Tonight in Las Vegas a few hours after Midnight, there will be an implosion/demolition of what's left of the Tropicana Hotel. It's a relic of Old Vegas that opened in 1957 and the last time I was in it, it didn't look like it had been cleaned since the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
There has been talk of its closure and razing for a decade or two now and they finally closed it last April and began emptying the place. The last two towers come down tonight right after a huge fireworks display.
The bringdown will be done by a company called Controlled Demolitions, Inc. that seems to be the leader in this field. It's owned and/or operated by the Loizeaux Family, having been founded in 1947 by John D. "Jack" Loizeaux. Around 1981, I was a writer on the TV show That's Incredible! and we had a bunch of Loizeauxs on to talk about their unusual profession and I spent an hour or so talking with them before the taping. It's really a fascinating skill because they usually have to do it to a building that's close to others that no one wants to see damaged. One of them said, "How it falls is not anywhere near as important as where it falls."
One of the Loizeauxs explained their craft in great detail to me. I didn't understand all of it then — it involved a lot of math — and I don't recall a lot of it now. I do recall that it was a lot more complicated than one might think because buildings are made of all sorts of different materials and are put together in different manners. Some years later, I was present for the implosion of the Hacienda Hotel, very near the Tropicana, and it was really an impressive thing to see in person. I'm not sure if that was a Loizeaux job. (I wrote about it here.)
Tomorrow or the next day, I'll try to find some video of the end of the Tropicana and post it here. I hate seeing part of Old Vegas go away but this was a place I don't think too many people will miss. I did win a lot of money there once at Blackjack but I don't play that anymore.