7 classic Las Vegas experiences you can no longer have
Las Vegas has become known for jettisoning its history, often through violent implosions.
But what about those aspects of our city that just sort of faded away? The ones that became synonymous with Las Vegas to the point you assumed they’d always be here — until they weren’t?
Here’s a look at seven classic Las Vegas experiences you can no longer have:
The Golden Gate’s 99-cent shrimp cocktail
The shrimp cocktail’s presence in the city dates back to at least July 19, 1930, based on a Review-Journal advertisement for the Roehm Inn at 10th and Fremont streets. The dish didn’t exactly catch on, which might have had something to do with the desert climate and the refrigeration of the era.
Then in 1959, the Golden Gate introduced a shrimp cocktail at a promotional rate of 50 cents, and imitators spread through the growing city like a tasty wildfire.
By 1977, the Golden Gate was going through about 48 tons of shellfish each year for its cocktails — shrimp that was cooked, chilled, topped with spicy cocktail sauce and a lemon wedge, then served in a 6-ounce tulip sundae glass.
The hotel was losing an estimated $300,000 a year on shrimp cocktails when, in 1991 during a celebration to mark its 25 millionth serving, the Golden Gate finally raised the price to 99 cents.
Tears were shed on April 26, 2008, when the price more than doubled to $1.99. At the time, the Golden Gate was selling an average of 2,000 shrimp cocktails a day.
During a 2012 renovation, the Golden Gate closed its deli and moved the shrimp cocktail to Du-Par’s, where it remained, first at $2.99 then $3.99, until the coffee shop closed Feb. 7, 2017. That was officially the end of an era.
A shrimp cocktail made the way it was at the Golden Gate, though, is available in Saginaw’s Delicatessen at Circa for $12.
Inexpensive buffets as far as the eye can see
Among the many things Herb McDonald is credited with bringing to Las Vegas, including the National Finals Rodeo, is the cheap, all-you-can-eat buffet.
McDonald was working late as the publicity director at the El Rancho one night in 1946 when he brought some cheese and cold cuts to the bar for a snack. Hungry gamblers who didn’t want to leave the tables long enough for a traditional meal took notice. By Nov. 20 that year, the so-called chuck wagon service was made official with a grand opening that welcomed the city’s elites.
“The affair, an innovation in the night life of Las Vegas, provided the stay-up-lates with a buffet dinner which, according to those who attended, was ‘out of this world,’ ” we wrote at the time.
The $1.25 buffet, filled with “barbecued delicacies,” became a daily fixture at the El Rancho from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. Less than three weeks after its formal debut, the Last Frontier had a $1.80 midnight buffet that included a floor show.
“I can’t say I was inventive,” McDonald told us in 1988. “I was just hungry in the right place at the right time.”
The inexpensive buffet became a staple of Las Vegas, but even that wasn’t enough of a value for some. In 2010, the company now known as Caesars Entertainment introduced “The Buffet of Buffets” — a 24-hour pass to the all-you-can-eats at Caesars Palace, the Flamingo, Harrah’s, Imperial Palace (currently The Linq), Paris Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood Resort and the Rio — for as little as $39.99.
The pandemic put an end to the ubiquitous cheap buffet. Based on our Neon listings, there were 49 hotel buffets when nonessential businesses shuttered in 2020, but only 13 remain. In the ensuing four years, the town’s cheapest breakfast buffet went from $7.99 to $17.95, and the cheapest dinner buffet climbed from $11.99 to $30.95.
See showgirls perform
On a recent visit to Fremont Street, one of the dozen or so showgirl impersonators who try to shake down tourists for money was wearing tube socks. This isn’t about them.
The showgirls that became synonymous with Las Vegas, those statuesque beauties with elaborate costumes that could tip the scales at half their body weight, date back to the French invasion of the 1950s.
Producer Harold Minsky caused a sensation on Jan. 11, 1957, when “Minsky Goes to Paris” opened at the Dunes as the first topless show on the Strip.
Seizing on the French theme, “C’est Magnifique” arrived with the Stardust on July 2, 1958. The show became known as “Lido de Paris” after the cabaret in France from which it was brought intact with a cast of 60, including traditional showgirls.
As casinos added showgirls as fast as they could costume them, two production shows stood out. “Folies Bergère,” with its 80 European cast members and $150,000 worth of costumes, opened at the Tropicana on Dec. 25, 1959, under the guidance of entertainment director Lou Walters, aka Barbara Walters’ father. And “Jubilee!,” the last of the great showgirl productions, opened July 30, 1981, at the MGM Grand (now Horseshoe Las Vegas). “Jubilee!,” we wrote at the time, featured 95 women sharing 1,147 costumes “which average upwards of $5,000 each in cost” and included jewels from France and Czechoslovakia as well as 3,200 pounds of feathers from South Africa.
Even then, though, the traditional showgirl, often referred to as a mannequin because she didn’t dance, was an endangered species.
“They’re becoming obsolete,” Ffolliott “Fluff” LeCoque, who would oversee “Jubilee!” until her retirement in 2010, told the Associated Press in May 1980. “Why hire a girl who can only walk when you can hire a tall, beautiful dancer who can do everything better and sing, too?”
“Lido de Paris” closed Feb. 28, 1991. “Folies Bergère” ended March 28, 2009, nine months shy of its 50th anniversary. With the demise of “Jubilee!” on Feb. 11, 2016, Las Vegas was left without a single showgirl production.
More than 250 classic costumes, though, are displayed inside Grant Philipo’s Las Vegas Showgirl Museum.
Get a marriage license in the middle of the night
Over the years, it became something of a storytelling trope: Two people, possibly strangers, have a drunken late night in Las Vegas, then wake up married.
That scenario just hasn’t been possible for nearly two decades.
A Clark County ordinance passed April 20, 1955, established that the Marriage License Bureau must be open for business “not less than 19 hours a day, seven days a week.”
That was updated Aug. 21, 1979, by an ordinance declaring the bureau would operate 8 a.m. to midnight, Mondays through Thursdays, and be open nonstop from 8 a.m. Fridays until midnight Sundays. But on Aug. 30, 2006, in what was deemed a cost-cutting move, commissioners abolished the midnight to 8 a.m. shift.
The change came too late to prevent a couple of very confusing hours on Jan. 3, 2004, when much of the world thought that, in the pre-dawn hours at Little White Wedding Chapel, Britney Spears had hastily married Jason Alexander from “Seinfeld” instead of Jason Alexander, her childhood friend.
Couples still can get married here at any time of the day or night, though, just so long as they get their license during regular business hours.
See big cats on the Strip
Exotic cats had been a fixture on Las Vegas Boulevard since at least June 1967, when Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn joined the cast of “Folies Bergère” with their cheetah named Chico.
Magicians Dirk Arthur and Rick Thomas arrived with their tigers in 1997 and became regulars up and down the Strip.
The lion habitat at the MGM Grand opened in July 1999 to house as many as five lions, some of which were descendants of the one featured in the MGM Studios logo.
But Siegfried & Roy stopped performing after Horn was attacked onstage on Oct. 3, 2003. The lion habitat closed in January 2012, and its animals were relocated to the Lion Habitat Ranch in Henderson. Thomas closed at the V Theater in May 2012. Arthur’s “Wild Illusions,” the last local show to use big cats, ended at the Westgate in 2016. The closing of Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at The Mirage, which had housed some of the duo’s lions and tigers since 1990, was made official in November 2022.
These days, if you want to see cats on the Strip, your best bet is “Popovich Comedy Pet Theater” and its cast of trained house cats.
Park anywhere on the Strip for free
If you weren’t living here on Jan. 15, 2016, it’s difficult to explain the anger and betrayal felt by longtime Las Vegans.
That’s the day MGM Resorts International announced its plans to “significantly improve the parking experience.” To pay for $90 million in planned upgrades, the company said it would start charging for parking at its properties on the Strip.
To locals, it was considered blasphemy. Sure, downtown casinos had long charged for parking unless you found a way to get validated, but the Strip was the land of free parking.
The initial fees were implemented June 6, 2016, although locals were exempt through Dec. 28. By then, Caesars Entertainment had announced its plans to charge for parking, and the race for additional fees was on.
Currently, the only hotels offering truly free parking on the Strip, excluding the need for a players card or a Nevada ID, are Circus Circus, the Sahara, Treasure Island and Trump International.
Be a complete degenerate on Fremont Street
As recently as June 27, 2016, you could cash out of a slot machine, scoop your nickels or quarters from its tray and into a plastic bucket that had doubled as an ashtray (and no telling what else), then go across Fremont Street and gorge on deep-fried Oreos and Twinkies before using what was left of your coin bucket to tip the topless dancers next door.
The first of those establishments, the Louisiana-themed La Bayou, where customers were greeted with Mardi Gras-style beads and a choice of 26 daiquiris, descended from the Northern Club, which was granted the state’s first gaming license in 1931.
Mermaids, known mostly for its menu of artery-clogging delights, stood on the site of the Silver Palace, which opened in 1956 as the city’s first two-level club. The Silver Palace’s floors were connected by Southern Nevada’s first “motor stairs,” aka escalator, and its design, we reported at the time, was inspired by “French contemporary artist Henri Matisse.”
Herb Pastor, meanwhile, infuriated local leaders on Dec. 3, 1991, when he made an opening between his neighboring Golden Goose and Glitter Gulch casinos and created a topless bar — just as newly elected mayor Jan Jones and others were trying to make Fremont Street a family destination.
All three properties were acquired by Derek and Greg Stevens in 2016 and quickly closed, with La Bayou making way for an expansion of their Golden Gate hotel and Mermaids and Girls of Glitter Gulch being cleared for Circa.
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on X.
