šŖĀ Tuesday will markĀ the 54th anniversary ofĀ the opening of Circus Circus. These dayās itās generally written off as a downmarket afterthought with an inexplicably great steakhouse and a roller coaster out back. But during the casinoās first few years, its driving force,Ā crackpot visionary Jay Sarno, invested the property with so much sheer surreal energy itās hard to believe now, in our own era of upscale Vegas tastecore. I mean, this was a headline before it opened: āLVĀ Circus Casino Approved; No Topless Shoeshine Girls.ā Chris Lawrence's boisterousĀ Review-Journal look-backĀ does a fine job getting across the casinoāsĀ boundary-pushing, regulation-bending, freewheeling mixĀ of kidsā fareĀ (circusĀ acts, games, animalsĀ š) and racy adult diversion ā including plenty of skinĀ (one act was introduced thusly:Ā āAndĀ now our dazzling display of devastating epidermis!ā). Judging from the stories, those improbable early years were a concentrated dose of the debauchery everyone thinks Vegas is about, and it was all certainly weird enough to give Hunter S. ThompsonĀ an infamous shudder of existential dread:Ā āTheĀ Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war,ā he fear and loathed.
Still: A lot of people who grew up in Vegas have early memories of Circus Circus, and rarely do they sound like the stuff of hepcat Nazi Saturdays. It was just a place kids went, first with family, later with friends. For many, the funky aura of Circus Circus no doubt served as a vivid childhood notice that our cityās idea of normal wasnāt always the same as the other cities we visited.
- šŖĀ For more on Jay Sarno, UNLVās David G. SchwartzĀ wrote the book.
