Can we have a jazz funeral for La Bayou?

It's not quite as big of a deal as the closing of Riviera, or even the Las Vegas Club, yet somehow it feels like it to me.

I hadn't planned to take a four-month sabattical from this blog – and I have no shortage of ideas I'd like to write about – but here I am, shortly before 1 a.m. here in Minnesota typing my first entry in months, and it's about the closing of three insignificant properties under the canopy of the Fremont Street Experience.

I just stumbled upon the news moments ago, courtesy of Vital Vegas, one of my regular go-to sources for Vegas information. Within the past hour the Vital Vegas guru, who by day works for the Fremont Street Experience, reported that Derek Stevens, the face of The D and Golden Gate casinos, has purchased three downtown businesses, and presumably the property upon which they sit. Stevens and his brother, who seems to shun the limelight, are the owners of Mermaids and La Bayou, two slots only game rooms, and Glitter Gulch, the downtown strip club.

As Vital Vegas nicely explains, these businesses – which I presume have been under the same ownership prior to Stevens' purchase – are strategically beneficial to the growing Stevens empire. La Bayou is adjacent to Golden Gate, the smaller casino owned by the brothers Stevens, and Mermaids and Glitter Gulch are next to the shuttered Las Vegas Club, which the Stevens own and plan to redevelop.

The Stevens boys run excellent casinos, and their acquisition of the sickly Vegas Club ensures they'll turn the tired old property into a successful downtown hotspot when all is said and done. The acquisition of the small casinos and the strip club will help them grow the Golden Gate and presumably create a much larger frontage for the new Vegas Club development.

And yet I'm saddened by this.

There was nothing extraordinary about La Bayou or Mermaids. I'm pretty sure both have been re-imagined since my first visit downtown more than 19 years ago. La Bayou is smaller than some of the gift shops on Fremont Street, and I don't go there to gamble. But it has a fun, colorful theme and sells all those fancy daiquiris that people covet when in New Orleans.

Mermaids has a larger gaming floor, comparable to the larger gift shops on Fremont, and its quirky draw is its weird, cheap food.

Years ago I could find all sorts of odd, cheap eats along the strip. The days of the half-pound hot dog and cheap strawberry shortcake seem to be over. Mermaids offered a few wacky, relatively cheap eats that were fun to indulge in when you were in Vegas. And I enjoyed its colorful facade.

According to Vital Vegas, it is expected both of those game rooms, and the strip club, will be out of business in about two months.

I've wondered why there's a strip club on Fremont, and only one. I suspect that its existence is a result of some quirky legal manuever in the past that grandfathered it in, but I've never asked. I won't miss it, but I always appreciated the "Golden Goose" and "Glitter Gulch" neon signs above the building.

Change is constant in Vegas, and I've seen plenty of it in the Fremont area over the years. A lot of it has been for the better, no doubt. But losing a few unique, small businesses saddens me. I liked the colorful diversity of those little businesses. Yeah, there are a million slot machines in the greater Vegas area, and plenty downtown, but when the property acquired by the Stevens' is absorbed by their larger holdings, we'll likely never see cute little game rooms juxtaposed with big downtown casinos ever again.

We bemoan the loss of local, independent, mom-and-pop businesses in towns across America. When Walmart moves into an area, there's a certain amount of dread that comes with it, because the mighty retailer will put nails in the coffins of at least a few local businesses.

Nobody would compare the Stevens to the Waltons, but the Stevens empire is having a similar affect upon the Fremont district, even if the Stevens are building Targets instead of Walmarts.

The three shuttering businesses may not evoke the same emotion as the Riviera's closing did a year ago, but their existence were the last connections we had to the smaller, simpler casinos of yesteryear.

Vegas, conquered

Twelve hours ago I was playing pinball in Las Vegas.

I have returned from six nights in Sin City, and here are a few hightlights:

Sunday evening:

• An hour or so during the final night of the Riviera

Monday: 

• More than two hours at the Riviera as they closed the doors 

• A Mariachi el Bronx concert at Brooklyn Bowl

• A ride on the High Roller

Tuesday:

• Dinner at the Prime Rib Loft in the Orleans

Wednesday: 

• A cameo in Primm

Thursday: 

• Dinner at Marrakech 

Friday:

• Container Park

• A whole lot of Fremont Street

Saturday:

• Pinball Hall of Fame

• Traditional "last supper" at In-N-Out Burger

The trip included a couple of afternoons at the Orleans pool. It was supposed to include pool time every afternoon, but the weather didn't quite cooperate. 

I will elaborate on some, if not all, of the aforementioned highlights in the blogs to come. And I will also explain how I managed to hit all three of my $25 match plays and three $10 match plays, thanks to my good luck charm.

And if you've seen the Twitter feed, @vegasinsight, you've seen pics from the final hours of the Riv. Some day I'll find a way to share some of those via my blog, as well as through a separate website. 

The losers will be the ticket buyers

I've long been a fan of game shows. I grew up watching them as faithfully as I watched cartoons. I was watching Wheel of Fortune before I could read. I was watching The Price is Right before I knew how to count money. I was watching Match Game even though I had no idea why the double entendres were funny.

The good folks at Vegas Chatter noted earlier today that a new game show is coming to downtown Las Vegas. "Lovers or Losers: The Game Show" is coming to the Plaza.

From what little I know about it thus far, it sounds like nothing more than a bastardized version of "The Newlywed Game." Hosted by Willis of "Diff'rent Strokes" fame, the show will allegedly be taped for broadcast. There's a chance it will end up on some cable channel, there's no shortage of airtime to fill, but this strikes me as a lame way to make a buck or two rather than produce a game show.

I won't tell people what they should or shouldn't spend their money on. If you think $40 or more is a fair price to pay for watching some sort of competition between couples, more power to you. I'm sure it will be a humor-based show. And it's not a crime to pay for comedy. But I have a hard time believing I want to spend any money while in Vegas to watch a knock off of a television game show.

A real game show doesn't sell tickets to attend a taping of it. Even shows like "The Price is Right" and "Let's Make a Deal," where anyone in the audience could be picked to play a game and win a car, don't charge for tickets. And I bet enough people would pay for a ticket to see The Price is Right that they'd still be turning people away every day. But that's another story.

If you have to charge for tickets to see an unknown game show, it tells me there's not a cable network backing your show. If a cable network is producing a show, you'd think they'd be attaching their name to it, and promoting the hell out of it to drum up interest long before the first episode hits the airwaves rather than charging for tickets to an unproven commodity.

I suspect a lot of complimentary tickets are going to be given away to fill the showroom.

The Plaza's info page notes that couples participating in the game are vying for prizes, but there's no indication the prizes are anything spectacular. I'm sure there are some nice, modest prizes to be won, but I doubt that this show will be giving away new cars or big cash prizes with any degree of regularity. There might be a major prize offered to make the show seem legitimate, but I'd bet the odds of actually winning a major prize are long.

I'll be anxious to read a review of Lovers or Losers. I might be off the mark, but experience tells me I'll be more right than wrong.