Downtown Cleveland - Casino & Club Seats

We spent an evening downtown, checking out the new Horseshoe Casino and taking in an Indians game. [Yes, it's true, Ohio legalized gambling last year - Horseshoe is likely the first of many.] Located in the old Higbee's building on Public Square, adjacent to the Terminal Tower, the casino is beautiful. I have to tell you, though, it's a little unsettling to walk through the doors to what used to be a department store and see slot machines and gambling tables where the clothing racks and cosmetic counters once were!

Horseshoe is not an inexpensive place to hang out. Minimum bet at the roulette table is $15. For comparison, in Vegas, minimums are usually $5 and sometimes as low as $3. We saw a couple of average looking people spend a lot of money. A young guy sat down next to us and bought $600 in chips with cash! The staff was a mixed bag - some were professional and courteous, other perhaps not ready for prime time. The facility is smoke-free (yay!) and Ohio law requires you to pay for your own drinks. In the forty-five minutes we spent there, no one offered to sell us one so I can't comment on their quality or price.

 The gaming floor is on the street level.

We didn't get a chance to explore but I hear the food court and buffet on the second floor are pretty good and feature local chefs. We didn't eat there because, thanks to friends, our tickets to the Tribe game were in all-you-can-eat seats. Turns out there are two types of all-inclusive seats: in one area, hotdogs, popcorn, peanuts and sodas are included; in the Club seats, where we sat, the food choices were much more expansive. In the Club itself, there is a buffet line (which featured pulled pork and buffalo-style macaroni cheese the night we were there) as well as stations for subs and salads and other goodies. Outside, near the seats were all the traditional baseball foods, enhanced. The hotdog cart also had a variety of sausages and all the toppings. There are carts with pizza and with nachos (including three types of salsas - cucumber fennel, anyone?) and ice cream; popcorn, peanuts and snow cones, with a fun dispenser so you can pick your own syrup(s). 

The seats are great too - on the right field side in the infield, between the lower deck and upper deck, straight across from the giant screen over the bleacher seats. What a great game, too. It was all offense, all night - the final score was Indians 10, Reds 9. Go Tribe!

Shelley and me. We had such a good time with her and Mike - thanks friends!!

We ran into my cousins John and Pat - it's definitely a small world.

Saw this video on facebook and loved it. If you haven't visited the area lately, here's what you're missing:

Go Tribe!

I wanted to blog about the Cleveland Indians for opening day but I was at SEPC and time got away from me. Normally (since moving away from CLE over a decade ago), I wouldn't be paying much attention to professional baseball in April (in favor of FSU/college ball) but my friend Meagan tweeted me a link in March to the social media work the Indians organization set up for the 2011 season. Here's a synopsis:

It got me excited to follow the team (@Indians, @tribetalk plus the front office, manager and players are on Twitter, visit http://twitter.com/#!/indians for a full list), and wow what a ride the season has been so far! No expects much of the Tribe, but they have been playing great baseball this April, and it's been a lot of fun to follow along.

my brother and me, ready to cheer on the Indians

I've been to, watched, and listened to a lot of games, in winning times (we played the World Series on multiple screens at our wedding reception in 1995) and not so winning (when we were kids (see photo), my Dad used to take us to a double-header every summer for my brother's birthday; I think I was in college before I ever saw them win in person!). So here's to the Tribe! Give them a follow in 2011 and remember (in the immortal words of Ebby Calvin LaLoosh in the iconic baseball film Bull Durham): "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."