Tourist attractions just haven’t been clicking for the New Tropicana Las Vegas. But it’s trying again with “The JFK Exhibition,” announced today. Although John F. Kennedy‘s connections to Las Vegas were part of the seamy underside of Camelot, that only makes the intersection of content and format the more apt. For all we know, the hit on JFK could have emanated from a Vegas boardroom in the heyday of Meyer Lansky.
It’s hard not to think first of Kennedy’s assassination when one of the centerpieces of the exhibit, curated by JFK obsessive Jim Warlick, is a 70-foot Air Force One fuselage, tricked out as it would have been seen on Nov. 22, 1963. (Warlick has a whole museum of this stuff in Branson, Missouri.) For car aficionados, there will be two JFK limousines, along with sundry personal belongings of JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy. Properly marketed, this ought to draw foot traffic … after all, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition has become a permanent fixture of Luxor without being exceptional. But you’d have thought the Trop couldn’t miss with Dancing with the Stars either.
* Although there are four casinos in the Philadelphia area, only SugarHouse is within city limits. So when it opens its temporary poker room, it will be the 
first time that legalized poker has come to the City of Brotherly Love, starting today, bringing with it 100 jobs. (A permanent poker room will debut in 2015.) It’s part of a larger, $164 million buildout of SugarHouse. The sweet part for city officials is the $1.8 million in new taxes they stand to collect. As for the casino, General Manager Wendy Hamilton says, “There’s not a lot of growth in the gaming market. So, to compete, we need to be a more amenity-rich experience, giving guests a more well-rounded experience and more things to do.”
* Horseshoe Casino Cleveland (pictured) recently experienced the equivalent of someone shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. A player — we’ll call him Mr. X — was on the wrong end of a losing streak. To get even with the casino, he 
allegedly told employees that Mrs. X was a nurse who’d just returned from Africa carrying the … you guessed it … Ebola virus. Kudos to the patron who got Mr. X’s license plate number (police arrested him at home) and to Horseshoe for taking the precaution of closing the table at which Mr. X had been playing. Mr. X is still in custody and likely to face indictment for inducing panic. Serves him right.
* Not Dead Yet Dept.: The former KOA campground at Circus Circus will reopen in a smaller scale. According to our What’s News page, “The re-imagined RV park will feature 60- to 80-foot pull-throughs with options for grass, patios, and outdoor furniture. It will continue to offer complimentary Wi-Fi [Who knew?], plus pool and laundry facilities.” The ex-KOA will still make a strange bedfellow with new neighbor Rock in Rio but it’s nice to see that it’s not going out of existence.
* Congratulations to the author of Vital Vegas for being recently ushered into the great state of Matrimony by ex-mayor Oscar Goodman. The nuptials were further notable for being held at the Mob Museum. However, Vital Vegas made one oversight, in our opinion, by not pimping John L. Smith‘s Of Rats and Men. Mission acccomplished.
