Las Vegas, Nevada.

In March, we drove to Las Vegas from Buckeye, only about 4 1/2 hours. We picked up my niece, Pat, and her husband, Gary, at the airport and went to check in to our hotel. They introduced us a few years ago to the Main Street Station, a downtown casino and hotel that used to be the passenger train terminal for Las Vegas many years ago.

Lynn and I are small-time gamblers, usually playing the slot machines until they take our stake. We win if we get tired of playing and we’ve simply come away without losing, or even losing only a small part of our stake.

The opening photo features a view of the 5-block long pedestrian mall called the Freemont Experience. We found ourselves walking along this strip several times during our 5-day visit. Though we spent some time in a couple of the many casinos on Freemont Street, it was mostly to have dinner in one of the casino restaurants.

The Freemont Experience attracts many performers who ply their special skills for donations from the many visitors. After being closed and fenced off for a time during the earlier days of the pandemic, the mall reopened last year with robust cleaning, though the live stage shows remained shuttered until later in the season.

With Omicron waning, the Freemont Experience is again fully open. Since it’s an outdoor venue, there were few masks in use by guests, though many employees of the venues who interacted with guests were still wearing masks as of early March 2022.

For the record, this post is scheduled to be published in mid-May, and I know that right now, a new variant is on the rise in Europe. I may end up editing this article for my Covid remarks before it gets published. In any case, in the open-air mall, there weren’t as many buskers as I recall from earlier visits, but the gentleman in the top hat and suit attracted my attention… I had to stop and reflect upon him for a bit… I saw a lot of myself in his suit. (OK, sorry, not sorry, for the puns.)

One thing that was new to us this trip is the Circa Resort and Casino, now open and fully operational. On our last trip to Vegas, that large hotel on the left in the image above was under construction. In the center of the photo is the Garage Mahal, Circa’s parking/valet/ride-sharing hub. This cell phone image was captured from the sixth-floor window of our hotel room. The Plaza Hotel is visible just behind the Garage Mahal.

Back when there was $3 blackjack, I used to play until my $50 ran out, sometimes for an hour or two. I quit when the stakes got higher. Over the years, I would watch the Craps tables where people seemed to be having a great time. It appears to be a team activity with all of the players “against the house” and all celebrating anytime the house loses. I thought it might be fun this time to learn about the game. Still, I was not planning to spend $10 for a pass bet. I thought maybe I might be OK with $5 minimums, at least to learn. I searched YouTube for videos on how to play Craps and I found the Casino Quest YouTube site. From there, I learned some of the basics, but not enough for me to want to risk any money on what I think is a relatively complicated game.

It turns out that Casino Quest is a business in the Fashion Mall on the Las Vegas Strip. They offer one-on-one lessons in several different casino games for a flat fee of $25/hour ($20 if you reserve online in advance), and they provide the chips. You aren’t gambling, you are being taught how to play the game.

We stopped by the mall to check the place out and found that we could purchase gambling equipment. We also noticed three Craps tables and other game tables used for instruction. We inquired about getting a lesson, and Dean, who had just started working with another guest, directed us to hang a bit as one of the other instructors would soon be available. We waited, and were just about ready to leave when Dean finished up and got ready to start with a young couple who’d signed up for beginner training. He asked them if they minded if Gary and I joined in and they approved. Dean was then free to include Gary and me in a one-hour introduction to the game. We found out though, that it’s best to go online and register for an appointment slot. They are quite busy.

After our lesson, with $300 worth of “play chips”, I was ahead by $67. I even tipped the dealer with a couple of the play $5 chips. >grin<. In any case, the experience was way too much for me to take in for such a complicated game, Gary and I decided to come back the next day and do a two-hour session with Dean. We went online and made an appointment for the next available time, 2 PM the next day.

Though I still wasn’t ready to put my money into a real game, I decided to try my luck at a machine game called “bubble craps.” Basically, it’s an electronic version of Craps played by one or more people. In the center is a single “bubble” with a pair of dice. When it’s time to roll, the machine vibrates the bottom of the bubble and the dice flip around to land on the number when the vibration stops.

I put $50 into the machine to see what would happen, and I was able to generate a pretty good run, walking away from the table in about 30 minutes at over $40 ahead. The next morning, I tried it again determined to only play on the $42 of the casino’s money I had taken the night before. In less than 15 minutes, I was down $20 from my starting position, and I called it quits still with $22 of the casino’s money in my pocket.

That afternoon, Gary and I went for our 2-hour session with Dean and got some instruction in basic Craps strategies. We didn’t do so well with neither of us being able to generate a decent series of rolls before we hit “Big Red” (7 is a loser, but no one at the table ever says “Seven”, it’s bad luck. They call it Big Red.) Our original $300 play money stake had barely $100 left when we were finished.

The upshot is, for $60 I got an inexpensive lesson (for Las Vegas) in a game I was interested in learning. I consider my winnings at Bubble Craps a discount on my $60, leaving me with a net cost of $38 for three hours of instruction. All in all, I’m not planning to spend any time at a real Craps table. It was a fun exercise, but I think I’ll stick to the slot machines. >grin<

John Steiner

Las Vegas, Nevada.

In a story to be published later this year, I will share some pics and interesting experiences on a trip to Vegas in March 2022. We don’t go to Vegas a lot, but it’s only a 4.5-hour drive from Buckeye and we would be meeting my niece and her husband there for a few days.

They like to stay at the Main Street Station hotel which is downtown and just a block or so from the Freemont Experience. For those who are unfamiliar, several blocks of Freemont Street are covered with a large video display.

If you walk the five blocks at the western end of Freemont Street, you’ll pass casinos, shops, restaurants, and plenty of buskers who entice you to stop and drop a few bucks while you watch their outdoor shows. But this story is about that giant display that runs over the top of the pedestrian mall. As you can see in the image above taken during the day, directly underneath the giant screen is even a zipline. I included the daytime image to give you a better perspective as pedestrians walk the mall.

About the photo: The real point of this post is the opening photo. Every evening, a music video plays on a rotating schedule. It is usually graphics mixed with videos of the performers singing or whatever. One evening we were walking the mall with the nightly performance underway. I noticed a familiar sight in the middle of the video screen. Yes, that’s a standard Microsoft error dialog box. It’s an unhandled exception error from the Microsoft.NET Framework.

I captured the image with my Samsung S20U. Then I rotated the image in processing so that you could more easily read the error message. It would appear that the Freemont Experience program is completely automated with no one monitoring the display for such errors. The dialog box remained on the giant screen for the entire presentation.

Processing the brightly colored images was very simple. I didn’t even bother with the tweaks that I often make in Luminar, just adjusting the basic image controls in Adobe Lightroom to improve contrast and clarity.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

No, we didn’t take a quick trip to the Big Apple! Since we stayed downtown, we didn’t see much of the Las Vegas Strip, the row of casinos and resorts along Las Vegas Boulevard just west and north of McCarren Airport. Back in the day, the first casino built along U.S. Highway 91 was well out of town. In 1931, Al Capone built the Pair-O-Dice nightclub. Gangster families were already reaching out to the mecca of legal gambling. That stretch of highway soon garnered hotels and casinos and would become what is now known as the Las Vegas Strip. We spent most of our  time this trip downtown, but we decided to spend a few hours on the strip just to say we went there. Traffic and parking are problematic on the Strip, but we found a solution. There’s a monorail system that services the southern end of the strip and it goes from near the Westgate Hotel and Las Vegas Convention Center, near downtown, for about 4 miles (6.4 km) to several stops along the strip. A quick Google search for parking allowed me to discover a parking tip. As long as there are no special events at the Westgate Hotel or Convention Center, parking at the hotel is free. We drove the three miles (4.8 km) to the Westgate Hotel. The convention center is pretty busy so be sure to check before heading out. From where we parked, it is just a short walk to the tram station, as you can see by the photo above. The station is on the right in the shadow of the Westgate Hotel. Fares are inexpensive on the monorail, though truth be told, we could have parked the car closer to the strip for less money than we paid for three day passes. On the other hand, a day pass allows you to get on and off the tram as you wish with no additional charges. It was definitely cheaper than two taxi rides from downtown to the strip and back. We elected to take the tram to its final stop, behind the MGM Grand Hotel. The last time I made a trip on the tram, things were much different than they are today. Walking into the MGM property, we discovered a huge shopping and restaurant mall, busy with traffic and apparently not suffering at all trom the malaise that’s affecting most malls around the country. The gallery of images features a few shots of the mall and our walk to Las Vegas Boulevard.

After quite a walk, we finally made it to the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel. From here, we exited the hotel and walked a short distance to the intersection of four major hotels: MGM Grand, Flamingo, Excalibur and New York, New York. The highways at that intersection are major vehicle thoroughfares. Each corner has escalators to skyways that take people over the street so pedestrians don’t have to mix with vehicle traffic. As a bonus, the views from the glass-enclosed skyways are interesting, to say the least.

Looking north from the skyway between MGM Grand and New York, New York; the view is of Las Vegas Boulevard, the Strip. It was now late afternoon and time for some refreshment after our walk. We opted to head for an Irish Pub inside of New York, New York. Nine Fine Irishmen found us and we discovered that even as early as it was, there would be a wait for either a seat inside or just outside the pub, but still in the casino. We accepted the pager and sat in a waiting area. We decided that once we got in, we should order our evening meal. After about a 30-minute wait, we were seated. After a good meal and a dark brew, we were ready to explore. One of our goals was to grab some evening shots of the casinos. We would play tourist and hang around the small “borough” of shops and restaurants inside the hotel/casino.

Once darkness was upon us, we headed out to the skyways to get some views of the hotels at night. Those shots and others captured on our tour are featured in the gallery of images at the end of this post We didn’t stray from that intersection much for the rest of the evening and eventually found ourselves back on the monorail tram headed for our parked car and the short drive to our downtown hotel. I submit for your review our gallery of images captured that afternoon and evening. Select an image to enlarge it and to scroll through enlarged views. Most browsers support the higher quality images I upload here for your review.

We finish our trip to the Las Vegas Strip and to the City of Lights with a shot of the famous 1950’s era Welcome to Las Vegas sign. The iconic image is so popular, there are signs telling people to stand in line to get a shot of the attraction. I found it more interesting to include the line of people wanting to get their own “up close and personal” souvenir image.

Las Vegas, Nevada.

A short walk from Fremont Street and a shorter walk from our Main Street Station Hotel is an imposing building that currently houses The Mob Museum. The neoclassical building has a history that began as a U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in 1933. In 1950, Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver came to town. He led a Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. The Las Vegas Courthouse was the site of one of the hearings held in fourteen cities across the country. There were lots of underworld figures who “testified”, though not surprisingly, most had little to say. Even so, much of the country was to learn about the hidden society of mob bosses and organized crime syndicates.

The Kefauver Hearings brought out the connections that were made between organized crime families and individuals. The second floor of the museum houses the restored courtroom that became the room where the hearings were held. Many of Las Vegas most well-known residents were invited to appear before the committee.

The hearing room features a short video presentation and a narration of the events surrounding the hearing. In 2002, the building became the property of the City of Las Vegas for the princely sum of $1 with the stipulation that it be preserved and used as a cultural center. The mayor who happened to represent mobsters as a defense attorney back in the day, Oscar Goodman, proposed that the building should house a museum that captures the history of the Mob.

The museum isn’t just about organized crime in Las Vegas. The history of racketeering and all variations of criminal activities around the country are featured in the many exhibits. The brick wall in the image above is one of the featured exhibits. On February 14, 1929, Chicago’s Bugsy Moran’s headquarters were raided by several “police officers” who lined up some of the Chicago gangsters along this wall and shot them to death. Those police officers were actually members of Al Capone’s rival gang. The killing of the seven gangsters became known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. A large section of the wall where those men died was moved to Las Vegas to be displayed at the Mob Museum.

From all corners of the country, the Mob Museum features the stories of these historic villains. Names like Pretty Boy Floyd and Ma Barker were notorious in the 1930s. Much of the syndicate grew out of the 1920s prohibition era where money was to be made in the sale of illegal spirits. A featured display focuses on illegal booze and those who profited from it.  The walls of the museum are covered with artifacts gathered from around the country.

A note on photography in the museum: The museum and exhibits are darkly lit. I was fortunate to have brought my Sony camera with f/1.8-2.8 lens. Even with the larger lens openings, the camera, which I set to Auto-ISO, put the settings at 1600-3200 or more. If you look closely in the gallery of images by clicking on one to enlarge it, you’ll notice some of the grain and grittiness of noise in the image. Some of the images were softened to reduce the effect of noise. The small size of the Sony camera is great for not being conspicuous in public settings, but the small image sensor size is a factor in a higher level of noise in the image.

One exhibit that we didn’t experience is the Use of Force Training Experience. This extra-cost exhibit provides each guest with a CO2 pistol and duty belt while being given scenarios that demonstrate the speed and complexity of use-of-force decision making. You can find out more about the Mob Museum including visit planning and hours of opening here. I submit for your review, a gallery of images captured at the museum. In most browsers, you can select an image to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner