Las Vegas
As the Uber driver takes me across one of the many bridges leading away from the strip, I notice the sierras covered in a patchwork of sunlight and shade built by the quilt of the overcast day. The clouds animate the atmospheric duvet with their speed. Vegas isn’t all that bad outside of the strip. It’s quiet and moves like a small town.The city isn’t so much in a valley as much as it is nestled by mountains. Watching the range, I manage to reach a clear-minded state often sought through meditation.
“So what’s got you up so early?” the driver asks, jarring me out of my rumination.
“I’m looking for a place to drink for cheap.” I say.
I don’t know when it happened, but Las Vegas became expensive. About a decade ago, I could rollick with boys in bars downtown, or otherwise away from the strip and do it all for almost nothing. One thing held true: never buy anything on the strip if you want to save money. No food, no drinks—including water—no replacement cables, no nothing.
That ethos may extend to the entire city since my last visit. My recent trip took me to at least 7 bars, some at or near my strip-based hotel, others in locals-only territory. The prices have soared since the days of my youth. Las Vegas was one of the few bastions in the US that could be counted on for a cheap good time. It could be that I’m misremembering it.
As I write this, I’m off-strip in a place that I’d readily go to if I were home. A dark, gross dive bar filled with people who aren’t working at 8:00 in the morning on a Friday. There aren’t tourists here, not that I can tell anyway. These are old locals. People that should be either retired, or close to it. They complain about their lives and smoke as many cigarettes as humanly possible while sipping whatever shooter they ordered, being sure to chase every draw with a little water.
The bartender is an old man bewildered by every order and question put to him as if it’s a surprise that anyone is talking to him. As I look around the bar, he’s poured himself a shot of whiskey, carefully measured, and put it in his mug. He notices me notice him, he places his finger over his lips in a grandfatherly way, and sushes. He walks away to douse the liquor with coffee.
The bartender comes back to explain he’s been here since midnight and he’s covering for the person who couldn’t be here. I ask him if he’s going to be leaving soon. No, he isn’t. He’s covering for the person who called out this morning, not last night. He’ll be here until noon. He wanted something that could make the day faster — an Irish coffee.
This bar, like many in the city, has video gambling machines in them so you can chase one vice with another. This dive has a multi-game cabinet embedded in the bar. I won’t touch it. Winning is fun. But like every other gambler, I lose a lot. Nothing makes me more upset than repeatedly losing.
Vegas is not the place for me. I don’t like gambling. I don’t care to go to shows (not that I’ve tried). Two of the biggest sports that exist here are MMA and football—two things that I hate more than gambling, but for moral reasons. Going to Vegas is billed as a crazy time, but it’s only as crazy as you can make it. The people I normally come with make it as interesting as possible. I love my friends and I love getting wild with them.
The bartender has come back. He’s asked me to help him identify which DirectTV channel the music is playing from in the bar. Since our last meeting, he’s had two shots—more than a man his age should have in such a short amount of time. The bartender thought I was playing music from the jukebox app. He has Shazam, the music identifying app, on his phone and he uses it to find the song and track down the channel the music’s playing from. He smiles when I find the channel, and for the first time, I notice he’s missing his two front teeth.
At this bar, all wells cost $4.50. The same drink at the hotel I’m in will run me $12. I’m coming out on top. I can drink for cheap here, but I don’t like the atmosphere. Especially because I leave smelling like cigarettes, Money House Blessing, and hopelessness. Is the extra 62.5% savings worth not smelling like shit? I don’t know if that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
The next stop for the evening is an off-strip karaoke bar. I want to say it’s in ChinaTown, but the area is more Pan-Asian than Chinese. This place in particular is a Filipino bar. I hang around outside, taken aback by the sheer number of massage parlors open 24/7 in the strip mall. I snap a few pictures, looking more like a private dick looking for cheaters than a dumb tourist. One place in particular is offering table showers. “Is something going on?” I wonder, realizing the number of folks sitting in their cars in the lot. Either they’re the feds or just want to make sure they aren’t seen going inside.
As I wrap up my photography spree, I see two of my party come outside. One of them, Tammy, is very upset and the other, Tim, is trying to calm her down. She tells me the place stinks and she doesn’t want to eat any food there. Tim goes back inside to chat with the rest of the gang. To take Tammy’s mind off of the place, I do a mini-shoot with her making sure to effect the same obnoxious call outs the cliched fashion photographer does. I sound more akin to Austin Powers than Annie Lebowitz. An Uber arrives and Tim and Tammy leave.
When I enter the bar, the first thing I notice is Tammy undersold the stench. It smells like literal shit in there — like someone popped open the septic tank to like the aromatics bloom in the building, to let the mixture breathe so it could fully mature. As I’m walking to the table, one of the proprietors is lighting incense to try to diffuse the stink for the obvious first timers. It doesn’t help much. Now it smells like shit and spices. Dev, the cat with us who speaks the most Tagalog, and is much more patient and forgiving than the rest of us, convinces us to stay despite the head-spinning foulness in the air. He does this by ordering a bunch of food and beer before anyone else can get it in their mind to leave.
I think to myself: given the, uh, ambiance in the building, and its distance from the strip, there’s no fucking way it’s expensive to drink here. I am incredibly wrong. For a well rum and coke, it’s $11. Which is obscene. My buddy pays a whole ass $18 for a 7 and 7. Sometimes it’s hard to know if you’re being taken for a ride because you’re a tourist, or if a place is truly expensive. My vibes are fucked as soon as I see my bar tab.
The food is served family style. It is enough to feed four or more in some cases. To their credit, the food is pretty good. It smells good, too, but isn’t enough to overtake the ever-present “drainage problem” they claim to have. The food is less expensive than the liquor, which sounds backwards to me. Karaoke is far less fun when I’m sober and I’m not incredibly interested in eating for obvious reasons. This place is not for me.
I’m an early riser and a drunk. In my infinite up-too-early boredom, I scour my text messages for any recently delivered recommendations from the folks I know in Las Vegas, or who are here frequently enough to know the best (cheapest) spots. A Hail Mary came from one of my billiards teammates: Double Down Saloon. He described it as a punk bar near the strip.
I hail a rideshare and head out. To this point, all of my assumptions about drinking in Vegas have been challenged. I don’t know what to expect, so I abandon all expectations. I just want to be surprised. When we arrive, the Uber driver shared her concerns, “are you sure you know where you’re going?” I tell her I do, despite the opposite being true.
A big man with a white beard and a shirt that says “staff” on the back is sitting outside when I hop out of the car. I approach one of the two doors on the east side of the building and begin to pull it open. He stops me, “what are you looking for?” I pause, confused. The steady trickle from the AC unit’s drainage pipe fills the silence. I tell him the name of the bar. He gestures toward the door about 10 feet to the left, “that’s the entrance you want.”
My eyes take a while to adjust after I enter. It’s a bright morning and the room is barely lit by the red light bathing the room, a couple of TVs playing old videos, the light from the jukebox (which actually plays CDs), and the light above the solitary pool table and bathrooms. Just like almost every bar I’ve been in, this one has the same video gambling machines embedded in the bar. The place doesn’t smell as bad as the karaoke bar.Not much could, I think. The only thing that stinks are the cigarettes the group at the pool table chain smoke as they play. Though, I have a feeling the building has the aroma from past packs smoked embedded in its bones.
When I can see again, I peer around the bar. Almost every wall is covered in stickers with the exception of two spots: the mural behind the stage of the bar’s motto “SHUT UP AND DRINK,” a message I can truly get behind, and a big mirror next to the bar. Two other things catch my eye: first, there’s a specialty house drink called “Ass Juice” that runs for 4.50 a pour. I’m not sure what is in the Ass Juice, but I order it. The drink and price are better than whatever trite bullshit I’d been drinking to that point the entire weekend. Second, a big sign that says, “All drinks $3 between 5am and 5pm.” I’m certainly here between those times. I find myself curious about the clientele that show up at this bar most days and times. The place is 24/7 after all.
I’ve ended up in the ideal place for drinking. A dark, cold place with drinks at a cost that I won’t notice. I also don’t think I’ll be smelling like the place when I leave. It even has its own mystery drink, Ass Juice. The bartender tells me that "there's no set recipe. It's kind of like jungle juice, though." He’s right. It’s very fruity and incredibly strong. I house about 8 of them before heading back to the hotel for a pre-noon siesta. I’m adding the bar to my list of permanent places to go every time I’m in Las Vegas.