located “by coincidence” within the same city limits. Fremont Street may be “Las Vegas”, but let’s be brutally honest, the Strip is:

No one seems to wonder (and given the fun! fun! fun! resort atmosphere, no one seems to care) why there should be two resort centers in one city. Why didn’t downtown just grow in size? Ah, therein lies a tale. And it involves two things, those Californians coming up from Los Angeles, and the post-war automobile age that developed across the US and the world. It is not a coincidence that the Strip lies to the south of downtown, in the direction of California, and not in any other direction.

Go back to that leaning H, and to the right-hand bar, Las Vegas Boulevard. If you follow it as it runs southwest, it first goes through a nondescript part of town with nothing of interest. But then it bends and swings south (this is the Strip), with I-15 running parallel to it a few blocks to the west. As it leaves the center city, Las Vegas Boulevard is then swallowed by I-15 on its way to California (remember the fate of many parts of Route 66). Now, think pre-interstate, when this road was the major route to and from California.

Back to the start of gambling in 1931. As drivers came up from California, they came up Las Vegas Boulevard to get downtown to Fremont Street. as the decade went on, investors started building on the road coming into town to tap the “gold mine” coming from California. The land here was cheaper than downtown, and there were fewer building restrictions and lower taxes in what was then the suburbs. The first casino hotel, El Rancho, opened on this suburban “strip” of Las Vegas Boulevard in 1941, to tap the flow of traffic headed downtown. Growth here bounded post-war, and we have another example of the suburbs “killing” downtown. And growth on the Strip, which has become famous for its tear-downs and replacements, continues to this day.

This development also explains why the strip is CAR-ORIENTED as opposed to the pedestrian-oriented Fremont Street. Moving from one hotel’s area to another’s is like moving from one shopping area on a road of strip malls to another. You need transportation of some sort to go any reasonable distance. This is the 20C car culture we still live with.

It has now reached the point where the tail wags the dog. When you talk about Vegas, you’re talking about the Strip. I’m sure there are many people who visit the Strip who are unaware that there is another center downtown, which is why I like to talk of four centers: from the Strip, Reno is across the state, Laughlin is across the county, and Fremont Street is across town.

Reflecting back again to Lincoln’s second election, you see the domino effect of one little thing having unintended results. Realizing that Vegas statistics below include downtown along with the Strip, the numbers remain impressive. Of the ten largest US hotels, nine are in Vegas. Of the ten largest hotels on the PLANET, eight are in Vegas. Another statistic says that of the twenty largest hotels in the world, fifteen are in Vegas. Vegas is a 20C boomtown, and a prime focus of world tourism. It is the largest and most distinctive resort destination in the world.

On 24 April 2007 I read in the New York Times that Vegas has 151,000 hotel rooms, with a lot more under construction or planned, while New York City has 80,720. Vegas has 380 hotels to New York’s 400, but Vegas has a population of 545,000 to New York’s 8,143,000. Many Americans visit, as do an increasing number of international visitors. Vegas has a 95% weekend occupancy rate, and it approaches 100% on just the newer properties. The weekday rate, helped by conventions, is close to 90%. The Venetian is the sixth-largest hotel in the world. The construction of its tower with 3200 suites will give it a total of 7,000 rooms. Smaller casinos nationwide, which have clearly been spawned from the Nevada experience, act as a feeder system toward the Vegas big-time destination. In 2006, $15 billion was spent just at the Strip’s casino resorts, with 60%, or $9 billion, coming from the non-casino sources of hotels, restaurants and malls. Vegas (= the Strip) is a phenomenon, nationwide and now worldwide.

Ah, but the bigger they are, the harder they fall (but not too soon). When I was in Mexico City last January I first read in the daily Reforma about how Macau is growing. Macau (ma.COW) is the former Portuguese colony which, like the formerly British Hong Kong, has now reverted to China. It has always been known for its gambling. The New York Times reports that the Hong Kong billionaire Stanley Ho had had a forty-year monopoly in Macau, and nothing much changed. With Macau now reverted to China, Ho’s monopoly ended in 2002 and other hotel-casinos are coming in. In his behalf, it should be said that Ho has brought in a new hydrofoil that cuts the Macau-Hong Kong crossing from 4.5 hours to 50 minutes. A growing Macau last year passed the Las Vegas Strip as the world’s gambling center. In 1999, Macau had 7 million visitors; in 2006 it was up to 22 million. From out of Las Vegas, Sands, Wynn and MGM are aggressively building casinos and resorts in Macau. Macau has the only gambling in China, whose people are known for enjoying gambling. We shall see.

For a while, the Strip tried to make itself out as a pseudo-family-friendly destination. For instance, the MGM Grand had an Oz theme park. This is now out, and Vegas has returned to its adult roots. In its new identity as a luxury resort, it is a very adult destination. Its motto is well-known: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. On the other hand, one joke goes that it isn’t called Las Vegas, it’s called “Lost Wages”.

On our one-day drive-through in 1968, we camped in our VW Camper before and after the city. Coming back from Hawaii in 1970, we did stay a couple of nights, but opted for the less expensive Freemont Street area, venturing to the Strip mostly to see the shows; I remember in particular seeing Jack Benny. Most of those hotels are now either gone or dying.

This trip I purposely arrived by swinging around the south of the city, and driving up Las Vegas Boulevard from where it’s still suburban, through The Strip, through the sleazy ‘tween area, to downtown. I postponed checking in to my Strip hotel until about 10 PM, since I preferred orienting myself first.

I parked and walked the length of the Fremont Street entertainment district. It’s glitz. It’s flashy. It was once the center of the Las Vegas world, but it will never regain what it lost to the Strip. It’s a pedestrian mall now. There are all sorts of street entertainers. At one booth women could have their picture taken (for a fee) in the arms of two shirtless (what else?) Chippendales guys. I took a quick look at the sound-and-light show, which is shown for seven minutes hourly on the “ceiling”, called the “Fremont Street Experience”. The thirty seconds I stayed to watch, there were space ships flying the length of the street and a few abstract designs. I was not interested.

As much of a promoter as I am of downtowns, this situation is different. I haven’t been in Reno in many years, but I suspect its Virginia Street might be in the same situation. Reno’s Virginia Street, Las Vegas’s Fremont Street, and Laughlin’s new Casino Drive will each find its own clientele, which is why I hold them at arm’s length from The Strip, but none of them will ever be a competitor of the Las Vegas Strip of world-wide renown. It’s apples and oranges.

Las Vegas: The Strip   For businesses to thrive, they must keep on reinventing themselves. This is certainly the case with Las Vegas. If downtown had totally revitalized itself way back, perhaps it would have grown instead of the Strip developing separately.

But urban neighborhoods keep on moving on. The perfect example is New York. Its entertainment district was once on Lower Broadway near Wall Street (!!!). At other periods it was on 14th Street, 34th Street, 42nd Street. Numbers in musicals illustrate this. Think of (Hello) Dolly making her entrance down the restaurant staircase singing about “the lights of Fourteenth Street”. Think of Cohan singing “Give my Regards to Broadway, Remember me to Herald Square”. Herald Square is at Broadway and 34th Street. And there was an entire musical called “42nd Street”. The old entertainment venues have died out as such, which is why it’s so ironic that the statue to George M. Cohan is not in Herald Square but in Times Square, near 42nd Street.

This is happening in Vegas, but instead of moving northward as in New York, it’s moving southward. The retreat of downtown has been discussed. Now the northern end of the Strip, closest to downtown, is dying as well. It’s the central and south Strip (with some exceptions) that’s thriving.

When we quickly visited the Strip in 1968, it consisted primarily of what is now the northern Strip. We visited and/or saw shows at the Frontier, Riviera, Thunderbird, Stardust, Desert Inn, Sands. When we returned for two nights in 1970, we saw the Sahara (Jack Benny), the Desert Inn again, and the Flamingo. Today, only the Sahara and Riviera remain; all the others were imploded and replaced, often with condominiums or other developments, sometimes still with vacant lots. A Trump building is going up; I hear it’s a combination of a hotel and condominiums. There are lots of pictures in the Riviera of all the stars that had performed there, but it’s all history.

The Flamingo is down in the center strip. It was the one that Bugsy Siegel, with his colorful history, had put up on the Strip in 1946, establishing its upscale tone after two other hotels had been built there starting in 1941. It was torn down and replaced with the Hilton Flamingo. In its garden is a Bugsy Siegel memorial. Also on the center Strip, the Aladdin is now a Planet Hollywood, of all things.

So, as the center of gravity moves south, it’s the central and south Strip that is of interest. Note that all comments on hotels below do not involve an in-depth study. I did over two days visit every hotel mentioned, some for a few minutes, and the more interesting ones for an hour or more, but we are just discussing first impressions here, yet very often, first impressions can be quite revealing and definitive. By the way, as I moved up and down the Strip, the afternoon temperatures were at about 99°F/37.2°C, and somewhat dry, but nowhere as dry as in Death Valley, so there was less comfort in Vegas. And although those temperatures were lower than in Death Valley, also keep in mind that body temperature is 98.6°/37°, so we were in what you could consider the beginnings of a “mild fever” range.

As for hotels of interest let me exclude many. I exclude the above-mentioned ones from consideration. I also exclude those places where the kitsch is so common that I consider them—forgive me—trash hotels. This includes the very sleazy-looking Circus, Circus (tired, clown theme) and Excalibur (dreary, King Arthur theme). The Tropicana is also of little interest, since it’s showing its age, and may be torn down. Treasure Island, which likes to call itself TI, now belongs to the Mirage, but its pirate ship look is very downmarket.

We are left with my opinion of the “better” venues, of which I count ten. Others will certainly disagree, but this is my opinion. I will take refuge in French to put these into two groups, which by chance happen to include five hotels each, the Hotels de thème and the Hotels de classe. Both these groups are of prime interest to visitors to the Strip, but you may guess which group I prefer. (If you can’t guess, let me give you a hint. When we visited Disney World, I was glad to SEE Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, but I wouldn’t want to STAY in it. Now you have my whole hotel philosophy for the Las Vegas Strip in a nutshell.)

Be cautioned that, with any of the hotels listed here in either grouping, size does matter, but negatively. Overly big hotels, at 3000 rooms or more, are the equivalent of tract housing. They may call themselves luxury hotels, but true luxury hotels aren’t that big. Sprawling hotels can’t provide first-class service in such quantity.

Hotels de thème   I referred above to low kitsch—avoid it. But high kitsch is what makes Las Vegas and the Strip what it is, so we have to seriously consider it, and at least go visit it and gawk. The following are in no particular order.

LUXOR Out my hotel window to the left I could see a monstrous 36-story onyx pyramid next door, which at night had a light beam in its apex pointing up into the sky. This was a 315,000-watt laser beam. The LUXOR also has a ten-story Sphinx out front and Cleopatra’s Needle inside (which illuminates). Instead of elevators inside it has “inclinators” that rise at a 39° angle. High kitsch does not get kitschier than this; this building is for kitsch-worshippers. However, it defaces itself with advertising. When I was there, there was a huge banner for Absolut vodka down its front slope. Tacky.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK It has a mockup skyline at 1/3 scale. At the corner is a good-sized Statue of Liberty, with a fireboat on each side shooting water jets. On its Strip side is a half-block long Brooklyn Bridge, whose length I walked. In case these things don’t impress the visitor, the building has a roller coaster around and over it. It is a theme gone wild. NEW YORK, NEW YORK is not subtle!

PARIS LAS VEGAS This on stands out by the half-scale Eiffel Tower sticking up out of it. I really mean it. The tower stands at an angle to the Strip façade of the building, and 2-3 legs penetrate the main building, and are visible inside. Next door is an Arc de Triomphe, and the main building is a collage of Parisian Belle-Époque buildings.

CAESAR’S PALACE This one is supposed to show Roman decadence. Outside, it’s the ugliest set of buildings on the Strip, which look like cheap, apartment buildings—how about low-income projects? The main concourse inside is very attractive, and includes the only spiral escalators I’ve ever seen, actually only half-spiral. There are some nice fountains at intersections in the main concourse, but on the hour they have “talking statues”. Now, really. Also, the whole thing is too big, too massive.

VENETIAN This one is the classiest of the hotels de thème, but remains one nevertheless. Outside there’s a copy of the campanile in Saint Mark’s square, totally defaced by being enshrouded in an ad for Phantom of the Opera. The redundant sign next to it calls it the Campanile Bell Tower, for those who don’t know what a campanile is. There’s another collage of Venetian buildings outside, including the Doge’s Palace. There is also a model of the Rialto bridge which has to be equal to, if not bigger than, the original, but as you enter it, you step onto sloped moving sidewalks! The interior is a little less tacky, and consists of “streets” with shops along the way. The overhead “sky” looks very good. There are periodic canals (OK), then you see visitors riding in gondolas (uh-oh), then at intersections the gondoliers stop and sing for the public. By that point, it’s all down the tubes.

I will repeat: you MUST see these hotels. You may enjoy walking through them. They may harbor some good restaurants or shops. But I would not stay in any of them. I’m fine in bed & breakfasts, and my three log cabins were fun, but in the circumstance of the Las Vegas Strip, I need a soupçon of dignity, a touch of reserve, a trace of solemnity, a scintilla of stateliness, a hint of class, a smidgen of style.

Hotels de classe   These are not gaudy and obtrusive but project style, and the best ones speak for themselves. One can maintain one’s dignity here. It will not be much of a surprise to realize they also attract a classier clientele. These are in my REVERSE order of preference.

MIRAGE This is one of Wynn’s hotels. There’s a rainforest in the atrium inside. It’s a nice hotel de classe, still, it failed to impress me.

MGM GRAND This one is attractive from the outside, quite modern, with horizontal blue-and-turquoise stripes. The interior is circular, which is interesting. Given the MGM mascot, there is a live lion display inside. It’s the world’s largest hotel, with 5,034 rooms, which to me says a lot, but not positively.

BELLAGIO Ah, the hotel with the frequently mispronounced name. Bellagio is a charming town out on a point in Lake Como in the Italian Lake District. It’s just up from the main town of Como itself, where we stayed in 2002, when, just out of Venice, Beverly wanted to see the Italian Lakes. The hotel is not theme-intensive, however, it is set back to allow for a copy of Lake Como in front of it, including a rather attractive water ballet. It has many restaurants, a conservatory, and an art gallery. It’s very stylish, but it’s much to vast for me; it covers literally acres and acres. I was also less than overwhelmed by its outside architecture. Note for the record: the Italian syllable GIO—and it’s always one syllable--is pronounced JO. It is not pronounced zhi-o. So if you have Giovanni drinking pinot grigio in Bellagio, it’s Jovanni drinking pino grijo in Bellajo, not the other nonsense you so frequently hear. I wish those mispronouncers would just learn this one single smidgen of Italian, and they might stop mispronouncing it as the Bellazhi-o.

WYNN Ah, the most beautiful, elegant hotel in Vegas, one that replaced the Desert Inn. After visiting it, I reject everything above, even the just-described hotels de classe. It is sleek outside, a curved, metallic quarter-circle arc facing the street, the deeply bronzed panels on its façade almost a chocolate color, with thin light stripes in between. It’s apparently expanding by building a duplicate arc nearby. On coming up to it you’re surprised by a tall cascade of multiple waterfalls down a rocky wall, which is discretely not visible from the street. Its one main corridor has shops and restaurants—discrete and elegant. Unlike most hotels, even the hotels de classe, the casino is (discretely) hidden off to the side. It doesn’t get better than this.

MANDALAY BAY/THEhotel The Mandalay Bay is the southernmost hotel on the Strip. It was built following the teardown by implosion of the Hacienda on 31 December 1996. There are two structures, operated as three separate hotels. The main building has three tall wings joined fan-like in the center, the second building is an L-shape. Both are in gleaming bronzed panels and are as attractive as the exterior of the Wynn. The top five floors of the tri-building are dedicated to the ultra-expensive Four Seasons Hotel, which also has its own pool and its own entrance. Indicatively for a true luxury hotel, it has a mere 424 units. The rest of that building is for the regular Mandalay Bay Hotel with 4427 units. The large, noisy, busy concourse is below the main building; it of course includes the casino. The Mandalay Bay has probably the most attractive poolside resort area in town. One pool encircles the area like a canal, upon which you can float in rubber tires. The very large main pool has some sort of device that makes very large waves, crashing onto the sandy far end of the pool. This being Nevada, and given Nevada’s history, a number of hotels have wedding chapels; I visited the one at Mandalay Bay. Actually, it has more than one. I looked in on the Gold Chapel and Silver Chapel, the only ones not in use at the moment (this is Vegas). Each had an adjoining Bride’s Room and a Groom’s Room, which looked attractive, convenient, and comfortable.

The L-shaped building is operated as the third hotel. Unfortunately, it has the most idiotic name on the strip, written THEhotel, or, in full, THEhotel at Mandalay Bay. I’m not sure how to even pronounce it. Anyway, it has its own entrance, to a discrete, quiet lobby, decorated in art-deco black-and-white motifs. This is where I stayed based on doing the appropriate research, and I chose well.

Rates at THEhotel, built in 2004, are typical, but not overwhelming. They vary on a daily basis, similar to airline rates (four my four days I had three different rates), and if price is a particularly strong factor, reviewing the calendar on the website can allow you to plan your visit most economically. The advantage to THEhotel is that every room is a large, handsome suite, plush enough to be a bit over-the-top. In its 43 stories encompassing 1117 of these suites. (Compare how the very expensive Four Seasons has only 424 and the Mandalay Bay 4427 and you’ll see that quantity of rooms is inversely proportional to luxury quality, as stated earlier.) These suites are the largest standard rooms in Vegas, at 750 ft²/70 m². When you consider that my New York condominium is 810 ft²/75 m²--and that’s on two levels—you will understand why I would have been ready to take the suite home with me.

On check-in I was told that for some reason they’d upgrade me to a corner suite, so I ended up having views in two directions. The suites are sleek, sophisticated, chic, and elegant. One enters a very large living room with ceiling-to-floor windows at the far end (mine had a south view), in front of a desk. The couch faces a huge plasma TV. There is a complete wet bar and—get this—near the front door there’s a half-bath, in additional to the main bath with the bedroom. I’ve never had a hotel room with two bathrooms before.

The adjoining large bedroom, with king bed, has both south and east views, with another plasma TV between them on the wall. The main bath is the size of some hotel rooms. It’s all in marble, has two spacious sinks (with a small, third TV above one), an ample stall shower, a separate alcove for the toilet, and the largest bathtub I’ve ever seen. It’s not a jacuzzi, but is larger than my jacuzzi at home. The side of the tub comes up to your ear, and there are no spigots; water flows from a waterfall at the side. In addition to my morning showers, I took three baths in four days, just for the fun of it.

Frommer’s guide to Las Vegas gives THEhotel at least four “Bests”: Best Room (“could be a great apartment in Manhattan”); Best Bathroom; Best Non-Casino Hotel (tie with Four Seasons); Best Non-Vegas Vegas Hotel (you have the best of both worlds, as you can still step over to Mandalay Bay’s casino if you wish).

I’m happy with the choice I made. It was not inexpensive, nor was it all that expensive, all things considered. It also has to be remembered that in Vegas, what you’re there for is to experience your chosen hotel, plus the others of interest. A very quick review of prices show the Wynn and THEhotel to be comparable. As much as I loved what I saw at the Wynn—and that’s so beautifully elegant--on a later visit I’d have a hard time tearing myself away from another visit to THEhotel and its huge suites, its idiotic name notwithstanding.

There are only a few large hotel and casino corporations in Vegas. Wynn and Sands are two, and it’s ironic that there’s no longer a Sands Hotel. The third is MGM Mirage, and it owns Mandalay Bay, THEhotel, Bellagio, Luxor, Excalibur, MGM Grand, Mirage, New York, New York, Circus, Circus, and more. The amount of local inbreeding is breathtaking.

I also noted an interesting indicator of transience. Major cross streets are named after major hotel-casinos, but many of them are now gone. The Sahara is on Sahara, the Flamingo on Flamingo. But there’s no Desert Inn and Sands any more on streets of that name, and the Tropicana on Tropicana may not be long for this world. With the Hacienda imploded, the couple of blocks of Hacienda next to Mandalay Bay have been renamed Mandalay Bay Road, so the beat goes on. (There’s also a sign at the hotel entrance proclaiming the driveway “The Road to Mandalay”). Of course, if they’d asked this language consultant, I’d have suggested calling the street “Mandalay Bay Way”, to take advantage of a triple rhyme, but like Rodney Dangerfield and Nevada itself, we don’t get no respect.

Restaurants   Knowing I would be having only four dinners in Vegas, and that I wanted each to be a highlight of my day, I chose very carefully in advance. I did not want to eat more than necessary on the Strip, especially since the Strip is a thief. Forget stealing the New York skyline, Parisian monuments, and a pyramid, and rarely having an original thought of its own, it also steals restaurants en masse. It has the financing so that it makes world-famous chefs and restaurant offers they can’t refuse, and “steals” them—OK, clones them--as well as it steals the Eiffel Tower.

Just one case in point: after I was in New Orleans last January I dined at famous restaurants just in the French Quarter, but then found that I’d missed an important, restaurant in the Garden District that’s been there since 1880: Commander’s Palace. I’ve already made a reservation there for the Saturday of Mardi Gras weekend early next February. But then I also saw that Vegas had cloned Commander’s Palace, which is now located on the Strip. I declined. I’d rather go to the original, and find something more local in Vegas. [Here’s an update: Commander’s Palace in Vegas had cast its fate with the Aladdin Hotel, which, as mentioned, is now a Planet Hollywood. Not surprisingly, CP Vegas has now fled the scene, and is looking for another Strip location. C’est la vie. But also: C’est la vie à Las Vegas.]

So I wanted something local and I wanted first something downtown. The first night I went to André’s (French Restaurant), located in a pleasant, quiet neighborhood a ten-minute walk from Fremont Street. It’s a converted old house, beautifully decorated. The city has even named the short side street to its left after chef André Rochat. In the Zagat ratings, 30 is perfect; no one gets that. I may have seen a 29 once, but usually, a really good restaurant will be 28-27. André’s has 27 for Food. Also, aside from food, since part of a good dining experience is the décor and the service, I can report André’s has 25 for Décor, 26 for Service. Being concerned that downtown is no longer the tourist mecca it once was, I was told they now have a heavy business clientele, especially lawyers, which I’m glad to hear. However, another sign of 1) the restaurant’s quality and 2) the Strip’s penchant for stealing, André’s now has two branches in Strip hotels. Can you believe it? Vegas even clones itself!! The philosophy seems to be, if you have a good thing—COPY IT!!!!!

All this cloning works out less well than you’d imagine. My advice is, go to the original. Some cases in point: Alain Ducasse has a restaurant called “Mix”. Not only is it at Mandalay Bay, but specifically in THEhotel. And it’s on the 64th (top) floor, with outdoor, glass, express elevators whisking you up there (right near my bedroom window). Its food rating is a lowish 23, though, so watch out. Given the location, its décor gets a nice 27, presumably because you can see the whole world. But then service is only 22. None other than Hubert Keller from the San Francisco area’s French Laundry, which may be the most famous restaurant in the US, has the “Fleur de Lys”, also in Mandalay Bay. I don’t know I’d pay his prices for ratings of only 26/26/25. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware.

But OK, I did end up falling for one of them. Charlie Palmer has, among other restaurants, Aureole on E 61st Street in New York. Zagat 27/26/26 sounds pretty good, but I’ve never been there. He also has an Aureole on the main level of the Mandalay Bay, and the second night, I dined there with a friend, my only dinner actually on the Strip. It was nice enough, and we enjoyed not only the food, but chatting with some people at the next table. But Aureole-Vegas depends on gimmicks more than necessary, first in the form of its Wine Tower. You enter down flights of stairs around a four-story plexiglas (??) tower containing rows and rows of bins holding wines, all the way to the top. Then, when someone orders a bottle, this pretty young thing on a trapeze gets pulled up all that distance to fetch it. Too much? I certainly think so, and rather idiotic. Then I was handed what looked like just the screen half of a laptop computer. I was apparently supposed to use a stylus to poke the screen to help me make selections. I came close to blowing up, and asked for a regular wine list, which of course I got. Zagat give 24/27/23, which is low for food, but high on décor because of the gimmick factor. Puh-leez. This fling took me to the only restaurant here I definitely wouldn’t go back to, even with its good food.

The last two restaurants were both off-Strip, one way west, the other way east. They were the highlights of the stay. The third night I went to Rosemary’s, which everyone is talking about. It’s just in a strip mall out on West Sahara. It’s a Nouvelle American “find”, that foodies gravitate to. I went with John and his wife; I re-met John last April at my Brooklyn Tech 50th Reunion, and, since he’s now a Vegas local, we got together for dinner. Rosemary’s offers a little amuse-gueule from the chef before dinner, and also one afterward. The restaurant is pricey, but they have a flat prix-fixe for any three courses. By coincidence, Wednesday was Ladies’ Night, and because John’s wife was there, we got a $25 discount on the check. They not only do wine pairings with their special tasting menus, they also do beer pairings (we didn’t take advantage of either—maybe next time). Given such good food, and being treated so well, it really is a find. Zagat: 28/21/26. As I said, it’s not often you see a 28, and the food was worth it.

By coincidence, the last night’s choice was on East Sahara. No one I mentioned it to had ever heard of it before, not John and his wife, nor the same friend I went with that I had gone to Aureole’s with, all of whom live locally. The friend surprised me by picking me up, not only in a low-slung Jaguar, but in a convertible, at that. It was fine with me to keep the roof down, although it was almost as hot in the evening air as it had been during the day. Our destination was a Thai restaurant, Lotus of Siam, located in just a bit of a grungy neighborhood. But Frommer had screamed in its favor. The restaurant’s own website quotes Gourmet Magazine as saying it has the best Thai food in North America. That’s not just in Vegas or Nevada, not just in the US, but in all of North America. How could I skip it?

Yes, it was a hole-in-the-wall, but what food. The soup was perfectly spiced, the chicken satay with peanut sauce was so good, we also got a beef satay. The decor got only a 12—no surprise, the friendly service a 21, which is OK. But the food at Lotus of Siam got an incredible 28, the same as Rosemary’s, with entrees at a quarter the price, if not less. The pairing of a 28 with a 12 is remarkable, but not unheard of.

I would go back to Vegas just to eat at Lotus of Siam. Rosemary’s, too. And neither is one of those big-shot overblown places on the Strip. Good things do come in small packages.

A Museum   My only other venture off the Strip may surprise some readers. It was to a museum, but it’s not what you think; yet, keeping kitsch in mind, I couldn’t imagine anything being more appropriate for a Vegas visit than to go to the Liberace Museum.

I never followed Liberace’s career over the years, but like everyone, I was aware of him in the background. He was part of the culture, and not only in the English-speaking world, either. I researched his background before going, and was surprised at his very complete musical background.

He was Wladziu Valentino Liberace (1919-1987), which became Walter Liberace. His Polish mother (note his first name) was musical, and his Italian father played in the Sousa Band. None other than the great Polish pianist Jan Paderewski visited them in their home in Wisconsin and heard Walter play the piano. Paderewski not only predicted fame, but also made the suggestion that he just use his last name, so Liberace he became, but when needed, he “stretched” the first syllable of his name and became Lee Liberace.

If his museum were in Seattle or Atlanta, I wouldn’t have been interested, but the flamboyant style he developed in his later years is totally in step with the kitsch you see in so many places along the Strip. The museum is surprisingly small, and in two adjacent buildings. One shows some of his flamboyant cars, also pianos, the other concentrates on the costumes, and some jewelry. The museum is non-profit, and continues to furnish scholarships to students in the arts. It’s just unfortunate that Liberace never came to grips with his sexuality, nor does the museum. The most they say is that he died of “complications from aids”.

Yet, even with his secrets, he did live life as flamboyantly as he saw fit. I’ve heard Elton John say on TV he owes a lot to Liberace’s style, a point that will surprise no one. Liberace also influenced Little Richard.

I think everyone’s favorite Liberace quote must be from when he was asked how he felt that so many people were laughing, not with him, but at him. Let’s all quote him together: “I cry all the way to the bank”.

Gambling   I’m making little or no reference to gambling as a factor in hotel quality. Those that gamble can make their own decisions. I do not gamble, and consider it foolishness. On our last visit to Atlantic City a good number of years ago (again, just to see what the casinos looked like) Beverly said that, well, we HAVE to at least put one quarter in a slot machine. I would have nothing to do with it, so she spent her one quarter. She lost. Do you doubt it?

I have no moral feelings against it; there are just a couple of things that bother me. For instance, the house advantage. On the roulette table there’s that 0, and on many tables 00 as well. If the ball hits 0 or 00, the house wins and every one else loses. This bothers most people not at all, but it’s how the house gradually makes its money. If you play just a bit and happen to win, you’re ahead, but no one does that, and, the more you play, the more the averages will work out that the house will come out ahead. Remember, they’re not in this for their health. You’re on a fool’s errand. Also, there’s the physical foolishness. Most casinos have no windows or clocks, so you’re get lost in the local atmosphere. The mechanical slot machines had an arm and wheels that spun around. Now they’re all computerized, yet it’s artfully and cleverly done to FOOL the viewer. When the wheels “spin”, they seem to bounce as they stop, as the old mechanical wheels did. If they should pay off, a sound track makes it sound like coins are falling. Do I need this fantasy world?

Yet I will agree that, as long as you don’t mind being bamboozled and wish to play along with the system you’re presented with, sitting in a casino can be a pleasant way to spend relaxation time as you end up losing on average in the long run. Pleasant but expensive.

My earliest experience with casino gambling, long before Beverly and I visited the casino at Monte Carlo in Monaco (dressed to the nines, as was/is the custom; gambled little or nothing), was just a half-century ago, in 1957, when I took that fateful, very first trip to Europe with a friend at age 17. One place we stayed was Interlaken, Switzerland (as I will again next year for the first time in years), which has a Kursaal. It’s a long story, but let’s say a Kursaal is a kind of casino. It being Switzerland, things were very low-key. They didn’t have full-fledged roulette, but rather played a very similar game called La Boule (The Ball). The table was laid out similarly as a roulette table, with numbers you can bet on, but in place of a full roulette wheel with its tiny, little ball, there was a wide depression in the wooden table, honeycombed with smaller depressions, each having a number. The croupier caused a ball to roll around the larger depression until it ended on a number in a smaller depression. The ball was large, a bit smaller than a handball. Otherwise, La Boule was the same as roulette.

As I wrote in Reflections 2004 Series 24, I had, a few weeks earlier, learned my first IN CONTEXT phrase in French; in other words, you read or hear it, and understand it without translation. That was the phrase “avec ou sans filtre”. As I now reflect on Interlaken again I remember (is this memory Proustian in any way?) that I learned the second and third French phrases in context (see below) at the La Boule table in the Kursaal.

The language in ¾ of Switzerland, including Interlaken, is German, but, as indicated by the French name “La Boule”, gambling was done in French at the Interlaken Kursaal, nevertheless (bless those Europeans and their multicultural ways!). I suppose I must have learned quite a bit about understanding the numbers in French at that table, but I don’t really recall that. What I do recall very clearly is hearing the croupier say, as he started la boule rolling:

From context it was perfectly clear it meant “Place your bets!” As la boule started to slow down in its leisurely, circular roll, he would then say:

Literally, this is “The bets are placed!”, but it corresponds in English to “No more bets!” I don’t really remember, but I must have spent a few Swiss francs on la Boule at the time. The most I can therefore say is that gambling at that point did contribute something quite positive to my experience, but not financially. It fully tripled the number of phrases in French that I knew at the time. And that’s the most positive thing I feel I can say about what little gambling I did over the past fifty years.

And, considering how the odds favor the house, in all fairness, shouldn’t casinos post the Dante quote for entering suckers--er, visitors--to see?: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi qu’entrate. Works for me.

All in all, Nevada wanted to step out of the shadow of California, first from the metropolis of San Francisco, later from Los Angeles as well. Considering the domestic and international flights today from everywhere directly to Las Vegas, I think we can say it has succeeded.

L.A. Area   Vegas would have been the last stop on this trip except it was time again for a Carpe diem! moment, which ended me up back in the Ellay area (I like to amuse myself sometimes by writing L.A. as Ellay). In 2001 we had gone back to San Francisco and Los Angeles, but I suddenly had sharp stomach pains and had to have a doctor come to the hotel room for an injection and medication. The illness knocked me out for a couple of days, and I had to cancel our trip to the Getty Center, to the Queen Mary, and, when we took out one of Beverly’s cousins to a nice restaurant, I was the only one who didn’t eat. I wanted to rectify all three things.

Short-haul driving, largely on smaller roads, with many stops, as I did between Albuquerque and Vegas, is one of the pleasures of travel, almost up there with rail-and-sail. Long-haul driving is the pits, comparable to bus trips and flying; you don’t enjoy it, you just want to get there and have it be over with. Yet, to go from Vegas to the Ellay area, it was a matter of all interstate driving, first I-15 through the boring Mohave Desert, then connecting to I-10, in the increasing Ellay metropolitan traffic.

But just like the end of Route 66 had been moved to Santa Monica, I-10, after going through downtown Los Angeles, is called the Santa Monica Freeway with the same destination.

I used to hate Los Angeles, then I began to tolerate it, and now that I understand it, I’m happy there and enjoy returning. But this hate-turning-to-like—it’s still not a favorite—took a long time.

It’s probably due to the decision in 1940 of the regional planning association to decentralize the city. It was über-successful. Ellay is so decentralized today that many people are unaware it has a downtown, which, thankfully, is reviving. The decentralization ended with the cutting back on rail travel and the growth of freeways. Ellay has never been the same.

Gertrude Stein reputedly said of her home town of Oakland that “there’s no there there”. She was right about Oakland, but it’s the same with Ellay: there’s no there there. Just where IS this place?

Los Angeles is referred to as being on “the coast”, but that’s not quite true, as evidenced by the fact that the end of Route 66 had been extended from Downtown Ellay to the real coast in Santa Monica. Ellay is in reality somewhat inland and touches the Pacific only in a few areas, and is surrounded by numerous smaller cities and towns. Over on the NE side is Pasadena; on the NW is first Beverly Hills, and later Santa Monica with Malibu beyond and Venice to its south. Way to the south is Long Beach. Aside from Downtown, the only other neighborhood within the city limits of particular interest is Hollywood, which had been incorporated as a separate town in 1903, but joined Los Angeles in 1910 to gain access to its water supply.

I’m saying I visited the Ellay AREA this trip since I stayed in Santa Monica, Long Beach, and Catalina, and only stopped in Ellay in passing.

Santa Monica   Santa Monica is a lovely seaside city, but that image is different from what you may be imagining. Picture a DOWNWARD view of the ocean. The main part of the city is on a cliff. I had mentioned that Route 66 ended on Lincoln Boulevard inland, the equivalent of 8th Street. When you go down to 1st Street you reach the cliffs and Palisades Park, which I always stroll through for a few moments and sit on a bench and look at the dramatic Malibu coast off on the right. Looking straight down you do see the beach area with a couple of streets and houses parallel to it, but the primary view is from above. Down to the left is the Santa Monica Pier from the Aughties and Teens. Nearby a walked a bit on the relaxing pedestrian street known as the Third Street Promenade.

I stayed one night free on points at the Sheraton Delfina down on Pico and 5th Street, so my balcony had a perfect view down over Palisades Park and of the sun setting off above the Malibu hills, which I watched while finally relaxing and reading my book.

It was just a few steps over to Lincoln (8th), but there was no marker to be seen commemorating the end of Route 66. However, I did go to my Polish restaurant on Lincoln, the Warszawa (var.SHA.va, = Warsaw). It was as lively as ever, including a wedding rehearsal dinner going on. I had borsht and pierogi and discussed my two earlier visits with Beverly with the woman in charge. A week later when I was waiting for my table at Topolo in Chicago and other people in line said they lived in Santa Monica, I mentioned Warszawa; sure, they knew it.

J. Paul Getty’s art collection first went to his museum in Malibu, now called the Getty Villa. When we were there, it covered pieces from the whole collection, but once the Getty Center was built, only the Roman and Greek collection remained at the Villa, which is very appropriate, since the building is designed as a Roman Villa, with atriums, columns and courtyards. As a matter of fact, to me the Getty Villa remains one of my three favorite museum BUILDINGS as being appropriate to its collection, the other two being Frank Lloyd Wright’s New York Guggenheim and Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao that I just visited a couple of months ago.

The newer Getty Center is just a couple of towns east from Santa Monica, built imposingly high on a mountain ridge. For me, it was a letdown. The collection is sparsely displayed chronologically in four buildings of two levels each, but once again, I felt there was no there there. However, in its favor the Getty Center has some beautiful gardens for strolling, a most interesting so-called “tram” that brings you up the mountainside (two opposite cars floating on an air cushion are drawn up and let down by cables on the side, a sort of horizontal elevator made by Otis), and most spectacularly, the view. Again and again you have unparalleled views over the SW (Santa Monica), S (Beverly Hills), SE (Downtown Ellay). However, you were reminded where you were by the pale blue-brown layer of smog in the distance between the blue sky and the city below.

I suppose I’m glad I finally made it to the Getty Center, but next time I’m in this area and want an art fix I’ll go back to the much superior art collections in Pasadena at the Huntington and/or the Norton Simon.

Long Beach   I didn’t remember that Downtown Long Beach was so attractive, particularly along Ocean Drive where I stayed. I checked in for two nights free on points at the Westin Long Beach, which was located directly next to the circular four-station loop of the Blue Line. I’d seen, but had never ridden before, Ellay’s evolving mass transit system, the replacement of the extensive streetcar system known as the Red Cars, which had been killed off by the automobile. The Blue Line is light rail, just as attractive as Minneapolis’s Hiawatha Line, and after circling the four local Long Beach stops, shoots north for 40-45 minutes to Downtown Ellay. As new systems everywhere now are wont to do, there are no turnstiles; you are responsible for carrying a valid ticket subject to surprise inspection. Machines at the stops sell single tickets or day passes. The day pass is cheap, and for seniors it’s discounted to only $1.80, twenty cents cheaper than a regular single ticket. How can you lose?

The Red Line is a regular subway line, running from Union Station through Downtown, then through Hollywood. I rode it to Hollywood, just for the subway ride. I’d been there umpteen times, but with the day pass, I got out on Hollywood Boulevard at Highland for about ten minutes and watched the tourists looking down at the Walk of Fame, or at Grauman’s Chinese Theater with its footprints in the concrete sidewalk. I then went back downtown to see a few things, including the location at Broadway and 7th that was clearly marked, unlike in Santa Monica, “Route 66 – Original Terminus 1926-1939”. Good for Ellay. It didn’t even have the final, relocated terminus, yet it felt what it did have should be marked.

I then went nearby to Roy’s Los Angeles for dinner, where I had a reservation. Roy’s is the—I choke to use the word—chain of restaurants that is the exception to the rule that a restaurant chain cannot be excellent. Roy’s in Tampa, which Beverly and I always liked, is where I like to take people to dinner and where I had Beverly’s second memorial dinner. Manager Robert Snow has been known to enthusiastically greet me on my entering.

Checking in at Roy’s Ellay, I chatted with someone who seemed he could be a Managing Partner, who turned out to be Matt Dochin. By any chance did he know Robert Snow in Tampa? Did he ever. He had been involved in helping Snow set up Roy’s Tampa.

So, while I was reading the menu, a plate of two pot stickers (dumplings) arrived. Then, as I turned my attention back to the menu, a much larger sushi-like appetizer arrived. I then supposed I should spend my energy just looking for a main course. I later got to talking with a nearby couple, and they had wondered what sort of VIP I was, but it’s just a matter being part of the Roy’s family, I suppose. Later I thanked Dochin for his hospitality.

The next day in Long Beach I drove over to the original Queen Mary (1936-1967), permanently “docked” in Long Beach harbor. We had driven up to it years ago, but now I was to visit it. Well, it, too, was something of a letdown.

I recognize the need for keeping older ships as museums. I’ve been on the USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”) in the Boston area, and I’m a member of the South Street Museum which has several masted ships in the East River, including the Peking. So it’s wonderful that a famous ship from the 1930’s is also on display.

It seems surprisingly small, given its fame, yet realizing its age. I know the QM2 has, and uses, its original foghorn. Looking at the bridge and its machinery of the era, things look so interestingly antiquated, as do the officers’ quarters, and certainly the wireless room. But the ship now has an aura of genteel shabbiness. You cannot be impressed in any way by the luxury that must have impressed people at the time. Many cabins are now used as a hotel. The tiny 2nd-class and 3rd-class cabins have been consolidated; the 1st-class cabins remain as they were. I peeked into one being cleaned and it was singularly unimpressive. I cannot imagine anyone enjoying staying at the hotel now in the Queen Mary. I stepped into the dining room, which was being used for a Sunday brunch. A main lounge was closed for a wedding. It was an Indian wedding, and the sight of so many turbans looked unusual. I was also surprised that all the machinery in the engine room and elsewhere had been removed, to the extent that tons of ballast had to be introduced in the ship’s belly to keep her steady. The funnels had corroded so terribly that they’ve all been replaced. The floorboards on deck seemed warped at the edges and looked old. I never had realized that, over the years in Long Beach the museum had foundered many times, and once actually did close for a period. In 1993 the ship was put on the National Register of Historic Places. All in all, as with the Getty, I’m glad to HAVE SEEN the Queen Mary, more than actually SEEING it at the time. As a contemporary touch, it just so happened that the Carnival Pride was docked nearby.

La Moto   That afternoon, taking Beverly’s cousin Darlene, her sister Phyllis (and Jim), and their mother out to dinner was far more successful than seven years ago when I was sick. Afterwards, I really enjoyed visiting the fashion boutique that Phyllis was now running in downtown Tustin. Also, I had spoken earlier in the day about the bikers in Durango. When Jim casually said he had a Harley in his garage, I knew it was my day to become a biker (of sorts).

Édith Piaf, in the later years of her short life, sang a song that was unusual for her, because of its updated, contemporary style. She had been impressed by the biker image of Marlon Brando in the film L’Équipée sauvage/The Wild One (1953), and in 1956, singing at the Olympia, she introduced “L’Homme à la moto”, which translates as “The Man on the Moto(rbike)”, or perhaps simply as “The Biker”. It was the French adaptation of the 1955 American hit “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots”. Here Piaf sings it on YouTube: Edith Piaf: L'homme à la moto

The first part of the French version actually varies slightly from the English to fit the meter, not mentioning black denim: “He wore motorcycle trousers [and] boots [and]/A black leather jacket with an eagle on the back”.

Jim lent me a jacket and helmet like he wore, and, once he showed me where to step up, I climbed behind him and off we went through the dark streets of Tustin for about 10-15 minutes. I thought we were speeding, but I looked down to see we were doing about 30 mph/50 kph. Then, after some deep, side-leaning turns, we zoomed down a more major street, but it proved to be at only at about 50 mph/80 kph. I enjoyed it, and will definitely do it again (as a passenger), but when I consider the highway speeds I drive in a car and see bikers passing me, I wonder how they can stand the wind pressure, especially when I realize that I was using Jim in front of me as a windbreak.

I was not wearing black denim trousers, but as I’ve said, I have been wearing black chino trousers of late. I wore no boots, motorcycle or otherwise, and I doubt that Birkenstock sandals count. But I WAS wearing a black leather jacket. I noticed no eagle on the back, although I might add, there was no chicken there, either, it having been my idea to try out this ride. But all in all, along with Jim, I was still L’Homme à la moto. I’d like to think Piaf would have approved.

Catalina   Through careful, advanced planning (which really involved quite bit of luck), four things lined up nicely within mere blocks of each other on or near Ocean Drive in Long Beach. Next to the 1) Westin was a stop on the loop of the 2) Blue Line. Three blocks west, at the next stop, was the local 3) Avis office, and 3-4 blocks further west was 4) the Catalina Express ferry terminal. It all worked like a charm: checking out of the hotel, turning the car in, taking the ferry, then the next day coming back on the ferry and walking back to the Blue Line stop next to Avis to go up to Union Station in Ellay.

From Albuquerque to Long Beach I had driven, zigzagging, just under 2900 miles/4667 kilometers. Considering that the width of the US is standardly considered to be about 3000 miles/5000 kilometers, that’s a lot of zigzagging.

The furthest point on this trip was in paradise, also known as Catalina. Beverly and I had stopped there for just a few hours on a day trip in 1993 (August 18, her diary tells me), and we loved it. Beverly liked it so much she, quite unusually for us, bought herself a Catalina teeshirt, which I still have in Florida. Come to think of it, I’ll have to start wearing it.

The full name is Santa Catalina Island, named after Saint Catherine, shortened to Catalina Island, shortened to Catalina. It’s really quite odd to shorten the name, after all, you don’t shorten Santa Monica or Santa Barbara. The pleasant ferry trip takes about an hour.

Interesting history involves the fact that chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr from Chicago bought the entire island in 1919, and from 1921 to 1951 he used it for spring training for his Chicago Cubs baseball team. The Wrigley Mansion (1921) is now an inn. Western author Zane Gray’s 1929 house is now also a hotel. The oddest quirk is that in 1924, Cecil B. DeMille brought some two dozen buffalo to the island for a film. They were left behind and became a wild herd, now up to 400.

The island is a mere 76 square miles/197 square kilometers, longer than wide. One long side faces the open Pacific, the other, more protected, faces the California coast. This is where Avalon is. I have no particular interest to see other areas of Catalina, even to see the buffalo. Avalon is too nice to leave.

As the ferry approaches, first you see the high hills in the background, then Avalon takes shape down below. It’s so petite that it’s perfect. The ferry docks on the left (east) end of the circular harbor, and in ten minutes you wheel your bag under the trees on the appropriately-named Crescent Avenue, past the shops, many pedestrian streets (cars are limited), the tiny beach, an entertainment pier, up to the hotel you’ve chosen, the Villa Portofino. More on that in a moment.

You’re two-thirds around the tiny harbor and marina by this point, so you continue the rest of the way out to Casino Point at the west end. Here is the Avalon Casino, a large, beautiful, round, Art Deco building (1928-9).

Don’t be misled. In Avalon the word Casino retains its original meaning of a place of general entertainment, particularly ballroom dancing. The Avalon Casino was never a gambling venue; that’s a more modern meaning for a very specific kind of entertainment the word Casino has since taken on. On the ground floor I understand there’s the Art Deco Casino Theater, with a pipe organ, still showing movies, as originally intended. I understand the top floor is given over to the Casino Ballroom with the world’s largest circular dance floor at 10,000 ft²/929m². The ceiling is topped by a dome of 138 ft/42m.

If I sound cagey as to what’s inside the Avalon Casino, it’s because I’ve never seen it. I had planned to take the tour this trip, but even months ago, I saw on its website that it would be closed for a private function while I was there. Oh, well. I’ll just have to drag myself back to Catalina again sometime.

Older readers may reflect on how famous both Avalon and its Casino have been. In the Thirties and Forties, all the biggest of the big-bands performed there, including Benny Goodman. Dances were regularly broadcast from there on the radio, with the announcer saying “And now, from the Avalon Ballroom, ...”. Radio is not what it was; neither are big bands, but the Avalon Ballroom survives.

As for the town, in 1920, Al Jolson wrote these lyrics to the hit song he named after it. Here he sings it on YouTube: Al Jolson: Avalon

It’s interesting how he keeps on repeating the name for a pleasing affect. But this beautiful song carries some interesting baggage with it. In 1921, the estate and publisher of Puccini’s operas sued all parties, claiming the melody was lifted from the aria “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca. The court found for the plaintiffs and awarded them damages and future royalties. So, assuming that that decision still holds (it may not), if you ever hear “Avalon” performed today, the royalties go to the Puccini estate and publisher.

There are many small hotels in Avalon. I chose carefully, and well. The Villa Portofino on Crescent Avenue is right on the harbor, has a nice Italian restaurant (the cioppino was great), and you can have the coffee and pastries of your included breakfast at café tables in their central courtyard. My room was up a level on the courtyard. I didn’t chose one with the harbor view, because I knew I’d be using their roof deck with its magnificent view most of the afternoon. Avalon is a vacation place, and I don’t vacation. After strolling a bit around town, I set up my laptop on the roof terrace, enjoyed the view over the harbor, and wrote for several hours. I’ve been to the real Portofino on the Italian Riviera (although we didn’t stay there), and this Villa Portofino has all its charm.

The next morning I read a bit on the terrace and watched the Carnival Paradise that had docked in the harbor for the day. On checking out, I spoke with Tom, one of the owners about how much I enjoyed my short stay. When he heard about the website, he insisted on giving me one of their press kits. As I told him, I’d now be concluding my trip by traveling across the country from Avalon Harbor to the Hudson River.

I had time in Downtown Ellay, and another day pass, so I rode the Gold Line. This is neither light rail nor subway. Its trains leave from tracks 1 & 2 of Union Station (it’s not commuter rail, which also exists) and runs largely on the surface to and through Pasadena. The final stations are in the median of a freeway. It’s unusual to be riding in a train and seeing freeway traffic right outside the windows on both sides. Outside Union Station I walked along the Olvera Street historic district, where Ellay started, then waited for my train. Union Station dates from my year, 1939, and is the last of the great train stations built in the US during the heyday of rail travel. The three main railroads serving the city were urged to build a common terminal, but the next year the decision was made to decentralize the region, and the die was cast in favor of cars. The attractive station combines a number of styles: Mission Revival, Spanish Colonial, Moorish, Art Deco.

Southwest Chief & Lake Shore Limited   I was taking the same cross-US rail trip Beverly and I last took seven years ago. It’s easy to remember it was 2001, since on that trip we arrived home on September 5 and six days later, Nine Eleven occurred. We had just gotten home in time.

The Santa Fe Railroad had had a train called the Chief, but in 1936 they eclipsed the Chief by introducing the glamorous, streamlined Super Chief, nicknamed the “Train of the Stars”. Yet by 1971, glamorous rail had declined, and Amtrak took it over. However, the Santa Fe wanted to preserve the historic image, and didn’t allow use of the name, so Amtrak called it instead the Southwest Limited. But eventually there was a compromise, resulting in the blended name used today, the Southwest Chief. It runs over two nights the 2256 miles/3631 kilometers from Los Angeles to Chicago.

This rail route would of course also be parallel to Route 66, and even the Santa Fe Trail in its area. Over the first night I was aware we would cross the Colorado River south of Laughlin; at about two we stopped in Kingman, and at four in Williams again. At about noon the one full day on the train we were in Albuquerque, then Lamy. Over the second night we stopped in famous Dodge City, Kansas, which we had visited on that drive back in 1968, and the last morning in Topeka, which gave its name to the railroad (Atcheson, Topeka & Santa Fe), as well as Kansas City, from where so many railroads had started out. By early afternoon we crossed the Mississippi into Illinois.

It struck me it was the third time this year I saw the Mississippi. In January, near its southern end in New Orleans, I crossed it on the ferry; in August near its northern end in Minneapolis, I saw from the Guthrie the site of the bridge collapse, and now in September, in the central region, the train crossed it on a bridge that also serviced car traffic above the rail level.

Knowing I had a layover in Chicago, I had made reservations at Topolobampo. At first, I was going with Kevin and his wife, from my high school reunion class last April, but they suddenly had a conflict, so I was to go by myself. For sleeper passengers, the First-Class Metropolitan Lounge at Union Station holds your bag for you, and in the pleasant late afternoon weather, I decided to walk. Leaving Chicago Union Station onto Adams Street, I walked east across one part of the Chicago River; at Clark Street I simply turned north across another part of the river to the restaurant.

Beverly and I had enjoyed Topolo (people like to shorten the name) some ten years ago or so. When I was in the Copper Canyon in January (Reflections 2007, Series 2-3), I noted that the port area of Los Mochis at the canyon’s southern end was Topolobampo, where the Chicago restaurant got its name. A Chicago woman I met in the Canyon knew the restaurant, but not the port. Chef Rick Bayless is apparently known for a cooking show on PBS, and this restaurant has two parts. The Frontera Grill (1987) is more casual, but there are lots of casual Mexican restaurants, as far as I’m concerned. Adjoining it is Topolobampo (1989), which is upscale Mexican. Zagat gives the Food an outstanding 27 (Décor 23, Service 25). The pork gravy on the entree was thickened by ground hazelnuts and pignoli, and the vegetable was some interesting sort of pumpkin. The dessert included a chocolate ice cream made with salted pumpkin seeds, I believe. It’s an unusual place, and de qualité.

Walking back to the station I had one of those unplanned events that result from stupid luck, and nothing more. On Adams Street, almost entering the station, I saw a street sign indicating that Adams Street was part of “Historic Route 66”. Now of course I knew Route 66 started in Chicago, but one associates it more with the West, so it didn’t occur to me to look for a Chicago marker. So now I’ve been at the beginning of Route 66 in Chicago, its original end in Los Angeles, and its unmarked later end in Santa Monica, this all in addition to driving on it in Albuquerque, Santa Fe (old road section), Williams, and the longer section from Seligman to Kingman. I’d say that covers Route 66 quite well.

The New York Central Railroad ran its fabled Twentieth Century Limited between Chicago and New York from 1902 to 1967. Please note this fact: that was the train that was so plush and had so many rich and famous people riding it that, when the railroad started laying down crimson carpets at its stops for passengers, the English language acquired the phrase referring to VIPs “being given the red carpet treatment”.

Today, Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited runs the 959 miles/1543 kilometers of that route, including running along the entire south shore of Lake Erie. It stops at Toledo, Cleveland (both at night), Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany. In Albany, a section splits away to go to Boston’s South Station, while I go down the Hudson to New York’s Penn Station and home.