Las Vegas Weekly

February 17, 2009 · 9:13 AM

A slip of the bill does the trick at Jack Rabbit Slim’s

By John Katsilometes

On Valentine’s Day evening, the late-night snack would happen at a 24-hour restaurant I’ll not name because I don’t want to get any of its staff members stewed. Let’s call it Jack Rabbit Slim's. As we made our way through the parking lot of Jack Rabbit Slim's, a cab rattled up to the front of the restaurant and out tumbled a couple from elsewhere. Maybe Indiana. Maybe Arizona. Maybe Idaho-a. Somewhere else, for sure. The female member was laughing gutturally. “Can you believe that s***!” she asked, or maybe stated, about some episode in her recent life. Her right mitt was clamped on a 16-ounce Coors Lite bottle, and she was wearing a sweatshirt with Someplace Saloon inked on the back. The male followed close behind, gripping a plastic cup holding a clear drink topped with a squeezed-out lemon. I would guess they had just cabbed it over from Slots-A-Fun, but who could know? Maybe it was Encore.

She Shaq-dunked the nearly empty bottle in the ashtray-trash container near the Jack Rabbit Slim's entrance. “I hope we sit next to them,” I said, thinking not that they would enhance the Valentine’s night dining experience, but that they would make for interesting writing. They already had, actually.

The couple rumbled back toward the Jack Rabbit Slim's lavatory area first, allowing us to put our name on the restaurant’s waiting list – Jack Rabbit Slim's still seems to be doing healthy stagger-up business despite the reeling economy. Then the careening twosome returned and started chatting with the hostess. I could make out individual words and phrases, such as, “didn’t” and “come to” and “Vegas” and “to wait to eat.” The three-way conversation continued, energetically, for a couple of minutes, during which the guy kept motioning toward the counter. Whenever he motioned, she nodded vigorously, and the hostess smiled with her eyebrows pinched and shook her head in a disbelieving sort of way.

The guy then reached into his pocket and plucked out a bill. I tried to get a look at it, and I think it was a $10. It was a $10, or maybe a $5, or possibly a $20. It was not a $1, or $2, or anything higher than a $20. Maybe it had a little house and choo-choo train on it. Whatever, he slipped the bill to the hostess, who smiled some more and led them to the counter.

Score!

Forget that the counter at Jack Rabbit Slim's, as is the case at restaurants all over the country (including the Crockery at the Flying J in Nephi, Utah), is first-come, first-serve. It was wide open for anyone, even those not willing to slide the hostess a 10-spot for preferential treatment. But they seemed to have a good time over there, tearing apart their sandwiches in about 15 minutes before wafting out to an awaiting cab. They left none the wiser, keepers of an only-in-Vegas tale they can spin for years. “So I said, ‘No WAAAAY did I fly all the way to Vegas to wait in line to eat …”

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