Having spent so much time at the new Griffin and Downtown Cocktail Room bars, I'd begun to forget what the east side of Fremont Street used to be like. Fortunately, it takes only a brief drive a few blocks past the construction to refresh my memory. Oh, yeah: Scary.
The street lights seem to grow dimmer until I hit Ninth Street, where the sign for Atomic Liquor flashes in all of its nostalgic glory. The bar acquired its name from the nuclear testing back in the '50s, but today it could just as easily be a reference to the neighborhood. With its dilapidated buildings and torn-up road, this area feels postapocalyptic.
I park in the spacious lot behind the building and leave the window down, so anyone who feels inclined to search my car for valuables can find that there aren't any without bothering to break the window. I'm not too worried about the car being stolen because it's hard enough to start with the key. If someone can manage without it, they've earned themselves a car.
A ring of the doorbell gets me buzzed in, where I find a fairly nondescript, average bar: a couple of pool tables, a jukebox, a cigarette machine and a handful of friendly patrons. An older woman dressed in pink sits at the bar, watching an episode of Law & Order. I'm blown away by the TV's sound quality until I realize that those sirens are coming from outside. Three cop cars zip past, briefly lighting up the pink walls with bright red and blue.
It's 10 p.m., and the bar closes at the shockingly early hour of 11. I ask Scott the bartender about that.
"Do you want the true story or the bullshit story?" he asks.
"How about both?" I say. "Then you can pick which one's on the record."
He goes with the truth—that a while back a bartender here had a side operation, renting out the restroom for illicit activities. Metro shut the place down and only allowed it to reopen with the earlier closing time.
"I can remember when this place was open 24 hours," says Grant, a longtime patron. "There were a lot of hookers and dope dealers, but this place has mellowed a lot since then."
Seeing a dusty picture of Sinatra on a lower shelf, I ask just how long Atomic has been around. Scott hands me a weathered card spotted with dozens of pin-holes—the bar's original liquor license. I look for the date when suddenly I spot: Tavern No. 1.
"Wait a second," I say. "Does that mean this is actually the first bar in Las Vegas?"
Scott confirms it. Wow. All of a sudden, the place seems so much more awesome—not because it was the first bar in a town renowned for its bars, but because it doesn't treat that distinction as a gimmick. Any other bar would've renamed itself "First Bar" 40 years ago and then covered itself with canned nostalgia. Atomic Liquor has a single picture of Sinatra, and you have to lean over the video-poker machines to see it.
I meet the woman in pink, who turns out to be Stella Sobchik. She and her husband, Joe, have run Atomic Liquor for 55 years.
"Fifty-five years—that's awesome," I say. "How much has changed since you first opened?"
"Just the people," Stella says. "They filmed some of the movie Casino in here. Before that, Barbra Streisand used to come here to play pool. She even mentioned it in her book. Before that, the Rat Pack used to come down here, and Roy Rogers. And when they did the atomic testing, we would watch it from the roof."
I ask her what she thinks about the new Fremont East development, and she winces, but mostly because the construction has slowed traffic. "But that hasn't stopped us," she says.
Certainly not. If this landmark survived when they were dropping atomic bombs nearby, a torn up road won't pose a threat.
Atomic Liquor
917 Fremont St.
384-7371