Friday night, Holly and I went to see Bill Cosby in Wendover. I’ll get to the concert in a minute, but I wanted to discuss this little town in eastern Nevada.
We arrived in town at about 4:00 in the afternoon. We missed our exit thanks to me programming the hotel address into my TomTom wrong so we ended up driving through the “Nevada side” of town. This is the part of town that has half a dozen casinos, a liquor store, a grocery store, and a porn store. It’s basically a place where, if you have a vice, it can be satisfied. We turned around and drove to the Utah side where there are “homes” (also known as run-down trailers and shacks) and a few motels. We had reservations at the lovely Wendover Days Inn.
Saying that Wendover is a giant armpit of a town is way too kind. It’s actually a hippie armpit of a town. There is nothing but the things mentioned earlier, dirt, rocks, and mountains covered with really bad graffiti. It’s not even gang graffiti, it’s just stuff that some moron with a can of paint decided to spray on the side of a rock on top of a mountain. It is in the shadow of such a mountain that the Days Inn resides. And we had a lovely view of it from our room.
There were two good things about the room we stayed in. First, the shower head was really good. There was good water pressure and it was hot. (The last time we stayed at a Days Inn, I didn’t have a hot shower the entire week.) The next thing that was good was the breakfast: they had a waffle maker. That was about it. But I like waffles so I was OK with the lack of choice in breakfast foods.
The beds in our room were another story. I have not slept on a mattress that horrible for a long time. I guess we’ve gotten spoiled by our new ultra-comfy bed. It was a night filled with tossing and turning and Holly and I both woke up on the verge of being paralyzed.
For dinner, we went to a buffet in one of the casinos. It was seafood night so the price was high, the food quality was OK, and I tried to eat my money’s worth in crab legs. I ended up getting a stomach ache though. I think that I had too many pieces of fried seafood.
After dinner, we killed a bit of time before the concert started by playing some slot machines. Gambling isn’t as much fun as it used to be. It used to be that you could stick a quarter in a slot machine and, if you weren’t happy with the outcome, you could move to a different machine. Now, the machines don’t accept change. You need to feed bills into them and, if you decide that the machine is no good and want to move on, the machine will print a ticket which you then need to go redeem to get your money back. It’s too much of a hassle. Plus, there’s no sounds reverberating throughout the casino of change falling into metal trays. Instead you hear people saying things like “I get a ticket worth $100!” Where’s the fun in that?
The time finally arrived for us to find our seats in the concert hall. I was pleasantly surprised at how good our seats were. In fact, most every seat in the place seemed to be pretty good. I really liked that. After a few minutes, a heavyset old man wearing a pair of sweats and a hoodie came walking onto stage. I thought it was cool that Bill Cosby showed up looking like he was getting ready for a Sunday afternoon nap.
As I sat listening to Cosby, I felt like I was listening to somebody’s grandfather. His stories were all over the map, and he would occasionally lose his train of thought, but he eventually got back to his point. The amazing thing though was how he made you enjoy every minute of the rambling that came in between the start of the joke and the punchline. He’s been in the business for a very long time and it showed. He was the ultimate professional, even when the sound guy couldn’t get things right. The jokes were new and funny and he made me laugh for the entire 75 minutes that he was on stage.
Despite the fact that the town that Cosby was appearing in a town that is a giant sack of waste, and our hotel left a lot to be desired, I would drive the 2+ hours to see him there again in a heartbeat. To see a legend like him live, and to see how friendly and kind he was to the audience, made the weekend one that I won’t soon forget.
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You should have spent the night in one of the casino hotels. The last time we were there the rooms were great because they wanted you to enjoy your stay. If you were in a good mood they feel like you would spend more.
Which buffet did you go to? The breakfast buffet for the Rainbow Casino was great.
All of the casinos had no vacancy. As for the buffet, we went to the Peppermill’s dinner buffet.
If the casinos wanted me in a better mood, they should have had seating that wasn’t at a bar or a gaming table/device that would have allowed me to watch the Jazz game. I ended up standing next to the craps table for about 20 minutes, pretending to be interested in the gambling, so that I could watch the game.
Did you win any money?
Sadly, no. I didn’t really gamble too much though. I think that between Holly and myself, we lost about $14.
Muc of the graffiti on the mountains here in Bendover began with the soldiers stationed here in WWII. A closer look reveals unit numbers and other military markings. The people who enjoy racing on the flats also leave their marks, the marks of their cars and their times. There are also two American flags painted there, done in the days just past Sept. 11th. This is on top of marks left by pioneers passing through. Many of these marks are protected by law.
I also went and saw Cosby. I enjoyed the show very much.
(Here via a search result on my sitemeter, which I backtracked and it also led here.)
Becky, thanks for the information. From what I saw, the graffiti seemed to be created by drunk teens on a Friday night. I’m glad to know that there is some actual historical significance to some of it.