June 29, 2010
Under the Sea!
This was a good...no...great day!
Picked Emma up a little after 8am , and made our way up to the Newport Aquarium. It's been quite some time since we've been there and it was certainly worth the trip. We cruised around Newport on the Levee, which included a few neat little stores. One in particular was called The Dragon's Hoard. What a cool shop! It had a lot of Renaissance garb and gear for festivals, along with a "hoard" of weapons. Good thing Conor didn't come with us...there could have been mayhem afoot!
Anyway, we talked with the owner (I suppose), and he indicated that they had recently opened and were anticipating even more inventory, including some western gear. A lot of the things he gets are made from the same folks who do reproductions for movies...neat.
Oh yeah...there are dragons there too. He said more are on the way as well...that by itself is worth another trip up there. We wished him good luck and went on our way.
After visiting the fish, we did another lap around the levee and headed home. We stopped in Florence at an antique mall. In 10 minutes, I saw more chips there than all of my other mall, flea market, yard sale, estate sale excursions combined! Unfortunately, the booth owners were quite proud of their chips so we didn't bring any home with us...but still a very exciting find.
We hit the Florence Mall (did they change things around in the past 5-6 years?) and did more shopping. What is it about us and malls? Oh yeah...Emma is a teenage girl...silly me! After a visit to the food court, we came home.
My feet are killing me, and I don't care!
Thanks Emma! I had a blast, and I hope you did too!
June 26, 2010
one half this, one half that
Few days good
Most days bad
Almost all days sad
The more I sleep, the more tired I get. An interesting equation.
The ringing never, ever stops.
How one can someone be so oblivious to how much hurt is caused?
Time to lay down.
June 22, 2010
Yearning
As my chipping friends descend upon Las Vegas once again for the Annual Collector's Convention, I wish them all safe travels, lots of new chips, and bring home some of Vegas' money!
June 09, 2010
Man...how I wish I could go!
Al Moe
Casino chip collectors will mob Las Vegas in June for a show featuring chips and other items. A single casino chip sold on eBay for $28,988.88
The 2010 edition of the CCGTCC chip collector’s convention hits Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 and runs through Saturday June 26. The convention is the highly anticipated annual get-together for thousands of casino and gaming memorabilia collectors. Doors open to the public on Thursday, June 24, at 10:00AM in the Grand Ballroom at the South Point Hotel/Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
The Casino Chip and Gaming Token Collectors Club (CCGTCC) has been around nearly 25-years, after starting with less than 20 members in 1987. Archie Black, a collector of casino chips from Atlantic City, New Jersey, started the club after contributing articles on New Jersey chips to Casino and Gaming Chips Magazine, based in Reno, Nevada.
Black and his small band of collectors held their first annual meeting at the American Numismatic Association Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1988. The club’s enthusiasm and growing membership led to it becoming a sub-section of the ANA, and the annual meeting became a full-blown convention in May of 1993, held at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. This year’s event will be held at the South Point Casino, and traffic entering the Grand Ballroom is expected to top 10,000 persons.
Quarterly Chip Club Magazine
The CCGTCC offers an 80-page color magazine with its annual membership. The quarterly magazine features stories about the history of casinos, but because members collect all types of memorabilia from around the world, stories contain wonderful photos of chips, dice, ashtrays and matchbooks, tokens, casinos themselves and even hotel key- cards, postcards and swizzle sticks.
Early collectors of casino and poker chips like Phil Jensen, Bruce Landau, and Dale Seymour scoured flea markets, antique stores, and casinos themselves to find rare chips in the 1970’s. Seymour went on to publish the first catalogue and price guide: “Antique Gambling Chips.”
Chip Price Guides
Newer price guides like the “Chip Rack” and “The Official U.S. Casino Chip Price Guide” are updated regularly to reflect fluctuations in prices, new issues, and rare finds.
$1 Chip Sets Record Price
Retiree Sandy Marbs from Florissant, Missouri listed a chip on eBay that she found nestled at the bottom of her jewelry box, a momento from a trip to Las Vegas in 1960. She started the bidding at $2.25 – but by the end of the auction, the rare $1 issue from the Showboat Vegas fetched a record $28,988.88
This year’s convention at the South Point Casino will include more than 50-dealer tables full of all types of casino collectibles for sale and trade to the general public. Educational seminars are a part of the convention this year with advice for organizing your collection, collecting gaming, collecting Caribbean casino chips, and a lecture on the book, “The Roots of Reno.”
Club members also enjoy special events like a blackjack and poker tournament, trade sessions, plus club rates in the hotel. Non-members will enjoy a veritable plethora of casino chips, dice, tokens, silver strikes, and displays of different casino advertising collectibles like matches and ashtrays. Bring your old chips to sell or have priced. Who knows what they might be worth? The dealers at the convention do!
June 01, 2010
Another promotion
But not for me...for Emma!
I attended Emma's 8th grade award ceremony this morning. My little girl is the last of the kids to get into high school...where has the time gone?
She looked so grown-up, walking across the floor to receive her certificate. I was able to snap a pic or two. My mind then wandered back to when she was born...and then as she grew up. The images flashed by by so quickly, just as the time has flown by.
I really miss being with her as she begins a new journey at a new school. Fortunately, we get together for shopping and lounging every 2 weeks or so. Even just crashing and watching a movie with her is a treat.
Congratulations Emma, I'm very proud of you!
May 26, 2010
Good Rumblings!
Shuttered since 2006, Lady Luck showing new life in downtown Las Vegas
LV Planning Commission to discuss proposal
There are signs of life at the Lady Luck casino in downtown Las Vegas, which closed its doors four years ago for what was supposed to be a one-year hiatus.
Remodeling and expansion plans have been submitted to city of Las Vegas officials.
The remaining question is how soon those plans will be implemented.
A representative of Resort Gaming Group, which is managing the project, could not be reached for comment.
Through a spokesman, Mayor Oscar Goodman said he couldn't comment beyond saying the project is "moving forward."
Councilman Ricki Barlow, whose ward includes the Lady Luck, also could not be reached for comment.
According to city filings, the plan calls for:
■ Adding 8,500 square feet of meeting space and 17,250 square feet of pool and deck space on top of the existing casino building at Ogden Avenue and Third Street.
■ Replacing 50 hotel rooms with a spa, a fitness room, bathrooms, meeting space and corridors.
■ Upgrading the remaining 634 rooms as well as the casino and retail space "to a much higher standard than previously existed."
■ Drastically altering the pedestrian bridge that connects the two hotel towers across Third Street. When finished, the remade bridge will be see-through, allowing an unobstructed view of the Mob Museum building from the Fremont Street Experience.
There also will be a new central plant, a new loading dock and changes to parking and traffic flow.
Some work already is taking place at the Lady Luck.
In March, Goodman said the inside of the hotel was being cleaned up in anticipation of remodeling plans.
The Lady Luck closed in 2006 for renovations. It was purchased by CIM Group in 2007.
Resort Gaming Group, which manages Timbers Bar and Grill sites in Southern Nevada, will manage the Lady Luck and is named as the applicant on the plans submitted to the city.
Those plans are on the Las Vegas Planning Commission's agenda for Thursday. The plans also need to be approved by the City Council.
What would become the Lady Luck opened in 1964 as Honest John's, a 2,000-square-foot joint with pinball and slot machines and five employees.
The Lady Luck name was adopted in 1968, and the property expanded in 1972, 1983, 1985 and 1989, according to information compiled by the UNLV School of Architecture.
Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@review journal.com or 702-229-6435.
May 01, 2010
Misty for good reasons
For the most part, things have been a bit crappy for me for awhile...more so the past 2 years. Not everything has sucked...just a lot.
Today was different. Today, I traded texts and got a phone call from Trevor. He has finished his basic training and will soon move on to his other endeavors.
He has no idea how much that phone call meant to me and just how much I miss him. No father has been more proud of his son.
April 02, 2010
Say it isn't so...
Anyone who knows me and my casino collecting habits will know how hard this hits.
CRYSTAL BAY, Nev. — Before the Las Vegas Strip ruled the gambling world, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. helped make the Cal Neva Lodge one of Nevada's coolest casinos in the early 1960s.
On Wednesday, roulette wheels will stop spinning and blackjack games will cease at Sinatra's old resort that straddles the Nevada-California border on Lake Tahoe's north shore at Crystal Bay.
While the resort's current owner hopes to reopen the casino under a new outside contractor by year's end, some analysts think the Cal Neva might have dealt its last hand. They said Tahoe casinos are particularly vulnerable to the double-whammy of the recession and competition from Las Vegas and Indian casinos.
In 2009, gambling revenues at Lake Tahoe casinos were roughly half of the 1992 total when corrected for inflation, said William Eadington, an economics professor and director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno.
"The realities are when you have that kind of decline the weakest operators typically get pushed out," Eadington said. "The older, tired casinos — and the Cal Neva is a great example — don't have much to offer for gaming."
Sinatra owned the Cal Neva from 1960 to 1963 during its heyday, drawing fellow Rat Pack members Martin, Davis and Peter Lawford, and stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Juliet Prowse.
Monroe spent her final weekend at the Cal Neva before she died of a drug overdose in Los Angeles in August 1962. The small cabin where she stayed still stands and is part of a tour offered by the resort.
Sinatra renovated the Cal Neva, adding the celebrity showroom and a helicopter pad on the roof. He used tunnels to shuffle mobsters and celebrities beneath the resort so they wouldn't be seen by the general public, said Carl Buehler, a bartender who leads tours at the resort. The tunnels were built in the late 1920s so liquor could be smuggled in during Prohibition, he said.
"This was one of the hottest casinos in Nevada when Frank owned it," Buehler said. "Frank had all the stars coming in and out of here, and it was always packed with people. I think the history is what keeps the Cal Neva going."
Sinatra's gambling license was stripped by the Nevada Gaming Control Board after Chicago mobster Sam Giancana was spotted on the premises.
Richard Bosworth, Canyon Capital Realty Advisors senior director, said the Los Angeles-based financial institution that has owned the rustic resort since last year has held discussions with several gambling-license holders who have expressed an interest in managing the casino.
He noted the rest of the property, including restaurants and the showroom now named for Sinatra, will remain open. The company has overseen significant turnarounds in non-gambling operations such as hotel and wedding bookings since becoming the landmark's owner through foreclosure.
"We have worked hard to successfully stabilize business operations over the past year, and we are confident that an operator shift at the casino will only further enhance the value of the Cal Neva resort," Bosworth said in a statement.
Former Nevada state Archivist Guy Rocha said he questions whether the casino will be able to reopen because of the decline in Nevada's gambling business.
The Cal Neva's colorful past isn't enough to draw younger gamblers not as familiar with Sinatra and other celebrities who entertained there more than 50 years ago, he said.
"People just aren't coming in the numbers to gamble like they used to," Rocha said. "The Cal Neva doesn't capture people's imagination the way it once did."
The Cal Neva is one of Nevada's first legal casinos. The present resort was built in 1937, when a fire destroyed the original lodge that had opened in 1926. Before Sinatra's tenure, Judy Garland first performed at the lodge in 1935 at the age of 13.
Canyon Capital took over the Cal Neva after foreclosing on a $25 million loan to its prior owner, financier Ezri Namvar. A two-state auction of the property last year netted no bidders. Namvar bought the Cal Neva from Chuck Bluth in 2005.
At a meeting last week, Lake Tahoe casino owners agreed the local gambling industry is in sharp decline and the current status quo is not a viable option.
"The cost of doing nothing is considerable," said John Koster, regional president of Harrah's Northern Nevada.
Mike Bradford, president of Lakeside Inn and Casino in Stateline, said he has had to lay off about 100 employees since 2006.
"I just couldn't afford to pay their salaries," he said.
Elsewhere on Tahoe's south shore, Bill's Casino closed and the Horizon Casino eliminated table games of chance last year, further signs of the industry's distress.
February 17, 2010
sprouting wings
Today, my eldest son, Trevor, leaves home to begin his long journey in the service of the Army. I'm not quite sure he realizes what is in store for him, but he'll discover that soon enough.
To say I'm going to miss my boy...well...just don't say it.
Trevor, while I may not understand your decision, I certainly support what you wish to do. I am very, very proud of you.
Listen, do what you're told, keep your head and your ass down. I look forward to buying a serviceman a beer in the future.
February 14, 2010
180 degrees
I used to look forward to so many holidays. Now...I could not care less. So many things, little things, that just remind how alone I feel.
What I need....what I really, really need...is a trip to Vegas. It would not take much to convince me to make it a one way ticket. I want to leave here so badly. Hell...I've been pushed away and pretty much discarded by those who meant the most to me (not all, mind you)..why not? I won't be missed by them.
I feel like shit anyway and need to start all over, so why do it here? If I'm going to begin a new life, I might as well do it somewhere I like.
I just wish the ringing and spinning would stop.
February 12, 2010
Simply amazing
How many times am I going to have my nose rubbed in it...and how many times am I going to keep going back for more?
Hi...my name is doormat...just walk on in.
January 15, 2010
.......
How many times have I gone to sleep, wishing I wouldn't wake up?
Knowing things I wish I didn't.
The sadness and loneliness envelope me like an unwanted blanket on an already hot day.
I'm so tired of putting the "game face" on every day...I just don't want to do it anymore.
I give...something wins, but not me.
January 01, 2010
The Year That Was(n't)
Happy New Year!!
Well...Christmas is over and I'm here pecking away at the keyboard while the Rose Bowl is getting ready to start. I was able to visit the kids today and now my dinner is cooking. Things seem to be peaceful and for the moment...stress free. Now would be a good time to reflect on the past year...the good and the bad.
One of these days, I'll either move all my files to this laptop, or fire up the old one so I can upload some pics. One of these days.
I have to start with the 2 people , without whom I would probably not be around to write anything. They would be my brother, George, and my main man and voice of reason, Will Hallback. I've interacted with many folks over the past year, but these 2 have been the sturdiest of rocks I relied on (or cried to). My personal issues have been varied and some quite severe, and these guys have responded within minutes to provide aid. I can never repay them for the support they have given me...the best I can do is offer my sincere thanks.
Work has been good and I'm continuing to learn new things almost daily. It has been an exercise of patience at times, but overall very rewarding. I have looked into positions in other divisions of the Company as far away as Alaska and in Florida. I peek at Nevada too...lots of opportunity there...hahahahaha. Who knows where I will end up this time next year?
I have made several new friends, through work and through WOW. If I tried to mention them all, I would surely miss one or two. The ones who really stand out though, for whatever reasons are: Fjaweru/Zoqui, Nightsmoon, Michedica, Morgatha/Piobhorror, Erised/Enived, Eltsorro, Drclal & Msclal, Dew(in all her forms!), Distructor...the list could go on. These folks (some don't play anymore) were not only fun to play with, but fun to banter with during game play. It's fascinating how relationships develop within the game...helping with quests and achievements or general fussing about things out of our control...what class is OP (they all are except mages!), and so on. Amazingly enough, I've grown close to a few of the above mentioned folks...discussing their kids (we have a lot of couples in our guild), schools, parenting, "adult" subjects (heh heh),...etc. And one, whom I won't mention by name, I owe so much to. If any of my in game cronies actually read this thing...they may know who I'm talking about. This person was a beam of sunlight piercing the grey clouds of my horizon (oh puke!), showing me that, yes, there is some hope for me. Thank you! Not that this person also caused me some grief as well...the pros outweigh the cons. Christmas and New Year's Day were both pretty much saved by this one person. That's it..no more to be said.
I'm done...dinner is ready. Looks like a good game. I think we may raid tonight. So...2010...what do you have in store for me?
December 14, 2009
The best laid plans
What should have been the last day of an adventure filled weekend, is played out like the previous three days...blinds drawn, lights out, room dark. Unable to tell the time of day except with a clock.
Then again, things have been dark for a long, long time.
At least I'll be on time to work tomorrow.
December 09, 2009
Damn those trees
Over the years I have surrounded myself with very smart friends. Why am I not smart enough to listen to them?
November 29, 2009
Sound of Silence
I forgot how deafening silence can be...or maybe that's just the ringing in my ears.
Another Holiday Season is upon us...I was hanging on to futile hope that I would not be alone this time. Still the fool, I am.
November 11, 2009
March on!
I did not make it to any football games this year, so I didn't get to see the South Oldham Marching Dragons do their thing. Conor is a junior this year and a veteran member of the band. While I have always enjoyed their performances and thought they were an elite group, they had never been able to to make the State Finals from when Trevor played until now.
That changed this year as not only did they make the finals, they placed 3rd in State! Excellent job one and all. Conor, I am so proud of you.
Here is a link the 3rd Place performance...very impressive.
October 14, 2009
One of the nicest guys you will never meet...
...Greg Susong, chip collector and webmaster of The Chipboard, passed away 10/9/09.
The world has too few good people in it, and now it has one less.
Here is the thread from the Chipboard.
R.I.P. Greg, you will most certainly be missed.
