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The tristesse of modern Nevada casinos
When you travel through Nevada, you can’t escape it: sooner or later you will end up in a casino.
Sometimes because you want to eat there, sometimes because you spend the night there, sometimes just because there is not much left in the town besides the casino.
Where has the magic gone?
For many Europeans, casinos still conjure up images of glamour, twinkling lights, cocktail dresses and the jingle of jackpot machines.
The reality today – at least outside of Vegas anyway – is slightly different.
During our trip through Nevada, we stayed in three smaller gambling towns: Laughlin, Ely and Reno. All three have a history that is closely linked to gambling.
The tristesse of the casinos
Yet we especially noticed how much the atmosphere in the casinos has changed compared to our previous trips.
What once appealed to the imagination now made a somewhat melancholic impression.
The gaming halls were mainly populated by an older audience that sat in front of the slot machines for hours. Not noisy or exuberant, but quiet and concentrated.
People press buttons, swipe across screens, look at the lights and wait for the next combination. It sometimes seems more like a pastime than an adventure.
Maybe that’s the difference with the past.
The romance of gambling seems to have disappeared.
Where once levers were pulled, the wheel rattled around and coins ended up in metal bins with a lot of clinking, today almost everything is digital and silent.
Fortunately, there is still music.
When we leave the Pioneer Casino in Laughlin, If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot sounds from the speakers above the parking lot.
The song floats through the warm evening air and seems to fit this place better than all the flickering screens inside. Fortunately, there is still music.
We also noticed that some casinos look a bit tired.
Not dilapidated, certainly not, but as if they have seen better days. Carpets that have been around for a while, restaurants that are barely filled and retail spaces that are empty.
Laughlin
This was particularly noticeable in Laughlin.
The so-called Riverwalk turned out to be little more than a walking path along the river at the back of the casinos.
We did not find the atmosphere that the name suggests.
The shopping center that was once ambitiously set up is largely empty and the riverboat casino the River Belle that closed its doors during the corona period has never reopened.
Laughlin attracts American visitors looking for the Las Vegas of a few decades ago, when gambling, an inexpensive buffet meal and an affordable hotel room were the city’s main ingredients.
We, as Europeans, mainly felt tristesse and saw a river city that still lives from tourism, but where you can also clearly see the traces of its glory days from the 1980s and 1990s.
But to be fair, Laughlin lived up to its reputation and turned out to be cheap.
Very cheap.
The overnight stay at the Aquarius Resort and dinner at Bumbleberry’s together cost us only 100 dollars.
Reno
Reno also radiated contradictions.
The city is explicitly trying to profile itself as a more modern destination with trendy restaurants, events and an attractive Riverwalk along the Truckee River.
Yet we also saw closed zones and places where the economic and social challenges of the city are visibly present.
The contrast between promotional photos and the reality on (some places) the street was somehow striking.
Although the city is clearly making efforts, it must be said.
The newly renovated J’s Resort was welcoming, the area around it brightened up with interesting artwork, music in the surrounding streets, and the room functional and spot on.
But the contrast with Las Vegas is striking.
Las Vegas has reinvented itself as an entertainment city. People come there as much for concerts, restaurants, shows and attractions as for gambling itself.
The smaller casino cities seem to have undergone this evolution much less.
There, the casino still plays the leading role, while the audience that used to come for that dream is getting smaller and smaller.
Reno, Laughlin and Ely are no longer destinations of glitter and spectacle.
They have become cities where people come for an affordable room, a decent meal, some cooling in the air conditioning and maybe a gamble in between.
The big dreams that were once associated with the casino world have given way to something much more common.
And it was precisely in this that we found that remarkable mixture of nostalgia and tristesse.
Ely
Ely, on the other hand, is a notable exception to this. While Reno and Laughlin are still looking for a new identity besides gambling, it seemed to us that Ely has already made that switch.
The streets have recently been renovated and cared for, the many murals about the mining past give the town color and character, and the casinos are present without dominating the streetscape.
The Nevada Northern Railway in particular impressed us. It is not a museum, but a living piece of history. The old locomotives, workshops and platforms are exceptionally well preserved.
You only have to walk among them and close your eyes to imagine yourself in another time, when the copper ore from the surrounding mines was transported here and travelers were waiting expectantly for their train.
This is exactly what makes Ely different. Where some casino cities mainly look back at a lost past, Ely seems to have succeeded in breathing new life into that past.
Want to read more about Ely? Ely, the most underrated place in Nevada
In addition to the important differences, we also noticed a lot of small cultural differences. Read more about this in our next story.
Emma