River Rock Casino bills itself as "San Francisco's closest casino", which may be the case—but that doesn't change the fact that it's actually pretty fucking far away. [1]
Some background: Mena's parents are visiting us this weekend, and so we were driving San Francisco basically trying to figure out what to do, and inexplicably decided that an Indian casino was the way to go. If you've read Mena's blog—or rather, if you read it 4 years ago—you might remember that she has a number of Las Vegas stories about her family and herself. So there's a lot of, um, history around gambling with Mena and her family.
But anyway, in honor of our trip this weekend to the casino, I've compiled the following list!
Reasons to hate the River Rock Casino:
- It's not actually that close to San Francisco.
- They don't serve alcohol. I don't know why.
- They've taken a beautiful setting (the Alexander Valley, in the middle of vineyards), ripped it up, and built a building that looks like a penitentiary, spoiling the area forever.
- They don't have any Blackjack machines. (This is mainly Mena's reason.)
- It's horribly depressing. This is in turn because of a number of factors, including all of the reasons above, but in addition: the buses pulling up with giant groups of tourists; the old people breathing through oxygen tubes and basically living for the thrill of pushing the button on the slot machines; etc.
All that said! We took some pictures, and had a generally good time, because frankly, it's kind of funny to see Mena blowing smoke into her mom's face and giving her dad a cigarette:
[1] By the way, see that "Now More Parking" line on their website? Seriously, the parking lot is gigantic, which in and of itself is kind of depressing, because it was so not full.
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