Toys and Stuff: Las Vegas Fremont Street Experience and Toy Shack

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Las Vegas Fremont Street Experience and Toy Shack

The other we had a rendezvous with friends from Germany at the Fremont Street Experience here in Lost Wages (aka Las Vegas). We didn't really spend a whole lot of time there, basically walking up the length of Fremont Street and back down. We also stopped in at the Toy Shack (featured on the History Channel's hit series Pawn Stars) located in the Neonopolis business center. Basically I have mixed feelings about the place. There's a mix of new product and collectible vintage and antique toys. They have a large selection of die cast vehicles - Mattel Hot Wheels and Johnny Lightning - all new product and reasonably priced. HOWEVER, the price structure for the vintage stuff is through the roof. I saw several Marx trains consisting of an engine (some were plastic, some were die cast), tender, and two or three cars. All were common-as-dirt pieces but the sets were selling for $300 !!! OUCH These are $40-$50 ABSOLUTE MAX anywhere else in the real world. But that being said, they are located in a tourist part of town and there are costs associated with a brick-&-mortar establishment that the average on-line seller doesn't have to worry about. My friend and I did buy several of the more down-to-earth offerings and the proprietors do honor military, police, fire/emergency worker, and teacher discounts. It's seldom that we actually drive to that part of town so it's unlikely the store will be a regular stopping place for us.

Okay, on to the rest of the post. We've been in this town for over twenty years now and for us personally all that glitz and glamour of The Strip and Fremont Street has really worn off. We're not 'big city' type people and this is just so much noise to us but every now and again it is kind of cool to see. For those unfamiliar with what the 'Fremont Street Experience' is, basically Las Vegas took a chunk of the old Downtown area where some of the older casino's are located, like the Golden Nugget, and closed the streets off to vehicular traffic and turned about five square blocks into a pedestrian zone in the model of many European cities. Then they built a large curved overhead canopy or vault about 1500 feet long over Fremont Street which is covered with LED lights. Starting at dusk the lights to the casinos go dark and the overhead canopy lights up with a brilliant light show. There are actually several different shows which are repeated every so often during the night. We got there at the the time of the first show which was 'American Freedom'.

While there the other night I didn't really take many still photos but I did the one thing I've been wanting to do for a long time, record one of the LED shows on the canopy. It was the first one played for the evening. Enjoy!