Partner and I went to Foxwoods, the gigantic Connecticut casino, a few days ago. When you approach it from the east, it's impossible to believe that they didn't plan the view: you're driving through a pretty-but-dull New England landscape, and then you come around a corner, and there, framed perfectly straight ahead of you, is a Disney castle of cream-colored brick, with a roof of angelically beautiful blue.
Welcome to the Mashantucket Pequot Nation.
I hated it the first time I went there. There's the continual din of slot machines chiming in C major, and the smell of stale cigarette smoke, and the grim spectacle of people with oxygen tanks riding from slot machine to slot machine in their scooter chairs. And you don't see a lot of smiling faces, oh no children you don't.
But it's fascinating nonetheless. And you might win a million dollars.
We go a couple of times a year. The food ain't bad, and once in a while you leave with more money than you arrived with. (Not this time, unfortunately.) I love watching the table games, especially things with names like Pai Gow and Dragon Poker and Caribbean 21. Also, I am amazed at the security staff, which is mostly made up of overweight men over seventy years of age with ambulatory disabilities. I think I could have kicked their asses, for the most part, if I'd wanted to.
Partner tells me that business is off at the casinos, and I think it's true. It felt – empty. Foxwoods is an enormous place, and normally it's swarming with people, but the other day there were big lonely spaces. And the machines weren't paying. You could tell that all the machines were set to some slightly-lower payoff point; you won a little, once in a while, but never enough to inspire or encourage you. The grim faces were a little grimmer than usual.
It's beginning to feel like a fancy upscale mall on the verge of going into decline.
Next time we're going to Mohegan Sun.
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