Fremont Street Experience – A Slice Of Big Pauly

glittergulch

I’ve been reading the news out of Las Vegas that the Glitter Gulch is going to be closing up soon.

When I first visited Las Vegas in June of 1996, I stayed at the Plaza Hotel my first night there. Taking a shower after a two day spell on a Greyhound bus, I decided to look around this canopied complex called the Fremont Street Experience. Looking around, I saw the strip club right in the middle of all these casinos.

I remember thinking, “What a novel place to put a titty bar!”

Back then, I used to love going to strip clubs and nudie bars, basically because it was something to do. It was a good habit if you had money to spend I suppose, but if you didn’t have money to burn, it was a terrible habit. Plus, that that I loved all the shapes and sizes a woman could be. Some girls were short, some girls were tall, some girls are naturally chested, and some weren’t.

I don’t remember too much about how much I spent there, other than getting a dance from two girls simultaneously, which was a thing I was into back then. All I remember is that I thought I was being hustled, which wasn’t an unfamiliar story at the Fremont Street Experience at that time. A few of the establishments there were casinos with slot machines, and female attendance who would watch you play to make sure they got a cut of whatever coins came out of the machines. Now that was a hustle and a half, so I got the hell out of there, much to the chagrin of the Asian lady watching me.

Las Vegas is a city that doesn’t treat its history well. I’m not too shocked that the Glitter Gulch and some of the ripoff joints looking like casinos are now going to go away. It’s probably a good thing. It also taught me in a sense to appreciate women of all sizes and shapes, and that not all beauty shows.

The night I arrived in Las Vegas in my 1996 visit there, I stayed at the Plaza Hotel. (I’ve mentioned this particular time in this blog previously.) One of things I decided to do that night was visit the other hotels that made up the Fremont Street Experience, then a newly built canopied area of casinos that made up the downtown portion of Las Vegas.

Visiting the Las Vegas Club brought an awkward experience. A former boxer had been hired as a greeter, and I shook hands with him. Now, at that time in my life I followed boxing pretty religiously, but I had NO idea who the heck that guy was. I can still remember that he was an African-American man who wore a purple bandana under his chin. The file cabinet of my mind recalled the menagerie of heavyweight champions during the 1980’s, thanks to the proliferation of boxing organizations that wanted their own “world” champions.

Tony Tubbs? Pinklon Thomas? Tim Witherspoon? John Tate? Greg Page? Perhaps a champ at a lower weight class? Every name I could think of drew a blank.

I felt kind of bad that I didn’t know that former boxer’s name. Still can’t place it all these years later.