Las Vegas’ Scuzziest Bar

LAS VEGAS’ SCUZZIEST BAR

“Stage Door’s daily “special” is a hot dog and bottle of ice-cold Budweiser for $3 not counting tip and you sure as shit better tip this bartender. Hell, you can’t afford NOT to buy it. And for dessert — $20 shots of Pappy Van Winkle or JW Blue Label. ESPN on the tube 24/7. Classic rock blaring over the house P.A. If they toss in an airbed and unlimited showers, I could live here.”

When the nukes fly and we’ve all turned into brown ash blowing in the hot wind, at least two things on the forsaken earth will survive–cockroaches and the Stage Bar Casino.

This is the scuzzy joint that looks like a porno shop on Flamingo, just off the Strip, next to Barbary Coast (it’s the Cromwell now) and shoehorned in-between the Flamingo and Bally’s. Stage Bar has the *second-worst* food on the block. The Italian scumbucket Battista’s Hole in the Wall is right next door.

This afternoon, I was “in the neighborhood” and decided to pay my disrespects. $1.50 Heineken. Yee-haw! PBR for a buck! You had me at–“I’m buying.”

This is debauchery with a double dick and a broken sledgehammer. Two rooms, including a liquor/convenience store, slots, a long bar with every loser this side of Boulder Highway parked in the barstools, soaked with smelly ass since the ’70s. Free matches. The air is blue. Everybody knows everybody. The legless guy. The hooker way past her prime with a laugh like Phyllis Diller inhaling Miller Genuine Draft in a bottle because even she has her standards and won’t drink PBR–oh, and it’s 1:15 in the afternoon. More tattoos than a Hells Angels beatdown. The only thing missing here is $15 blowjobs in the back alley, but maybe that’s available, too (I didn’t inquire).

Honestly, it’s been maybe 35 years since I set foot in here. Back in the mid-80s, this was the “ER.” On visits, you could hop the brick fence from the Flamingo swimming pool, grab a pile of junk food at the Stage Door, run across traffic, and be in the Bally’s sportsbook by post time. Today, the bartender might have been the same guy as before.

I have no idea who owns Stage Door or how it stays in business given the primo land value near one of the busiest traffic intersections in the country. It must have been grandfathered into some old Mafia contract that nobody wants to mess with because then their car might explode. Once inside, it’s the size of subway car and looks and smells about the same. The restroom might as well be a virus lab.

Stage Door’s daily “special” is a hot dog and bottle of ice-cold Budweiser for $3 not counting tip and you sure as shit better tip this bartender. Hell, you can’t afford NOT to buy it. And for dessert — $20 shots of Pappy Van Winkle or JW Blue Label. ESPN on the tube 24/7. Classic rock blaring over the house P.A. If they toss in an airbed and unlimited showers, I could live here.

Forget the flair bartenders, the $19 cocktails, and Giada up the street hawking her $48 spaghetti. I’m in high hog heaven. Hey, I think Phyllis Diller over there is giving me the eye.