R.i.p. Stardust Hotel

Erik Sine · October 31, 2006

R.I.P. Stardust Hotel

By Jim Benning World Hum

I spotted the guy in the ghoulish grim reaper costume, gripping his faux scythe, at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas Saturday night. He fit right in among the other Halloween revelers—the scantily clad nurses, the Top Gun pilots in their flight suits and reflective sunglasses, Richard Nixon and his entourage of Secret Service agents. But the grim reaper really should have been skulking several blocks up the strip at the Stardust, where death loomed like a hazy cloud of casino cigarette smoke. On Wednesday, the half-century-old hotel with the strip’s most iconic neon sign will close for good. The usual implosion will follow in several months, paving the way, as the Vegas hotel life cycle dictates, for a new megaresort.

I visited the Stardust on Sunday to pay my respects. The famous sign was still there, a relic from another era. A marquee touted the final Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme shows, which ended Saturday night. Inside, a mostly older crowd was playing slots. A few diners were strolling out of the Cocoa Palms Buffet, with its $12.95 prime rib dinners.

A sign near the rewards club members’ desk said, “We regretfully inform you, due to the closure of the Stardust, all points become invalid on Nov. 1, 2006 at close of the Stardust.”

I sat down at a blackjack table to play a few hands. The dealer, a grim-faced woman in her 40s, absently shuffled the cards and wondered where she would find her next paycheck.

“I’m still young,” she said. “I can’t retire yet.”

There was talk of older dealers struggling to find new jobs, as if to confirm the stereotype that this is among the most shallow of cities. A guy next to me wondered which classic hotel would be next to go. His money was on the Riviera.

A story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, not available online, noted that the Stardust was among the first Las Vegas hotels to be aimed at budget-conscious travelers, and that, “in a sense, the Stardust was the prototype of the mass-market casino resort”—a precursor to the likes of Circus Circus and Excalibur.

The Los Angeles Times seemed to get it right when it noted Sunday: “When the Stardust shuts its doors, it will have gone from the world’s largest hotel to one of the smallest on the Strip, from glamour to infamy to middle-class normalcy.”

And soon it will be simply dust.

YYZ · October 31, 2006

There's only so much you can do with a building that has 40 year of cigarettes, booze and piss ingrained in every piece of drywall. I've never stayed there, but have been inside the Stardust - and this closure is no real surprise. The north end of the strip needs to breathe new life and the only way to do it is tear down the old and rebuild anew.

Kind of like forest fires - nature's cleanser.