My friends -- let's call them Mr. and Mrs. Dangerfield -- chose Feb. 29th for their marriage day, and chose Las Vegas as the venue for such a stunt. Actually, his parents live there, and Elvis did not officiate, so I shouldn't call it a stunt. It was a nice ceremony, and, having introduced the couple to begin with, I got the honor of being the best man.
I had not been to Las Vegas as an adult, so I was looking forward to a first visit, even though it would be a short one. According to Lee, it wasn't going to be much of a beer vacation, but because I made the idiotic mistake of staying downtown instead of on the strip, I actually stumbled upon one of the few brewpubs in town, the Main Street Station next door to my digs at the Plaza. So, even though I was staying in a fleabag hotel, permeated with the twin fragrances of vomit and cigarette smoke, I could still walk down Main Street for a fresh beer. Just like home!
My first night in town, I went over there about 3:30 AM, after dropping $100 on some, ahem, poker lessons at Binion's. Lucky for me, the Main Street casino doesn't have a poker room, but midnight to 7 AM is happy hour of sorts, with $1.50 pints. The picture above is of the tanks on display in the restaurant area. As you might expect with a tourist place, the beer wasn't adventurous, but it was drinkable, so I licked my wounds with a couple of pints of their winter warmer seasonal (not very warm, around 5%). Adding a big bowl of Chinese noodle soup from the breakfast menu brought my bill to a whopping $7.85. I think in Portland we'd probably call their winter warmer a red ale, it had that reddish-malt look and taste to it.
The regular beers on the list are a pale ale, a porter, a "red lager", and a golden. My beer snobbery got in the way of trying the latter two, but I did check out the pale ale and the porter the next night as I dabbled at $5 blackjack. Like the winter warmer, these were tame but drinkable, especially the porter. The other casinos I sat down in -- on the strip and downtown -- didn't seem to offer any beer better than Heineken, so Main Street is guaranteed at least some of my gambling losses next time I'm in Vegas.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Main Street Station, Las Vegas
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