Downtown Las Vegas

“Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city, linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty, how can you lose? –Petula Clark

The place that used to be hopping with the main casino activity in Vegas is downtown on Fremont Street. After our fine hotel stay on the Strip that I wrote about in my last post, we came here after checkout. Since it was morning, things were pretty quiet. Change was immediately evident since the last time I was here. The street has been permanently blocked off and made into a pedestrian zone. Something called a Viva Vision canopy now covers the whole thing. It is the largest LED canopy screen in the world. Free light shows happen on the hour. There is even a zip line that goes from one end to another. It has been dubbed “the Fremont Street Experience.”

As I first stepped on what was formerly known as the Strip, a wave of nostalgia washed over me. I was here, days before my 19th birthday, with my best friend who has since passed. She had purchased a car from her uncle who lived here, and I flew to Vegas to meet her and help her drive it back to Texas. Of course, we dressed up to the nines to go out on the town. We played the slots, but I’m sure we didn’t spend more than some of our quarters. A decade later, Cal and I also visited here a couple of times when we had family living in town.

On a side street, I could almost feel the old Vegas.

Cal and I remember when people would stand outside the casinos handing out coupons for free sodas, a room, a low-cost meal. Breakfast was especially cheap. Anything to get you inside. If you played, they gave you free drinks. What I didn’t know then, I know now: in those days, the Mafia ran Vegas with a tight fist. They are credited with developing the city into what it is today, both good and bad. People with money ran hand in hand with those who had no money but had expertise.

Two things happened to change things: law enforcement cracked down on traditional organized crime, and new Nevada laws were passed to ease the way for corporations to own and operate casinos. Add to that, all of the newer casinos out on the Strip are not in the city of Las Vegas. They are in an unincorporated township named Paradise.

Here in downtown Las Vegas, on Fremont Street, no one passes out coupons anymore. It seems smaller to me, but someone I talked to said it really is not. Some of the smaller casinos have been swallowed up by bigger ones, though, so there are less of them.

If you are interested, you can get more of the history by visiting the Mob Museum in downtown Vegas. We didn’t visit it this time.

There is a show on TV called Pawn Stars. Occasionally, when Cal is flipping channels, he stops on this show to watch something that catches his interest. On the show, people bring in things they want to sell. Many times they are antiques or oddities and the owners then consult experts to check the value. It is interesting to see what the experts tell about the history of the item and to find out how much they think it is worth, and then see how much the pawn shop owners give the seller for it. Sometimes a deal is struck, sometimes not. Usually the seller receives much less than they said they originally wanted.

The shop that the Pawn Stars own is Gold and Silver Pawn. We walked down to it from Fremont Street.

It was strange to be in a place we’d only seen on TV. The counter is familiar as the place where people set their treasures for evaluation and sale. There was nothing we would have been interested in buying, though, and some of the collectibles were very expensive. I’d call this “Upscale Pawn”. Do they have good luck selling this stuff? Well, there are buyers for everything, and the store is also on-line so you don’t need to come to Vegas to shop.

After digging around, I discovered the shows we’d watched are reruns. The show has been off the air for two years. The shop is owned and run by three generations of men and one of their friends, but scandal and legal issues surrounded them. The store is still a popular place to visit, judging from all the people coming and going.

Walking from Fremont Street to the shop, we passed a pretty wedding chapel:

We made one more visit downtown. I wanted to see the Neon Museum. We took an Uber back downtown for an excellent dinner at Nacho Daddy’s. From there it is a 3/4 mile walk to museum. It wasn’t the nicest walk. I suppose walking isn’t the main way people get there, and I think it’s too bad that the city can’t do something to clean this up just a little bit.

The Neon Museum is a graveyard for many of Las Vegas’s old signs. There is a lot of history to be seen just by looking at them.

The Stardust Casino opened in 1958 and the hotel was the world’s largest at the time. As a child, I remember it being one of the iconic scenes of Las Vegas that you would see on TV or movies. The design of the sign is a nod to the beginning of the space age that was happening at the time. The resort closed in 2006.

I was surprised to see the Hard Rock Cafe sign behind it. How can a Hard Rock be out of business? It was here for only five years before being purchased by Richard Branson and rebranded as Virgin Hotels. Word is that a new Hard Rock will be opening in 2027.

Argon makes the light in this sign, which dates back to the early 1950’s. The light that argon produces is blue, but the colored glass used for the words changes it to green. This was a motel sign.

Neon, however, is what put Vegas on the map. The museum’s oldest operating sign is the Chief Motel Court which dates to 1940.

The Golden Nugget, built in 1946, is one of the oldest casinos. Today there are six Golden Nugget resorts in five states. I suppose this sign doesn’t work any more.

The Neon Museum has placed some of the old motel signs in the median on some streets downtown. Of course, the Normandie Motel is long gone.

Walking back to Fremont Street, we noticed that we could have happy hour at the Gold Spike at 4 AM. That’s handy.

The Strip in Las Vegas today uses LED lighting, but the neon lights (and light bulbs) are all still aglow on Fremont Street. When we arrived back after visiting the Neon Museum, the place was hopping. It was a drastically different scene than we’d encountered on our morning visit.

The East side of Fremont street doesn’t have the covering over it and traffic is allowed on the street.

Visiting the city of Las Vegas was a whole lot of fun but it didn’t take many visits for us to decide we were done. We talked to many locals while here, and every one of them said that they only go down into the city when they have company. What else could there possibly be to see and do? I’ll be exploring that in the next couple of posts.

Next time – Valley of Fire