Columnist Susan Snyder: San Diego slips us a Mickey

Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2003 | 8:16 a.m.

Over the weekend we visited a Southern California casino that boasted a couple of attractions the Las Vegas Strip doesn't have:

Gaming rooms for nonsmokers, and the "Mickey Finn Show."

Actually, we didn't partake of the nonsmoking gaming rooms at the Sycuan Casino outside San Diego. One was for bingo, and the other had slot machines. Both were full.

We saw Fred "Mickey" Finn's show twice. However, you can see this show half a dozen times in a row and never see the same one twice.

Even the musicians have little idea of what's going to happen next. Sure, there are musical charts and a general idea of what's going on. But Finn may decide to change the order of tunes or add tunes or exchange them or add the beginning of one to the end of another.

And he does it at about 100 mph, onstage.

"We need seat belts up there," Harry Watters, the band's trombonist, laughed after the first show Friday night. Watters also is first-chair trombonist for the U.S. Army Jazz Band.

And -- because I have to give full disclosure or my mom and my editors will rant -- one of Finn's other musicians was my brother Jim Snyder, a clarinetist without peer who has played as a member of the Dukes of Dixieland and Al Hirt's band, among others.

(I continue to be amazed we are related. I think he's still waiting for the DNA tests to come back, but that's another topic.)

For some 40 years Finn has hawked his zany mix of comedy and music that usually is described as Dixieland but could just as easily include Chopin, swing, boogie-woogie and a selection from "Cats."

He started a 24-year run in Las Vegas in 1966, playing Caesars Palace, the Union Plaza (now the Plaza) and the Landmark (now amemory), among other places.

Finn's show defies description. You have to be there. Suffice to say I have never seen a man play a piano when the keyboard's covered by a tablecloth.

But Finn was only part of this amazing experience.

This casino is located at the end of a winding, hard-to-find (OK, hard-to-find if you're me) road in the foothills near El Cajon. It sits six miles from the Singing Hills Golf Club Resort, which the Sycuan Band acquired last year. That is the closest hotel.

The Sycuan Casino is dry -- no alcohol of any kind is served. Consequently, there are no voluptuous cocktail waitresses in skimpy togs and stacked heels serving freebies. Valet parking costs $2.

It doesn't have a roller coaster or shark exhibit.

And it was packed. By 7 p.m. the line for valet parking extended out to the road. Self-parking was so full by 5:30 p.m. that the best hope of stopping the car was to find someone who was leaving. Slot machines and blackjack tables had lines.

Finn's shows were sold out or nearly so. After Saturday afternoon's sold-out matinee the Sycuan's entertainment director said the casino's shows averaged 85 percent capacity.

Amazing. No bar. No free valet. No scantily clad women. No smoking and no teeny-bopper Top 40 singers. Just the games people want to play and the players they want to hear.

Sounds like Las Vegas. At least, it used to.