Credits: Article and images by Quentin Bufogle @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2024/05/25/why-i-bought-it-a-bulova-like-mobster-bugsy-siegel/
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Full disclosure: I’d spent nearly 20 years working like a horse (at times, two) in Vegas resorts. The last five as chef de partie at Sin City’s only five-star property – not to mention a solid decade at the “Fabulous Flamingo” itself. Sadly, the Flamingo I knew had little in common with the palace Ben Siegel had literally spent his life’s blood – and $6 million in mob cash – to build.
From the solid Italian marble walls to the fancy, art-deco furnishings and the palm trees he’d have trucked in from Florida to shade the enormous, blue-tiled swimming pool, Benny spared no expense. He even spent a cool million – the entire budget originally green-lit by the mob – to run individual sewer lines for each of the Flamingo’s 105 rooms.
Heck . . . they didn’t call him “Bugsy” for nuthin’! Sixty years later, when I reported for my first shift, the Flamingo had swelled to a property with four towers and approximately 3,500 rooms. Ironically, all that remained of the original structure was the plumbing.
In 1993 – in their infinite wisdom – the corporate “suits” who ran the Flamingo decided to do away with the last remaining vestige of Ben Siegel’s original structure. They bulldozed the hotel portion of the original Flamingo, which still stood fully intact out back by the pool; like some ancient artifact that had somehow been swallowed-up by a vortex in the spacetime continuum only to be deposited at the foot of those four gleaming, new high-rise towers – as incongruous as if someone had stuck the Great Pyramid of Giza between a Del Taco and a gentlemen’s strip club.
And just why did those corporate suits choose to do this, you may ask? Answer: to make way for an exotic bird sanctuary! You heard me right. Why allow tourists a chance lay hands upon Sin City’s very own version of Plymouth Rock?
To possibly spend the night in Ben Siegel’s actual penthouse suite replete with a maze of trapdoors and hidden passageways allowing him to make like Chris Angel if the Feds came a knockin’?
Nix the history and romance – the fascinating gangster lore. Forget the colorful, Runyonesque vibe. Give the tourists what they really pined for: a gaggle of African penguins!
Okay, so I’ve gotten a bit off topic. Let’s bring things full circle back to that Bulova I decided to purchase. If the splendor of those bygone days was indeed bygone, I was determined to add a piece to my watch collection that would somehow hark back to those dust-strewn days of early Vegas, a time when the occasional tumbleweed still ambled along what would one day become the famous Las Vegas Strip.
Something I could wear on my wrist to serve as a talisman of a time and place that – regretfully – I wasn’t fortunate enough to have experienced firsthand. A watch that was both a tip of the hat to Bugsy’s Vegas and my own Queens, New York neighborhood.
I spent days searching the web for a suitable candidate. First, Chrono24. Slim pickings. Bleary-eyed but undeterred, I summoned my courage, held my nose, and dove into the eBay listings – a veritable “buyer beware” swamp of fakes, frankenwatches, and “Bombay specials.”
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Credits: Article and images by Quentin Bufogle @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2024/05/25/why-i-bought-it-a-bulova-like-mobster-bugsy-siegel/