Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

OFF THE STRIP:

White Castle arrives with loyalty in tow

white castle grand opening

Mikayla Whitmore

A line of customers wait to order sliders at the grand opening of White Castle at the Best Western Plus Casino Royale on the Strip on Jan. 27, 2015.

White Castle Grand Opening

The grand opening of White Castle at the Best Western Plus Casino Royale on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015, on the Las Vegas Strip. Launch slideshow »

It was 3:30 on an early Saturday morning, and the sheer whiteness of the room blew out everyone’s vision like an overexposed photograph. Chris, the most cultured of a group that was lost someplace between high school and a career path, pointed out that it seemed we were in a scene of a Stanley Kubrick movie.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Dave,” said Keith, another member of the group, in the voice of the evil computer in Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “You should hand me another one, Dave.”

There was no Dave; there was only Donnie, and he pulled a small cardboard carton from the paper sack. After removing the top half of the bun from a square-shaped steamed meat patty whose five holes resembled the pips on a Las Vegas craps die, he pulled off the pickle.

That was 25 or more years ago in Louisville, Ky., where White Castle restaurants dotted the landscape, and pickles flung by prank-prone diners often dotted the industrial clocks within them in the hours past the last stop of a night out and just before the morning cleaning crews.

The original-slider westward rush has begun, as shown in a video posted by the Las Vegas Sun of the valley’s newly opened “Porcelain Palace” — just one of White Castle’s many nicknames used by those who were raised near them. In Vegas, the lines flowed around a corner, and then another, and then another, until it practically backed up off the Strip into baggage claim at McCarran Airport — the new terminal.

I witnessed one of the great pickle shots of 1989 that night with Chris, Keith and Donnie, so I quasi-understand the inexplicable appeal of the “Aluminum Room.” But this waiting line? It’s ridiculous.

Or is it?

In June I was in a family minivan loaded with middle-aged men that rolled through one of sketchiest parts of St. Louis to grab a case of White Castle burgers. A line like the one seen in Vegas this week would have changed our plans in the blink of an eye, maybe.

It should not be incriminating that after the University of Kentucky lost the NCAA men’s basketball final this past April, a carload of us left Lexington for Cincinnati to see a Bruce Springsteen concert the next night, via a White Castle that was on the way, nearly.

And what of it, if, at another time, a taxi full of usual suspects left Chicago’s Wrigley Field and one paid for six or eight of those little monsters with an American Express Black card? Ray needed the points, probably.

It defies logic, really; kind of in the same way one can’t stop scratching an itch. It feels good, but we probably know better, and the lengths folks will go through seem boundless.

Trekking two-dozen miles through a dark, remote part of New Jersey with a former major league baseball pitcher in 2000 to grab 60 or 80 of them for a team that just won the Atlantic League baseball pennant is not the limit, obviously. Nor is the eight-block walk through a Manhattan blizzard. I’ve often led these charges and I still don’t know why.

Still, the lines form in Las Vegas and this mythical stranger to the West’s uninitiated has ridden into town. And thus, the slings and arrows come out as West Coasters are championing their In-N-Out Burgers and whatnots over the Mighty Whitey.

But before this gets out of hand, remember there is no accounting for local allegiances. (Go to Sydney and try the Vegemite, then learn to accept what you don’t get.) There are no comparisons to be drawn; it’s simply different.

White Castle has not launched in Las Vegas’ suburbs, at least not yet anyway. And it was not destined to make its West Coast debut in place of José Andrés’ Bazaar Meat at SLS Las Vegas. Rather, it’s placed its bizarre meat at The Best Western Plus — located right next to the Walgreens, and right across from the famous Mirage volcano.

And that’s a cinematic allegory that Stanley Kubrick himself may have even employed.

Billy Johnson is a longtime Las Vegas resident who has been contributing commentary to lasvegassun.com since 2011. Johnson, the former president of the Las Vegas Wranglers hockey team, is now the director of the University Medical Center Foundation.

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