Whatever happened to Abbey Road?

Revisiting Fremont Street East and the Las Vegas Strip

Last week I took a fellow who plans to start a tour company in Las Vegas on a mini-tour. I wanted to show him the important parts of Fremont Street from Ferguson’s Motel (now a small shopping plaza with the truck sculpture ‘Big Rig Jig’, which premiered at Burning Man, on display), and a variety of art centers surrounding Ferguson’s.

Atomic Liquors (the first legal package liquor store/bar in Las Vegas), and there’s nearby Abbey Road, where Ringo Starr’s handprints are displayed.

Guess what? Abbey Road has not only vanished, but I am not finding one article on line about what happened!!! Are they redoing it? Did they remove Ringo’s handprints? It does look like they’re doing some work on the El Cortez, so perhaps it will be brought back to it’s former glory? Looks like I’m gonna have to take matters into my own hands and return to El Cortez and ask them about the status of Mr. Starr’s handprints.

I just found out Abbey Road has a Facebook page, so I asked the question and will let you know what I find out.

I have done two tour videos on Las Vegas. I did work at Big Bus Tours where I sat on top of a double decker bus and gave stories of the golden age of Vegas while passing the sites. And I also gave walking tours of Fremont Street. Plus, I was the first generation of tour guides at Wayne Newton’s Casa de Shenandoah, which is now for sale.

When I tried to get back into tour guiding, I was told that Big Bus no longer hires tour guides. They now use ‘commentators’. I presume that means everyone is wearing a headset and downloading listening material to their phone. When I worked there, I was told that could never happen because Las Vegas changes so much they would constantly have to update the tour. Well, guess they made peace with updating the tours.

If I get back into the business of tour guiding, I will be creating new videos because both these videos need updates. The Fremont Street video needs to include the new location of the Writer’s Block bookstore (now at 519 S 6th St Ste 100), which is next to a movie theater that appears high class but never seems to be open when I’m around. Plus, I need to find out what happened to Ringo Starr’s handprints! They weren’t there the last time I looked.

Regarding the video of the Las Vegas strip: the Tropicana is gone, the Diamond motel with the pink elephant is gone, and Casa de Shenandoah is now a prime location for someone to shoot a horror movie at!

Seriously, a bunch kids sneak into Wayne Newton’s abandoned estate and, as a former tour guide, I can tell you that there are stories of strange phenomenon in that estate that probably rivals Disney’s Haunted Mansion.

Once I know the answers to some of these questions, I will return to give you the information I uncovered. In the meantime, enjoy these videos of Las Vegas past. The Fremont Street Tour video is at the top of this article, and the Las Vegas Strip tour video is at the bottom.