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Tiki Central / General Tiki / JOHN-O's Las Vegas (& Honolulu pg 8) Thread

Post #426613 by JOHN-O on Thu, Jan 1, 2009 12:32 PM

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J

Also if any of you wondered what pre-Tiki Frankie's was like, here's a review that I found in "Las Vegas CityLife" dated 12/1/2005. Apparently it was a pretty cool dive bar in it's former life.

"People sometimes fall down, go boom. Go to University Medical Center, get laid up. And then, craving a drink, show up at Frankie's next door (1712 W. Charleston Blvd., 387-9256), complete with -- no shit -- IV bags, hospital gowns and oxygen tanks. Bartender Diana leaves 'em dry, though. "You don't know what kind of medication they're on," she explains. Among the wounded would-be drinkers she's rebuffed is even, she says, a certain former casino mogul who'd recently exited the hospital after a nasty motorcycle crash. But if you're well, Frankie's is a healing place to drink, offering that certain kind of atmospheric hug and frayed-collar swank that comes from rotting in a free-standing bar. It's a womb thing, I guess. The bar's historic by Vegas standards (born 1964), and Diana says the south wall, an alarmingly gorgeous slab of paneled wood, somehow came from the Golden Nugget. The specials are limited to select shots that rotate regularly (tonight, $2 blasts of ... Black Cherry Smirnoff?), but Frankie's is nonetheless a fine place to toast your health. And if Diana asks you to roll up your sleeves, don't freak out -- she's just checking for hospital wristbands."

This gives me an idea. If you can make a great tiki bar out of a dive bar, why not make a cool dive bar out of a bad tiki bar? This can be done to the LV Trader Vic's. To begin with, you can get LA street gangs to start dealing crack out of the place at night to make it edgy and dangerous. During the day, you can bus in patrons from the East Fremont motels and the Western Casino to provide additional authentic color. Rename the place "Atomic Vic's" and market it as a little slice of old East Fremont on the Strip. Now that would be interesting.

[ Edited by: JOHN-O 2009-05-31 12:56 ]