Las Vegas Race and Sports Books: Come back, Bugsy Siegel

I miss the Mob.

When the original gangsters were running Las Vegas, the Race and Sports books were a great place to be. Free drinks, cheap cigars and open betting windows reigned. A man could really relax while losing his money.

Even when Sin City got rid of the mob and replaced them with another bunch of wise guys called Corporations, the sports books were left untouched. The new crooks looked more towards adding adding arcades and amusement parks in an effort to turn The Rat Pack’s old haunts into Rug Rat heaven.

By the early 90′s, the plan looked to be paying off as Las Vegas became the 2^nd most popular domestic vacation spot behind Disney World.  During that period, the kids played in their sandboxes while the ever-exploding popularity  of gambling  gave even the newest daddies plenty of free time to spend in their own smoke-filled, booze-happy sandbox called a Race and Sports Book.

But just as the country began worrying about Y2K, the corporations realized that tourists with kids gambled way less than those who didn’t bring the little ones.  Parents weren’t at the tables if they were going down the slides at the  “Wet-n-Wild” water park.  So the kid’s attractions were shut down faster than LeBron James in the 4^th quarter of a playoff game. No one cried when the corporations cut out the kid stuff in order to regain gambling profits. But then they started messing with the adult playgrounds. Man, where’s Mickey Cohen when you need him?

In response to the 2008 recession, the corporations added the word layoffs and technology to the Vegas lexicon. Every nook and cranny of a casino was under scrutiny. A new list of Vegas ideals, such as cost-cutting, clean air, and nickel-and-diming customers in order to add more nickels and dimes to corporate profits, took over.

You see, the better half and I have been going to Vegas for many years. The wife plays the slots; I spend my time betting at the race and sports books. I can attest there was a time that once you sat down in a book, even at the poor excuse for one at the New York New York hotel book, a cocktail waitress was only minutes away. The guy at the window would hand me a free racing form and I could light up the expensive cigars I buy just for these trips. The Flamingo, the hotel Bugsy built,  actually had a guy handicapping the races for everyone so he could educate us as to how to lose money.  I used each trip as an escape from the clocks and bosses that controlled me.  Then like magician Criss Angel does in his overrated Vegas act, the new crooks made a lot of things disappear.

I remember being in the Excalibur race book about a year ago when the waitress came by and I tossed out my usual order of the cheapest Amaretto poured over four ounces of ice in a five ounce glass.   Then she spoke in what I thought was a foreign tongue.  “Do you have a drink ticket?” the MILF queried. I told her I must have missed the admission window on the way in. It turns out the guy at the betting window didn’t give me a ticket. So I innocently asked the man what it took to get a precious ticket for a .25 drink. After all, I thought my $2 across the board bet on a horse named after the girl I had my first wet dream about qualified me.  That was when I found out the times were a changin’.

Nowadays, in some casinos, it takes a minimum $100 bet on sports and $20 bet on a race to get a drink. The Monte Carlo even has a sign displayed to that effect lest anyone expects to suck down a Heineken while the Washington Wizards lose to the University of Connecticut women’s team. You can’t fantasize about going home with the waitress because they are already home…collecting unemployment. The free drink is as strange an idea as paying for music is to a teenager.  And the disappearing service and freebies are only half the story; the other half is the Cantor.

No, I’m not talking about the guy who sings in a synagogue. I’m talking about yet another corporation, Cantor Gaming. They have opened Race and Sports books in several hotels with the sole idea of making sure you don’t sit in them. Their modus operandi is simple: Create smaller,  hi-tech, no-need-for-humans, non-smoking sports books. Need to count your cash before deciding on a betting budget? Why count when you can open an on-line account. Want to place a bet on the long shot running in the sixth at Prairie Meadows?  No need to go to a window, do it on a touch screen console. Want to light up that $22 Cohiba cigar? Sorry, no smoking lest you ruin the touch screen mechanism. As The Pretenders once lamented, my city is gone.

The fun and human interaction has been taken away faster than a sheriff in a city in Mexico. Cantor believes you can use their screens or even your own phone  to do anything you used to do in a sports book. The new crooks must love it – cut labor while their good customers are playing both the horses AND roulette at the same time. It’s enough to make me shed Vernon Davis size tears.

Sure, there are a few places that are still pristine. Bally’s may place sports bettors in the basement but at least their sports book is still one of the biggest. The off-the-strip Southpoint still has a waitress by your side if she sees you sitting more than 5 minutes. But I imagine their days are numbered also. I mean pretty soon the only human interaction I’ll get in Vegas is from my wife. Some escape, huh?

On my most recent trip,  I popped into the Tropicana casino. I met a guy who worked there when the mobsters still walked the floors. He remembered meeting Lucille Ball and helping to clear the path for Frank Sinatra. He smiled as he told me how the mob didn’t lay employees off and loyalty was rewarded. Free food, drinks and cigars were easily rolled out to the SRO crowds in the racing book while they watched Secretariat run. He missed the times when the hotels thought that creating a fun, friendly, and relaxing atmosphere was the secret that kept you betting at their establishment.

So as I pull out my $10 for a shot of  Jagermeister while wondering if I can touch a screen to make sure I place a $10 bet in the 7^th race and not a  a $7 bet in the 10^th,  I think I know exactly how he feels.