Question of the Day - 16 March 2018

You're referring to the Holy Cow Casino & Brewery, which sat on the northeast corner of Sahara Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard, now occupied by a Walgreens. It was several blocks south of the Stratosphere, on the opposite side of the street.

As to “unusual rituals,” we never saw any unholy acts performed in the Holy Cow, nor have found any evidence thereof. But the Holy Cow has an interesting, if ultimately sad, history.

You couldn’t miss it. The Holy Cow was a squat, two-story, oblong building surmounted by a giant, sunglasses-wearing, 3-D Holstein just across the street from the Sahara Hotel-Casino (now SLS). It occupies a significant place in Las Vegas history, because Nevada law prohibited breweries until Holy Cow owner Tom “Big Dog” Wiesner persuaded the state legislature to change its mind in 1993, paving the way for many casino-based brewpubs to follow. But that wasn’t beginning of the story.

What we now think of — if at all — as the Holy Cow opened in 1955 as Foxy’s Deli, named after founder Abe Fox, which did business for 20 years, helped no doubt by its proximity to the Sahara, as well as for its practice of importing fresh food from Los Angeles every day. Shecky Greene, Liberace, Wayne Newton, Ann-Margret, and Don Rickles were regulars. Even more importantly, it made history by being the first integrated restaurant on the Strip. 

From 1976 to 1988, it was Foxy's Firehouse.

Tom Wiesner entered the picture in 1992, buying the defunct Foxy’s, using the proceeds from selling the Marina Hotel (now MGM Grand’s West Wing), and reopening it as the Holy Cow. In 1996, he announced plans to rebrand it as the Chicago-Chicago Casino, incorporating a Big Dog’s Chop House restaurant (Big Dog’s was the corporate name for Wiesner’s network of pubs), but this never came to fruition. 

When Las Vegas tourism fell off in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Holy Cow was collateral damage, closing to the public in 2002. Indicative of the climate was the taste-impaired tourist who told a reporter, “Does it affect me? Not as long as there’s stores here still selling Bud Light.” Its signature heifer now decorates the Longstreet Inn & Casino in Amargosa Valley. 

During its golden era, the Holy Cow drew a favorable notice from beer critic Tom Ciccateri, who called it “a welcome refuge from this city’s non-stop neon and slot machine bells … One might almost forget that this cozy bar was in the heart of Las Vegas were it not for the distant sounds of slot machines paying off and the fact that Elvis was seen getting drinks at the bar.” He noted that Las Vegas’ famously hard water “requires a carbon filtration step, but no other adjustments … Prices were reasonable and serving sizes ran from small to large,” including a pumpkin ale that required 500 pounds of pumpkin to make. (It was quite tasty, too, and packed a punch.) 

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Holy Cow won “a gold medal in 1993 for Holy Cow's classic English pale ale, a 1994 bronze for red ale, and another bronze for Black Lab stout in 1996” at the Great American Beer Festival. 

After its brewery days ended, the shuttered Holy Cow moved down in the world, becoming office space for timeshare projects during the chimerical condo boom. First came Australia’s Victor Altomare and his (never-built) Summit, a 73-story, 940-unit, no-equity, pipe dream. “A group, a conglomerate, is working on this project,” Altomare partner Joseph Di Mauro said. “The group has vast experience. ... We don’t really want to disclose who’s involved in this at this time, but eventually we will.”

And eventually they did: It turned out to be Ivana Trump. 

The project was eventually renamed Ivana Las Vegas, but that didn’t translate into timeshare sales (which were supposed to finance the project). Like so many planned Vegas condo towers, it was just vaporware. 

Arizona developer Steven Johnson bought the Holy Cow in 2007, paying $50 million an acre (a record for the Strip), though he didn't demolish it until 2012. His early plans called for a hotel-casino to be built atop his two-story Walgreen's, but that didn't pan out.

Now the Holy Cow only lives as a fond memory of those who raised a glass of designer suds within its walls.