Card Squad: Westward Ho Closing Doors […] The Westward Ho, opened in 1963, is situated between the Stardust and Circus-Circus on famous Las Vegas Boulevard, otherwise known as ‘The Strip.’ The 700-room motel sits on a 12.3 acre property and is best known for providing low-cost accommodations and 99-cent hot dogs and margaritas. The ‘Ho’ will be closing their doors permanently on November 17 of this year.

Oh my. I stayed at the Westward Ho for my first Comdex back in 1996 – my company [at the time] was tied to the launch of Windows CE 1.0. Since we had no plans of going to Comdex that year – we had six in the company – we had to scramble to get a room on the strip…

Just before I left for this trip, I caught a relatively nasty piece of a flu in Connecticut which I brought with me to Long Island – where it mutated into a plague – before I hopped on a jet at JFK. I remember that the CE launch event was the night before the first day of Comdex. It ran from 9pm to Midnight, Vegas time, on the day I landed with the remnants of that flu, so I was good and delirious by the time it was over… and I walked directly into Bill Gates. Literally. Tripped over the guy, while he was in mid-sentence, talking to a small group of people – I didn’t even realize who it was until I was around the corner. Shortly after that, while in the cab line, we made David Cole – now of MSN fame – laugh when we traded business cards and he noticed the “Mobile Division” tag line.

It was also at this hotel that I discovered why we were being charged $300 a night at a motel. Ever stop to read those signs on the back of a hotel room door? I did at this hotel: they posted the going rate for their rooms to be like $300 or some shit; the Mirage has them listed at like $895 and higher. Legally that means that at any time they can charge that rate for a room. Comdex was the biggest conference Vegas saw throughout the year during the mid 90’s – even the Ho got top dollar for a place to crash.

I haven’t been back to the Westward Ho since the late nineties… for a while people wanted to see what the place looked like, after hearing that I “stayed at the Ho”. After all, it was a landmark: those silly light umbrellas are in more movies than I can remember – no one ever realized that there was a motel tied to it. If anything I figured Harrah’s would be buying them any day now, just to, ya know, buy something new… guess not.

Ah well – if we’re lucky maybe they can take out Circus Circus with it!