The valet sign is in the shape of a horseshoe. The advertisement for the steak house, posted in the hallways leading from the Horseshoe garage to the Horseshoe casino, says, "Simply great steaks: Binion's Horseshoe." The nickel slots say Horseshoe Nickels and the penny slots say Horseshoe Pennies and the frequent-players-club desk says Horseshoe Club Center and the security guard, whose official security shirt patch is in the shape of a horseshoe, is sitting behind a desk writing on Horseshoe stationery.
"In about 10 days, they'll start taking all the signage down," he says on Monday, of the giant neon Horseshoe signs on the front of the famous Downtown casino and all around the exterior. "It'll be a job."
Since Harrah's Entertainment turned the keys over last Thursday to owner MTR Gaming Group, a West Virginia-based company, the 54-year-old Fremont anchor has been renamed: Binion's Gambling Hall and Casino.
Harrah's takes the Horseshoe name with it. "We still operate three Horseshoe-brand casinos in other states—Bossier City, Louisiana; Hammond, Indiana; and Tunica, Mississippi—and we're in the process of converting our Bluffs Run Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to a Horseshoe casino," says David Strow, Harrah's spokesman.
"We're going to be actively looking for opportunities to use the Horseshoe brand elsewhere—including here in Nevada—but it's a little too soon to say where we're going to be using it in the future."
Harrah's will come back into the old, or new, Binion casino on July 14-15 to host the final three tables of this year's World Series of Poker at the request of Mayor Oscar Goodman—to keep with a 35-year tradition for the city's centennial celebration. But after that, the relationship is over. The rest of the series will be hosted at the Rio.
But before all of that, the horseshoes have to go.
Although it's hard to imagine the Downtown stretch of Fremont without the Horseshoe name and iconography, MTR plans to bolster the old casino's image, although it's not clear how yet—unless we take our clues from its other local property, the Speedway Casino in North Las Vegas. (What? Never heard of it? Has race cars.)
In any event, I went into the Downtown casino this week with the full intention of counting every mention or image of a horseshoe, because that's the kind of thorough journalism to which the Weekly is committed. I was on No. 42 when I finally noticed that the carpet is covered in horseshoes. Suffice to say, the place is horseshoed from the floor to the ceiling and everywhere in between.
In the gift shop, the employee behind the cash register had scratched "Horseshoe" off of her badge, but had not yet gotten a new uniform. "We're a little worried what they'll look like," she said.
Perhaps it's safe to say the city feels her anxiety.
But for now, with the gift shop sale-pricing stuff with the Las Vegas Horseshoe on it, it's time to stock up on old memories—I got a $4.99 Horseshoe Casino key chain for the bargain basement price of $2.50—and bid farewell to Binion's Horseshoe.