Columnist Susan Snyder: Binion’s saga a dark day for downtown

Friday, Jan. 23, 2004 | 4:42 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

January 24 - 25, 2004

Probably the best steak dinner ever was served in the restaurant atop Binion's Horseshoe.

We first dined there with two friends who also were recent Las Vegas transplants and also lived on the valley's west side in a house that looks a lot like others across the Southwest. Nothing about them says "Las Vegas" except the addresses.

We snared a table by the window that offered a breathtaking view of Fremont Street and its surrounding neighborhood. From that vantage point, downtown Las Vegas looked neither dead nor Disney.

It looked like, well, "Vegas" -- the kitschy, glittering desert character that had lured visitors to this downtown corridor for 50 years.

But the Horseshoe's luck ran out earlier this month when federal marshals shut it down because of more than $1 million in unpaid union pensions and health care benefits.

Harrah's Entertainment sealed a deal Thursday to purchase the Las Vegas landmark; it might reopen as early as March.

Until then, it sleeps.

"Ohhhh, it's sad, isn't it? They just go out of business?" an older woman said, cupping her hands to look through the locked glass doors of Binion's silent casino last week.

It is a spectacle. When was the last time anyone saw the Horseshoe with its doors locked and lights out?

Supertramp's "Take the Long Way Home" blared over the Fremont Street Experience loudspeakers as visitors meandered among the retail kiosks just opening up for business Tuesday. It was late morning, but the previous night's activities were written all over their faces with too much makeup -- or not enough.

There's little doubt that much of Fremont Street looks better after sundown.

There's something about women in garish costumes hawking Mardi Gras beads that doesn't sit right at 11 a.m.

But then, it was a little early for this downtown lady to be up.

As vendors in front of Binion's prepared to hawk everything from "Cat-lover" T-shirts to gold charms and fake tattoos, visitors stopped and studied the photos posted in the glass case along the casino's wall of winners.

Nearly every passer-by stopped to look first at the photos, then pressed their noses against the glass to see what a dead casino looks like. They had to. To keep walking would have been like stepping over a body in the middle of the sidewalk.

Just before noon a couple sauntered toward the temporary tattoos display. She sported jeans that fit better 10 pounds ago and carried a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He wore a baseball cap and clutched a Budweiser longneck.

America's Couple.

A mother snapped a vacation shot of her two young sons with the Golden Goose's "World Class Topless Girls" sign flashing in the background.

Ragged-looking people stared vacantly ahead as they walked nowhere in particular.

"It's just another day for you and me in paradise," Phil Collins sang from the speakers overhead.

There was a death in this odd family. And its remaining members paid their last respects and went about the business of getting on with life.

The old woman peered once more at the roulette wheel just inside the Horseshoe's doors. Its colors were eerily bright as it stood alone in the darkness.

"It's just too bad."

And she walked away.