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Aside from gambling, Vegas offers plenty of excessive entertainment
TRAVEL
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Gambling with culture
As Ocean’s 12 hits the big screen, Mark Fisher investigates the truth behind the legend that is Las Vegas.
el this be a lesson to you. It is
the story of a guy called Joe
Roman. They called him Shoeless .loe on account of his dislike of footwear. lie was a Las Vegas Vagrant and petty thief who. one day in NUS. picked tip his social security cheque and took it to a blackjack table.
In the self-styled playground of
America this is not hard to do. I‘rom the moment you arrive at .\Ic(‘arran International Airport to the second you crawl into your hotel bedroom. you are besieged by gatnbling opportunities.
I’ruit machines are like an
infestation. tempting you out of
eyery last dollar whereyer you are: in bars. restaurants. waiting rooms or the Vast floors of the city's hotel— casinos. When the slots lose their thrill. you can turn to high—rolling tables for roulette. blackjack. poker. eyen bingo. Thus it was that Shoeless Joe gambled and lost his S400 welfare cheque at the Treasure Island casino. The story should have ended there - another mug in
a city where the only winner is the house — but with nothing left to lose. Joe asked the teller to lend him S I00. Taken off guard by his audacity. she forwarded him the cash.
That’s when he started winning. ()n his first win. he paid back the Sl00 loan. He continued to play and he continued to win. He was a terrible player but his luck was in. The bigger he won. the higher he
gambled. That in itself is a sign of
an addict. unable to appreciate the enormity of the sums he was playing with. From an initial stake of nothing. he got up to Sl.3m. Anyone thinking rationally would have bailed out long before that.
As he approached S l m. the casino proprietor Steye Wynn is said to base offered him 810.000 for the rights to his story. The story goes that Shoeless Joe agreed. took the money in chips. gambled and lost it immediately. The hotel put him up. got him showered. cleaned and clothed. He accepted their hospitality. but refused to wear shoes. Back to the poker table he
went. Inevitany his stake began to crumble. After ten days or so. he was down to 890.000. That‘s when the management interyened. They told him he could do something
LAS VEGAS Ol-TERS INSTANT DREAMS AND PRE-PACKED
ST ARDOM
useful with that kind of money and. when he fell to 850.000. they kicked him out for his own good.
They say he walked down the street to the Paris casino and lost the rest of it there. I was told the story in good faith by a surveillance supervisor at the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino. although some people belieye it to be apocryphal. Fact or fiction. the moral is the same: don’t go to Las Vegas expecting to come home richer.
In ()(‘t'tllt'x //. the Iic‘llztgio hotel casino might look swish and glamorous with its fountains rising defiantly into the desert air. but losing feels the same wherey er you are. Rather than lea\e disappointed. you‘re best setting aside a lised amount of tnoney and treating it as any other part ol'your entertainment budget. You'll lose it but you'll haye fun doing so.
Iiy'en if you haye no interest in gambling and I don‘t myself Las Vegas does eyerything to such excess you'll find the whole experience stupidly irresistible. ()n the other hand. ill the good reader ol Tllt‘ List in you makes you hanker after some higher cultural enlightenment. you'll be surprised at what you come across.
It is true that this is a town where people you'd assumed to be long dead still command a ready audience. Among those w ho'ye distracted the gamblers irom the tables in recent months are (iene Pitney. the Loyin‘ Spoonful. Michael Bolton. Ho I)idley and the
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