The cover over Fremont St. as well as closing the street off for traffic brought tears to the old Vegans. The really old Vegans will tell you the first thing that brought most of them down was making Fremont St. a one-way street; back in the old days everyone would cruise Fremont St. showing off as they passed each other ten or twenty times a night. Sure, some people hung out at the Union Plaza; why I still can't tell you. The Golden Nugget was a dump with wooden floors and 50 cent drinks. But the one and only casino I hung out at, as did every other Las Vegan, was the back bar at the Horseshoe.

The casinos on the strip were for the tourists. It's where the dollar players went to show off their diamond rings and expensive suits and dresses. Downtown would get its share of tourists after three or four days of the strip, but there were a few places downtown that were strictly locals: The Pioneer Club, the Las Vegas Club, but most of all was Binion's Horseshoe. It was the place where craps players went to spend a day or two throwing bones. It was the place where Blackjack players went to take a shot at all those single-deck games when everyone else was going to six-deck shoes. It was the land of 50-cent shots and $2 steak late night dinners. They had so much money, they were able to hang a million bucks in $10,000 bills by the back door where they developed more pictures of the people in front of the money than of the city itself.

They didn't have a regular poker room back then, but come April when the "Binion's World Series of Poker" started, all at once Binions' was the biggest poker place to be in the world. Millions of bucks would change hands across the green felt tables in the span of a couple weeks trying to win some cash and more important, to get the gold bracelet and your picture on the wall of fame as a World Series winner. But things change as they always do. When the Mint went down, we were shocked because it was a great little casino with a nice poker room, so it was good when the Horseshoe decided to just punch a hole in the wall and keep the inside of the Mint the same.

It wasn't that long ago when I wrote the column "The Horseshoe Screw" when I brought some friends downtown only to see the back of the Horseshoe closed up, the blackjack pit gone and most of the machines removed. It was weird because it was where the hotel registration desk was, as well as the entrance to Valet and limousine services where everyone walking into the casino was met with silence and darkness, while all the other casinos like to put their registration area right near the action and sit back and watch people hopping up and down waiting to get checked in so they could get to the damn tables and machines.

The first thing I told my friends was, "Uh-oh, this place is going down." It was a while after Jack left, Teddy had just been murdered and even Bob Stupak couldn't get his money from the vault when he handed them a quarter million bucks in Horseshoe checks. When they failed to pay their part of the cost of the Fremont St. Experience, it hit the papers when it got to a million bucks. But it was too late by then. Once Becky seized control from Jack and Ted, we all knew it was the beginning of the end, and I was really surprised it lasted this long.

But then a few days ago I went downtown to see for myself that the Horseshoe was actually closed for good and sure enough, the lights were off and the doors locked. The racks gone from the tables and the machines turned off and emptied. It was hard to believe, like someone was shooting a movie and in a little while the lights would come back on and the action would begin again. But everyone knew Becky Binion would run the place into the ground and sure enough, it didn't take her long. I don't think she stood a chance when she'd never run a casino before and no casino just runs itself. People weren't playing Blackjack anymore, they weren't playing craps any more, and the Horseshoe was THE PLACE to play craps. It wasn't a place for beginners but I can remember going down there just to watch how the great players played the game far above everywhere else in Las Vegas. It was fun just to watch the action. Hands down, they had no competition when it came to Craps. The Horseshoe dropped more cash in their craps boxes in a shift than most casinos dropped for the entire day from all their tables.

Now it's closed. Like a dead friend you can recognize it but it just doesn't move. The heart has stopped beating downtown. Fremont Street will never be the same. Harrah's has signed a deal to buy the casino; they say it has something to do with the registered "World Series of Poker" rights. I hate to tell everyone but by now there's bigger and better poker games coming that the Horseshoe's WSOP would have a hard time competing with anyway. The Bellagio was planning a bigger tournament as well as the Venetian and a couple other casinos that were ready to give them a run for their money. Now the race is over, the workers had lost their benefits; their insurance wasn't paying their bills. And now the next question was if their 401Ks would ever be paid off. They've told their workers that it might take a couple months to get them their 401 checks when it shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks. Most dealers down there lived week to week so they're going to be hurting just waiting for their money, IF they ever see the checks.

We saw the Dunes go down, the Sands, the Aladdin, but at least they were replaced with bigger and maybe better casinos. But the Horseshoe is different. You can't blow up a casino down there, considering the other attached buildings and the roof of the Fremont Street Experience, so the best Harrah's can do to the place is replace the doors and make it smell a little better, but the rooms will be a hundred bucks, the drinks $3 or $4 bucks, all 6-deck shoes and $5 crap limits. The place will be just as empty as it was just weeks ago when Becky Binion made the comment that "they were doing everything to see that the place would stay in business." That was all she had to say to let us know a friend was dying and the few of us that went down there to witness the deceased would have been better served to make this a closed casket funeral.

Like a friend you watched slowly dying from a disease it's almost better that it's finally over, the pain is gone, and the heart is stopped forever.

-Kenny Pearlman