Last roll of the dice at Las Vegas hotel
The casino floor was heaving as gamblers hit the slots at the Tropicana for one last dance with Lady Luck.
During its heyday in the middle of the past century, the hotel represented the glitz and the glamour of Las Vegas, the casino town that sprang up in the middle of the Nevada desert and was controlled by the mob. But the gangsters who once called Sin City home are long gone and the Tropicana, which opened in 1957, is being replaced by a US$1.5 billion (NZ$2.52b) baseball stadium.
America's sports franchises once stayed away because of Las Vegas' ties with gambling, but, like everything in the city, times have changed and money talks. Now the leagues are desperate for a piece of the action. There's even an F1 race in town.
When the hotel's doors closed for the final time last week, Sally Cresswell, 57, of Texas who has been visiting Las Vegas since she was 18, admitted her US$1000 jackpot win was tinged with sadness. “It's really sad that this place is going.”
If the Oakland Athletics baseball team complete their move from California, Las Vegas will be home to NFL, National Hockey League and Major League Baseball franchises.
The Tropicana featured in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, the magicians Siegfried and Roy debuted there and Sammy Davis Jr was among the acts who performed on its stage.
But the hotel had a dark side, thanks to its links with the mob. After the reputed gangster Frank Costello was shot in the head weeks after the hotel's opening, police found a piece of paper in his coat pocket with the Tropicana's exact earnings scrawled on it.
In the 1970s, another mafia-related scandal struck the hotel, forcing a change of ownership, but the decline had already begun.
The tuxedos and ball gowns that guests wore during the 1960s are long gone and today's guests show up in flip-flops, shorts and American football shirts. Smoking is still allowed indoors in Las Vegas and many gamblers make their way through packets of Camel cigarettes while jabbing away at the slot machines.
Rosie Caspary, originally from Shorehamby-Sea, West Sussex, spent some of the happiest days of her life at the Tropicana, as a showgirl in the Folies Bergere cabaret from 1993 until 2002. The feathered dancers were a Tropicana fixture for almost 50 years, before the curtain was brought down on the act in 2009.
Caspary, 53, said the Tropicana was once the height of elegance. “Vegas is different now. We're becoming a lot more sportscentred and concerts-centred. It's not the Vegas of times gone by where you used to be able to come into town, gamble, then go see a show and get all dressed up. Afterwards, if you were hungry you could go and get a 99-cent breakfast. Try getting anything under US$20 now.”