It’s in Los Angeles I stumble upon a clip of a young woman on an Instagram series called Reasons to Like White People saying in support, “They invented the deserts.” The interviewer asks, “Like the Mojave?” The young woman says, “No. Like apple pie.”
Where snowbirds fly
There are places in America that have no equivalent in New Zealand. At least, not so far, thank heavens (and legislation). Such a place is a Nevada desert town called Laughlin. It’s often described as “Las Vegas lite”, though there’s nothing light about Laughlin. It’s where old people, the snowbirds escaping cold weather, go to gamble and if you’ve ever wanted a glance into the third portal of hell, this could be your holiday spot.
I went because a friend who likes to hang in Vegas but doesn’t like the high hotel rates told me the rooms, just an hour or two away in Laughlin, were top notch and cheap, which they were. But he didn’t mention all the old folk. Nor the smoking. And the wall-to-wall awfulness of the gambling. And the food. Though, by the time I got to Laughlin, I knew scurvy was probably just around the corner anyway.
I’d had three weeks in Los Angeles before taking a road trip to the deserts of inland California and Nevada, so I’d been taking good food for granted. Out in Nevada there’s a whole other thing going on. Apart from the occasional dressing-drenched salad, healthy vegetables and fruit seem generally absent from the Nevadan culinary experience. I could see the results in the shapes and gaits of people making their way across car parks, diners and gas station forecourts on the road to Laughlin. People looking old before their time.
In Nevada, the authorities invest in other things. The moment our route crosses from California to Nevada, the frayed edges and potholes of the Golden State’s lesser roads are immediately outclassed. Wider, smoother, richer somehow, the highways are better in Nevada, but the road to penury should be well paved. And the billboards that line them are bigger, mainly advertising casinos, the state’s lifeblood.
When it comes to gambling, Nevada is a vampire. The three biggest gambling towns in the state, from the top, are Las Vegas, Reno and Laughlin, though Laughlin has faded a little in recent years. Hardly surprising, given that it has a fading clientele.
Laughlin sprang to life on the banks of the Colorado River 60 years ago when a speculative type called Don Laughlin bought 3ha of land and built a casino. Until then, there was no town at all, just a motel and bar. Now there are eight giant casino hotels punching at the sky out of the arid little settlement (population: 8658), the biggest with 1900 rooms, fiercely competing for custom from the crowds of elderly tourist gamblers who pour in.
So the rooms are cheap, the parking’s free and – if you believe the town sign – so are the drinks. “Welcome to Laughlin – get a free beer on us” it announces. The Las Vegas Sun once reported that 70.4% of all liquor sales in Laughlin were complimentary, which is a statistic that might stick in your mind.
A whacking great room with a river view at the Riverside Casino – Don Laughlin’s original place – is just US$50 a night. But there’s a price to pay, of course. The first price to pay are the local tax add-ons, which take it closer to US$90, but that’s still a bit of a bargain. The second price, though, is pretty much everything outside that hotel room.
When I booked my room, it seemed such a bargain I considered staying two nights, but some instinct warned me not to, that Laughlin might not be my sort of place, even though I fit the oldster demographic. Which makes a change after Los Angeles, where the only older person you’ll spot after dark will be a homeless one. I started feeling like a novelty wherever I went in that town, and not a very groovy one. Youngsters would offer me their seats.
My Laughlin-loving friend said the Riverside was one of the classier options, and it looked classy enough pulling into the valet lane, a clutch of casually dressed elders waiting for their cars. One of them with his long white beard, looked like Santa on holiday.
The Las Vegas Sun once reported that 70.4% of all liquor sales in Laughlin were complimentary, which is a statistic that might stick in your mind.
Inside, the first trick is finding the hotel’s front desk, because being a hotel is the Riverside’s second job. It’s first job is immediately on cacophonous, eye-assaulting display left, right and dead centre; towering electric gambling machines designed in a confronting range of pixilated themes. No handles to pull, no effort required, save slumping in a comfy chair, drink at hand, feeding money into the machine’s maw and occasionally pressing a button or two.
There are table games, too, but this crowd looks like it prefers to lose alone at one of those machines. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air, an atmosphere I haven’t tasted since last century.
Check-in is deep inside the designated smoking wing of the casino. Finding my room is the next challenge, through the twists and turns of the casino to an elevator to whichever “tower” I’m in. I forgot the directions at the front desk the moment I heard them. It’s a long hike past banks of machines and doddering gamblers before there’s a sign saying “elevator”. I must look lost because an old lady, a tiny bird with a close resemblance to Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies, comes to my rescue. “It’s this way, sonny,” she shouts up at me.
All around, there are people on walking frames, in wheelchairs and slightly upright, bow-legged, backlit by the chattering, jabbering machines.
Upstairs on the fifth floor, my Smokefree King is enormous, odourless, a five-star fit-out with the promised river view. Arizona, all brown, on the other side, water taxis whirling gamblers up and down to the other Laughlin casinos. Downstairs again, options for non-gambling residents are few. The bars have names like the Losers Bar and they’re all awful. Everywhere you sit, you’re confronted by a gambling screen. Craft beer is as out of place as a fruit bowl here and the cigarette smoke hangs heavy in the air.
Casino crawl
Outside, it’s a relative joy to promenade along the river, which takes you on a casino crawl, the walkway so dotted with bent folks in leisure gear I feel I’ve penetrated an ad for an aged care facility.
At a casino called the Edgewater, there’s a slightly lower-key vibe than the jangly Riverside. In one of their bars, the server – in her 70s, deaf as a post – lets me sit and drink a beer without having to tend to the gambling gear popping out of the counter at me. I can’t understand a word she says and vice versa, though I manage to get what looks like an IPA for $5, no tax. Then my gambling machine draws me in and I immediately lose $2 in what might have been a game of poker, though I was never quite sure.
“We’re not in Palm Springs,” the weathered barmaid shouts at something a silver-haired customer said, adding, “They’re all gay over there.”
“I’m happy, but I’m not gay,” says the customer, a ready wit. A plump younger woman wanders past in a singlet reading, “Admit it, you want me”.
I leave Mrs Havisham a $2 tip and walk under a blazing sun across endless carparks away from the river, past the back of an enormous paddle steamer-shaped casino called the Colorado Belle, which, on closer inspection, is closed, shuttered up five years now, it turns out, with no sign of revival.
It’s a younger crowd further down the river at the Golden Nugget, in their 40s and 50s, but they’re here to feed the machines, of course. It’s only when you’re seen to be gambling that the free drinks come. The house restaurant offers “range rattlers” on its menu, which seems interesting but it’s a horror of a thing, deep fried in a goopy cheese-injected nugget with a prawn sticking out of it like a handle. I feel shame.
In Laughlin, the food is two degrees short of fatal, but it is a pleasant walk along the muscular river. Back at the Riverside, in a state of hunger and confusion, I find dessert in the desert, but when my ice cream comes, it’s a terrible colour and tastes of nothing but sugar. “Your tongue has turned blue,” says an old man at the next table. Around us, the machines chatter and flash.
Next morning at 8.30, the ancient holidaymakers are already downstairs in numbers, slumped at their favourite machine, popping their savings in, smoking their cigarettes and enjoying a breakfast cocktail while the sound system blasts out a bit of classic rock ‒ Chicago at the moment.
An elderly cleaner shuffles by with a broom. I attempt breakfast, but it all tastes like cheap cheese, even the coffee.