The Riviera

Growing up, we had a few pieces of furniture - mainly just chests of drawers, I think - that my parents had gotten from a liquidation sale in Las Vegas when an old hotel (I think it was The Sands) closed down. I always thought it was kind of cool to have a piece of history like that and also a great way to score some furniture very inexpensively.

A few weeks ago, I was reading in the newspaper and saw that The Riviera was being torn down. The article linked to another article with information about a liquidation sale. I immediately wanted to go! The sale had been going on for about a week, but when I called they said they had plenty of everything left. Ryan and I were going to go, then the logistics of crowds and girls got the better of us and we called off the trip. It was on Memorial Day and we just didn't feel like spending our holiday there. After that, I thought that it wouldn't happen because I didn't want to take the girls alone by myself during the weekdays and Ryan was going to be gone the next weekend for a race. Then Kim and I started talking and she's a sucker for a sale and a bargain. We decided to meet at the hotel on Saturday morning right when it opened at 9 a.m. Robert hopped in my car and drove the girls up to their house to play with Bridgett and Abby. Kim and I stayed to go through the sale. It was amazing! It was truly an experience. The first four days of the sale it costs $10 to enter but after that it is free. We both agreed that even going when we went would be well worth the $10.

Imagine a sale where they want to squeeze every last drop of money out of a space before they tear it down. This was that sale. EVERYTHING was for sale, including the carpets on the floor (there was a sign on the wall with the dimensions of a ballroom carpet and the price), the service vehicles were parked out front for sale, the pool furniture, the exercise equipment, all the beds, the cabinets, the dresser drawers, irons, ironing boards, luggage racks. Everything! It was crazy. Then, on top of that you would find a random ream of paper with a price tag on it. The art from the rooms was on sale, the elevators had price tags on the inside for $550 each. They unlocked the rooms and you would take an elevator up to a floor and just walked from room to room seeing what you wanted. The different towers had different furniture. It was so bizarre.

All the tables and chairs from the restaurants and lounges were on sale. Some of it was worn, but some were really nice wood pieces. I thought that if I had a new space and needed furniture to fill it, then there was a lot of stuff that would have looked great with a different coat of paint and maybe some new knobs or something. You had to use your imagine on some things, for sure, to see what the potential was, but for that type of creative person it was a gold mine. I think Ryan's sister Lianne would be the perfect person to take to this sale. I bet she could have re-imagined everything in there and made it cool and functional in a home.

Kim had a lot of mismatched dining stuff at home, so she got all new glasses (water glasses, goblets, little dessert ones, kid cups) for cheap. All the kitchen equipment was on sale and there were chafing dishes galore, little stoves, walk-in freezers and fridges, and more. I just can't get over the magnitude of STUFF that they were trying to get rid of.

They were selling all the gaming tables. I took a turn behind one of them to see how I fit... not very well, I also didn't have $2000 for it or the space. Who knew that these things could be so expensive?

The strangest thing was really just to have absolute freedom to wander anywhere you wanted in this giant hotel/casino. It felt eery, like someone should be stopping us (or would have been stopping us if it was open and running). Just for fun we went up to see the suites and the penthouses. Strange things had already been bought and claimed - like giant panels of mirror and glass from penthouse walls. It was so weird to think who would want that and would already have claimed it and paid for it. Since it was an older hotel, the rooms weren't that spectacular, but I could see in their heyday that they were pretty cool.

This one suite was different from all the others not only in looks but most especially because everything on it had a "Not For Sale" sign. In a building where people are pulling the light fixtures from the wall, it's strange to find a pink marble jetted tub that's not for sale. Our only guess was that maybe a famous performer or someone like Elvis had stayed there, or maybe it was the owner's. I don't know. It was a weird room.

In the end, I bought a room safe ($30) and mini fridge ($25) for Brandon. There were hundreds of mini fridges, it felt like, and there probably were since they probably had one in every room. We found rows and rows of them on the first floor. The liquidation company were moving certain things out of the rooms and into common areas. Kim got a mini fridge and her glasses.

A few days later, after some thought, I decided to go back and get a television. They were selling 32" flat screens with a wall mount for $75. I was going to get one for us and one for Rebecca for their guest room. I bravely drove out by myself with the girls. There was a room full of 32" t.v.'s, but the worker told me that they had just gotten in a few 42" screens. They really only advertized the smaller ones because there were so many of those, but as the liquidators took more of the hotel apart, the bigger screens would occasionally become available. So, I got a 42" for our living room and a 32" for Rebecca. Ryan and I have had a 32" in our living room since my parents gave it to us for Christmas almost six years ago. It's been a great t.v., but as our living spaces got a little bigger than our 500 square foot Los Angeles apartment, it looked a little small. Action movies were so pathetic. I'm not saying that 42" is so huge, but for us it's a big improvement. So exciting!

If anyone has a chance to go to a major liquidation sale, do it! The company that is running this liquidation has a website. Next time I need something, I'm going to go on the website and see if there are any sales nearby that might have what I'm looking for. It was a very fun adventure.