Actually, the security guy never told me I couldn’t take pictures. I’d taken a picture of the bar’s dining area and then turned and took a picture that included the casino area, but from a distance.
That photo also included the security guy, who approached me shaking his head. I put my phone away, and he seemed good with that. But let me repeat, he never told me explicitly not to take pictures.
There are all kinds of ways to use cameras to cheat, so keeping them out of the card playing area makes sense. Mindy took pictures in the bar (she was in the restroom when I got my possible reprimand), but she stayed far away from the gaming.
I recently began working at a downtown Fresno hotel. You’d think a city with half a million people would have a thriving downtown, but that’s not the case. When my shift begins at 11:00 pm, the only food options outside of the hotel are Club One and Domino’s Pizza, and the only drink option in the neighborhood, outside of the hotel, is Club One. I thought we should see this place where I’d directed people.
We walked through the gaming area (where, in California, only people 21 and older can visit) to the restaurant’s bar. Club One also has a coffee shop that sells Starbucks coffee, though it’s not an official Starbucks. Coffee is available to players, presumably to keep ‘em playing.
The bar had many TV screens on the walls, and though some played basketball or hockey games, about half were tuned to game seven of the World Series. When we’d walked into the casino, a security guard (not the one who later kind of scolded me) saw my Oakland A’s shirt and said, “Go Dodgers!” There were a number of Dodger fans in the place, but also a number of Dodger detractors (who are probably also Giants fans). Fresno’s halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, so it’s interesting to notice plenty of fans from both the Blue and the Orange and Black.
But the game kept us from asking the questions we often ask (“What makes for a good bar?” and “What makes for a good church?”), because people had their mind on other things -- such as Yu Darvish’s rather disastrous pitching performance for the Dodgers. (Dodger fans booed their own pitcher as he left the field.)
I ordered an Angry Orchard cider, Mindy had a glass of pinot noir from Sonoma County’s DeLoach winery, and we shared an order of egg rolls. The bartender who brought us the menu was attentive to our drinking and dining needs, but aside from smiling, didn’t engage with us at all socially. I didn’t catch the name on her tag, let alone get a chance to ask her what made for a good bar. I couldn’t get a sense whether the people at the bar were regulars or not, but we enjoyed our drinks, the egg rolls, and the couple of innings (which turned out to be decisive innings) we watched.
On our way back to the parking garage under the casino, a man standing near the door asked us, “Are you from out of state?”
We told him no, and I asked why he thought we were.
“I saw you taking pictures, and I saw the security guy talk to you.”
We told him about the blog, and gave him a card. So we did end up chatting, just for a minute or two, with one person at Club One -- besides the security guys, the bartender, and the man in the cage who validated our parking ticket.
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