I’m standing at midnight in the middle of nightclub Vex deep within the bowels of South Lake Tahoe’s Harrah’s casino. It’s early by nightclub standards, but the place is going off. The manic crowd resembles a psychedelic carnival. Everybody seems happy and hip knowing that they’re in the right place at the right time. There are women everywhere. It looks like a casting party for Baywatch, but at a topless beach bash.
The Party Girls, hard-bodied dancers from the casino’s adult revue show, have taken over the scene. Suspended overhead on multiple staging, they are go-going in Vegas-style burlesque to the DJ’s hip-hop radar jamming sounds. There are no poles or stripping, nothing like that, but their dancing is downright seductive. Okay, they’re partially naked, I’m busted, but it’s unzipped. Everyone’s digging it, everybody’s dancing, and it’s pretty cool.
Several hundred people are throwing down on a pulsating dance floor. Other partygoers are entrenched in conversation at reserved Cabanas that bridge above and across the catwalks where the Party Girls are pulsing. A cocktail waitress I’d been talking with pokes me in the ribs and whispers in my ear, ‘Don’t look now, but there’s Pam Anderson,’ and, of course, I turn around and spill some of my drink on the guy behind me. ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘but there’s Pam Anderson.’ ‘Who cares,’ he says whisking the two smoking hot babes he’s with into the full-throttle crowd.
My adventure began near twilight at 19 Bar and Kitchen. Located up on the 19th floor of Harvey’s, it reveals great views and a swank atmosphere with an extensive wine-by-the-glass list. I’d made a pass through the Hard Rock Café, then rallied and wandered downstairs to Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Cantina, the Jekyll and Hyde of the South Lake Tahoe scene: a casual Mexican Restaurant by day and a boisterous bar by night, with live music and servers who are as likely to be up on the bar doing the coyote ugly as bringing you the house’s signature Cabo Wabo tequila. Male bartenders are showing off chiseled chests in front of a backdrop of multi-colored bras hanging behind the bar. The whistle blows and one of the Cabo female servers jumps on the bar and begins pouring the house brand down willing participants’ throats. For the bold, her bellybutton delivers the shot.
Next, I cross Lake Tahoe Boulevard to MontBleu to check out the Opal Ultra Lounge. Its dimly blue-lit berserk backdrop and hobnobbing patrons have taken on the fevered pitch of a Prohibition speakeasy. A mixologist is shaking a signature concoction from her rollaway bar at a VIP booth. Patrons pack the room – some enjoying hookah pipes, others ordering custom, herb-filled drinks from the resident bar chef.
A snowball’s toss away I sidle into Blu, the casino’s late night dance club that’s known for partying until the sun comes up. Aside from a DJ-led rocketing dance floor and an uncorked jungle of flesh that would shame Caligula, in-house body painter Robert Whirlwind paints unabashed women to a crowd of awed watchers. Girls take their tops off, some even more, and he decorates them right in front of everybody until, garnished in a surreal kaleidoscope of electric blue and hot pink, they wander off to the dance floor and groove to Italian disco. Out of a scene from ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ patrons lounge on curtained super king-sized beds near the edges of the room. ‘Damn,’ this guy vacationing from a St. Louis suburb says to his amused wife. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
Scenes like this are played out all the time among the south shore casinos of Lake Tahoe. My hazy recollection of partying along the southern portion of the lake in the ‘80s and ‘90s was seeing B.B. King for $5 at a Harrah’s cabaret room, a price that included two complimentary drinks. Through the years I’d seen a few other shows like Tower of Power, Willie Nelson and even the Jerry Garcia Band at Caesar’s (now MontBleu), but mostly I’d hung at local taverns doing Jello Shots at Sam’s, or scoping girls wearing lavender in-the-boot stretch pants at Heavenly’s base lodge California Bar right after the lifts had stopped spinning for the day.
Even then the town was an open city, known for 24-hour gambling, headline entertainment, and a vibe that has historically been a far cry from drinking Glühwein in your long johns around the woodburner.
The town has always had the patina. In 1956, when the world’s most famous skier Stein Eriksen signed on at Heavenly, the bi-state community’s growing casinos were already a showplace for action and mega-stars. Bill Harrah was bringing in some of the hottest acts of the time: Frank Sinatra, Eddie Fisher and Dean Martin. Marlene Dietrich and Bob Hope both appeared at Harvey’s in 1955, the same year Heavenly opened. Aprés skiers might have visited the Stein Room, the rathskellar bar under the base lodge where skiers could buy their own beer steins and listen to Stein Eriksen and his instructors sing.
But it was the Stateline clubs that offered the evening’s main course. The mountain retreat contained a good deal more avant than aprés. The John Denver Celebrity Classic, World Cups, hot dog freestylers, celebrity sightings and even local notables like the homegrown Mohawk-shaved, free-skiing junkie Glen Plake added fuel to the fire.
‘There was always a lot going on,’ recalls Kimberly Plake, Glen’s wife. ‘Every Friday during winter months, it was mandatory to hook up with friends, mostly the Face Rats (a loosely tied brotherhood of Gunbarrel mogul bashers) at the California Bar in the late afternoon. There was always a live band and a great finish to the week, if not the start of a fun evening.’
South Lake continues to have more to do with the evening to come than it does with the day that lies behind. People visit Heavenly and its surroundings to escape from the city, and they still have fun on-slope and off. But while some of their motivations have not changed over the years (despite its dangers, sex is still in fashion), the style is hardly the same. A decade-long redevelopment of the casino corridor removed the tacky souvenir shops and roach motels. Visitors are now welcomed to a pedestrian-based village featuring contemporary restaurants, bars, boutiques and even a Cineplex and ice rink.
‘South Lake Tahoe has undergone a big makeover since the downtown renovation,’ says Howie Nave, the host comedian and emcee at the Improv Comedy Club in Harvey’s. ‘There’s a great pulse. I take visiting comics over to Vex to check out the action, and they have some pretty good DJs there. MontBleu Casino next door always brings in some sharp DJs to both their nightclubs. Harvey’s Casino has Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo downstairs and since it’s proximity is close to the Improv, I’ll head down there after a show. They have live bands nightly. A lot of the patrons from our comedy show head down there, too, and it’s fun to hook up with them. To some visitors it’s a bit overwhelming, but it’s all fun and happening.’
For the adventuresome, it’s hard not to have fun visiting the south shore. Aside from being a favorite tour stop for chart-topping headliners, the six Stateline casinos offer everything from magic, illusion, and comedy shows to party promotions, adult revues, ultra- to shabby-chic cocktail lounges, lively restaurants, and, of course, a chance at Lady Luck on the gaming floors.
‘South Lake’s really emerged to combine the best of all things,’ says Curtis Fong a longtime DJ for South Lake Tahoe’s local radio station KRLT. ‘It’s a world class destination. There’s so much going on you sometimes have to remind yourself you actually came here to ski and recreate.’
Not everyone visiting South Lake feels the need for casino charms. With plenty of bars, eateries and clubs outside the casino corridor to choose from, South Lake Tahoe is a social supermarket. The art of barhopping its alpine hamlet resembles a rumble down Heavenly’s famed steep mogul run Gunbarrel: a series of linked-recovery turns, usually negotiated with more spunk than style.
‘The town’s jumping. Tahoe’s always been youthful and very spirited,’ explains Ross Orlando whose popular monthly publication The Entertainer documents the nightlife and mayhem of a resort town. ‘You have these cozy funky taverns on both sides of the border like Whiskey Dicks, McPhee’s, the Fresh Ketch and Tahoe Underground presenting stellar bands every night in a cool atmosphere with everyone saying let’s have some fun. One of the most popular party evenings is Karaoke Tuesday at the Lakeside Inn. Drinks are $2 all night and locals are packing the place and it’s a blast.’
It’s now late into the evening and I’m back at Harrah’s in a roundabout lounge listening to a piano player who calls himself Artie The One Man Party. With its popular location outside the Vex nightclub’s entrance, Artie attracts a huge crowd of revelers who come in to watch his famous version of ‘The Humpty Dance.’ His act is known to attract bachelorettes parties who storm the stage and caress the mic.
But now the party has wound down. Several women are sitting together at a table, not talking much, but their eyes wander the casino floor with the concentration of submarine periscopes as if waiting for someone famous to walk in. Outside, the mountains loom large and inviting under a divided sky. The moon slowly fades as it gives into the orange and reds of the rising sun. Time to get up to the room and think about making some turns on the hill tomorrow…which is now today. After all, in a party town like South Lake Tahoe there’s always another night.
