{"id":3071,"date":"2010-05-06T14:14:38","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T22:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=3071"},"modified":"2019-02-08T09:52:09","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T17:52:09","slug":"blasts-from-the-past-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/blasts-from-the-past-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Blasts from the past"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Wynn<\/strong>‘s been taking himself a mite too seriously of late, which makes me wonder whatever happened to this<\/em> guy? At least the “hair helmet” look is a thing of the past. Sadly, so too is the Golden Nugget Atlantic City<\/strong>, which passed through many hands (including umpteen permutations of Hilton Gaming<\/strong> and, briefly, Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong>) before falling into the dumpster that is Colony Capital<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Colony CEO Tom Barrack<\/strong> (successor to James Packer<\/strong> as Gaming’s Worst Investor) bought the erstwhile Nugget for a song, got way the hell upside down on his mortgage and there’s a serious likelihood that the A.C. Hilton could be forfeited to its creditors, just as Barrack’s Resorts Atlantic City<\/strong> was. One of Wynn’s strengths is that he doesn’t go cruising on Memory Lane but you have to wonder if his recent visit to Atlantic City — where he kicked the tires at Revel<\/strong> — was tinged with a certain bitterness at how low his old Boardwalk property has fallen.<\/p>\n

(Thanks to Ian Sutton<\/strong> for the video clip.)<\/p>\n

The new Stupak?<\/strong> Ming vases and cowb0y-themed slots? Prof. David G. Schwartz<\/strong> takes a stroll through the “comfortably anarchic” Treasure Island and muses upon the personal idiosyncrasies that Phil Ruffin<\/strong> has brought to the place (yet another<\/em> Wynn legacy). Vegas needs an amiably eccentric casino owner and Ruffin bids fair to inherit the as-yet-unclaimed mantle of Bob Stupak<\/strong>. Like the quixotic Stupak<\/a>, Ruffin is an operator in a town increasingly overrun by bean counters and property speculators.<\/p>\n

(Schwartz, by the way, may be the most powerful journalist in town not named Jon Ralston<\/strong>. If the Las Vegas Business Press<\/em> doesn’t like it that he’s writing for the Las Vegas Weekly<\/em> or the latter sees his byline in rival Vegas Seven<\/em>, that’s just too bad. Writers with that degree of carte blanche<\/em> in Vegas are damn few and fortunate. Bravo, Dr. Schwartz!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Wynn‘s been taking himself a mite too seriously of late, which makes me wonder whatever happened to this guy? At least the “hair helmet” look is a thing of the past. Sadly, so too is the Golden Nugget Atlantic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,3,7,96,53,119,32,9,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3071"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23493,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions\/23493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}