Atlantis Casino, Bahamas
[dcs_p]This is a beautiful casino. I lost twenty grand playing dice, but I’m not complaining. I know the game—hell, half my family’s early fortune was made in the gambling business. My favorite casino is the Bellagio in Vegas, although I’m sentimental about Caesar’s Palace. I used to stay there with my old man in the seventies—when Vegas was the boy’s town and they rolled out the red carpet.[/dcs_p]
[dcs_p]Today Vegas is so-so, a little too hyped, a little too square. But there isn’t really anything to compare with it, and there shouldn’t be. I’m going to be a bit hypocritical here, seeing as how I built a casino in my hometown of New Orleans. Ironically, I’m the only original investor who still gets a cut of the profit, and someday I’ll tell you how I managed to pull this off.[/dcs_p]
[dcs_p]My beef is with the abundance of casinos. They’re everywhere—in every hick town and province across the country. I was recently in Detroit, and they’ve got three casinos with two across the river in Windsor. The casinos are swank and glossy, but they’re built in a depressed urban area and their patrons are poor and disadvantaged and elderly. They’ve ruined whatever local economy was happening. It’s overkill, especially since the government is the main beneficiary.[/dcs_p]
[dcs_p]
It was different when guys like me got rich off of craps and card games and sports betting. We were in the community and always gave back to it, but these shysters are building casinos the way Sam Walton built Wal-Marts. It’s cheesy and cheap and worse … it’s boring. So, my advice is … if you want to go to the casino, make it a destination: Vegas, Atlantic City, the Caribbean, even my little hotel and casino in New Orleans. Blow your money and have a good time—that’s what life is about. But in your crappy backwater town or crumbling ghetto, forget it. The Feds are rich enough, why give them more?[/dcs_p]
