Las Vegas has perfected the idea of establishments where the clientele doesn't know what hour or even what day it is, but no place tops the Dispensary Lounge for completely stopping time. The theme is, for lack of a better term, Regal Beagle: You know, a quiet little place with brass and ferns for Jack Tripper and his buddy Larry to try to score with a couple of stewardesses. Yet something about its white walls and perpetual quasi-emptiness feels strangely temporary, as though the whole place had been thrown together in a warehouse by a few production assistants, and then passed off as a swank San Francisco restaurant where the cop-masquerading-as-call-girl meets her prime suspect in Shannon Tweed's latest soft-core, straight-to-video opus. Back when video meant video, and what's more, you had to ask whether it was VHS or Beta.
The Dispensary Lounge's atmosphere is nothing if not soothing: sculpted shag carpeting in subtly graduated hues of beige and oversized furniture made of fake logs and brownish, itchy, plaid upholstery arranged in the ancient style of the conversation pit. The Spinners give way to the Bee Gees on the sound system, quietly enough not to obscure the sounds of glasses being lifted and the gentle splashing of the water wheel.
Ah, yes, the Dispensary's famous waterwheel—a 10-foot-diameter mill wheel that turns serenely, hypnotically, eternally against the back wall. But don't touch the water wheel. Word has it that to touch the waterwheel is to ensure instantaneous ejection. And the immediate firing of your waitress, which is the real negative reinforcer. I mean, who cares if you get thrown out? (I held off leaping into the rooftop pool at a party at a penthouse back in New York City until I'd had my fill of free booze. But I had to jump into the pool because a) when else will I ever get a chance to do the backstroke while gazing up at the Empire State Building?; b) as a friend said at the time, "You're not really special until security escorts you out"; and c) once they tell you you'll be thrown out for jumping into the pool, you must jump into the pool.)
But still, don't touch the waterwheel, just in case that thing about your server getting canned is true. I mean, I doubt it, but it's bad enough that she has to wear a leotard. Yup, a leotard—not one of those gilt-embellished thong-'n'-bustier numbers favored at Strip casino cocktail lounges, but a plain ol' burgundy or mauve nylon-polyester Danskin. Some of them wear it like it's what they wore to rehearsals when they were on the line at the Trop back in 1978; others seem more like this was the outfit guaranteed to draw a roadie's eye and win the backstage pass at a Poison concert. Regardless of how they do it, the ladies do it with style.
When it comes to clientele, the Dispensary Lounge is never empty, but never full. At 1 a.m. on a Monday or 10 p.m. on a Friday, there's always a seat. A guard of video-poker veterans seems to be in perpetual attendance around the bar and nothing seems to change. This is the other secret of the Dispensary Lounge's timeless ambience: the low lights, the low music, the low-slung furniture all add up to feeling like you're comfortably nestled in a cocoon where a nice lady with big hair brings you strong whiskey and sticky nachos, and Ronald Reagan is still only president-elect.
Lissa Townsend Rodgers learned to make a martini at age 6. E-mail her at
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