More Vegas signage

I've got another slideshow for you, with a few of the old motel signs I snapped on our bus ride downtown. Please pardon the presence of streetlights, etc., but it was a little tricky to try to get shots as we were moving! They have a mini version of the famous Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada sign on the way downtown, and it substitutes "downtown" for "fabulous." Super cool!

Some of the signs are in pretty good shape, which is more than I can say for some of the motels! Most of them looked like places you really wouldn't want to stay in, not if you wanted to walk out alive, uninfested, or both. There are a lot of sex shops and seedy-looking strip joints in this area, but also a lot of wedding chapels...which I found odd and interesting at the same time. A couple of my favorite motels we passed were the High Hat Motel (a great name, and the sign includes a boomerang) and the Tod Motor Motel. That was a pretty large sign, and I just liked the name. A motel named Tod. Of course, Tod (pronounced tote) is the German word for death, so I doubt if they get a lot of German visitors staying at the Tod Motor Motel!

I suppose there will come a day when Vegas tries to clean up the approach to the old downtown, but I hope it takes them a while. I thought it was kind of neat to see these signs and motels...although I don't think I'd want to walk around in the area. They're doing a lot of work on the area adjacent to the Fremont Street Experience, including expanding the sidewalks and adding some brand new neon signs, a couple of which I included in the slideshow. The martini glass is fabulous, with concentric circles lighting in sequence, then the olive! They've done a good job with these signs. But Las Vegas Boulevard, just north of the Strip, is probably what most people hate if they hate Vegas. It's seedy, dirty, and a little bit sleazy. I kinda like it, but then I have a fascination with the way buildings age, especially when contrasted with the glitter of the Strip. I still maintain that such buildings and signs will be the archaeological sites of the future.

I also included a couple more Boneyard signs in the slideshow, because I just knew I was missing a couple! I checked my camera, and there were about 10 that didn't download. One of the cutest signs was from a dry cleaners, and our guide Justin said it was his favorite growing up in Vegas. It's called Happy Shirt, and he would wave his arms and smile. There's a picture of a later incarnation of the Stardust sign (it went through several makeovers), which should give you an idea of how massive the Stardust sign always was. Justin said that the sign is in 9 pieces, and all of them are huge. He said they did a great job in dismantling the sign, as well, cutting along all the original welding lines. Yay!

By the way, although the movie "Casino" was mostly filmed at the Riviera, it's based on Franky "Lefty" Rosenthal and his management of the Stardust for a while, and his associate Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, played by Robert Deniro and Joe Pesci respectively. Ken and I watched "Casino" again not too long ago, and it's a great movie.

I still have lots of pictures of the Fremont Street casinos, and I'll save those for another day. Here's the slideshow, and again, you can click at any time to get the big picture.