24/7 in Las Vegas

DAY: Tina Lokofis

I guess I think about Las Vegas a lot different than the average person would think about Las Vegas. I guess I feel like I'm a part of Las Vegas. A big part. When I look at a vacant lot I wonder what we will build there. I worked on the Maxim, the Sundance, the Luxor from bottom to top. I was a foreman there. Some of my crew are working there now. The Moapa power plant, the five story parking garage downtown, the Imperial Palace, Caesars Palace, the Lucky Star on Mount Vista, the Chaparral Apartments. I worked on the Hilton, the Stratosphere, Polo Towers, the First Interstate Bank building. I've built a lot of it. So I guess in a lot of ways you could say I built Las Vegas. Building this Stratosphere tower was probably one of the most awesome things I ever did. I'm getting ready to go to my twentieth high school reunion in Seattle. I'm really looking forward to telling them about building Las Vegas. I think they're gonna think it's unbelievable. You know I was sophomore homecoming princess I wasn't anything like this. It's gonna be pretty neat. Actually, I think I'm gonna have one of the most interesting stories to tell. Maybe somebody's taken out hearts and put them in somebody else's body. But to say that I've built a lot of these buildings from the ground up, I think I have a pretty neat story to tell.

Being the only woman on many projects I wanna say I have a personality that I can joke with the best of 'em, I can laugh with the best of em, I can cry with the best of em. It took a lot of years for me to earn their respect, because you're really not wanted at first. Especially if you're kinda cute, that even makes it worse. No, maybe it doesn't make it worse. They're gonna razz ya no matter what, and they're gonna say things. But after a while of really getting out there and bustin' your ass, sticking to it and doing things you don't want to do...it's raining, you're bleeding sometimes, you hit yourself in the head or you smash your finger, you just want to go home and you can't...

Men... it's not a good subject with me. I mean I can handle the guys at work all day long, no problem. But off the job I don't do well at all. I am not afraid of anything. Eight hundred feet in the air, upside down, no problem. But love, I am definitely afraid of love. I truly am. I just cannot seem to get that one right. There's another thing that I have done since we started. You know how when you pour concrete? I have put my name and my daughter's in tons of slabs in concrete in Las Vegas. Sometimes I will put my boyfriend's name. My name is in a lot of slabs. Just in the corner. Sometimes they erase it and I have to sneak back and put it back in. Someday when they go to tear down Las Vegas thousands of years from now they might see little pieces of my name all over the place.

SWING: Carol Altman Poker is a microcosm of life: You got some tools to live your life with. You make a decision what to do with those tools. Then you have to read everybody else to see if they have better tools than you and if you are using yours better than they are. It is very exciting. Then you either fail or you win. Every three seconds you have this challenge and this failure or this win. This is the excitement. I love to gamble.

When I do win, I win at least 40 percent more than I should. Because men get very very macho. When you are streaking and you are winning, they don't want to believe it. Just the other day, I was with a man from Italy. I wasn't with him. I was at his table. I won $755 - $400 of it was his money that I never should have won. He was raising me, betting into me, even though I had it. His wife was yelling at him. It was really funny. I have that edge which is very interesting. I also use flirtation. Even though I am a feminist and all that, I kid around a lot. I flirt a lot. I disarm the men. I make believe I don't know what I'm doing.

I talk to myself. I will walk over to a table and say, Oh, I would never check a raise. I would shake. It would be like a volcano happened here. There is a whole other world in Vegas that knows nothing about the hotels or casinos. They just don't. One politician that I know, she hasn't been in a hotel except to go to one of the ballrooms or go to a show. So there is that world. And there is the world of professional gamblers. We like to play.

I feel that women who play slots feel less adequate and self confident than women who get involved in the real human games, whatever they are, even if it is baccarat or black jack. It is much more human and interactional. And you need to be much more aware of records or whatever, even the dice. You have to know the system and you have to be really bright. That is why they like the machines. You don't have to answer to anyone. And no one bothers you. You're just on that machine. There is no interaction and there is no challenge and there is no need for success. If you fail it was only the machine and only bad luck. If you win it is only good luck.

Women who play other games, I think anyhow, are much more confident and willing to take the risk and willing to fail and say, when they lose at poker, ÒI played badly.Ó There is luck of course, but there is also bad play. If I lose a little bit, sometimes I have a few bad bets, I take ownership of that, that I played badly. A machine, you don't have to take any ownership. I met a woman who lost her entire life gambling, her house, her children, her husband, everything. And she is living here in a rooming house now and she's playing the machines.

Women don't really have many chances in life to win because of the glass ceiling or the brick ceiling. But in a poker game there is no stopping you. And you can really, in fact you can win against men because of the things that I have said that is why I think it is a feminist game. You can really use everything against men. They have no awareness of what you are doing because they are so involved in themselves.

The interesting thing in Vegas is the difference between gambling and risk taking. I think that gamblers are the people who play for a living. They gamble and they know all the odds and they know exactly what to do and they play the odds. They play the same way every single time. There is always another game. I am more a risk taker. For me to win the hard way on a craps table is much more fun than to have the ten come in six-four and have the odds come in.

GRAVEYARD: Janna Smith-McCoy Everyone wants to be here where the action is, where the excitement is. I came to Las Vegas because my mother brought me out when I was seven years old for the first time and we stayed at the Flamingo. And I was so infatuated and excited over the city. I told my mother, When I grow up I am moving to Las Vegas. When I was seventeen and a half I moved up and I have made it my home ever since. One thing that impressed me the most was the fact that you could pick up the phone and you could call room service and the chefs were nice enough to make the pancake the same size as a real original silver dollar and I thought anybody who's gonna take the time to make the pancake the same size as the money is gonna be great. It was really exciting, the glitz, the lights, the glamour. At one point my mother came up in the room one night, we were sound asleep, my sister and I, and she is throwing silver dollars all over the room.

I am approaching my seventeenth year driving a cab. And not that it ranks any Oscars or a ribbon, but I am the longest running female cab driver in Las Vegas for the night shift amongst all the cab companies here.

One evening, I winded up getting this lady in my cab and it happened that she became famous amongst cab drivers. We called her the bag lady. She had a slight mental disorder. All she wanted to do was live in taxi cabs. The trick was, when you picked her up and you had her in your car, she rode with you your entire shift. And when you were ready to go off the shift, you had to pull alongside another cab and open the door so she wouldn't put her feet onto the ground and she could climb into the next cab. She was in Las Vegas for almost three months and all she did was live in cabs. She had this phobia, something about putting her feet on the ground. We would take turns taking her clothes to the laundry and dropping them off. Occasionally she would have you pull over to a little bar and run in and grab her a couple of cocktails and bring them out and give it to her in the cab. But she just spent her entire night in the cab riding around with you. Sometimes she would talk to you, sometimes she would just lay down in the back and fall asleep for hours at a time.

Las Vegas is an open city and it is kind of a city where anything goes and anything is accepted so a lot of people come here and they test it you know. It's like how far can they go, how far they can push it to the limits, and to what extent can they get away with what they do. You know it's a crazy town, it's a great city. People get in the cab and tell you anything in the world. It is an exciting place 24 hours a day. There is always something to do. There is entertainment all night long. There are restaurants to eat at all night long. And people come here and they really appreciate that. They love that. It's a place for the people who don't like to sleep I guess. There is always something to do in Las Vegas. You can never be bored in this city.

I think women are very strong in this town. It's kind of funny being a female driving a cab that's advertising for topless places and what have you. It's interesting because you get a lot of comments. People come up to you and ask a lot of questions that doesn't bother me. It's part of my job. You know if it bothered me I couldn't do it. Because I constantly get asked a lot of questions: What are the best topless places to go to? Where is the best, you know, ah, house of ill repute? Where can we find working girls? Where can we find call girls? What is it like with escort services? That's part of our job, you know. You have to know these things. A lot of times people get in your cab and they feel uncomfortable about asking you that, but once they feel you out and test the water and know that you are willing to talk, they don't mind asking.

OK, we're going down Las Vegas Boulevard, right? And we're approaching a wedding chapel called the Silver Bell Wedding Chapel. That's one of the first places where I took anybody to get married. I stood up for them and when they came out I threw rice at them. And believe it or not I even cried for them. I had a young couple that got in my cab, I think they were both eighteen years old and they wanted to get married, and it was my very first wedding. I'd never been to a wedding before, other than my own. So I took them over there and they asked me if I would be their witness. Well, I did, and it was really funny because they had a lady minister doing the ceremony and in the middle of the ceremony, I am almost crying like it is my daughter up there getting married, I mean I had tears rolling down my face. The minister had to stop in the middle of the ceremony because she started laughing and she said to me. Why are you crying? Because these people are getting married? And I said , ÒNo, it's kind of like watching your favorite soap opera, you know, when your favorite characters get married. These two are so sweet, I said. I just can't help it. I think I've taken at least ten couples over there and witnessed their marriages. I've thrown rice, I bought champagne, I bought congratulation cards, I have taken pictures for them. When you're a cab driver you kinda become a little bit of jack of all trades out here doing different things.

When I have driven in the daytime, you know, this town is based on a lot of conventions, and conventions are usually monopolized by men mostly. In the daytime they are very, very conservative, they are the suit and tie people. They are just business in the light. They are a different kind of person at night when the bright lights come on. It's really amazing. I mean, now the city is full of mystery and excitement and a little sin and what have you. They get in the cab and it's like, here is the best topless to go to? Or where is the best bordello to go to? Or how can we get a girl to come to our room? You know, little things like that. They get very promiscuous about asking these things. I think being in the dark just brings out all these things that men like to talk about. And it's funny because they get in the back and once they figure out that they can talk to you and they feel at ease with you, especially if you are a female, they talk about everything and anything they can think of, and it usually wraps around sex of some form.