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C’est Las Vegas

To cut to the chase: The Stardust hotel tower came down on schedule last night–2:35 a.m. PDT by my watch. The demolition crew did its job well and the 32 stories of concrete and steel folded into itself and plunged to the desert floor. The blasts startled and deafened; the collapse roared; the ground shook when all that mass slammed into the ground. And the throng, such as it was–a smattering of Stardust fans and former employees scattered among a sparse, subdued crowd that had wandered up the Strip for the night’s best free show–scurried toward the bright lights nearby to get away from a roiling cloud of concrete dust that enveloped the neighborhood. In the quick exodus, I actually heard one person say, “It’s like 9/11.”

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Drive-by, Walk-by

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I landed here about 3:30, got a car at about 4, and drove in very slow traffic up The Strip to see what, if anything, was going on at the Stardust. Nothing was visible from the street, anyway, though I’m sure the demolition crews and pyrotechnics and lighting technicians were busy. This is the Stardust–the shell of the 32-story built in 1991 and a satellite nine-story tower at the right–shot from the car across Las Vegas Boulevard at about 5 p.m. I checked into my hotel, the Platinum, on Flamingo, then walked up the Strip to try to get pictures of the Stardust before sunset. I didn’t make it, but the lighting along the street was wonderful and it turned out to be an advantage to show up while it was getting dark. The lighting crew was experimenting with projecting different colors on the tower. Most passers-by didn’t seem to pay much attention, but some were taking pictures. I asked one woman in a strip mall parking lot whether she was going to watch the show after midnight, and she said she and her husband had, by coincidence, gotten a room in the Riviera with a view across the to the Stardust site. Some luck. I expect the streets will be packed by 2 a.m. The tower is supposed to come down, after four minutes of fireworks and other special effects, at 2:35.

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Bay Area Travel Notes

I may have established the minimum leeway one can leave home from Berkeley, take BART to the airport, and still get on one’s reserved flight.

I had a 2 p.m. flight to Las Vegas. I planned to leave home at 11:30, figuring it might take an hour and a half to get to the airport on BART. That timing would have put me at the airport an hour ahead of time. Through one thing and another, I didn’t actually get out of the house until 12:05 p.m. The BART station is about a six- or seven-minute walk, so I was probably there about 12:12. The train to San Francisco arrived at about 12:21. I grabbed a copy of the timetable and saw that the airport train I needed to transfer to wouldn’t arrive at SFO until 1:31. Gee, that would be cutting it close, but there was nothing to do but take the ride and hope there wasn’t a gigantic security backup. The trains were on time, and I actually got off BART at the airport at 1:30. I waited a couple minutes for the shuttle train to the terminal. There was no line at the security checkpoint; the only delay was the usual absurdity: jacket off, shoes off, laptop out of my bag and in a separate tray; in all, I had to to put four separate pieces onto the X-ray conveyor. The TSA guy opened my small suitcase to confiscate my toothpaste, but otherwise I made it through the check quickly. The gate was very close to the checkpoint, and I made it on board at 1:48. Closer than I would have liked, but all’s well that ends well.

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More Stardust Memories

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As part of my relentless pursuit of information on the fabulous Stardust Motel in Redding, I noticed a news development in Las Vegas: the Stardust, once a mobster-run gambling palace whose sordid history served as the model for Martin Scorsese’s “Casino,” is about to be demolished. Or to be more precise: demolition crews have been tearing down the satellite buildings around the 63-acre site since the joint closed last November 1. The remaining job consists of imploding a 32-story hotel tower in the center of the site. Although Boyd Gaming, the company that took over the property from its mob owners in the early 1980s, won’t say when the tower will come down, bloggers–notably Joel Rosales of the excellent Leaving Las Vegas (his page documenting the Stardust demo is here) and freelance reporter Steve Friess–have pinned down the date and time as sometime between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. on March 13; in other words, after midnight tonight. Long story made short, I’m flying down there this afternoon to do a freelance story on the event.

At this point, large-scale hotel demolitions are as much a part of the Las Vegas scene as the construction cranes that grow out of the rubble. According to one detailed list, at Las Vegas Today and Tomorrow, the Stardust is the city’s 14th major structure brought down since the first headline event, the implosion of the Dunes in 1993.

One of the striking aspects in the little bit of research I’ve done on the Stardust and the process of clearing the Strip of older buildings to put up ever more spectacular new complexes is the nostalgia projected onto the demolition events and the shocking recency of the structures casino owners are getting rid of. Sure, Las Vegas hotels are little more than barracks for the gambling masses; owners don’t want to make the rooms too nice for most visitors because that might cut into the time people spend down at the slots. And yes, the hotel facilities are used hard by the tens of millions of vacationers and convention-goers who show up every year; so everything needs to be made over just to get people in the door. Still, the Stardust tower that’s supposed to fall tonight is all of 16 years old. What’s to feel sad about?

The nostalgia doesn’t attach to that building, naturally. It attaches to the history, which stretches all the way back to the late ’50s: the Paleozoic Era in Vegas terms. People remember the shows (the Stardust’s Lido is reputed to have offered Vegas’s first topless revue), the real-life mobsters and celebrities, Siegfried and Roy, Wayne Newton, the cheap rooms and cheap eats, the jackpots, the decades that many employees stayed to serve the throngs. The Stardust hotel is far from the youngest building flattened and scraped off the desert floor to make way for something new: As part of the process of redeveloping the Desert Inn site for a complex of new resorts, Steve Wynn had a seven-year-old hotel tower dynamited a few years back. The economics of the place–land going at $30 million an acre and owners and investors chasing a crowd of visitors willing to spend more and more for their Vegas excursions–make knocking down a not-so-old building to put up something new and breathtaking an easy choice.

Anyway. The street in front of the Stardust. That’s where I’ll be tonight. Check out a scoop from the Steve Friess site: The detailed program for the sendoff fireworks show (it’s an eight-page PDF document, fyi).

[Image from: TypeMuseum]

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Mixed Marriage

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I’ve just started to scan in some pictures from a trip Dad and I took in September 2004. From Chicago, we went down to Cairo, crossed the Mississippi, then took a ferry from Dorena, Missouri, back to Hickman, Kentucky. One of the stops on our itinerary was the cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois, about 50 miles northeast of St. Louis, where labor saint “Mother” Mary Jones is buried. My older son Eamon and I had happened across the spot on our way back to California a few months earlier. When we saw the informational sign on southbound Interstate 55–“Mother Jones Monument”–I was surprised. What was she doing out here, in the middle of nowhere? But the sign at the gate of a graveyard less than a mile from town and the interstate explained her presence: “Union Miners Cemetery,” it read. And on the arch above the gate, the legend was: “Resting Place of Good Union People.” You don’t know or tend to forget if you’re not from the area that this part of Illinois has a long coal-mining history and one marked by violence against union organizers and members. So: she’s there among the people she fought for. I’ve got some pictures I’ll scan in and post eventually.

While we were there, Dad and I strolled through the cemetery and another one just across the road. It was at the latter that we came across the headstone above. That south-central part of Illinois is divided between Cubs and Cardinals fans. Here’s a case where those bitter differences were put aside for a lifetime partnership (I note that the Cards’ fan lived to age 90; his Cubs’ fan wife would have been 80 when this picture was taken.

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When It Was Fun to Fly

Salon’s weekly “Ask the Pilot” column recalls the days when lots of people actually looked forward to getting on an airliner (me–I still like flying, even though the whole experience around it has become creepy and unpleasant):

“… [T]ry to imagine the following: You wake up early for the 45-minute subway ride to Logan International Airport in Boston. The shuttle bus brings you to Terminal C, where you stand in line to be frisked and X-rayed before reaching an overcrowded departure lounge. Half an hour later your flight pushes back, languishes in a taxiway queue for several minutes, then finally takes off. So far this is nothing exceptional, but here’s the twist: The plane’s scheduled destination is, well, Boston. The jet never climbs to more than 10,000 feet. It makes a lazy circuit above the North Shore coastline, swings eastward toward Cape Cod, then circles west in the direction of Logan. Fifteen minutes later, the landing gear clunks into place, and just like that you’re back where you started. You disembark, with smiles and handshakes all around, head for the shuttle bus, and take the subway home again.”

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Stardust Memories

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Above, the fabulous Stardust Motel in Redding, California. Well, the sign is fabulous, and that’s about all of the motel you can see in this picture. We passed by Friday afternoon, northbound to Eugene, and stopped across the street for some $3-a-gallon gas. We made the same stop, which also involved a Starbucks on an adjacent corner, on the way back south Sunday night. The motel didn’t look like it was open, and the sign was unlit.

Below, the humbler Stardust Motel of Curtin, Oregon, just off Interstate 5 near Drain. Kate spotted a sign for it on the way north, but it was after dark and we were in a hurry and didn’t stop. Returning home, we looked out for it and pulled off the highway, thinking that we’re starting a collection of Stardust Motel photos. This place was definitely open; the sign in the office window says so.

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Big V

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From atop Skinner’s Butte in the middle of Eugene, looking south across downtown. Kate and I drove up Friday to spend today with Thom–his 20th birthday. Amazingly, I don’t think we once went into dramatic retelling of “the night you were born” stories. Instead, we spent most of the daylight hours outside. It’s been rainy up here lately. We heard a woman at one of the drive-up coffee stands on Franklin Boulevard say she woke up, saw the sun, and thought it was a UFO. The sunshine and warmth lasted all day, and besides Skinner’s Butte (named after the city’s founder, Eugene Skinner), we walked along the Willamette, saw a bald eagle hunting the river, and took a short hike up a high ridge south of town. A great day for us. Too bad we don’t have more time up here–we need to head back south tomorrow. It’s always a fun trip, though.

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Stay-at-Home Blogger

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Monday night. Kate drove up to Eugene today. She’s at Thom’s house tonight. Scout and I are staying home. Scout to be Scout–a 10-hour drive is not a dog’s best friend, and Thom’s lease says no pets. Me, to take care of some work and shop and cook and otherwise get ready for Thanksgiving. I envied Kate the trip up to Oregon; it’s a long drive, but I like the way the route unrolls. But she’s off all week and it made more sense for her to go. I did the next best thing to driving up there; Before she left, I sat down and drew a map of the route and the key attractions: exits she needed to take, the locations of key towns, rest stops, features like Starbucks, In ‘n’ Out Burger (America’s favorite evangelical grilled-meat joint), the general characteristics of the road like the winding section once you get into the mountains north of Redding and the five passes you cross once you’re in Oregon. Drawing the map made me realize just how many times I’ve been over that road; I can picture so much of it, including beautiful Hilt, the very last town on your way north out of California.

Tonight: A spinning class at the gym. Dinner (some pesto spaghetti left over from the other night). A long walk with The Dog. A little Monday Night Football. An episode of “The Wire,” which, if I were to write about such things, I’d praise. And now this, and then bed.

(The picture? From late last week. An odd, persistent overcast that broke just enough at sunset to cast a striking light on the bay while I was out with The Dog (on right) at Chavez Park. That’s Alcatraz in the left distance, Thus concludes this November 20, 2006, slice of life.)

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Day Trip

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We went out today to investigate Sand Creek Road, a squiggle on the map that runs from the upper end of the Capay Valley east and north across the last ridges of the coastal mountain ranges, finally dropping into the Sacramento Valley near a little farm and ranch town called Arbuckle. I was curious to see if the road was paved all the way; I was pretty sure it wasn’t, and I was right. On the right kind of bike–one with big tires that could handle the gravel and rocks and dirt and stream crossings and washboard–crossing from the Capay to the Sacramento side would be a memorable ride.

As it was, it made a memorable drive: We took Interstate 80 to Vacaville, then hit I-505 going north and got off at Putah Creek Road just outside Winters. From there, north on the Yolo County farm roads until we hit Highway 16. Then into the Capay Valley, past the gigantic Indian casino–a little slice of Vegas right in the middle of one of the state’s most beautiful landscapes–then up to the village of Rumsey, where you turn off at a sign that says Road 41, cross a substantial bridge, and Immediately find yourself on a one-lane road that goes from asphalt to dirt after the first mile.

You climb through chapparal and scrub pine to the top of a ridge that gives a sweeping view of the Capay country. Then you cross into what I’d describe as a sort of live oak plateau, cross a divide, and parallel a creek (Sand Creek, I guess) that descends into the Sacramento Valley. There are signs of ranching, and lots of hunting club signs telling you to keep off the land on either side of the road. Eventually you pass a couple of ranches, find the pavement again, and drop to the end of road, up a long, gradual slope east of Arbuckle.

After a quick turn through town, we stayed on county roads all the way back to Winters–paralleling I-5 for a while, then cutting back through the hills west and south of Dunnigan on ranch and farm roads. Dinner was at In ‘n’ Out Burger in Vacaville, then home on I-80. (The pictures: They’re here.)

Arbuckle Hotel Bar

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