The guys at PRRM should have been around with a camera filming me and a few friends when we were stupid,young and poor and in Vegas for a couple weeks on summer vacations,it was hilarious.
Gas was 80 cents a gallon and divided by 4 the entire drive from Minnesota and back cost $40 each in the beater K car we used.A few times we flew out and it was on a last minute charter for an unbelievable $79 round trip all tax included.In the airfare was a coupon for each to get a one night stay at a dive known as The Gold Spike casino-hotel on the fringe of the old downtown before it was spruced up.If we wouldn't have gotten those coupons our plan was to pretend we were staying in one of the nicer strip casinos where we could sleep on a recliner and swim from about 10 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon and switch to a new one each day so they didn't think we were freeloaders.Then we would have stayed out all night partying until 7 when the buffet opened up.
Then we played every single match play coupon we could find,ate every free shrimp cocktail offered us and used 2-1 breakfast coupons at Circus Circus where it cost each $1.75 and we each ate as much as a family of 10 in a 3rd world nation.Most had a carnivorous diet and went straight for the meats bypassing the filler bread carbs.Oh,we weren't on any Atkins diet because it was 15 years from coming into being,we were on the most bang for your buck diet.
Then as far as drinks went,we mooched those too.Back home when paying we all bought rot gut slag green death beer like Fox Deluxe or Bosch which was $4 a case for longneck returnables but in Vegas it was Heineken and a variety of other premium import beers.We were all beer drinkers but all of a sudden when the drinks were free we became sophisticated martini and manhatten drinkers etc.We would pull up in the nicest air conditioned sportsbooks and play a $2 parlay bet and sit there tipping the cocktail waitress a dime each everytime she made her drink rounds.Then we knew the ropes where we would buy rolls of quarters at the bar to play video poker and you would ask for a drink and it was comped.You would pick a busy bar and sort of make an exit stage left when the bartender mosied on down to the far end of the bar to serve customers.
Then we stayed at a huckster named Bob Stupak's place called Vegas World.You got all your money back,free rooms,free drink cards,food,show tickets but it was on the edge of no mans land called the naked city not downtown or on the strip.We all won gyp cheesey jewelry appraised at $1000 a ring and we pawned them at wedding chappels in Vegas for $25 each.
Lots more but it was hilarious as I said,,,fond memories that are sort of embarrassing.hehe!
AI
