Jan 24 2007

Hooters in Need of Support

by Megan Edwards
Hooters
San Remo morphs to Hooters

What? Hooters is failing in the city of hooters? It seemed impossible last January, when old San Remo was still going through his makeover. Women turned out in American Idol numbers to see if their racks were awesome enough to land them the right to wear tight T-shirts and orange hot pants while they shuttled beer.

I checked the Hooters Hotel & Casino out last March, not long after the large display of orange fireworks had announced its grand opening. Of course this will do well, I thought as I admired all the racks that had made the grade and estimated how may linear feet of knotty pine had gone into the decor. It wasn’t really my kind of place, but posses of young, old, and in-between men seemed to be having a fine enough time. As the old saw says, display them and they will come.

Well, I guess they didn’t come, or at least they didn’t arrive in grand enough numbers to keep the orange in the black. Part of the reason may well lie in the sad old San Remo’s location — near the Strip, but not on it. Another issue might be the property itself, which is still basically, well, old. The remodel didn’t even get rid of the weird old Munster-house mansard roof, which looks a bit odd with the new painted-on palm trees.

But really, I don’t think it’s dilapidation or location that seems to have dragged Hooters down. I think it’s good old competition. Put bluntly, there are a lot of tits in Sin City, and the waitress outfits at the Bellagio, the Paris — heck, even the Imperial Palace — are all glitzier and more revealing than the white T-shirts and orange shorts the Hooters girls wear. I thought maybe the “surfer girl next door” image would appeal to a certain type of guy, but now I’m thinking that when guys come to Vegas, they leave their cotton-pantie fantasies at the airport. I mean, who’s going to pick Fruit of the Loom over Victoria’s Secret when they’re both equally available?

And there’s another thing. I had dinner at a Hooters in Henderson a couple of weeks ago. The waitresses were very cute, but the food was almost horrible. When my chili arrived, it was barely above room temperature, and the condiments and side dishes arrived in plastic containers that reminded me of being on an airplane. The “napkins” were a roll of paper towels stuck upright on a wooden dowel, which I would have forgiven if they hadn’t been the kind that disintegrate the minute you actually try to use them. If that’s the sort of food and ambience they’re serving up at the flagship location, they’ve got competition in that arena, too.

What it all comes down to is that the standards for breasts and food in Las Vegas are quite high these days. Make them awesome, and they will come.

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