The End of the Tropicana (1957-2024)

^{What’s left of the Tropicana in Las Vegas. It’s like bidding farewell to a relative you always loved but can hardly recognize in their final days. (Image: Bryan Steffy / Sipa US)}

I can't get too excited about the implosion and demolition of the Tropicana Casino Hotel, which is happening late tonight here in Las Vegas.

It’s like watching the demise of an old family member or death of a dear friend. 

I find it peculiar that destruction is such an odd fascination for so many. When structures fall, people cheer. They celebrate. It’s happened many times before. I don't get it.

Building something is difficult. Constructing anything grand takes time, talent, and tenacity. Las Vegas is the world's mega-capital when it comes to the erection of grandiose monuments to our self-gratification and lawful excess. Creating and then fulfilling fantasy is our speciality and will be our legacy. But then, most fantasies are an illusion. The winds of time always take their inevitable toll.

Tonight, the Tropicana joins the old Hacienda, Landmark, Sands, Dunes, Riviera, Maxim, and Desert Inn into the neon dustbin of gambling history. For a city constructed on the making of new memories, we do seem despairingly fixated on erasing the old ones.

Looking at the Tropicana site now on the southwest corner of 3801 South Las Vegas Blvd., the casino doesn't even seem real. It looks like a skeleton on hospice care. All signs of life are gone. It’s a shell of what once was, a face with no eyes, its spirit vanished, a dead place. 

Everything inside and outside of the Tropicana of the tiniest value has been stripped bare, auctioned off, hawked for salvage, and trucked away. The corner now looks like a bombed out war zone. Bare bones towering above the dust. When the girders of concrete and steel and little else collapses into the void of its own emptiness tonight at 2:30 am, many will celebrate it as a party.

No people, it's a funeral.

To those of you who cheer these demolitions -- will you do the same a few years from now when a wrecking ball demolishes your former house, your old school, your business, your favorite closed-down restaurant, or some other emotional receptacle of so many fond memories? My guess is, when those occasions come – and yes, they will happen – they will be sad. They will be moments of quiet reflection. So what makes ruination a happy occasion for so many? Please -- explain that to me. 

The Tropicana Casino opened its glittering doors in 1957 on 35 vast acres. Back then, the Tropicana property marked the farthest resort south on the famed Las Vegas Strip. It was surrounded by sand and tumbleweeds. But once it was built, they came.

Over the years, the Tropicana had many patriarchs – good and bad, with mixed results – from great visionaries to giant corporations to mobsters to Sammy Davis, Jr. himself (who owned 8 percent interest in the casino becoming the first Black person to own part of a Las Vegas resort). 

For nearly seven decades, the greatest legends in entertainment packed the showroom nightly -- including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Erroll Garner, Dave Brubeck, Benny Goodman, Al Hirt, Buddy Rich, Siegfried & Roy, Gladys Knight, Wayne Newton, Lance Burton, and so many more. Folies Bergere, featuring topless showgirls, was the marquis house show for decades. 

The Tropicana also served as the filming location for many classic movies and hit television shows. Viva Las Vegas, with Elvis Presley and Ann Margaret was shot, in part, at the Trop in 1964. So too was the 1971 James Bond movie, Diamonds are Forever, with Sean Connery. And who will ever forget the memorable "Moe Greene" scene when he's confronted by Michael Corleone along with Fredo in the Oscar-winning movie, Godfather II?

Now, we're told that a baseball stadium will take the place of the old Tropicana site. Where dice once rolled and cards were turned that changed the fortunes of those who played the game, a new pitch is coming. I suppose we should get excited about that.

Nonetheless, the implosion of the palace of so many dreams ... where thousands of weddings happened … where many were conceived (think of how many kids resulted from trysts in 1,447 hotel rooms over 67 years) ... where the greatest entertainers in the world once sang and danced … where comedians made us laugh … where classic movies were filmed … where world-class restaurants catered to every culinary whim … where guests could feel special and act the part of the high-roller for that one special day or weekend or vacation should be a moment of reflection and appreciation, not a drunken frat party.

When the Tropicana falls tonight, I will not be cheering. I will be sleeping, and then waking up to a place that is no more.