Detour: The Fremont Street Experience
Sampling luxury accommodations and scruffy street life in downtown Las Vegas
For my trip to Las Vegas to write about the fugitive banker, I stayed downtown, where part of that story takes place. A giant new hotel, the Circa, opened there a few years ago. It’s the first Strip-style casino downtown. The other lodging options nearby are fairly worn-down: lots of stained carpet and questionable characters who probably should have left the city a while ago.
Generally, the crowd downtown is more budget-conscious and ragged than at the Strip resorts. But the Circa is the only casino I’ve visited that scans guests’ IDs every time they enter, which is annoying and invasive but also effective at keeping drunks and prostitutes out of the casino.
Outside, on Fremont Street, a wide range of humanity is splayed along the pedestrian mall when I take my first walk at five p.m. on a broiling Sunday in June. There are tourists with selfie sticks, couples shaky from day drinking, and homeless people passing time. When I return in the evening, I’m surprised by how much more lively the street has become, though it is still 104 degrees at eight p.m. Bands on stages cover songs from artists of the 80s and 90s like Rick Astley and David Gray, and the crowd is more robust and diverse. Street performers dance, juggle, and mime. People seem to be having fun. Remarkably, the Fremont Street Experience light canopy still generates awe and foot traffic three decades after its installation.
The crowd on the street is half women and half men. Inside the Circa casino, the demographic is different. Circa boasts the most impressive sportsbook in Las Vegas. It’s almost elegant. However, a casino organized around a sportsbook mainly attracts groups of 30-year-old men. There are very few women in the casino. For what it’s worth, the men seem perfectly well-behaved, though the bros behind me at the roulette table enjoy bumping chests when the wheel hits their number. I assume they’re winning big, given the amount of bodily contact.
Next to me at video poker is a particular kind of Californian I find very interesting, and we chat for a while. He’s obviously conservative politically. But he’s lived his whole life in the Bay Area and chooses his words carefully to avoid offense. He rambles on a bit about high prices, which he somehow believes are unique to California and a result of the state’s economic policies — and homelessness, which he is more sympathetic about than I might have guessed. His wife comes by to celebrate a jackpot.
I call it a night after winning a couple of modest jackpots myself. My room at the Circa is large, well-designed, and smartly furnished — as nice as any I’ve stayed at in Vegas. It overlooks what’s called Stadium Swim, a complex of swimming pools facing the giant TV screens of the outdoor sportsbook.
The next day brings a long drive as I visit locations in Arizona for an upcoming story about an armored car robbery. The highlight of that trip turns out to be arriving in beautiful Prescott, Arizona, just in time for the monsoon season’s first thunderstorm.
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