My home away from home

Back in March, I piled eleven boxes of old fanzines into the car and drove to Las Vegas for Corflu Blackjack. I dallied too long in making my reservations, and couldn't get a room at the Plaza, where the convention was centered. In fact the only place downtown I found that had all four nights available was the El Cortez, back in 1946 the original Las Vegas resort hotel, but now a somewhat down-at-the-heels establishment a block or so past the end of the Fremont Experience, an end of the street where Andy Hooper cautioned any attendees against venturing: "Crack dealers are circling like sharks!" he declared.

In fact I couldn't even get a room in the El Cortez, as it turns out: My room was on a Fifth Floor above the parking garage, exposed to the gentle Vegas air instead of the controlled hotel climate. There were rooms circling the outside of the structure and two corridors cutting across it. I was on a corridor, so I'm not sure why they bothered giving us windows to enjoy the view of the room across the hall.

One time I went back to my room because I'd forgotten something on the way out, and was startled on entering to see that in the few minutes I'd been downstairs the hotel had parked a rollaway bed in my room, presumably by accident.

The room wasn't all that bad, had a tiny little color TV on the dresser, and I heard folks who landed in the Nevada instead claimed they'd been stuck in a real dive, albeit one nearly across the street from the convention hotel.

The Plaza's North Tower, as seen from The Plaza's South Tower

Corflu was returning to the site of its former glories, the Plaza at one end of Fremont street. (The better end.) The Katzes hosted early arrivals in their suite on Thursday night, and the rest of the weekend the hsopitality suite was in the room directly upstairs. It was a chance to renew acquaintance with folks I hadn't seen in some time, and meet some legendary figures for the first time face to face. There was a sizeable contingent of Brits this year, including one of the figures of gossip when my Brit friends visited the Springs in January.

We had a ballroom reserved on the third floor where we met for discussions, auctions, the banquet (Ken Forman resplendent in the white tux he acquired while working at a joint called Bogart's), and Mr. Hooper's play. At Friday night's reception, the bartender called Mr. Forman over, a quizzical look on his face, and asked just what kind of wedding this was.

The third floor is also where I sold off or gave away the bulk of my fanzine collection, a move which pained me deeply but seemed necessary. As I said I drove into town with eleven boxes. I left with three, one partially filled with air.

When I got home I found one box of fanzines I'd somehow overlooked. I may drive to San Francisco next year and do this all over again.

California....

It was good to hang with old friends. Pat Virzi recounted anecdotes of her little girl Madeline, who is turning into a teenager now, which prompts me to recall uncomfortably when Alexis Gilliland and I escorted Pat and the yet-to-have-materialized Madeline around the zoo in...Minneapolis, was it?...during one Corflu weekend. Pat and I also went to dinner with newlyweds Bill Bodden and Tracy Benton (a regular reader!) where Pat shared details of Oklahoma ranch life, such as climbing into a ditch to rescue an armadillo.

...show me your Golden Gate

Another night, after I had shown Bill how to make money at blackjack and lose it all back, Bill and Tracy and I joined Andy Hooper and Carrie Root for dinner at the Golden Gate, the original Vegas hotel and legendary home of the cheap shrimp cocktail. Andy looked across the table and realized, "Jesus, Richard, we must have gone out for dinner twenty times."

Hey, what can I say. I like to eat.

The lamp from the Aladdin casino hotel, circa 1966. If you look real hard you can see the El Cortez sign in the murky distance.

After dinner we took a walk down Fremont Street, to check out the Neon Museum, the downtown collection of signs from the town's heyday. While we waited at a stoplight I glanced down and saw something odd lying on the sidewalk, looking like a pog or something. I bent down and picked it up and it turned out to be a $100 chip from the Palms.

The Four Queens, where I stayed for another Vegas get-together

One night after walking back to the El Cortez from the Plaza, I stopped off "on my way to bed" to play a little blackjack. There was a woman at my table playing with her dad. Every time a hand was dealt she had to explain to him again what he was supposed to do with his cards. "He has Alzheimer's," she finally explained to the dealer.

This went on more or less all night. I found it fascinating. She said he used to go out gambling all the time in his more lucid days, and was the life of the town, so it was either rather sweet or some strange form of elder abuse.

We all ended up going to Fitzgerald's to play the new table version of deuces wild poker, although at some point I had to declare I would only play one more hand because now it was time for me to be getting back to the Plaza. Immediately after that declaration I was dealt a jack and ten of clubs with three deuces, a wild royal that paid $600. Suddenly the weekend was looking a lot more manageable.

Hotrodding on Fremont Street

There's always something happening on Fremont Street, which was blocked off downtown to create a pedestrian mall, and staying at the opposite end of it from the convention I got to see plenty of it. Sunday, both sides of the street were lined with hotrodders displaying their wares. Moshe Feder was enchanted by the huge slot-car racing track that someone had set up in the middle of the steet. And two of the original Munchkins from the cast of The Wizard of Oz were there signing autographs all weekend.

Monday morning, I met Moshe Feder to drive his boxes of acquisitions to the post office, and afterwards we stopped breakfast at the Golden Gate. Unfortunately I had foolhardily stayed up until three in the morning shooting craps (since I broke even one could define that as a total waste of time), was was facing at least a thirteen-hour drive back, and had come down with a cold that was flirting with me throughout the weekend. I stopped off for a nap in Seligman, but still had to resort to coffee drinks to keep me awake the rest of the way home. I'm only now getting over the cold, which was also an excuse to keep putting off my workout, now that the living room floor was no longer covered with carboard boxes.

And that's where I've been.

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