On a scale of one to 10, we’d give it a two.
The thing is, the atmosphere you refer to was so alive and legendary that it would be like trying to reincarnate it whole. And in the end, the atmosphere is now so dead that the one feeble attempt to resurrect it was doomed to fail.
The glory days of Binion’s were the ‘50s and ‘60s, when Benny greeted all comers with a handshake, a drink, a meal, a story, and a square bet. To us, the symbol of those days was the million-dollar display -- a hundred gorgeous drool-worthy $10,000 bills encased in foot-thick glass.
Before the Horseshoe set up its own souvenir-photo operation in front of the display, decades later, Binion’s sold postcards of it for a dime, hundreds of thousands of them, for visitors to send to the folks back home who hadn’t ever seen a $10,000 bill, let alone a hundred of them. In addition, it was the most popular backdrop in Las Vegas at the time for taking a personal snapshot.
Well, shortly after the display went up, the Treasury Department went after the Horseshoe for illegal reproduction of the currency. Two T-men confiscated 150,000 postcards and combed the town for prints and negatives. Benny was merely amused. He foresaw a lifetime of busy work for the two agents: tracking down a million postcards; finding tens of thousands of people all over the country who’d taken photographs of it; and seizing scores of newsreels and TV-show tapes on which the display appeared. All it cost Benny was $15,000 in postcards.
Of course, Treasury had the last laugh, sending Benny to Leavenworth for three years for that old workhorse, federal income-tax evasion. He had to "sell" the hotel to his Texas oilman friend Joe W. Brown, who "held it together in a kind of deal" 'til Benny served his time and "bought it back." Photos of the million-dollar display from the incarceration years sport the logo, "Joe W. Brown’s Horseshoe."
It was that kind of atmosphere.
The Horseshoe had the $2 steak dinner. It had the jammingest blackjack tables, craps pit, and poker room in town; the most brutal security guards; a glass elevator to the rooftop steakhouse; the World Series of Poker. It booked the world’s biggest bets. And all the profits accrued to a single nuclear family, with a gangster father and four predictably wild children who couldn’t, ultimately, hold it together.
Binion’s died a protracted and painful death. The $2 steak went up, in increments, to $6. The free souvenir photos were discontinued. Then the million-dollar display itself was sold off for cash. One of the sons, Teddy, was murdered for his money. Casino-chip scandals. Morale problems. Legal problems. Bankruptcy problems.
Finally, Harrah’s bought Jack Binion’s Horseshoe casinos, all of them except Binion’s itself. Then it bought Binion’s from Jack’s sister, Becky Binion Behnen, solidifying its ownership of the Horseshoe brand and coming away with the World Series of Poker. After a year, Harrah’s short-term partner, MTR Gaming, a West Virginia company with two race tracks and one small casino in North Las Vegas, took over the operation.
But after the 10-year downhill slide of the joint, MTR had its work cut out. Some money, not much, was invested in the property. The snack bars, complete with the famous daily bean soup and fresh turkey sandwiches, were reopened (earning it our two rating). The carpet is being replaced and a fresh coat of paint is being applied. And they announced plans to hold a major televised poker tournament in 2006 (a momentary three rating). But Binion’s decimated its video poker pay schedules -- from 10/7 to 8/5 and from 9/6 to 6/5. That’s desperate.
Which might be part of why a rumor is going around town that MTR is looking to unload the joint. Atmosphere of old? Highly unlikely.
