Girls of Glitter Gulch among 3 downtown Vegas sites closing
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this June 2 photo, Dancers at Girls of Glitter Gulch, 20 Fremont St., sit while waiting for costumers in Las Vegas.
LAS VEGAS >> Las Vegas is losing a trio of kitschy downtown properties, including the last remaining topless show on the Fremont Street casino pedestrian mall.
Topless Girls of Glitter Gulch and the Mermaids and La Bayou casinos closed Monday. Developers and casino owners Derek and Greg Stevens acquired all three properties from the Granite Gaming Group in April and said they plan to build a new hotel-casino.
The Stevens brothers say they are still in the planning stages for the new property, which would be the first ground-up development in downtown Las Vegas in decades.
“There will be a combination of demolition, renovation and new construction,” Derek Stevens told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “At this point, this is all that is a certainty.”
They also own the open-air Downtown Las Vegas Events Center concert venue on the site of the former Clark County courthouse as well as the D Las Vegas and Golden Gate casinos.
Mermaids opened in 1956 as the Silver Palace, which was the first two-level Fremont Street gambling hall at the time. It’s known for its deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos.
La Bayou, which has had several names over the last century, got the first gaming license in Nevada in 1931.
The casinos were among the last few in town where slot machine gamblers could still hear the clunk of coins hitting metal trays, and customers cashed out with real money instead of paper vouchers.
The topless show took its title, Glitter Gulch, from a nickname for the Fremont Street gambling district in the years before the Las Vegas Strip was developed a few miles south.
The closure means the loss of about 170 jobs, although the Stevenses pledged in April to give priority hiring to employees at the shuttering venues.
9 responses to “Girls of Glitter Gulch among 3 downtown Vegas sites closing”
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“Top News”?
Feel sorry for the workers dumped. Vegas can be unforgiving.
Those fried oreos and twinkies were awesome! I’ll miss having that afternoon snack.
Gonna miss Mermaids. They always had a couple of ladies out front handing out beads to entice you to come in. It was a total dive, I lived it. Beer and a hot dog for a couple of bucks.
The women were getting old if you like that thing.
Fremont St. continues to evolve. Great food at The D – Andiamo Steakhouse and American Coney Island chili dogs.
Internet killed the topless bar.
Was always interesting how the girls from Glitter Gulch really looked as they would walk into those offices by the parking lot!
oh man, those shoes in the picture looks to be 2 stories high.