Vegas

When you relate stories that happened before your time, or at least happened beyond your own experience, one often needs to rely a bit on legend. Legends are funny things. They often tell more about the human condition than about a particular event. They are often historically inaccurate but usually contain an element of truth. Such is the legend of Las Vegas's mobster days.

And here's how it goes. Once upon a time, organized crime ran the city's gambling industry. A visionary named Benjamin "Bugsy" Segal, representing the Sicilian Mafia, saw the potential of casinos and hotels in the Nevada desert. Segal (who, by the way was Jewish, not Sicilian) built the Flamingo Hotel and Casino on what would one day become the Las Vegas Strip. Segal didn't live to see his dream fulfilled. It seems that he had enemies, some of whom shot him dead in a friend's Beverly Hills home in 1947. However, the mob stayed on after Segal's demise, building more casinos and hotels and generally establishing a tourist economy that converted a small desert town into a thriving, cosmopolitan city.

Now I have no idea just how comprehensive the Mafia's control actually was over the local gambling industry, either on the Strip or downtown on Fremont Street. But I seriously doubt that, even in the mob's hay day, it was total and complete. The gangsters had to deal with returning G.I.s, running on high octane testosterone after kicking butt on the Germans and Japanese, as well as local vested political and law enforcement offices that had been handling criminals since the relatively recent frontier days when an offending outsider often found himself at the wrong end of a rope.

In addition, the mob had to continually deal with non-Mafia "business men," such as Benny Binion, a Texas gambler and casino owner who had personally killed at least two men and had probably helped kill several others before ever moving his operations to Nevada. Such men had a bad habit of not being intimated by eastern mobsters with vowel-ladened names or by anyone else.

None the less, the legend maintains that the Mafiosos controlled at least most of the Las Vegas casinos back in the day and that they did a pretty good job. They made huge profits, paid huge taxes, hired a virtual army of employees and, in general, proved to be good business men. In return for their contributions to the local economy, they were largely left alone as long as they treated the tourists well, kept petty crime out of the area and kept their portion of the city clean and safe.

Such were the golden days of Las Vegas, an era that, for all intents and purposes, lasted until Howard Hughes and his fellow representatives of Big Business gained control of the city and its casinos some time around the early 1970s. According to some Vegas visitors, the city has never been the same since. It has changed, and not for the better.

Leaving legend behind and drawing now upon my own experiences, I would have to say that the post-mob decline of the city must have been gradual. When I first visited Vegas in 1985, it was still a gambler's paradise and a tourist's Mecca. The casinos were exciting and well run, the rooms and food were cheap, and the streets were safe. You could walk from the Hacienda at the south end of the Strip to Foxy's Firehouse on the north and never encounter a panhandler, much less a purse snatcher or drug dealer.

I fell in love with the city and visited it three additional times through the coming years. And yes, things changed. Each time I returned the city had grown and the Strip had become more congested with hotels. The Hacienda was torn down for construction of Mandalay Bay. Foxy's burned down. Cheap buffets became harder to find, as did inexpensive beer and shrimp cocktails. Slot machines stopped paying off in coins and started paying off in slips of paper. Used playing cards, fresh from the blackjack and poker tables and which had previously been given away to hotel guests as souvenirs were now sold in the gift shops for a buck and a half.

There were other changes too. Panhandlers appeared on the streets as did an army of men handing out cards of nude women, advertising escort services. The sidewalks became dirtier as, I'm sad to say, did some of the casinos. Gang graffiti appeared on walls and even on casino symbols. The last time I visited, there was graffiti written across the stomach of the clown statue outside Circus Circus. In other words, the barbarians were no longer just at the gate; they were actually beginning to claim the Strip.

If you doubt that this sad process is still ongoing, I invite you to stand on a corner at the northern portion of the Strip and look to the west. Urban decay is encroaching.

Now, I'm not foolish enough to be nostalgic for a time when organized crime controlled anything, including Las Vegas casinos. Mobsters were not people to be idolized. They were ruthless and violent. But damn, I can't help but wonder what the Strip would look like if they were still in control. Would the panhandlers be forced to move along? Would the escort service advertisers be persuaded to find a less intrusive way to peddle their wares?

There is, of course, a far better way to clean up the Strip, or at least the streets and sidewalks of the Strip than to ask the mobsters to return. Surely, the hotel and casino owners and the Las Vegas city fathers can unite on an effort to return the area to some semblance of yesterday. More police in the streets and foot patrols on the sidewalks would be a good start.

If not, the already declining tourist trade will accelerate in its downward spiral. What the current economic situation has already started will become the norm. The Strip will not likely disappear, but the area's profitability will certainly drop. Las Vegas is no longer the only game in town. There is legalized gambling now across the country and Mr. and Mrs. America need only travel to their local Indian reservation to lay their money down. They are already inclined to stay in their home state because of economics and they certainly will do so if they find the streets of their old vacation destination dirty, unsafe and crowded with panhandlers.

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Writer's note for those readers who might think that I've made a common mistake: I fully realize that technically most of the Strip lies not in Las Vegas, but rather in the unincorporated Clark County areas of Paradise and Winchester. However, in most people's minds - including mine - the Strip is part of Las Vegas and so my writings and ramblings reflect this widespread conceit.