I had something fairly interesting to say. Then I saw the sign.
With some observations of a tiny Taos, N.M., casino in my notebook next to jottings about the future of anti-money laundering in the casino business, and thoughts after reading a half-century-old article from The Atlantic about the end of the casino business, I always have column subjects ruminating.
The industry has no shortage of veteran journalists covering breaking news and the really important topics that come up during a 24-hour news cycle. The business end of the gaming business is as fast-moving and complex as any industry in America. And with a former Atlantic City casino king in the White House, its licensees are in the spotlight as never before.
So, there’s a lot to write about here in the present. Then I saw the sign and found myself skipping and tripping into the past.
On my Twitter feed is a delightful little contributor called @HistoryNevada, which as you might have guessed is devoted to mots about historical dates in Silver State history. For natives like me, and all those who love the place, it’s informative and a lot of fun.
That’s where I saw the photo taken on the day the Sands closed. The tweet read, “After almost 44 years, the Sands Hotel Casino on the Las Vegas Strip officially closed on June 30, 1996. The site is now occupied by the Venetian Resort.”
Simple enough, right? But the photo included the Sands sign in its iconic script, and I was immediately transported back to high school. It was homecoming night in the disco 1970s. I was a sophomore without a single clue. I scraped together enough money to rent a tux and looked like a second-string Pip in a powder-blue suit with a bow tie. My hair made me look more like a mad scientist than a macho man.
And the platform shoes. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment: Make an uncoordinated kid with Size 13 feet dance the hustle in three-inch heels.
My first girlfriend was dreamy in her flowing greenish dress bereft of a single natural fiber. Her eyes twinkled behind new glasses that made her look extremely sophisticated for a 16-year-old. I knew it was true love forever, and that we’d be married one day in the near future.
Standing in the kitchen, we smiled for her mother’s camera, then made our way to the Clark High School homecoming dance, where I was sure to be intimidated by the far more sophisticated seniors.
Thanks to her friends, dinner at the Sands was comped. I didn’t understand the custom well, but I knew the term meant I didn’t have to pay for dinner but only had to cough up the tip.
I’ll never forget the feeling pulling up to the Sands in my ’68 Toyota Corona and seeing that sign and feeling all the magic of the night. The people were beautiful.
I’d like to say we ate steak and lobster and drank champagne in the Regency Room, but I’m pretty sure it was burgers in the Garden Room coffee shop. No matter. The food was wonderful, simply the best, and we were treated like paying adults instead of kids on a comp slip.
The reverie eventually ended, but that first feel of adulthood will always be with me. And the Sands sign, so simple and yet so exotic, is indelibly linked to that experience.
The best of Las Vegas is like that for generations of visitors. It’s just one reason it’s essential to respect the iconography of the place. Preserving the famous Las Vegas neon signs is a big part of that, but so is the work of UNLV’s Special Collections program. It’s also a reason to create a museum of Las Vegas entertainment, one that appreciates the fact for millions the place is a memory machine that generates a sense of nostalgia for the masses.
And the girl? We never did get married. She’s still a beauty – and a grandmother. More than a half century has passed. If I disco now, it takes three days to recover.
But we’ll always have that night at the Sands, kids on the edge of adulthood and feeling the beat.
Contact John L. Smith at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.
