The empty stretch of desert where Bugsy Siegel built the Flamingo, in 1946, has become the center of the Strip, home to America’s thirteen largest hotels. The ninety-nine-cent special has been lost to history: the new Vegas rarely stoops to giveaways. They said, ‘Does this mean my food will take longer now?’ ” Pretty soon, the hood caught on fire and the extinguishers went off with that chemical that looks like smoke, and then the Fire Department came in. “One time, so much grease built up in the ceiling that it came down the walls and set fire to the flat-tops. “They used to line up down the hall for the ninety-nine-cent special,” a cook from the old Lindy’s café in the Flamingo told me.
In the early days, when depositing your savings in machines designed to cheat you still seemed a dubious proposition, the casinos offered cut-rate rooms and airfares. But the energy for all that vice had to come from somewhere, and mostly it came from eggs. Sex and gambling, too, of course, and divorce and vaudeville and the creative use of neon.
Las Vegas is a city built by breakfast specials.
