Binion closed all 365 of its hotel rooms in 2009. In 1988, the Mint was absorbed into the neighboring Binion’s Gambling Hall, then called Binion’s Horseshoe. According to Thompson, he and Acosta ran up an unpaid room-service bill of $29 to $36 an hour for 48 consecutive hours before trashing the place and swiping 600 bars of Neutrogena soap. So locations at the Stardust and Riviera hotels, which have since been imploded, had to stand in for what was sadly redubbed “Bazooko’s Circus.” Whiskey Liquor Up at Binion’sĪ good chunk of the novel’s action took place in Room 1850 of The Mint’s tower. Quite understandably, a concerned Circus Circus wanted nothing to do with the 1998 Thompson-sanctioned Terry Gilliam movie, starring Johnny Depp as Thompson. I think I’m getting the Fear.”Īt one point in his novel, Thompson described Circus Circus as “The vortex of the American Dream.” At another, he described it as “The sixth Reich,” explaining that it was “What the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war.” While supposedly seated on the second of two floors of a free-standing revolving carousel bar called the Horse-a-Round - converted in 2012 into a snack bar on top and slot machines below - Thompson quoted Acosta’s famous uttering: “I hate to say this, but this place is getting to me.
“So you’re down on the main floor playing blackjack, and the stakes are getting high when suddenly you chance to look up, and there, right smack above your head, is a half-naked fourteen-year-old girl being chased through the air by a snarling wolverine.” “Right above the gambling tables, the Forty Flying Carazito Brothers are doing a high-wire trapeze act, along with four muzzled Wolverines and the Six Nymphet Sisters from San Diego,” Thompson wrote, claiming to be high on ether and mescaline at the time. But there’s no way he didn’t visit this still-surviving icon of Vegas excess, since his descriptions are so hilariously detailed.
We know that much of the novel sprang from Thompson’s furtive, drug-fueled imagination. Gonzo in the book - took here from Los Angeles while Thompson gathered material. What also still survives, surprisingly, is some of the original Las Vegas from the two road trips that Thompson and his attorney, Oscar Acosta - renamed Raoul Duke and Dr. Thompson shook pop culture by inventing “gonzo journalism,” a hallucinatory mix of fact, fiction, and literary brilliance. (Image: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas book cover.) Thompson (left) and Oscar Acosta pose in the Baccarat Lounge at Caesars Palace in April 1971. Here’s a look back on his iconic road trip. His 1971 novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was a mind-exploding quest for the American Dream set in one of the most unlikely cities to discover it. Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas.
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