At 5:00am on Saturday morning when most decent Las Vegans are just getting to bed, the Bus People are up dressed and ready by 6:00am and on the bus by 7:00. As one guy in back starts mixing the Vodka and tomato juice, another lady starts shaking up the Orange juice and grabbing the liter bottle of rotgut Vodka from the Bloody Mary guy. Another guy starts breaking apart the plastic on the six-packs in the cooler and handing them out to the beer drinkers and by 8 they're just clearing the city and by the time they hit Barstow they're getting tuned up for Vegas.

The lady running the tour hands out the stickers that must be worn on their shirts while they're in the casino so they can be easily identified (most bus people wear them all day, but the "real" people pull them off before they even clear the first slot machine out of sheer embarrassment). The better buses usually have TV's and show movies like National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation, (something moving to stir their dormant intelligence) or play Bingo to pass the time, then give them their free buffet passes, the cheap busses just give them a bag with cookies and a key ring to pacify them then point to the nearest McDonald's when they step off the bus.

As a dealer it's a mixed blessing. On one hand its bodies in the casino, which means players and tippers and life is great, but then we're reminded…THEY ARE BUS PEOPLE. Bus people can almost be as bad as Canadians and there's NOTHING worse than Canadians EXCEPT Canadian Bus People, these people are so cheap five of them will go in on a roll of nickels and all stand around the nickel machine while the most intelligent one of the bunch plays the machine since none of the others can usually figure out where the nickels go in the machines. They figure out the tips on a Canadian calculator then when they figure out how much an American dollar compares with a Canadian dollar, you can forget the tip altogether.

But yes, bus people do smell different, anyone who spends five hours within proximity of an on-board potty where the guys don't even close the door by the end of the trip to pee, is bound to pick up a few nasty smelling molecules in their cloths, hair, breath, etc. Mix it with a few Bloody Marys and a pack or two of Marlboro's and you have an interesting smell.

But they can't be matched for class, you can't imagine having to deal cards while refereeing a belching contest.... between two women... and they aren't drinking beer... then there's the smoke-off, how many packs of cigarettes they can fit in while in the state of Nevada before they cross back into California where they can be shot on sight if even within proximity of a cigarette butt. In California people now do all their drinking at home so they can smoke and drink at the same time... where people now eat their meals at home so they can have a smoke after a meal.

You liberal Californians asked for it, now you're getting it back in your face as you have to help bail out the bankruptcies when the bar/restaurant owners go out of business and fire their workers. The restaurant and bar business in southern California is down over 35% since the ban on smoking, many were forced out of business by either the lack of customers or by the insistence of "the state" to abide by the laws and lost customers that way.

Well I can tell you that in the state of Nevada, all is calm, intelligence wills out. We don't bend to the pressures of the people who would have us stop serving drinks in the casinos because they can't handle alcohol that would have you stop smoking in the casinos, restaurants, and bars since they can't handle smoke. No I'm not a smoker, but I defend their right to smoke where we've always told them they could smoke for all these years. These same people would have us stop the legal prostitution since they can't handle legal hookers 65 miles from their front doors, (deep breath), but the hookers that walk Fremont St. as are all the stripper's bars and escort services that are fronts for prostitutes just a few blocks from your schools and children are ok since they're not bothered by the Health Department like the legal hookers are, or blood tested every two weeks, like the legal hookers are, or are secured by real security like the legal hookers are, or are willing to be trick-rolled by the whores like the legal hookers won't do, since they have to support habits like the legal hookers don't have to do.

These same people would have us stop college sports betting to prevent the legal eye of the casinos to spot illegal and underage bettors. Or so your kid back at the University of Arizona can just bet the game with his favorite illegal bookie on campus instead of driving to Laughlin to bet in a legal casino where no one will bust his knees for not "paying up."

But when I'm dealing if you asked me who I'd rather deal to, I'll tell you every time, I'd rather deal to "bus people" than the typical liberal 25-40 year old southern Californian snobs that think I owe them to "let" them win since they took a bath in the stock market and have to make the payments on the Beamer and pay the cell phone bill. That I'd rather deal to $2 bus players that want to have fun than $100 players that think they should have their own table so they don't have to mix with "those people." But the bus people have a lot of fun, they may not have much money, but they have family and friends they always travel with, and they love to have a good time within their means and not put on airs, and they love to laugh and blow off a little steam on their weekends.

Today we had 47 buses, with approximately 60 on a bus that's over 2500 people brought in to have a good time, which means to the dealers, cocktail waitresses, bartenders ...MONEY. They help support us and I can tell you on a dead weekend there's nothing prettier than a few buses driving into your half-empty parking lot, I don't care what language they speak, we all laugh the same. Now we just have to figure out how to put those potties somewhere OUTSIDE the bus.

-Ken Pearlman