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Saturday night in Vegas usually comes down to one of two choices.  The Strip or Downtown.

Since I wanted to do some low-limit gambling, the choice of where to go was pretty much made for me.

Downtown was the obvious destination, and when I arrived, I was somewhat surprised.

There was nothing about Fremont Street itself that surprised me, rather, I was taken aback by my own reaction.  Something just didn’t feel “right”, and I actually became a little depressed.

For the first time in about four months, I went to an essentially “theme-less” Downtown … and I hadn’t realized just how much I had gotten used to the “Summer of ’69”.

While the “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone” phrase is cliche to the point that it invokes a gag reflex in most people, I feel that it truly did apply in this particular circumstance.

When I lived in New York City, everybody complained about New York.  The subway stinks, Giuliani is a dick, it’s filthy, it’s hot, it’s cold, there are too many (insert ethnic group here), there’s too much crime, and on and on and on.  D.C.  was similar.  Crime, drugs, traffic, potholes, carpetbaggers, swamplike-summers, etc.

Hell, I hated both places 90% of the time.  I’m a “glass half empty” kind of guy.  If I manage to make it to heaven, I’ll bitch about it up there.

“The goddamn streets are paved with gold!  Jesus Christ (whom I would actually be addressing in person), who’s brilliant f**king idea was this?  Gold is one of the softest metals in the universe.  It is wholly inappropriate for street paving!  That’s it, I’m converting to Islam.  At least they get 72 virgins instead of this gold street s**t!”

Now that I am removed from the day-to-day annoyances of the two cities in which I lived for 30 years, I tend to remember the positive far more than the negative.  This is reminiscent of yet another cliché’.  “Familiarity breeds contempt”.  It explains my love/hate relationship with this very city.  Half of the time I detest it more than anyplace on the planet, but after a weekend away, I’m always relieved to get back.

The distance is also why tourists tend to romanticize Las Vegas.

I could not possibly count the number of people who start counting down to their Vegas trips 9 months in advance, and then on the third night of their vacation … can’t wait to get the hell out of here.  It’s often anti-climatic.

Even though this is the case, after a month, they eagerly begin counting down the days to their next Vegas vacation.  Rinse and repeat an infinite number of times.

There is perfectly explicable human physiology behind this phenomenon, such as synaptic anticipation/reward mechanisms which are predictable, and the behavior is  normal.

This being the case, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that I missed Fremont Street’s “Summer of ’69”.

As soon as I stepped out of my car, things were different.

First of all, crowds were noticeably lighter.  It was not desolate by any stretch of the imagination, but relatively speaking, it was not busy.

There were leftover t-shirts being sold, but most of the signage was gone, and all that was really left was the “Hippie Nation Bus” on the far west end of Fremont serving as a reminder of what used to be.

It was not only the visuals, however.

The vibe was perceptibly different.  It felt like a bit of the Downtown grunge had returned.

There were a few identifiable things that stood out on this trip:

• I got panhandled a few more times than usual under the canopy.
• For the first time ever, I got yelled at by a vendor for taking a photograph of their kiosk which is clearly visible to anyone walking by.
• For the first time ever, the Mermaids girls disallowed photos to be taken of them unless they were paid.
• There were no shows.
• Random people were arguing with each other.

For the reasons above, and for more subtle intangible reasons, it just didn’t feel the same.  The crowd was a bit more surly and rude as a whole, and the fun-loving feel was certainly off a notch or two.

Just when I was really starting to feel down about the end of the summer season, I was rescued from the doldrums by the most common antidepressant known to man.

Boobs.

I was concerned that the party pits might go away after the summer was over, but once the sun went down, my johnson went up because all of the “party” dealers from Binion’s to The Las Vegas Club, to the Golden Gate took up their usual positions.  “Summer of sixty what?”  It seemed slightly less important while I was parked at a table.

There is one other thing that soothes the Vegas soul as well, and that is winning.

I’m fond of the Binion’s cowgirls, but they were running 6:5 last night so I split my BJ time between the two other greats … The Golden Gate and The Las Vegas Club.

For whatever reason, I had one of “those” nights, and I went on a decent run at both casinos.  It finally felt as though the stink had been washed off of my gambling monkey, and when it appeared that the tide was starting to turn back to nasty (as it always does) I cashed out.

When I am on a run, I will usually set a trigger to lock in profits.  Last night I decided to walk when I hit three consecutive losing hands, as this represents a trend reversal to me.

Logically, this makes no sense, and it’s mere superstition, but having some trigger to walk is far better than just playing until you’re broke.  Since there is no statistical stop-loss in Blackjack, you have to make one up.

Unbeknownst to me, there was also a festival going on last night on the Ogden wing of the pedestrian mall.  It was called “Culture Fest”, and I walked through the event.

There were a few dozen vendor booths with food and merchandise, and the smell of open-air barbeque filled the air.  Unfortunately, I had filled up on Golden Gate shrimp cocktails just minutes prior, so I didn’t consume any of the festival food.

Supposedly the purpose of this event was to “celebrate diversity”.

I don’t even know what that means, nor does anyone else.  It’s just a buzzphrase with which to make money.

The reality is that events like these are simply thinly-disguised marketing vehicles.  As a matter of fact, Culture Fest is “Coordinated and produced by Culturally Diverse Advertising (CDA) Media Relations and Special Events LLC” in partnership with “Gimme Money, Inc”.  Fine, the last company was made up, but the first two are real.

In my opinion, being obsessed or even “proud” of one’s ethnicity makes no sense.  People should be  proud of what they do, not what they are.  I think diversity is a contrived and bastardized concept put forth solely to achieve monetary goals and/or social control.

While there, I looked and looked for the Redneck, Irish, and French Canadian booths, but I could not find any of them.  So much for “diversity”.  Apparently the term only applies to Black and Hispanic people.

Lest I over-analyze this festival too much, people seemed to be having a good time, and in the end I suppose that is all that matters.

Overall, it was a decent night, but if you have been to Downtown even as recently as two weeks ago, it’s not quite the same.

It didn’t hit me until last night just how beneficial the “69” theme was to Fremont Street, and how much it changed the look and feel of the area.

I liked it, then I hated it, and now I miss it.

In my opinion, Fremont Street is still the place to beat in Las Vegas, but in the span of one week, it’s lost just a little bit of its magic.

I think it is only natural that I miss the theme, and it will almost certainly take some time for me to readjust to the “regular” Fremont Street.

Something tells me, however, that I will get over it in no time.

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