The Stardust is going down. A big wrecking ball lies in its future. Demolition begins in the first quarter of 2007 to make way for Boyd Gaming’s ‘Echelon Place’ development. There you have it. That’s one way to quash a den of thieves…ok…ok…I’m just kidding about the den of thieves. But isn’t that what we’ve all heard for years? The Stardust poker games were crooked as hell and the dealers and everyone were in on it? That’s what I heard. Is it true? Umnhhh! I wouldn’t know. It’s ingrained into everyone that’s an ‘old school’ poker playerthat has played in and around Vegas over the years. But it’s goin’ down! So I sent out the meeting arrangement to all of my Pan buddies via email. We were playing on Saturday night.

The funniest part of the upcoming weekend was that Greg, Amy, Mark, and I had planned a hike at Calico Basin early Saturday. I spent Friday night at a friend’s house, helping with computer geekette type of things, and the sky had been threatening the desert with a drenching by splashing incredible lightning displays across its inky blackness, followed by orchestrations of power in thunder boomers, and winds that whipped up the trees and air in exciting gusts. The air had a totally wild feel to it, I love it! As I worked onnetworking and wireless router issues, I had the door of the study opened to the night, reveling in the awesome display nature had presented…just for me…like a one woman show…she gave me a front row seat.

At 12:30 a.m., when I finished my tasks and headed back across the valley towards home, the sky was definitely pouring and the streets were filled with treacherous pools of water that had nowhere to go. Awesome! I kept the Steed at a steady pace across the valley, watching the city as it slid into a wet, dark underworld.

Of course I was sure the hike was a ‘no go’. Flash floods are a serious problem in the desert. Scary enough in the streets in the city, they become unbelievably devastating when rushing through a small canyon or gorge in the desert. At 6:15 a.m., Mark called me. He was on his way home from Wynn and it was still spitting rain with lightning and thunder. We all touched bases by phone and gave up on the idea until next week. Good thing, because about 8 a.m., the skies opened up again and another flood from the heavens started. I love sleeping during the rain! I did. Next time I should ask them to go kayaking instead of hiking. *jopke*

Back to the Stardust…

I arrived at 6:30ish and got right into a $3-6 H game. They had two games running; the other one was $1-2 NLH. For a Saturday, it was eerie. The casino had some business, but nothing like it should have had for a Saturday night in Vegas. The sign on the wall said it all:

My first poker room experience in Vegas was the Castaways and then the Golden Nugget in ’85 or so, when I came to town with two girlfriends and we stayed at the Castaways (it used to sit where the Mirage is now), for a three day runner. When I hit town in ’87, to deal my first big poker tournament, my first experience was the Gold Coast because my son Dan worked there at the time. But most of my time was spent hanging out and playing at the Stardust in the $3-6 H games. In those days the Stardust was a rock and roll poker hang out. That’s where I first saw Roy Cooke and Sissy Bottoms as they took their place every day in the $10-20 H games. Mark McBroom was a brush at the Stardust during that time period, coming to work at The Mirage about a year after it opened. Mark is a shift supervisor now at The Mirage. And Jimmy was at the Stardust then, and still is, great guy, great attitude, and he’s been there for over 30 years:

I took a digital still/movie camera in with me and recorded my friends and a few other characters around the room…aDVD short will be made for my Pan pals, to designate our final Stardust play, so mostly I have few pictures to show of the event, most of it is inDVD format. Some of the characters around the room must be facing a sad plight. One of them is Barry, an elderly black gent with no teeth and a cane, he just sort of ‘hangs’ out. He picks up an empty glass or an empty rack and toothlessly smiles at people in the games. I asked him where he would go when the ‘Dust’ closed. He said the Riv probably. I’m sure he has no where to be and they probably just give him a meal comp every day at the Dust. Life goes on. There’s a melancholy twist to it as we watch ourlives disappear into the dust of time.

Our Pan crew ended up being Greg, Viv, Mark, Wayne, and me as players in the game. Amy sat behind me and visited for a bit before she left to meet some friends that were in from out of town. Sylvia Hart, my budette that works at Bellagio, came and sat behind me for a visit also. I love these people!

The player on my right, Jeffrey, was so damned entertaining, he had us all in stitches most of the time. He finally showed us a picture of his family, a beautiful group that is filled with a wife and six girls…two of them are twins. They appeared to range from around two years old to 12 or 13. Trying to quote some of his quips is impossible as there were so many of them. He played almost every hand and was a true jewel in a poker game, laughing, having fun, and feeding chips into the pot. He’s from Louisiana.

Wayne just became a Vegas home owner. Congrats! And he’s smiling. Nice!

There was one old, grouchy fart in the 1s that kept crabbing at the dealers. Of course they dealt to him every day for the last 900 years and he felt he was entitled to be a dick head and they put up with him just because. At one point he viciously flipped off the dealer in the box and I jumped in, “Hey…don’t do that!”

The dealer laughed and said he was used to it. I like the dealer but I don’t like that attitude. That’s why poker still festers with dealer abuse. Another $3-6 game started and grouchy fart moved over to it. Too bad really because I broke him once and he fed a lot of chips in to two other big pots I won. As far as I can tell, he’s got no win, no matter where he’s at or what he undertakes. BTW, he’s in the video, and had a fit because he didn’t want to be in the picture, I told him I was filming the dealer. He kept exclaiming that cameras weren’t allowed in casinos. Of course that was after I’d beat him and had already been taking pictures for two hours.

*note Wayne hiding behind his hat in the picture* Greg is working at Caesars now, and he was working on rebuilding his chip stack here:

Jeffrey finally left us and it was getting late. I was definitely running out of steam after six hours of poker play…time to hit the road. Greg stayed to play whileMark, Viv, Wayne, and I all left at the same time. Mark standing outside the poker room at midnight…note how quiet the casino is:

Mark, Viv, Wayne outside the ‘Dust’ as we were leaving. This picture and the one of Mark above were taken with the digital still/movie camera. I still need some work on picture taking with it, but the movies are awesome.

I may make the ‘Dust’ one more time before the doors close, if so, it will probably be with Marie when her and Gary hit town again later this week. They’ve been out on the road all summer long. Welcome back kids…I’ve missed you.