This post is about my first visit to a casino.
I wish I’d done one about the strip club, but that’s faded into a dim I cannot properly recall except for the unexpected sadness of beautiful young women collecting crumpled dollars from a glowing glass floor. Subsequent visits made me realize it’s not as sad as the visual. Life, as cinema, has its actors, and the star of a tragic film is not necessarily a tragic person.
But this is about casinos. This is my first, so perfectly apt, impression of the Seneca Niagara Casino in Niagara Falls, New York:
Actually, the first impression was walking toward the bathroom past displays of ultra-expensive baubles branded with names unknown to me, and thinking of what a perfect set-up they’ve got. It’s not likely, but if you do win a bundle, you walk out, and the lady you’re with (or the “lady” you are) decides she absolutely must have one of these trinkets of prestige, and there goes your jackpot.
The second impression was seeing an ATM and wondering if the fees were as high as the strip-clubs, and for the same reasons. Together, those impressions are just a reinforcement of what I assumed: that this is a well-crafted island of consumer exploitation.
The toilet picture is there because it’s just so poetic. I was rushing into the bathroom because I’d been sweating during the tour my special lady friend and I had made on foot down amongst the Falls park. It’s also the only pic– well, I’ll give you this one, too, because it’s just so fucking cool:
But this isn’t about my day as a local tourist revisiting for the countless time what is to American what the Pyramids are to Egypt, and the East Coast equivalent of the Grand Canyon — but with water. It’s not about seeing an obese family and a son sporting a mohawk and an MMA shirt causing me to burst into “Ain’t That America”. It’s not about the black squirrels that are ruining the neighborhood. It’s not about wondering whether or not it’s racist of me to think all Asians just wander aimlessly without any regard for those around them as they try to take that perfect shot of a mailbox.
It’s about CASINOS.
Before we left, I printed out the Wikipedia entry on Blackjack, primarily so I’d know the proper hand signals. Turns out they’re fairly intuitive: tap the table or make two “gimme” curling fingers to hit, flat horizontal back-and-forth to stay, and some others. I won’t go into the others, or any strategies, because it turns out it didn’t matter. I hadn’t planned to count cards or beat the house– I just wanted to have a fun. I had a wild whim to follow the advice the titular Philip Baker Hall character from “Sydney” (AKA “Hard Eight”) gives to John C. Reilly, but that still makes about as much sense to me as the end of “Trading Places”.
Practically, it doesn’t matter because the table minimum — the minimum bet you can make on a hand — was $25. I wasn’t gonna risk blowing my wad on a couple hands.
Therefore, this will not be so much about gambling in casinos (except for penny slots), but about the experience, what to expect, and how to avoid appearing to be the newbie you most definitely are.
There are a shitload of slot machines. Rooms full. You turn a corner, and there are a thousand more, and a room full of Thai businessmen playing Baccarat. But all these slots, they’re running a total of maybe a half-dozen programs, just colored with different themes.
Most do not have levers. This was disappointing.
You pay by slipping in fives, tens, twenties, or higher bills — just like a snack or drink machine. Chips are for the tables, and I didn’t play the tables.
At this particular casino, you get a “Players Card”. It comes with a $10 credit you can spend, but you can’t cash it out. It’s for spending on the machines. Oh, and coins don’t spill out when you win, and you don’t feed them into the machines. You press a “Get Ticket/Cash Out” button and get a slip of paper you put into another machine that dispenses American cash.
The “Service” button on the slots doesn’t indicate that you want a drink. It means the machine isn’t working and you need some help. We figured this out (and my lady had been there before, many times) after waiting at least an hour for a “drink girl” to come by. I wanted these vaunted free drinks they give to ply you to spend more. The human drink dispensers came by twice in the six-plus hours we were there. That was my disappointment.
Anyway, I kept slapping that “Service” button because I wanted a drink. A light atop the machine would go on for a bit, and I thought that indicated to the servers that you would like a refreshing alcoholic beverage. Well, about an hour after we’d started pressing it, two guys in suits come over and say, “We noticed you pressing the button a lot– is there a problem with the machine?” And I honestly answered, “No, I thought that’s how we let you guys know we wanted a drink.”
They weren’t upset. They said they’d tell the girl to stop by on her next time around.
They didn’t, and she didn’t. Must’ve been because we were in a sparse penny-slot section. Maybe the nickel or quarter slots get more drinks.
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