https://nymag.com/intelligencer/arti...=pocket_mylist

New York magazine has been digging through its archives for stories on hustlers, etc, and this article came up recently. Everything you'd expect from a vegas story: degen action, mob ties, etc. 20 min read, I thought it was a cool dive into Vegas history

Sounds like the mid 1970s, when I was a "field Rep" for the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund for a bit, out of Chicago.

I took a week off and flew to Las Vegas from Chicago on some charter flight, I was not a known gambler and barely 21; got on by handing a guy $100 in cash. I was put up at the Dunes, in one of the wings from which my ground floor room opened to a swimming pool with a grassy lawn and palm trees. (There were cocktail servers at the pool and walking around the lawn where chairs were set up under some trees. )

The poker room was pretty small, maybe 3 tables, and dealt 7 stud. I stood out a bit because I was barely 21, wore a suit, had very long hair, but was from Chicago and worked for the Teamsters Fund that bankrolled a lot of hotels.

I won a bit, gambled at 21 and overall got some free chili and other free food and gambled that cost me around $200, net of the little money I won at poker.

Good times.

Good read; thanks for posting.

--klez

This was very entertaining, thanks for posting!

let me help you with a proper format of an external link...




If You’re a Stiff or a Welsher, Don’t Fly to Vegas “Give us action is all we ask. If you wanna play, play. If you don’t, just go as a tourist …”


Sy Geller, a natty, fast-moving New Yorker of 58, his wrists and fingers agleam with gold adornments, plays a highly specialized role in the Nevada gambling industry. He is a junketeer, an indispensable adjunct to one of the most artful devices ever contrived for relieving gamblers of their money.

From his Manhattan headquarters, Geller distributes every month, in behalf of Las Vegas’s Flamingo Hilton Hotel, 500 puce-bordered cards reading:

We would be most honored if you would join us at a private V.I.P. party …

The dates of departure and return by chartered jet cover four days.

Please R.S.V.P. within ten days of the receipt of invitation. For men only. Non-transferable.

Geller himself declines to assume any responsibility for the solvency of his passengers, leaving it entirely up to the Flamingo. “I wouldn’t vouch for my own father,” he says.


Hhaha awesome.

Thank you for the link.

In case anyone is wondering, multiply the number by 6 to approx. get the amounts in today's dollars.

That guy was 58 in that pic? Yikes, he looks 78. Lifetime of gambling/smoking FTL.

Great article and writing. '...he looked like he was cut from stone with a dull chisel...'

Seems like a lot of inside info to be divulged in a time (1974) when one could expect a visit from 'the boys' for talking too much.

“At the terminal, waiting for his luggage, he asks the guy next to him, ‘Got change for a dollar so I can tip the porter?’ He’s back to reality, back from Vegas, the adult Disneyland. ‘Maxie,’ his wife tells him when he leaves for work next morning, ‘put out the garbage.’ But driving along he begins to feel better. ‘Gotta call Sy,’ he promises himself, ‘gotta make that next junket.’”

Okay-- I didn't need to be singled out so aggressively