SlotZilla! SlotZilla! Follow the joyful screaming to downtown Las Vegas, where you’ll find the world’s largest slot machine. A dazzling display of bright lights that overwhelms the senses, SlotZilla rises 12 storeys above Fremont Street and is home to one of the world’s most incredible thrill rides.
The wondrous one armed bandit opened to much fanfare in the summer of 2014 and was designed to reinvigorate the area, which had fallen into disrepair. That goal was most certainly met. The end result is a Big Thing that’s garish, outlandish, and kind of beautiful – just like Vegas itself.
SlotZilla is flanked by two scantily-clad showgirls, each 35 1/2 feet tall. Known as Jennifer and Porsha, they aren’t to my taste, but certainly draw the attention of the masses.
A stream of Elvis impersonators and sun-kissed tourists spill from SlotZilla’s mouth like sparkling coins, thanks the landmark’s award-winning zipline. This breathtaking ride quickly established itself as Las Vegas’s premiere tourist attraction, providing a welcome distraction for those who have thrown away their life savings on blackjack and outrageously-priced food and drinks.
Dozens of celebs have taken the plunge, including pop royalty Katy Perry and my old friend Norman Reedus. He dropped his tough-guy façade just long enough to enjoy a hair-raising flight from that zooms past five city blocks.
The owners shan’t be able to add the name Bigs Bardot to that list, however. No, it’s not that I’m terrified of heights. It’s the $69 ticket price that scares me. But I suppose they had to do something to recoup the $17 million construction cost.
Unlike Godzilla, the horrifying green monster it was named after, SlotZilla doesn’t want to broil you alive with a high-powered laser beam. It just wants to empty your pockets of any spare change you have and leave you homeless and destitute, begging for quarters on the streets of Las Vegas in order to feed your gambling addiction.
Trust me, I know.
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
Standing beneath SlotZilla, the hypnotic bells and whistles cutting through the Las Vegas night, one can’t help but be swept into the seductive world of high-stakes gambling. With my addictive personality, I did my best to resist, but felt a tidal wave of neon anticipation washing over my quivering body.
(I’m no stranger to risk, of course, having long ago plonked my life savings into a little website named Land of the Bigs. On a completely unrelated note, please consider contributing to my Venmo, CashApp, PayPal, GoFundMe, Patreon, Kickstarter or BuyMeACoffee. Please, I’m desperate here.)
But with the promise of untold riches spilling from the bosom of SlotZilla, my resolve weakened.
One dollar can’t hurt, I thought to myself, my forehead slick with sweat. And the local economy is, after all, built on the misery of others. So, in a way, I’d be stealing if I didn’t gamble. They might even lock me up and throw away the key.
As appealing as an evening with heavily-tattooed Mexican gangbangers and drunken American frat boys was, I shrugged my shoulders and succumbed to my deepest carnal desires to wager everything I had on the whim of a machine. Plucking a shiny coin from my slacks, I turned to the nearest one-cent slot and hoped for the best.
To my delight I won a small amount. The celebratory klaxon filled me with the sense of achievement and companionship I’d been yearning for my whole life. Plonking another coin into the machine, I settled a little deeper into my chair. A mocktail was ordered from a passing waiter. My downfall was imminent.
The following hours are a blur of dopamine and shame. At some point I stumbled to a pawn shop to trade whatever trinkets I had on me for extra cash. The poker machine soon devoured that as well. A burly security guard hurled me, financially and emotionally ravaged, into the windswept street.
Peering up at SlotZilla through my tears of shame, my bank account bereft of funds and my few real-world friendships destroyed by the calamity of gambling, I wondered whether it was all worth it.
Of course it was, I thought to myself, rifling through a bin for a coffee cup to shake at strangers. It might’ve cost me my financial security and any residual feeling of self respect, but I got to see a big slot machine, and that’s all that really matters.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at SlotZilla.
