I really enjoy getting a nice shine placed on my shoes and was trying to remember where... if any shoe shines are in Vegas. I know most Nordstroms have one but what casinos and where in the casino would they be. Many of the casinos have a shoeshine stand, almost always in the entrance to one of the restrooms. The one exception I know of is Orleans, where the stand is in the hallway across from the Rocky Mountain Shop with all the candy apples. At which hotel will you be staying? For this trip El Cortez, but will be attending CES so will be in and out of the Venetian quite a bit. Well there's one in the Venetian on the casino level by the escalators that lead up to the food court and Grand Canal Shops, next to the restrooms. My fav one is in the Bellagio, it is in the entrance to the restrooms next to the old Fontana Bar... the brilliant guy is a dead-ringer for Nelson Mandela One attraction mentioned in this post I still make my wife shine my shoes !!
But it seems like many restrooms in the hotels have shoe shines. If you're staying DT, I'm sure that the Nugget has a shoe shine stand. I've had my shoes shined at Mandalay Bay and the Venetian. I get mine done at the airport when I get off the plane. NYNY has a stand kinda next to Ghallager's Caesars has a stand down the escalators to the restrooms from the Forum casino. Thanks for all of the great responses.... Now here is a bigger question to those who have gotten shines. Where do you feel you have received the best shines at? Planet Hollywood, Paris or Bally's?? What NOT to do in Vegas? What are some things you've asked your casino host for? The paradox of thrift.... Mgm grand vs Luxor vs Monte Carlo Comp drinks in specialty bars. Which hotels have the best Video Poker pay scales? how to redeem MyVegas loyalty points? Biggest win on slot machine and where in Vegas See All Las Vegas Conversations Top 125 things to do with your Family in Las Vegas
Hotels Offering Military Discount Planet Hollywood Westgate Tower - now Hilton Elara US holiday dates 2012 (including spring break?) Luxor Pyramid Rooms, Spa Suite Okay? Parking at Paris and Bellagio Best shows to see in Vegas???“Making Money” is a series on the different ways that people throughout New York City make money. This is the first installment. “Don’t worry,” Don says, upon hearing that his next customer has never had her shoes shined before. He instructs her to climb into an office chair bolted to a red-and-gray plywood box the size of a refrigerator, and sit down on a grubby towel printed with the White House’s insignia. “I brought it from home,” he says, pausing for laughter. He throws a stained towel over her knees and skirt, to protect her modesty (“It’s not my birthday!”), and starts in on the story of how Don Ward, who prefers to be known only as Don—“Cher can have only one name; so can I”—runs a successful business shining shoes at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street in Manhattan, just south of the headquarters of Fox News.
A water-stained sign designed in red marker, duct-taped to another office chair, promises an unspecified “economy discount” and one-hour drop-off service. It also implores customers to “Look at your shoes?” The question mark sits one line below the rest of the text, making the sign half offer and half critique. New York City is full of shoe shiners, and their economy is based on politeness and charm, in addition to convenience. Overhead is low: a large can of Kiwi polish will cover around fifty pairs of shoes and retails on Amazon for anywhere from $4.29 to $6.99. A jar of shoe dye lasts for only four pairs, and costs between $2.89 and $9.01 on Amazon. Don uses shoe cleaner that he makes himself. It looks a lot like carrot juice, and the formula is classified: “Colonel Sanders has his secret recipes; Don’s total cost of supplies comes to about two hundred bucks a week. Don won’t say how much he makes, but he works from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. and he sees anywhere from forty to sixty customers each day, at a price of five dollars a shine, plus tips.
Don’s overhead also includes a fair amount of duct tape. He stands on a piece of carpet that may, at one point, have been white, and that he must tape down every day. (He also tapes up his sign anew each morning.) Don politely declines to discuss his current storage arrangement. But he says that at one point he paid a hundred dollars a month to keep his stand—which he rolled out each morning, and rolled back each evening—safe at night. Don’s business model is himself. It’s not a stretch to imagine that anyone else, facing the same set of economic circumstances, might fare differently at Forty-seventh and Sixth, a spot Don inherited more than a decade ago. There are advantages to the location: an entrance to the Rockefeller Center stop on the B, D, F, and M trains; plenty of foot traffic; and an unusually open sidewalk. But the move to this location had little do with money. Don’s previous spot, in Grand Central Terminal, was “too political”—too full of the hedge-fund types he likes to mock.
Don uses various tools of benign manipulation to attract customers. And your hair looks nice. Can I love your boots?”). Shame (“Look at your boots!”). And appeals to reason (“How do you not clean your dirty shoes, sir? we have the technology.”). Don estimates that only one quarter of his customers are women—this is up from when he started shining shoes in the nineties, when a mere one in nine was female—but his tenderhearted heckling is equal-opportunity, and he does a lot of it. He also, though, reserves a lightly condescending, if protective, attitude for his female customers, and one suspects that it extends to women in general. “You know how many women I’ve saved?” he says, after coaxing a woman back from the crosswalk toward the safety of the curb. He seems not to be joking even a little. “What kind of world you living in?” he asks the customer with a towel obscuring her underwear. Is she living in reality? He says that certain things happen in reality. He means it literally: things that are certain, and that have grave consequences.
“Look at the fuckin’ guy, the Olympic dude,” he says, of Oscar Pistorius. (Don reads the Daily News in the morning, and the Post on the way home.) It’s cold outside, freezing, but Don doesn’t shiver. “I had a man used to tell me, ‘When people tell you who they are the first time, just believe them. You don’t need it confirmed anymore.’” He isn’t keen to explain what that means. His face says that the customer should know. The unlikely tabloid terrors of city life seem to haunt Don. He’s afraid of watching people get hit by taxi-cabs. He’s wary of muggings, and being pushed into the subway. He notes that it’s only February but already eleven people have died on the tracks. He believes that people are angry now. His anxieties are the sort that pass and do not linger when the sun is out and one is getting one’s shoes shined, but fester and creep after sundown, when the apartment is empty and the night is long. “I fear that one day I’m gonna tell a guy his shoes are dirty, and he’s so goddam mad that he’ll pull out a gun and shoot me.”