Big game means small sales

Monday, Jan. 27, 2003 | 11:05 a.m.

Las Vegas Valley residents interested in sales had plenty of help from store clerks after the Super Bowl kickoff Sunday, when mall traffic became super slow.

It was slower than normal at Galyan's, a sports and outdoors store with a two-story climbing wall at the Galleria at Sunset.

"This morning there was more business; in fact a line of people were trying to get a Raiders T-shirt," Galyan's clerk Jose Perez said Sunday.

But the crowd thinned to a trickle by mid-afternoon.

Some customers requested Tampa Bay Buccaneer T-shirts, but the Florida-based team is outside Galyan's region, Perez said.

"We only sell shirts of the teams closest to the stores," he said.

Michael Sweitzer, a resident of the area for six years, looked through a rack of sports jerseys Sunday.

So why wasn't he in front of a TV screen watching Super Bowl XXXVII?

"I used to watch when I was younger," Sweitzer said. "It was exciting when I was in my 30s. Now it's just a game."

A casino dealer who learned the ropes of gaming in Mississippi, he visited Las Vegas and fell in love with the 24-hour town, Sweitzer said, "I know football. The Super Bowl just doesn't interest me anymore."

For LaDawna Bitsko and her granddaughters Erin Bitsko, 14, and Deanna Bitsko, 13, a Sunday afternoon shopping trip to the mall was a rare event.

"I'm not much of a mall shopper," LaDawna Bitsko said as she and the two teenagers rested at a table in the Galleria's all-but-empty food court.

Her husband and the girls' dad were home watching the game, she said.

Besides, both girls had received a cash gift for Christmas and decided it was a good time to spend it on late January sales.

"We didn't have any trouble finding a parking space," Bitsko said.

While McCarran International Airport was busy on Thursday and Friday with Super Bowl revelers arriving, normal aircraft traffic was reported on Sunday, airport spokesman Carl Scarborough said.

"We were abnormally busy Thursday and Friday," he said.

Sunday morning flights are usually fewer in number than afternoon flights, he said.

That pattern on this Super Bowl Sunday was holding.

"I am not aware of any dramatic slowdown in flights," Scarborough said.