rev:text
| - I'm another one of those old people who'll tell you they remember driving down Fremont, under all those neon signs. Of course, I was a little kid, I was laying in the backseat staring up at all of the sparkles, and it was just before they shut it down to vehicular traffic.
Nowadays it's a dirty promenade, sort of a cross between Santa Monica's and the Venice Beach Boardwalk. You get a variety of colorful characters -- panhandlers, plus-size tourists in Vegas souvenir T-shirts, street performers, nearly naked women offering discounts... you name it, it walks down Fremont. The casinos have their doors pulled off with the backs of the hordes of slot jockeys practically lining the street as they continue to feed the machines and, consequently, their addiction.
During the day you can see the layer of filth on everything, but at night it's classic Vegas. Neon, flashing lights, now with ziplines and the sky blocked out with that lit-up Space Frame. In the dark it's also so overly crowded, you can barely turn around and people are getting pickpocketed all over.
Fremont has historic value, and it appears in so many films, TV shows, and games. It was in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for their Las Venturas section, and it appears as Freeside in "Fallout: New Vegas." In that latter game, the Golden Nugget is represented as the Silver Rush, 4 Queens is the King's School of Impersonation, and the casinos with the cowboy and cowgirl (Pioneer Club and Glitter Gulch, respectively) are sort of combined into the Atomic Wrangler. The games even include the Fremont East sign, hanging over the street.
If you want to play tourist, head on over to Fremont, but watch your wallet and be ready to be inundated with folks rushing you with signs that read "Why lie? I want beer!" and "Just lost everything gambling. Please help!"
|