To slot players, Palms’ sideshow a freak show

By Liz Benston

Saturday, Sept. 18, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Las Vegas resident Judy Skow visits the Palms several times a month to play video poker. One recent afternoon is a bit different from her usual trip, however.

For starters, it involves a man who appears to swallow a handful of razor blades. In a room decorated like a circus tent, performer Jim Rose of Lollapalooza fame is popping the blades into his mouth, followed by a rolled-up piece of string. He strokes his throat, rolls his neck and opens his mouth, gingerly pulling out multiple blades tied to the string.

Nearby gamblers, Skow included, can’t be expected to clap. Instead, they turn to watch the trick while tapping away on their machines. They are participating in a slot tournament, which entails furiously tapping the “spin” button on a slot machine in the hope of accumulating enough credits to win a cash prize. Rose stands on a nearby stage lit from overhead by string lights in a room decorated with murals depicting vintage circus acts, such as “strongman” and “fire eater.”

Skow, who is in her 50s, finishes playing and rolls her eyes.

“I don’t get it,” she says, grabbing a free bag of popcorn at a nearby snack counter decorated like a shooting gallery at a carnival, with clowns and toy prizes. “This is really for a different age bracket.”

Like many Palms regulars, Skow comes for the gambling, not the entertainment.

The free shows — which will run up to 10 times a day through Oct. 2, while a daily slot tournament is under way — are a new variation on previous efforts by Las Vegas casinos to mix gambling with live entertainment. It’s also one of many ways in which they are trying to attract customers in the worst economy for the casino business on record.

Circus Circus has long hosted overhead circus performances, such as acrobats — acts that often go little noticed by gamblers below. Multiple casinos have “party pits” — table games featuring nearby stages with scantily-clad go-go dancers and occasional poles as props. In some pits, female dealers wear the kind of revealing outfits historically reserved for cocktail servers and strippers. Some casinos have hired models, dancers and actors to perform in addition to dealing cards and serving drinks with the understanding that they are offering customers more than just gambling, which can be had just about anywhere these days.

Combining a slot tournament with a carnival sideshow may be a first, though Palms owner George Maloof said the idea wasn’t necessarily driven by the recession.

“We might have done this five years ago if we had thought of it. You always try to create things that are different. Sometimes they go unnoticed. But this is such a big production ... it’s a hokey, fun thing.”

Appropriately called the “Curiously Strange Slot Palladium,” the attraction may be just as bizarre and unpredictable as the economic slump that has decimated casino spending beyond anyone’s predictions.

“This isn’t your granddad’s circus,” said Rose, who pauses to chat after a stunt involving a scorpion in his mouth.

The performer, author and sometime actor has brought his self-named circus act to sold-out crowds at Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival, Lollapalooza and alongside alternative bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson,

Palms performances will include the “human dart board,” “human cannonball” and an escape from a straitjacket.

“I started out in the ’80s as a street performer so I had to create a crowd. I’ve been doing this awhile ... so I think I can get people’s attention,” Rose said of his gambling audience, gathered in a ballroom dedicated to the tournament.

“I sold out all over the world but I couldn’t get a gig in Las Vegas for years because I was too edgy,” he said. “The mainstream came to me. The only good thing about the bad economy is, it made everyone think again.”

Maloof watches the performance from a nearby table with the look of a man who has just survived a potentially dangerous stunt. After all, he is giving away $200,000 in a tournament in the hope of boosting sluggish gambling volume — which is the secret to profits that depend on players competing against an unbeatable house edge.

“You take a daily slot tournament I did 20 years ago, apply entertainment to it in a fun atmosphere, and I think people will show up,” he said. “I was a little apprehensive” at first, though.

With a business strategy best defined as schizophrenic, the Palms is already something of a curiosity in Las Vegas. During the day, it caters to older, local gamblers with a slot floor heavily weighted toward video poker machines. As night falls, the popular music pumped through the casino gets louder, with more dance tracks and nightclub hits. Slot gamblers thin out and a younger crowd spreads out across five lounges and nightclubs, along with a steakhouse and nearby tattoo parlor that look more like late-night clubs than their equivalent competitors around town.

The privately held resort is struggling alongside many other Las Vegas casinos. Like its major competitors, the Palms has been forced by the recession to negotiate with lenders to restructure its debt — a process similar to the lower or forgiven debt payments companies negotiate with lenders in bankruptcy — to ensure Maloof’s tenure at the helm.

Maloof, who wouldn’t reveal financial specifics, is confident he won’t lose his resort to lenders, as has happened with a number of older, more troubled properties in Southern Nevada.

Banks have been willing to negotiate a financial compromise because they don’t want to take over the Palms or many other casinos, for that matter, he said.

Casinos are “hard to manage,” he said. Owners “have to be here every single day and live it 24-7 and be able to grind it out.”

As Rose performs his scorpion stunt, Maloof glances down at its financial equivalent: a spreadsheet showing a razor-thin profit margin on his slot floor.

While many Las Vegas casinos have tightened or removed high-paying video poker machines to shore up profits in tough times, the Palms is returning a greater percentage of bets to gamblers in the hope that they will return, play longer and thus spend more in the long run. It’s a bigger gamble in the recession, Maloof said, given that some gamblers don’t realize they are getting a better deal. He’s planning an ad campaign to make that point. Like the show and tournament, which are intended to attract a bigger crowd than might normally go to the Palms on any given day, this will entail spending money that has grown tight.

The Palms has a solid reputation among local video poker players and has pushed the envelope on entertainment, said Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor newsletter. It was among the first casinos to install flat-screen TVs across the gambling floor to satisfy customers seeking to follow sports events and news headlines — a distraction now common in many Las Vegas casinos, he said. The Palms also capitalized on the nightlife culture by cultivating attractions and parties for those with little interest in gambling.

Skow’s pursuit of slot jackpots couldn’t be more different. While some younger customers in attendance nod in approval, Skow says she could do without the circus act.

“I mean, there was a guy eating a light bulb the other day,” she says. “Ugh.”

Her face softens at the sight of a little person in a purple jester outfit.

“He was really cute, though,” she says. “He’s the best thing about this show.”

During a break, a jester steps outside the ballroom and, beneath the blinking lights of the casino, begins to juggle a set of bowling pins.

Nearby slot machines are the bigger draw, however, and gamblers barely look his way.