The back room

A few years ago, for about nine months, I had the good fortune to work at FCB in San Francisco. It was a fun, jet-setting kind of gig because I had to commute back and forth from Santa Monica, where I was living at the time. I’d leave Monday morning, and fly back Friday night. Racked up lots of frequent flyer miles, and also got to know a lot of the airport personnel by name. Thank you for the free upgrades.

That was the good news.

The bad news is it was on Taco Bell.

If you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time – and if you have, thank you, but you really need to spend more time outside – you may remember I wrote here about my time up north. One thing I happened to leave out was the night I went looking for trouble.

Normally, trouble usually has no trouble finding me. But on this night, I decided to act on something I’d heard. I don’t remember if it was in a noir motion picture from the fifties that took place in San Francisco, or whether the concierge at the hotel had mentioned it to me in passing. I'd heard there were all sorts of backroom crap games in Chinatown, and I was setting out to find myself one.

I also don't remember where I heard this little tidbit: the best way to find one was ask one of the many Asian cab drivers.

So, very late in the evening, I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me to Chinatown. When we got near it, he asked for the exact address, and I told him I didn't have one. I wanted to be taken to a crap game.

He laughed, shook his head and told me there weren’t any. By the way he said it, I could tell I’d struck gold with this driver.

I told him not only did I know there were, but I knew that he knew where they were. I was insistent he take me to one of them. After a lot of back and forth, denial and more denial, he finally said he did know of one. But he wasn’t going to take me there.

When I asked why, he said because the games were closed to outsiders, especially Caucasians, and if I went into one I might not come out.

Even if I didn't hear about them in a movie, it was beginning to sound like one.

You know how seeing a police car in the rear-view mirror after you’ve had a couple beers sobers you right up? That’s how fast I lost my desire to play in a back-room crap game.

He took me back to the hotel, where I tipped him generously and thanked him for being so honest with me.

He said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

The itch

I go to Vegas at least once a year for SEMA. But truth be told, it's not nearly enough (I mean Vegas, not SEMA: three days of that is plenty).

Every once in awhile, like now, I get the itch. To feel the dice rattling in my hand before I roll them down the crap table. To get that jolt of adrenaline when I hit the point. To be in a town that understands you should be able to get a watered-down screwdriver 24 hours a day.

When I talk to friends of mine about going, what I hear a lot is, "I have to see if my wife'll let me go." Fortunately I'm blessed with a wife who says, "Get out of here. And bring back a little for me will ya?" I love that woman.

I like to think that I base my friendships on more substantial and meaningful things. That's why I have some friends that don't care for Vegas. But I have better ones that do.

My friend Mardel and I have gone to Vegas for years, and in the same way the tables run hot and cold, so have our trips.

However one of the great times we had was a few years ago when we were there for the Consumer Electronics Show. It's one of the biggest conventions held every year in Vegas, and an excellent excuse, er, reason to go there.

This trip, Mardel and I found ourselves at a crap table at Treasure Island at three in the morning (I know, I was as shocked as you are). Mardel was the shooter, and he was on a smokin' hot streak. He must've had the dice for over forty minutes.

We noticed on the other side of the table was a heavy hitter, betting A LOT of money. In fact at one point, they had to stop the game so they could bring this guy another rack of chips to play with.

I don't know how much money he had down on hard six, but Mardel rolled it. The roar was deafening. The gambler on the other side won $25,000 off that one roll.

I turned to Mardel and said, "If that guy had any class he'd tip you $100." As I was saying it, the stickman handed Mardel a $500 chip and said, "This is from the gentleman over there."

As I recall, there were drinks and more gambling. I'm not sure how long that money lasted, but it was sure fun while it did.

Those things don't happen every time I go to Vegas, but they happen just often enough to keep hope alive.

Of course, there are other things that happen there. But you know the saying.