Every Picture Tells a Story: A Tiger on the Loose — New Orleans, LA (1999)
OLD PHOTOS: DAY 4
A TIGER ON THE LOOSE IN NEW ORLEANS (1999)
Tiger decided to drive across the United States, making the land all his own — to California from the New York Island, and certainly to the Gulf stream waters.
The two most interesting anthropological snapshots of everyday poker/gambling subculture were (and are) very different. But they share equal validation for both revelation and authenticity.
Released in 1982, David M. Hayano’s classic book Poker Faces: The Life and Work of Professional Card Players was a groundbreaking project which ultimately became a book and academic cult classic. Hayano spent many months slumming around the California card clubs, documenting his experiences. If you’ve not heard of Poker Faces, think of the Robert Altman movie California Split, except that Hayano’s portrait was actually a doctoral thesis which treated poker culture as a viable demographic for the very first time with its own unique behavioral characteristics and social hierarchies.
The other revelatory “slice of life” in this discussion is a far more casual, spontaneous, and wildly entertaining narrative penned by a longtime friend of mine, known to many here on Facebook as “Tiger.”
I first met Tiger in Atlantic City at the Taj Mahal Casino sometime in 1995. Lots of drinks. Many dinners. Deep conversations, about poker and life. He introduced me to the BARGE community, which ignited many other friendships with people who are still a big part of my life today. How to introduce Tiger, if you don’t know him? Well, he was a contestant on Jeopardy once. He was also at Woodstock (the real one). When I met him, Tiger was a practicing NYC attorney who lived in Manhattan. He later moved to Atlantic City, where he’s been for nearly 20 years.
So, what led to these photos and what’s the story?
Tiger’s father died sometime around 1999, and that became a watershed moment. Call it a moment of introspection. A time for reflection. Hitting the re-set button. I’m not sure he’ll agree with this overly simplistic assessment when he reads this, but Tiger made some decisions that would soon culminate in a month-long cross-country road trip that became poker’s version of Jack Kerouac’s, On the Road.
The late 1990s was a gold rush for gamblers, and especially for the casinos who welcomed them. Prior to that, only Nevada and New Jersey had legal casinos. So, most of America was a wasteland, except for illegal underground action and offshore betting. But as the end of the millennium neared, more states began legalizing casinos (and poker) and by the fall of 1999, more than a dozen states offered gambling games, including poker.
Tiger decided to drive across the United States, making the land all his own, to California from the New York Island, and certainly to the Gulf stream waters. He planned to visit as many states as possible with casinos in them — big cities, small towns, saloons, Indian reservations — and play in as many cardrooms as he could. Then, he’d write about it and tell the story of his journey. Like many paths we take in life, there are always unexpected turns and detours, and even roadblocks. The most meaningful journey teaches us just as much about ourselves as the new things we discover.
“Tiger Tours the Tables” was posted online. Each day was a visit to another casino, with new characters, and fun stories. As he posted his travel reports, public interest grew. Poker players began looking for Tiger to pass through their local spot. Along the way, Tiger won and lost, laughed and cried, and met rednecks and racists and raconteurs who would become supporting actors on the stage of life and a trip report that was just as much an expose of poker’s unique subculture as Hayano’s master work two decades earlier.
Marieta and I decided to fly south and spend a week with Tiger, making our first-ever trip to Biloxi-Gulfport, MS. I honestly can’t remember what prompted me to do this, other than being very curious to see a new place. This was six years before Hurricane Katrina wiped that coastal resort city off the map, which demolished every casino along the gulf. The last two days were spent in New Orleans, an hour away.
Totally a coincidence, Harrah’s New Orleans held its grand opening on the day before we arrived. The giant casino was numbly shoehorned at the end of Canal Street, in between the French Quarter and convention center. Lines to get in were so long, they actually had to set up police barricades. Gamblers were allowed in 25 at a time, due to fire codes and fears of a stampede. We finally got in and headed straight to the poker room, which was artfully decorated with George Rodrique originals of the famous blue dogs. I looked up those paintings later on, which were selling for $80,000-$100,000 a piece. These were the decorations inside THE POKER ROOM!
The games at Harrah’s New Orleans were wilder than wild. Filled with characters out of a Tennessee Williams play. Strange, funny accents. Humongous pots that took 3 or 4 pushes to stack. Most of the tables played Omaha High (only). That’s a dinosaur game played almost nowhere, and is nearly extinct today. But New Orleans and its people are such a different breed that they do things their way. They play *their* games. And Omaha High was the local game of choice back then. In one afternoon, I think I lost $700 playing $4-8, which is hard to do. But hey, it was a GREAT game. The New Orleans locals asked me to return “anytime.” Nice people.
But, the most memorable part of the trip was New Orleans, itself. Just walking the streets. The restaurants. Cafe du Monde. New Orleans, the crescent city, was the star.
These photos brought back some great memories.
Note: We held a garage sale recently and I’m going through lots of stuff, including old photographs which I’ll be sharing in the coming days and weeks. My philosophy is — a photo does no good tucked away in an album or stored inside a box. A great photo should be shared, especially when it tells a story. Quoting Rod Stewart, “every picture tells a story (don’t it?).”
