| rev:text
| - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A cozy little museum-piece of vintage Vegas that ought been enjoyed & seen by everyone, at least once.
My continuing quest for old-school Vegas grub deals led me (a couple of months ago) to the front door of the Skyline, on Boulder Highway, a bit south of the intersection with Sunset Road. Someone advised me there was an envious prime-rib deal here to be had.
When I entered, it felt sort of though I had walked into Mr. Peabody and Sherman's Wayback Machine. The small gaming space was surrounded on all sides by mirrored walls trimmed by strings of clear light bulbs. Oh so 1970s! A visual illusion of larger space ... or a siege wall encasing the gamblers in an infinity gaming floor, you decide. The carpet is filled with sweeping red & orange arches akin to licking flames. The low ceilings repped with some antique-brass colored & patterned tiles. And there was a good bit of antique stuff scattered about, such as 1950ish vending machines. And to one side at the front door, a teeny-weeny space housing an old-school barbershop, only open on weekends. This entire space is so vintage Vegas cozy!
The gambling crowd seemed pretty civil, not quite as rough-round-the-edges as I rubbed elbows with at Longhorn up the street. A good bit of the crowd also appeared to be retiree in nature.
I didn't partake, but the once-legendary Golden Gate shrimp cocktail deal, now dark ... is still alive and well at the Skyline; just $1.50 (at the main bar) delivers a classic tulip-glass full of crustaceans topped with cocktail sauce. (It was a buck at GG until around 2008, then crept up to two bucks, then three, then four ... then disappeared entirely when the GG's sole restaurant went dark in February, 2017.)
The coffee-shop/diner was also a sight to behold. Counter seating & booths and entire décor, very much archived from an older Vegas, but immaculate and well-kept in every way. I kept looking around for a rip in some vinyl, a spot of flaking paint, a wee patch of rust. Nada. Almost as if this space had been kept under-glass somewhere to avoid fingerprints. Oddly, the diner isn't 24/7, as you would expect it to be; it goes dark on graveyard.
It wasn't running when I first arrived, but they turned it on: A model railroad train & track running on shelving tracing the circumference of the ceiling of the diner! MidCentury, one might -- occasionally -- see a ceiling train track as décor in a bar or diner, especially if it had railroading ties and/or themes, of course. (Union Pacific built a Boulder City spur route running roughly parallel to this area of Boulder Highway to support construction of the Hoover Dam.) I strongly suspect this is probably one of the last of very few venues in North America that has an operational train track such as this in place.
Service seemed kind of slow and spotty, surprising given the diner was almost empty. And the prime-rib deal wasn't exactly a deal anymore. It appears that all of the diner deals have had price hikes. My deal was $9, but that didn't include a salad or veggie or drink or tip. So my out-the-door tab was pretty close to $15. Not exactly a steal. Quality was OK, I suppose, for what I paid, but nothing to write home about.
The Skyline has also just completed the addition of a hotel, small, maybe 150 rooms or so. So if you know someone looking for new, modestly-priced rooms in the area ...
CONCLUSION: I'll hit this venue again, taking in the view, trying my luck with some other plate or special, maybe rib-eye, to see if I can make out better. Again, everyone ought see it, but don't go too far out of your way to actually dine it.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)