SINFUL: The Devil's Breath by Maxwell Cambridge

Author:Maxwell Cambridge [Cambridge, Maxwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Twelve Oaks Media
Published: 2020-07-01T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

The Grandissimo still had that old casino smell to it. The smell of cheap alcohol, stale tobacco, and discount air freshener. In an odd way, it smelled a lot like grandfathers tend to smell. I guess that’s appropriate, since the Grandissimo is the granddaddy of all the Downtown Casinos.

It was located in the heart of the Fremont Street Experience: an LED canopied tourist attraction that occupied the five westernmost blocks of Fremont Street, built to try and woo visitors away from The Strip and back to Downtown. The large number of neon signs it contained earned the area the nickname “Glitter Gulch.” For years, that was the most commonly portrayed area whenever movies or TV shows wanted to display the lights of Las Vegas.

The Grandissimo was built by Gabriel’s father, Wilson Bishop. He was a real rough-and-tumble cowboy who was one of the true innovators in this town. Rumors and tales concerning him and his involvement in organized crime and a host of other shady activities are things of local legend. But despite whether he was a real mobster or not, it’s hard to deny his contribution to the city.

He bought the Eldorado Club and Apache Hotel in 1951, re-opening them as The Grandissimo Casino. He fashioned it like an old-style riverboat, with low ceilings and velvet wallpaper. It was the first casino in the city to have carpeting, as well as comps that were offered to all gamblers. Wilson believed that small-time gamblers should get the same comps as those who bet big money – a revolutionary idea at the time. Bishop also instituted high table limits to attract the first iteration of ‘High Rollers’ to his establishment. When he first opened the Grandissimo, he set the craps table limit at $500—ten times higher than any other casino in Las Vegas at the time. Ultimately, Bishop raised the table limit to $10,000 and even eliminated table limits completely at times – a strategy that made the Grandissimo a mecca for all those early whales who visited town.

Bishop Gaming was a family enterprise, but other than Gabriel, none of Wilson’s children seemed to have much of an aptitude for it. Wilson’s other son, Tom, was too hard of a partier and too big of a fuck-up to manage anything. Of Wilson’s three daughters, only Felicia was interested in trying her hand at the family business. Though she now ran the Grandissimo, she simply didn’t have her father’s knack for gaming or hotel management. Under her watch, the Grandissimo had declined in both quality and profitability over the years.

Not that anyone could fully blame her for that. Felicia was trying the best she could. All the Downtown casinos were hit pretty hard, even before the recession. It was thanks to her efforts to cut costs that the Grandissimo was probably even still operating. Of course, that didn’t change the fact that the establishment looked and felt like it was on its last legs.

I can remember when I was a kid, I used to spend a lot of time here.

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