ONLINE GAMBLING AND CASINO GUIDE

If there is one universal culinary truth in Las Vegas, it is that our pizza sucks.

It just flat out blows goats.

As an East Coast transplant who used to enjoy good pizza on a very regular basis, this has always been hard to come to terms with.  Along with blowing goats … a hobby I have picked up since I moved here.

When I lived on the far west side of Vegas, there was a joint called “Villa Pizza” at Durango and Desert Inn which was actually pretty good — but not good enough to keep me in that hellacious neighborhood of bored lawn nazis with whom I was constantly at odds.  I tried to organize a homeowner’s uprising at one point, but all of my neighbors were so browbeaten into submission that they quivered and soiled their pants at the mere mention of the name of the HOA.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been back to that gated mind-toilet.

I wonder if they miss me?

Anyway, those days of 2004-2005 were probably the last time I had a decent slice of pizza in this town.  There is a Villa joint near Maryland and Sahara, but the one time I ate there was kind of a disappointment.  I figured two restaurants in the same franchise would be the same, but somehow they weren’t.

Today, however, I finally broke the five-year losing streak.

I had a doctor’s appointment near the Ellis Island casino, and the doctor failed to show up for my appointment.  I am completely serious.  Such is the state of health care in Las Vegas.

One might say that I got what I deserved by booking an appointment with a doctor near the freaking Ellis Island, but I dare you to find one medical center in this town that’s not a glorified version of the board game “Operation”.

In any event, being wholly fed up with the town once again, I decided to erect my middle finger to nobody in particular by being a self-destructive degenerate … by drinking and gambling in a low-roller joint before the sun even set.

In my opinion, there is nothing more sad than a local sitting around nursing beers and pissing his money away while the sun is still beaming outside.  The gaming is not so bad, but the beer is kind of pathetic.

I’m kind of an elitist when it comes to drinking.  To be brutally honest, I consider sitting around drinking booze to be beneath me.  In my opinion, drinking is on intellectual par with sniffing glue.  Alcohol is a very crude drug.  You can’t do a goddamn thing on it besides drool on yourself and act like an F’ing moron.  It turns otherwise intelligent people into complete idiots.  Say what you want about pot, coke, and skag, but none of them are the sledgehammer-to-the-brain that booze is.

“Let’s go to Vegas, drink ourselves into a stupor, forget what we did, then lay around and feel like shit the next day!”

This makes about as much sense as booking a trip to Mexico, and drinking the water once you get there to make sure you have the squirts for the next 48 hours.  What a freaking waste of a vacation.  Just stay home and huff paint.  You’ll get the same effect, and it will cost you much less.  You’ll also not f**k up our fair city for everyone else by playing 6:5 Blackjack, starting liquid-courage fights, and driving like a douche.

The LVCVA obviously does not care about your welfare, but I do.  Save the “what happens here” crap for back home, or learn how to hold your liquor.  The sloppy drunk routine was cool in the 8th grade, but when you are 30 … it’s kind of pathetic.  Keep your shit together or this town will put you over its knee and spank you like a little bitch.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, this article had something to do with pizza.  I had to go back and re-read the first paragraph to figure out what in the hell my topic was.  Don’t try this “stream of conscious” stuff at home, kids.  This article is being driven on a closed course by a professional.

At some point in my little endeavor I got hungry and I set off in search of food.  I spotted a pizza restaurant near the back brewery, and I stopped to consider the possibilities.  Last week I ate pizza in O’Sheas, and it was less than terrific.  It was standard food court fare, which is about par for the course here … but I craved something better.

I looked up at the sign on this restaurant which read “Metro Pizza”.

“I’ve heard about this place”, I said to myself, although I could not for the life of me remember where.

I walked up to the counter, and they had these little signs that said “Voted best pizza by the Review-Journal”, “Voted best pizza by Steers and Queers Illustrated”, or whatever little accolades they had garnered for themselves.  I noticed that they didn’t win a Trippie, though.  Losers.

At this point, I also remembered that I had read about this place in the Las Vegas Weekly, and it had been crowned “Best Pizza by a Paper Too Lame to Keep Richard Abowitz”.  Seriously, if I read one more goddamn column about nightclubbing in that rag while I am trying to relax and chop a loaf, things are going to get mildly unpleasant.

Anyway, I ordered a pie, content that if it sucked I could at least write about how the Weekly didn’t know good pizza from its own asshole.

When someone’s right, however, you’ve got to acknowledge it, and the Weekly was spot-on.  For once.

Given that I had little desire to spend the night in a Clark County Detention Center Couple’s Suite, I called a friend of mine who lives in the nearby Marie Antoinette building and ordered him to pick me up.

“Man, you know I have to work all night, just drive over or walk”, came the reply.

“F**k you.  I’m moderately inebriated and I bought a whole pizza.  I’m not going to sit and eat it in Ellis f**king Island”, I said.

“You got Metro Pizza?”, he asked.

“No, I called Dominos and had them deliver it to the blackjack table you stupid f**k”, I replied.

In three and a half minutes my man-servant was obediently chauffeuring me the full one block to his nerd cave.  Apparently, he was more excited about the pizza than I was, and once I tasted it, I knew why.

This was, hands-down, the best pizza I had ever tasted in Las Vegas.  Even better than Villa.

I’m not going to describe the pie in detail like a “foodie” (anyone who uses the infantile term “nom nom” should be sodomized with a screwdriver before being shot in the face).  Hostility issues are one more reason I can’t actually follow anyone on Twitter.

Feel free to take my word for the quality, though.  I lived in Brooklyn and sustained myself on pizza for quite some time, and while Metro might not rise to the level of the best eateries there, it was absolutely satisfying in its own way.  It was definitely kicking the flavor New York-style, and suffice to say that they now have a new loyal customer.

It’s one less thing from “back home” that I have to pine for, and for today at least … it was the only thing about this town that didn’t utterly suck.

The sun shines on a dog’s ass every now and then.

I guess this entire post was little more than a giant advertisement for a pizza joint, but screw it.  There is so little in this town worth endorsing anymore that I don’t feel like a complete tool.

Go to Ellis Island.  Order a pizza from Metro.  Be Happy.

For a brief moment today, I was.

• Keep updated through Newsletter or on Facebook

  E-mail:
  

  Subscribe
  Unsubscribe