In the current City Life, Lissa Townsend Rodgers visits a few of Las Vegas’ less publicized casinos, in search of $1 booze. The Gold Spike is lauded, provided your “goal is simply to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible as cheaply as possible,” and don’t mind the smelly/scary vibe that is uniquely the Spike’s.
While the in-house brew at Ellis Island is pronounced “fairly meh,” Rodgers follows with an impassioned ode to the casino’s weekend karaoke nights. On such occasions, Ellis Island “becomes a hotbed of guys in fedoras and girls in their Friday night miniskirts, cramming the tiny, low-ceilinged lounge for karaoke, cheering each other through parodically impassioned versions of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and meandering-pitch renditions of ‘Landslide.'” Still, I worry about the sense of fun of people whose idea of cutting loose is to sing the National Anthem.
Purty, yes. But good?
But Ellis Island comes off as a veritable Bellagio when contrasted with the Elardi family’s Casino Royale. Or “a casino that’s housed in a neon-trimmed faux-Victorian hideosity with a Denny’s sticking out the side,” as Rodgers describes it. Worse still are the margaritas, which she likens to a lime-flavored snow cone.
As long as we’re plugging our favorite local alt-weekly, I’d be remiss in not *cough* plugging *cough* my reviews of And When Did You Last See Your Father? (a must for Jim Broadbent fans) and two Criterion reissues of films by Louis Malle. If that’s your bag, as we used to say in the Seventies.
