The gaudy, fluorescent excess the trampling of local communities in order to plant massive footprints for glittering structures that are often just horrible to look at the grift and graft and worse involved in getting them built and the constant thought that for as many who go for some harmless fun (say, a bachelorette party) there are far more acting out desperations and needs on the gaming floors, often to their ruination-it all suggests nothing so much as a charnel house. Casinos are filled coast-to-coast with grannies bused in to man slot machines for hours at a time-the walking dead hoping their dinging, spinning one-armed Molochs will spit back triple cherries or maybe even a JACKPOT. Today, if so inclined, one can play craps in Lawton, Oklahoma blackjack in historic Chippewa country in North Dakota slots in Missoula, Montana.
Itasca County, was fought over taxes, but like so many such decisions it opened unexpected floodgates.
Now, thanks largely-and accidentally-to a 1976 Supreme Court decision concerning the regulation of Native American activities on Native American lands, they’re a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry in states across the nation.
American casinos were once found only on the glittering Strip in Vegas and the wannabe upstart Pacific Avenue in down-market Atlantic City.
