I came across numerous references to Inside Las Vegas by Mario Puzo as I read various and sundry accounts of late 20th century Las Vegas. Thought that since it was held in such high regard, it must be a Very Important Book about LV. Scored an autographed copy on eBay, copyright '76 and boy!...was I disappointed! Don't know if the boy owed one of the joints some big time markers or what but the book just seemed as if the writer was holed up in a downtown hotel room with a bunch of booze and old stories grinding out words per page until he could escape. Lots of "inside" lore for the squares back home apparently but really not as good as the hardboiled Las Vegas advise that you'd find in Green Felt Jungle for example. Ah well, we chippers are a jaded lot with our Splash Bar and Limo Stud legends. But!......there was a happy surprise to this book that I want to share. Lots of great photos make this tome a keeper. Some nifty stuff like the Dunes sign and also lots of evocative and poingnate images of the folks working and playing in Las Vegas back in the day. I'm going to post some of these pics as I throw things up on the board here. The book is 8X10 and kind of hard to balance on the scanner so's forgive the outta-plumb skew of some of the repo's, sorry. Not quite as hard as trying to scan turtles though.

Someone once asked me if I ever made any $ at my favorite casino game, blackjack. I guess I never figured it that way because I was having so much fun watching all the folks around me. Supose that's why I like pictures like the one of Cliff the Horseshoe dealer waiting on a player. He's got a rack of those Dieswirl chips, just the ones and fives though, guess the $25's were R-10 back then also. Of course Becky could have been using the greenies for teacakes for her dollies back at the Binion ranchhouse. You suppose?