Best of Las Vegas -- Las Vegas Review Journal

Locals casinos put best foot forward in annual contest

Proliferation of off-Strip hotels helped heat up competition in Best of Las Vegas readers' poll

By MIKE WEATHERFORD
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Cheap steak. Short skirts. Big neon signs and bigger buffets.

The finer things in life don't change, judging by an overview of the Hotels listing winners during the past 20 years of the Best of Las Vegas. The expected emphasis on the bigger-and-better mousetrap contrasts with surprisingly stable views on the importance of a budget 3 a.m. breakfast or a football contest with a $25 buy-in.

If there's any historical value to this popularity contest, it's in charting the rise of the locals casino. When the readers' poll was small, it made no distinction between Strip hotels and those geared to residents. There was hardly any need to.

In that first 1982 vote, the Flamingo Hilton won nods for its slots and friendly dealers. But a little place called the Bingo Palace seemed a logical power-of-suggestion choice for Best Bingo.

If you've lived here since then, you know how the story ends. That little boy called the Bingo Palace grew up to be a big, strong tower of cash called Palace Station.

By 1984, the renamed Palace Station took the honors for bingo, poker and what became its city-famous 49-cent breakfast.

As the years passed, it added more categories: slots (starting with a tie with Sam's Town in 1986); keno lounge (1988); lounge and paycheck-cashing gimmick (1989); freebie (1990, when we also noted an increase in the breakfast special to 99 cents); video poker machines and blackjack tables (1991); football contest, coffee shop, Mexican restaurant and seafood restaurant (1994); and promotion for locals and Italian restaurant (1995).

Among the most popular winners for Palace Station was the NFL football prognostication contest, with tract homes and cash prizes going to the best season record, the worst and even the terribly confused "fiddle in the middle." Readers remained loyal, even as the contest expanded to include other Station Casinos properties; more convenience as a trade-off for more contestants.

In 1994, we added downtown hotel to the listing, and the Golden Nugget captured the prize.

In 1996, the explosion of off-Strip casinos called for a new Locals Hotel category, with the Rio by then the readers' favorite. This year's vote reflected a four-year readers' preference for Sunset Station, and by then a whole mess of subcategories in which locals hangouts stole the action from the Strip or downtown:

Bingo? The Gold Coast has been a five-year favorite.

Buffet? The Rio has been a hard champion to beat during the years.

Video poker? Gamblers on Rancho Drive used to enjoy the Fiesta's generous attempts to win the payout war over Texas Station, until the latter ended the battle by buying the former. Remember the Alamo!

On the Strip, it's a different story. Whatever tends to be the brightest, shiniest object of that year is what temporarily draws the wonder of our childlike eyes.

In 1994, a hotel architecture category started charting the arrival of themed fantasy lands on the Strip: That first year it was the Luxor pyramid. In 1997, New York-New York. In 1999, Bellagio. Last year, The Venetian.

But hotels are not mere glass and concrete. They also are, as any employee motivational speech will tell you, people. And in Las Vegas, they are even entertainment. In any other city, you're lucky to find a piano bar or Rotary luncheon speaker inside a hotel. Here, you get white tigers and stages that turn into lakes.

In the contest's second year, the poll began asking about entertainers and shows in the Entertainment listing. In 1984, those categories moved to the Hotels listing. It didn't matter, Siegfried and Roy's "Beyond Belief" at the Frontier won Best Stage Show, while Wayne Newton won Best Entertainer. There would be many more wins for both acts. Lounge icon Cook E. Jarr first charted in 1985.

In 1989, after Siegfried and Roy closed at the Frontier, the Riviera's "Splash" broke through as Best Stage Show. The "kitchen sink" revue offering everything from Esther Williams-style aquatics to Michael Jackson impersonators held the honor until the magic duo reclaimed the category, which had changed to Best Production Show, in 1993 with its show at The Mirage.

In recent years, readers' entertainment tastes have been as diverse as the attractions themselves. Readers laughed at George Carlin (1994), Dennis Miller (1996) and Carrot Top (1998). They've been mystified by the magical skills of Siegfried & Roy (1994, 2000) and Lance Burton (1995-96, 1998-99). And they've been serenaded by favorite singers Frank Sinatra (1994), Michael Crawford (1996) and impressionist Danny Gans (1999).

Things change quickly in Las Vegas, but readers remained loyal to several traditions during the years. When locals sought a lighthouse on the foggy horizon -- or at least a dazzling desert display -- the Stardust sported their favorite outdoor sign from 1982 until 1990. Then the Rio came along to claim the title for the rest of the decade and the start of this one.

The Rio was another beacon when it came to cocktail sirens driving men wild with their low-cut, high-cut and every-which-way-cut cocktail uniforms. The old champion from the mid-š80s, Caesars Palace, never had a chance from 1993, when the Rio servers were named Best Cocktail Waitresses, through last year, when the category was merely called Best Employee Uniforms. But a rose by any other name ...

About the only thing the men of Las Vegas enjoyed more than their thong bikinis -- er, Rio uniforms -- was a good hunk of cheap late-night steak at Binion's Horseshoe (occasionally, the hotel would try to end the loss-leader, but readers kept voting for it anyway). You couldn't argue with the price: three bucks when the steak first showed up in the contest in 1984, and three bucks in 1999, the last time readers could vote on the now discontinued special.

Steaks and booze-bearing babes make Las Vegas hotels seem like a men's club. But readers also respect a more genteel tradition that has held its own against a flood of flashy high-end restaurants: All women dining in Hugo's Cellar at the Four Queens are presented with a long-stem rose, helping make the restaurant the readers' favorite gourmet room since 1995 (except 1997, when the Top of the World at the Stratosphere reached above it).

From class to crass, what can't be found in a Las Vegas hotel?

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