#VegasHalloween (day 4): The worst day of the year

If you really love a holiday or a day of celebration, the day after can be a bit of a let down.

Yeah, the spirit of Christmas lingers on after Dec. 25, but for most Hallmark occasions, there's little happening after the fact. For some folks, that's fine. For me, there's a sense of disappointment when Halloween is over. With the exception of the years when Halloween is on a Friday, the only Halloween leftovers to be found come Nov. 1 are discounted decorations and candy, and a bunch of pumpkins left sitting on the front steps of houses in the neighborhood.

Given how anti-climatic Halloween night is for me, I'm glad that I've spend five of the past seven Halloween nights in Vegas. Vegas provides a big flourish for Halloween, bigger than I'd get on a Tuesday night in Minnesota, making it an appropriate way to end a season of silliness and scariness.

Having spent eight hours downtown and not getting to bed until 3 a.m., it was a slow morning for us at Tahiti Village. When we finally got around to cleaning up, we didn't have a simple egg and bagel breakfast. We decided that Wednesday was our day to put miles on the rental car, have a late breakfast and violate one of the Five Hundy by Midnight podcast rules. We drove to the Suncoast Hotel and Casino for breakfast at Du-Par's.

What rule did we violate? Co-host Tim, in his guidebook published a couple of years ago, explains that it doesn't matter how extraordinary a meal might be. When he's in Vegas, he's not going to spend 20 minutes traveling by car for a breakfast when he can get a good meal at his casino, or next door to his casino. I agree with the logic, to a point.

Regardless, I never experienced the glory of the Du-Par's pancakes when the California institution operated a restaurant at downtown's Golden Gate. I like pancakes, but it was never a priority. Unfortunately, when talking about the places that Vegas fanatics love, it came up in a conversation, and my girlfriend decided she had to find out what the hype was about. That was a couple of years ago. Since that time the Golden Gate location closed. So she wanted to experience Du-Par's before the Suncoast location closed, and this was the trip to do it.

We both ordered a stack of pancakes, sans meats or any other add on. They were as big and filling as advertised by everybody on the planet. And they were better than any pancake I had ever consumed at any restaurant or church fundraiser. They live up to the hype, no doubt. Would I drive 20+ minutes from Tahiti Village to Suncoast again? Nope. I tried them, I understand the hype. Unless I have another reason to travel that direction, I'm not stopping at Suncoast again.

There was a benefit to hitting up Suncoast the day after Halloween.

When I dropped my girlfriend off at a nail salon on day 2 while I went to the haunted attraction, she got long, black, fake fingernails to go with her with costume. She doesn't do long, fake fingernails, and found them to be highly difficult to live with for 36+ hours. For example, she never considered how she would take her contacts out with long fingernails. She found a Youtube video with tips on how to do it, so crisis averted, but even using her cellphone was a challenge with those nails.

While she could have gone anywhere to get the fake nails shortened to something manageable, we had to pass the exit we hit on day 2 for the salon and haunted attraction. So we hit it again and went back to the same strip mall salon.

Since we were going to be there for a while, I decided to indulge, as well. I got a pedicure. I do a terrible job of trimming my toenails. They always look mangled by the time I'm done. And they were due to be cut, so I paid to have them done.

And what a deal that was! I have had a pedicure once, about five years ago. I knew what to expect, more or less, and the woman doing my pedicure was thorough and outstanding. She did foot massaging in addition to all the work on my nails, and the chair I sat in was very relaxing. It was one of those massage chairs, so that was a nice bonus. And as I sat there in the chop shop, on a pleasant Vegas Wednesday, with the doors of the chop shop open, I looked to my left, and through the windows I could see the Stratosphere off in the distance. I loved it.

I knew to expect the service to cost about $30. The woman spent more than 30 minutes working on my nails, so $30 seemed reasonable. And as I stood at the register to pay, the cashier told me the total was $23. I was amazed. That was one hell of a deal. I paid by credit card, and tipped $7, as I expected to pay at least $30 before the tip.

The cashier asked to see my ID since I paid by credit card. She was surprised to see I was from Minnesota. This ain't a place that sees a lot of tourists, I'm sure. She asked me if it was cold back in Minnesota. I told her it snowed the past Friday, which it did for a while, even if it didn't last a day.

By mid-afternoon we were back at Tahiti Village for pool and hot tub time. As the sun started to set and the warmth went with it, we cleaned up and headed to The Cosmopolitan for dinner. We don't spend much time on the strip, and we don't dine at many buffets, but my girlfriend had wanted to try a high-end buffet. The Cosmo had a 2-for-1 coupon in the Las Vegas Advisor coupon book for its buffet, Wicked Spoon, so we gave it a try.

First off, we had to pay for parking. It was my first time paying for parking on the Vegas strip. I wasn't excited about it, but I wasn't going to spend an hour trying to circumvent the parking fee by walking a mile or riding the bus up the strip. I will say this, the red light/green light system and tabulation of available parking spaces is slick.

We went inside, signed up for player cards and headed to the buffet. It's about $45 per person for dinner on a Wednesday night.

The food is well done, overall. They had pre-split crab legs, so it was easy feast upon my second-favorite Vegas delicacy. They serve many of their entrees in single-portion dishes, which is a nice touch. I tried a variety of them and found most to be very satisfying. I had a couple of slices of their prime rib, too. It's my favorite Vegas indulgence, but I wouldn't go back to Wicked Spoon for it. The first trip to the carving station produced a satisfactory, thin slice. On my second trip the cut I had wasn't as good. If I go there again I'll certainly have a slice, but it didn't dazzle me like I expected given the Spoon's reputation.

Obligatory photo of the buffet sign.

I can't tell you what's in that little dish, perhaps it's the fancy mac and cheese, but on the right is one of my favorite Vegas delicacies, crab legs. The only drawback to buffet crab legs in Vegas, they're often served chilled. But good crab meat and hot butter is never a losing combination. 

I don't love sushi, but I don't hate it. I stick to the basics and had one serving at Wicked Spoon.

Fancy desserts are tasty at Wicked Spoon, but not to die for. 

Overall I was highly satisfied with my meal at $22.50 per person. Our server was prompt in clearing our plates, but not very proactive when it came to refilling my beverage. Oh well, he saved me a buck on my tip.

Plenty of fancy desserts available at the Spoon, as you might expect. I sampled a few. They were very good, but I didn't fall in love with any of them.

We did gamble a bit at Cosmo after dinner. I dropped $40 in a Top Dollar slot machine, and although I did get the bonus twice, my bonus offers weren't much more than $10 at best. I was not impressed by the machine.

My girlfriend had read about the Verbena, a unique drink they serve at Chandelier. So we made it a point to venture over and try it. I won't try to describe it if you don't know what it is, but it's a unique cocktail sensation I've never had anywhere else. It was $16 per drink, I think, and that's typical for cocktails at Chandelier. It was worth trying.

I'm not exactly Cosmo material, but it was fun to clean up and spend a few hours among the beautiful people, watching the parade of well-funded men and women parade to and from. Cosmo is a nice place and I like it. Perhaps one day I'll forgo the vow of poverty I took when I chose my career and will be able to afford to drop $100 or more on a few rounds of drinks without thinking twice about it.

Some day.

Which way is up? I'm not sure, but it's a photo I took at The Chandelier inside The Cosmopolitan. I won't be winning any photography awards any time soon, clearly.

Funny thing about my brief cameo at Chandelier. I looked toward the bar and saw a woman walking away. I didn't get a head-on look, but I got a profile view. I was sure it was Marci, a frequent visitor who shares a lot of pictures and stories of her Vegas travels through Facebook groups dedicated to Vegas travel. I know several names and have seen pictures of the most prolific contributors to these groups, but I wouldn't expect to see or recognize them while wandering about. I didn't chase the woman down as she was walking away from my area, but I checked on Facebook that night, and sure enough I spotted Marci, one of the frequent contributor to a group called Talk Las Vegas. It was like spotting a celebrity.

We left Cosmo before four hours had passed. I paid $7 for parking. Not the end of the world, and I likely would have been ready to leave even had parking been free, but the fact that the base rate for parking increases after four hours was all the incentive I needed to move along. Who knows how my night might have been different had I not been paying for parking. I was content with paying $7 in order to park for dinner and a cocktail, but I didn't want to pay more than that. No big deal, I'm not Cosmo material anyway.

Our next stop was Orleans, the casino I liked staying at during the past several years. Unfortunately those comped weeknights that my girlfriend and I received two years earlier have stopped coming. We spent five nights at the Orleans in September 2015, and four of those nights were comped. We paid for the fifth, ate meals on the property, drank beers at the pool and charged it all to our room. And at that point they stopped comping me weeknight rooms. I don't get it.

I was disappointed on this Wednesday night to find that all of their $5 tables were auto-shuffle machines. I swear they were. I looked, and looked again. I use to be able to count on $5 double-deck pitch games, but not that night. I was highly disappointed.

I used that as a sign that it was my night to play Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em. I had good luck over the course of a couple of hours, winning $150 on $5 play. I cashed out and used a $10 match play to win a $10 spin on roulette. After tipping a few dollars, I finished my night at Orleans up $166.

We were on the road back to Tahiti Village around midnight, early enough to close out our night with a visit to the hot tub.

It was symbolically one of the saddest days of the year for me, but it turned out to be a pretty good one. Thank you, Vegas.

What happened to the Vegas we loved?

It's summer, and I biked 27 miles earlier this evening. How I love the 9 p.m. sunsets in Minneapolis. We get them for a few weeks of they year, and I take advantage of them. I have things I want to write, and will, even if it kills me. For now, here's my attempt at polishing an idea I started a few months ago, but shelved. It lacks keen insight, but here it is nonetheless.

Why do we pine for the days of yesteryear? The simple answer is that it is in our DNA to do so.

I've been going to Vegas since January 1997. I've seen a lot change in nearly two decades, but the evolution of mega-resorts on the Las Vegas strip was already underway. My first trip included three nights at the enormous MGM.

I can cite a lot of changes in Vegas over the 19 years I've been visiting Sin City. I no longer stay on the strip, and my bankroll hasn't grown as much as I'd like given two decades of professional employment.

I follow a few Vegas conversation resources, and one thing that caught my attention was a discussion on the Facebook page for the "Five Hundy by Midnight" podcast. 

A gentleman by the name of Bob Smith wrote the following: 

Last week, Tim & Michelle spent some time talking about how change is a constant in Vegas and how many of us believe it was a better experience when we first took it in, whether that was 10, 20 or 40 years ago. The comparison Tim used was how most of us think the best music happened to arrive in our teens and early 20's. That's a very valid point. However, when it comes to recent changes, there's nothing nostalgic about assessing better vs. worse.

Resort Fees: inarguably worse

6:5 blackjack: ditto

MGM parking fees: yep

Double odds at Wynn craps: worse

Reduced video poker pay tables: not better

Early check-in & related random fees: bad

Those are just off the top of my head. Yes, those who say Vegas was better "when the mob ran the town" may be indulging in nostalgic revisionism, and it makes for an interesting discussion. However, the steady march toward squeezing nickels and dimes out of every visitor is a different matter entirely. Many (most?) of the items listed above have taken hold in just the past decade. It has rapidly and permanently changed the Vegas experience for the worse. We can try to avoid these fees and gaming odds adjustments and we should. But in time, all the Strip & Downtown casinos will almost certainly fall in line, as they have with resort fees. Yes, we'll still visit Vegas on a regular basis, but with an increasingly jaded eye. Better or worse? Mostly, it's really just sad. 

I took a few economics classes in college, and I use to be really good at math. A long time ago. So here's a layman's analysis of why the good old days that Smith spoke of have gone by the wayside. 

In the 1980s Vegas had a huge advantage over the rest of the country, it was the place to go for gambling. Yes, there was Reno, and Atlantic City's casino industry was trying to put a dent into the Vegas experience, but for the most part, Vegas was a magical destination like no other. We like to think of it as a Disney World for adults. 

The thrill of hitting it big at a slot machine couldn't be matched locally, at least here in Minnesota, where I live. Gambling just wasn't a part of our day-to-day life here in the Midwest. I remember churches would occasionally run some forms of gambling under the guise of a church festival, designed to make money for the parish... and why not? Isn't that how God wants a church to be funded?

But gambling here in Minnesota, and certainly other parts of the country, began to change in the 1980s. The 1980s brought parimutuel betting to Minnesota. The poor man's Churchill Downs gave degenerate gamblers a place to prove reading the Daily Racing Form was a sweet science. During the 1990s our neighbors to the east, Wisconsin, had a handful of dog tracks for the same purpose, including one less than 30 minutes from St. Paul, one of our celebrated Twin Cities.

Lotteries weren't unheard of in the '80s, but we didn't have them in Minnesota until the late 1980s, or perhaps early 1990s. I'm quite sure Wisconsin beat us to the lottery game by a year or three, but nonetheless, both states climbed aboard that train, turning just about every gas station into a neighborhood casino. Do lottery games replace the thrill of the craps table? Not by a long shot, but suddenly there was a way to turn $1 into $100, even if the odds were lousy.

I didn't go to bars in the '80s, but at some point bars became places to gamble, under the guise of "charitable gambling," at least here in Minnesota. It's amazing how many bars host a pull-tab operation, which pays rent for its space within the bar, and an hourly wage to employees, all in an effort to make money for a nonprofit entity. 

Pull tabs are basically slot machine games played with small cardboard game pieces. (I have no idea how prevalent pull tabs are nationwide, but I assume plenty of states have them in their bars.) In the past few years pull tab proprietors in Minnesota have been able to offer the games electronically, using a tablet that players are given at the time of their purchase. 

Pull tab gaming seems to be profitable at many bars across Minnesota, even though the games seem to offer less than spectacular odds for the player. 

All of those things have made gambling a part of life in the Midwest, but as we know, the expansion of the casino industry across the United States has provided many of us from coast to coast with a taste of Vegas, sans the airfare.

In Minnesota we have plenty of tribal-owned casinos scattered across the state. Most of us live within one hour of a casino. They emerged in the early 1990s, much like other tribal casinos across the country. Minnesota doesn't allow our casinos to offer live craps or roulette, but you can get those in our neighboring states, for they have casinos, too. (I'm too lazy to research if the casinos in our neighboring states are all tribal entities. I get a sense the answer is "no" in Iowa.)

Once upon a time playing casino blackjack was a privilege, one frequently enjoyed in Vegas. I've been to casinos in California, Mississippi, Louisiana, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin, and in some cases my appearance was simply because it was convenient to drop in and survey the scene, not because I had an itch to gamble. I ate at the Hollywood Casino in Toledo, Ohio, and never gambled a dime.

Three of the six points Bob wrote about above were diminished gaming conditions in Vegas. You'd think that Vegas would want to be offer better gaming odds to attract people who can opt instead to spend a weekend at a fancy tribal casino closer to home and save the cost of airfare. But better odds aren't enough to trump the tribal casinos, evidently, so instead of offering better odds to Vegas visitors, the tourist casinos are looking at how to squeeze more out of every dollar wagered, any little way they can. The casinos are no different than most other American businesses. When your profits start to decrease, find ways to make it up, be it at the expense of your customers or your employees.

The expansion of the casino industry, and other forms of gambling, denied future generations the thrill of Vegas, at least when it comes to winning or losing your paycheck.

Plenty of people come to Vegas for conventions, sightseeing and hedonistic ambitions, and plenty of those people will gamble. But reports over the years have illustrated how the gaming portion of the casinos is now part of a multi-faceted effort to turn a profit. Gaming is no longer king, and rather than make gambling more enticing with better odds, the casinos have finally accepted that they're attracting customers who grew up with casinos in their backyards, and don't get the same thrill their parents or grandparents got from a trip to Vegas.

Enough people don't care, or know better, so they accept 6:5 blackjack or reduced video poker pay tables. And those reduced payouts are due, in part, to the fact that the casino industry is now raising generations of gamblers across the country.

Vegas has lost its luster as a gambling mecca, and the deteriorating conditions we see today are a result of that.

As for resort fees, that's obviously the result of the Internet. As has been discussed many times in the online world, resort fees are a shell game the casinos play in order to minimize the commissions paid to third-party booking services.

Regarding the other points Smith made, about parking and other fees, those go hand-in-hand with diminished gambling conditions. They're ways to squeeze more cash out of the tourist.

I'm not sure how many casinos around the United States charge for parking, but I'm guessing many don't. Casinos located in downtown districts, such as New Orleans and St. Louis, might not have free parking because the real estate is expensive and in high demand. But you won't find a casino or race track in Minnesota that charges for general parking. They may charge for valet parking, but free parking is still the norm.

Will people stop going to Vegas because of the cost of parking? Heck no. Some will change their plans because of the cost of parking, but no particular fee is likely to drive people away. Give people enough reasons and they'll throw in the towel, but new generations are awaiting their turn at the adult playground, and they won't scoff at throwing away a portion of that disposable income for a parking space, especially those who have $1,000 or more budgets for their weekend at the ultra lounges.

How would Vegas be different today if our country had never gone casino crazy and had never given tribes the keys to the casino industry? (It's not quite that simple, but we'll leave it at that for now.) If the gambling landscape of 2016 was similar to the landscape of 1976, would Vegas casinos be turning the screws on its gamblers and hotel guests?

Perhaps, but not to the degree we see today. Our nation's love affair with gambling has taken something from Vegas that Vegas will never get back: cachet.

Book review: From the outside, looking in

As you might expect, "The Outsiders' Guide to Las Vegas" is not your mother's guidebook.

My first trip to Vegas was in January 1997. If it wasn't in preparation for that trip then it wasn't long after that first trip that I obtained a copy of a traditional visitors guide. I might still have it, although I'm betting I donated it to some sort of used book sale, because who doesn't want to read buffet reviews from 10 years ago, capturing the magic of the dearly departed Riviera buffet?

I lost count of how many times I've been to Vegas over the years, but I'm quite confident the total is more than 30 after nearly 20 years. The last thing I need to read is a visitors guide for Sin City.

But a year ago, when I started this blog, I checked out online Vegas resources that I hadn't given much time to, including "Five Hundy by Midnight," a longtime podcast that I had seen references to over the years, but had never attempted to dial up. (Do you dial up the internet?)

As I sampled the podcast I learned of its forthcoming guide book. It took me many months to finally pick one up, but given I regularly sample the podcast offerings I wanted to read what Tim Dressen, the show's co-host, would include in a guidebook about Vegas. Over a recent span of 10 days I did just that.

The book is very much in the style of the podcast, a bit irreverent and written for an audience you're more likely to find congregating at a local watering hole than in the library at an institution of higher learning. And really, isn't the former where you'd expect, and want, to find people discussing Vegas?

Dressen's book offers many recommendations and observations similar to those you will find from year to year within the traditional guidebooks, but it pulls no punches when it comes to critiquing what succeeds and fails in Vegas. The book leans heavily on the personal experiences of the author, but there's some indication that information compiled within its covers is also drawn from the feedback and experience of the thousands who listen to the podcast.

If you want to know the skinny on the hotels along the strip and downtown, you'll find it in Dressen's book. If you want to know about a variety of restaurants, that information is included, too.

But many of the opinions and recommendations of the author are colored with his personality, which you find little of in other guidebooks.

Few stones are left unturned by the end of the book. Dressen provides recommendations on how to go about planning a trip and things to avoid when doing so. He has his personal preferences when traveling to Vegas and a rationale for them. It doesn't matter to Dressen how delicious breakfast is at a quirky, unique restaurant 13 minutes by cab from downtown Vegas, Dressen isn't going there, and he explains why. I have different ideas about how I want to spend my time in Vegas, but Dressen gives good reasons for why he prefers to do things the way he does, and those give the reader something to think about.

Did I learn a few things I didn't know about Vegas by reading the book? Absolutely. Vegas is constantly changing, and no matter how much you read about Sin City or how often you visit, chances are there are a few things, trivial or significant, that you don't know or know about. My jaw never hit the floor while reading the book, but I learned plenty of tidbits that might be useful down the road. And I learned that the Forum Shops at Caesars has a spiral escalator.

As I noted, this is not your mother's guidebook. Therefore I'm not giving a copy to my mother for Christmas. Besides the fact she has no interest in going to Vegas, I don't think she'd appreciate the graphic descriptions under "strategic restroom planning." But it was reassuring to know I'm not the only person who thinks about such things.

Dressen has a few "editorials," for lack of a better term, about things he likes or doesn't like about Vegas, or the world in general. Did you know that audience participation is ruining the world? You will if you read his book.

No book can include everything, and this book is no exception. When it comes to reviewing off-strip casinos, several are critiqued, but not all of them. I'd be curious to know what Dressen likes and dislikes about the Orleans, one of my regular haunts. What he likes or doesn't like won't change my personal preferences, but it would be interesting to read. It's a major property, not far from the strip, but it didn't make the cut. I'd guess that other than favorable gaming conditions he isn't particularly dazzled by the property.

His review of south strip hotels didn't include the former San Remo, now known as Hooters. I haven't been in that building since its days as the San Remo, and most comments about it are less than glowing. I couldn't help but wonder how Dressen might skewer the property, but that didn't make the book, either.

The book has plenty of pictures, but they're small and are of little value. The book isn't intended to provide a visual guide to Sin City's casinos, but the small, black-and-white pictures don't have a lot to offer in many cases, and the book would be just as valuable without them. But they do help break up the copy visually, and that's often a psychological selling point to many readers.

I'm an unapologetic supporter of pinball, and every trip I make to Vegas includes at least one visit to the Pinball Hall of Fame, one of many unique off-strip attractions. I was pleased to see it made Dressen's guidebook. I'll gladly take a plug for pinball over a critique of the Orleans or Hooters.

Change is the only constant in Vegas, and Dressen's website for his book attempts to update information that has become outdated since last summer – such as the closure of Las Vegas Club – although no updates have been reported since January, and certainly some tidbit of information within the book has changed since then. Nonetheless it's a smart way to keep the book relevant, but it begs the question, will we start seeing updated versions of the book annually? There's no "2015" on Dressen's book, but now that the framework is in place, might we see periodic updates with new information and observations?

The outsiders' guide is a lot like reading reviews from Trip Advisor or other online sources. It represents what people think, not what a major publisher is willing to parrot on an annual basis. Unlike a user-driven website, Dressen's book is highly organized and easy to navigate.

It's a great book if you're a Vegas veteran like me and want to read Vegas opinions while staring at something other than a tablet or computer screen, (although you can certainly get a paperless version of the book should you so desire.) And it provides a lot of great advice for Vegas newbies who want to know if there's a great restaurant at their home base during their next trip, the Flamingo. (There's not.)

The book is $19 and available wherever Amazon is accessible via your tablet or smartphone. It won't change your life, but it won't ruin it, either. And it will entertain you for hours, unless you're my mother.