The only time that a televised explosion involving the Chicago area and involving some type of
mob influence on a single building was in the late 1980s, called The Opening of Al Capone’s Vaults,
hosted by breakthrough Hispanic reporter that I used to love, Geraldo Rivera.
Yes, there were explosions in Chicago in the past that were major. Comiskey Park had its
“exploding scoreboard” (and I felt the brunt of that in at least a few Chicago White Sox baseball
games I attended), the modern Navy Pier has its own summer lakefront fireworks, and of course
there was Disco Demolition in 1979. In addition to that, the FALN in the 1980s bombed Chicago, and way before that act happened, Chicago had its first terroristic incident in history way in the past with the anarchist dynamite bomb that blew up in the vicinity of Haymarket Square during a labor
protest there, killing scores of police officers and wounding a fair amount of others. But I was glad
that Chicago is not known as the “implosion capital of the world.”
Las Vegas—thank God I was not living or planning to be there—was regrettably the “implosion
capital of the world.” Several rat-pack hotels in that city were already blown away to rubble—the
Tropicana—the Dunes II, and the Hacienda. Then, I found out quite too fast that the Dunes Hotel
was going to be dust. I saw the fireballs exploding around the hotel---several big ones---that I never
had seen in the past news pictures of a building implosion ever since. I was guessing that Las Vegas
did already claim the title as The Entertainment Capital of the World---they can do anything. Including imploding!
But I did not know how they did the fireballs that enveloped the whole hotel into a reminder
of the most famous classic disaster moving, The Towering Inferno—for several seconds, before the
whole building finally game down. I learned later that it was hundreds of pounds of aviation fuel
rigged by explosion that caused the fires so spectacularly—and I had to figure out how all of this started coming down.
I did not even know that there were 5 to 6 minutes of pyrotechnics in the sky around the whole
hotel in a pre-implosion display. And then, the first explosions started not at the Dunes Hotel itself—
the implosion started from the nearby Treasure Island hotel, at its famous stunt show area where there
are explosions and fire in the famous sea battle stunt scenes, and I heard the command of “Ready,
Aim, Fire!!!”, and I knew the implosion would actually start with a cannon shot from Treasure Island---and even though I could not identify the exact person who gave the command to “fire!” to start the implosions, I knew it was going to be a really explosive sight. And it was, but thank God I was not at Las Vegas to see it. It was going to be so bad for my ears and I would even pass out from either a panic attack or a heart attack if I saw the implosion live.
I was trying to dig deep on why the Dunes had to go. First of all, I learned that they were shooting a movie where one hotel was supposed to be imploded, and I learned that they would to erase The Dunes so that way modern Las Vegas never relives what was the past – where Las Vegas was formerly the “sin city” and where mobsters made their living there in the 1970s and 1980s.
So, fortunately, I was never a fan of the Dunes Hotel when it was blasted to bits, but I had a teeny inspiration with the outdoor sign that was at a bit of a distance from the main hotel. Now that is gone—as well as the hotel, so I am not really upset about this. It makes me want to think of other things…I can think “sand dunes”—what I heard in the 1980s when I attended Beacon School, but I did not knew what “dunes” were---just sand.
How Las Vegas really changed in 1995 and I realized that another Las Vegas hotel, the Sands,
was going to be imploded in still another movie, which I learned was Mars Attacks!—one of my
favorite movies up to the day related to science fiction.
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