Go: Where to Go, What to Do & Why

By James P. Reza

"I'll have a salad with that, with Italian dressing on the...salad." The weathered woman occupying the neighboring stool at the counter of the Golden Gate Casino's venerable Bay City Diner (385-1906) laughed at her cheeky low-maintenance wit to the waitress (there are no waiters), herself a Bay City institution of more than 30 years. It was just before noon on Sunday, but the woman and her lunch date each had an open Corona (sans lime wedge) sweating proudly next to the bottle of ketchup, reminding us that this is a city without a first call.

Thirty years is a long time to hold any job, but in modern Las Vegas, where UNLV-degreed hotties in their prime wiggle from waitressing to bartending to go-go dancing and back again every time a new venue opens, three decades at one service industry job is inexplicable in an era when such loyalty suggests something less. It's a hash-slinging tenure stretching long before most residents' notions of Las Vegas, and with it a perspective of downtown before Steve Wynn started by remaking the Golden Nugget; before the O'Halloran family's too-much, too-soon Fremont Street Reggae & Blues Bar departed to make way for the struggles of Neonopolis; before L.A.'s Beauty Bar and NYC's Hogs and Heifers aimed to lure Hollywood-style hipsters to a part of town that might not yet be ready to give up its lo-fi roots; before the canopy stripped Glitter Gulch of its most impressive and unique draw--millions of incandescent bulbs and miles of neon tubing linking Las Vegas to its mystique--and replaced it with cartoons.

Here, however, at the narrow Bay City Diner, time holds its breath. Picture windows slatted with wooden blinds front Main Street and dark paneling and authentic turn-of-the-20th-century appointments envelop diners in an intimate 24/7 loop of Vegas noir. Here, players, politicos and power brokers, longtime Las Vegans and old school visitors meet and mix in our city's most authentic incarnation of the town diner.

Here, "I remember when" isn't nearly as important, nor impressive, as "this is how we did it," and when you meet a grizzled character who claims he installed the diner's cold cases and rotating toaster oh-so-long-ago, and who complains half-heartedly to the waitress that today's split pea soup special tastes like none of the above, you believe him without reservation. He will, given the chance, get back there and show them how to do it; it's that get-it-done attitude that seems sorely missing today.

As lunch comes to an end, a loud, drunk twentysomething in a shiny shirt and big, bad sunglasses bursts into the diner. "Gambling! We're gambling! Yeah!" He approaches a table of four men who, in a different era, may have had connections. "Hey guys! Can I buy you a shot? Shots for everyone! Let's all do shots!" Three of them sternly chew over their plates, the fourth staring at the loudmouth in a way that made me more uncomfortable than it did him. "Hey, I didn't mean to offend anyone. I'm just having fun! Gambling! Yeah!" He stumbles out of the diner to a group of friends who look as though they came to town to act out some mythical scene from Swingers, and who would be much more welcome at the Palms Hotel than in, say, Las Vegas.

Myth-busting

Contrary to common denominator knowledge, the true sin of indulgence in Las Vegas is not found at a craps table, or in the vanilla-scented, 90-second embrace of altered breasts, or in its endless supply of liquor and hubris. Rather it is that, from the Golden Gate Casino, one can hop into a Lincoln Town Car and, in roughly 20 minutes, inhabit another world entirely. One can enjoy a national conservation area, get back to basics in a neighborhood of foreign language billboards and cheap ethnic eats, be on a university campus or wander a movie-set land of gates and forced "community." It was in this world, where shopping malls masquerade as town centers, that I ate a serviceable sushi lunch at the outdoor bar/counter of the oh-so-popular Kona Grill (547-5552) the very next day. The waitress was less than a third the age of the server at the Bay City Diner, yet somehow managed to spoil me with twice her inattentiveness.

Here, in Summerlin's tony Boca Park shoppi... err, lifestyle center, a woman noshes with a small dog in her lap--a health code violation that would have had her escorted from any restaurant in town had she not been sporting brand name couture. Outside, a yellow Ferrari with a NIP TUK vanity plate is valet parked across from the vacant storefront of Fine Things Interiors, now slated to become the Hoochies clothing boutique. (For those of you just joining this party, Hoochies is slang for hooker, which has somehow morphed into the acceptable "slut," but only when reclaimed by women dressing like Paris on a Saturday night. Keep in mind that the Hard Rock's Pink Taco cantina, itself a hoochie heaven, reportedly faced resident opposition when considering a Summerlin branch. Faux Hookers : 1, Labia Nicknames: 0.)

Lunch wandered on (as did the waitress), and when the check came, the food was about twice the cost yet half as satisfying as my tuna salad on sourdough the day before. Just then, the Ferrari's quad-cam yelped as it approached 9,000 RPM--in the parking lot. The lunch crowd giggled, and it was satisfying to learn that shiny shirts aren't welcome here, either. My faith in humanity restored, I returned to Las Vegas.

You Go here

Go to First Friday this week (March 4; 678-6278; see page 43), enjoy the warming weather before you complain that it's too hot, and dance your (not so slutty) ass off at the Get Back afterparty at the Ice House Lounge...Also downtown, Bruce Willis and the Accelerators play the Golden Nugget Ballroom Friday and Saturday (March 4-5; 385-7111), and Streetlight Manifesto, Voodoo Glow Skulls, MU330, Deadball 38 and Big D & The Table Kids rock an all-ages show at Jillian's on Sunday (March 6; 759-0450)...At the House of Blues on Friday, '80s New Wavers The Fixx are joined by local synth-wave trio Sweetest Infection (March 4), while on Saturday, political comedian Bill Maher fills the House with subversion (March 5; 632-7600)...Also this weekend, tickets go on sale for the Hard Rock Hotel's 10th Anniversary Weekend, featuring Nine Inch Nails (with a new album), Bon Jovi and Coldplay. Call 693-5000. Ten years and another generation comes of age in Vegas; when will the madness end?

Native Las Vegan James P. Reza gets around, but don't call him a hoochie. E-mail the author at jpreza@cox.net.