RIP to a Vegas classic that was no mirage

Not many people can say they stayed at the Mirage on its first night and its last night, but I can. In 1989, my father took me for my 21st birthday, and last weekend I returned for its last night with friends. In between, I’ve stayed at least 50 times, mostly with college friends as an annual trek during its first 20 years.

Seeing it close felt like attending a sad funeral, like when your 35-year-old friend dies suddenly in the midst of a full life. Frankly, it all seems so unnecessary.

One doesn’t need to be a casino maven to see the obvious.

When the Desert Inn, Stardust, Sands, Dunes and Tropicana shut down, it was time. Some might even say past time.

Had you walked through those joints on their last day, you would have said: “Yes, bring on the wrecking ball, this place needed it at least five years ago.”

But not the Mirage.

Right up until the doors closed last week you could walk through it and see a place still beautiful and humming with energy and life. It still looks great.

The rooms we stayed in were still nice, clean and modern, the hallways clean and chic. The feel and look of the casino remain iconic and soothing, a place you want to be in.

Whatever it may need, it’s not a full gut job that will make the place unrecognizable in three years.

And to get rid of what I believe is the best pool in Las Vegas borders on travesty.

Being there to shut the joint down left our group saying, “What’s wrong with this place as is?”

Most of us hadn’t been in many years and were expecting a rundown place. But we found the opposite.

Why fix what isn’t broken? If you want to add a guitar tower and put a new name on the door, I suppose go for it. But why gut a working beauty still in the prime of her life?

It all reminds me of the Joni Mitchell lyric: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Today’s new “modern” casino feels more like an airport concourse than a place that takes you on an adventure like none other. That’s what the Mirage does. Or did.

Seriously, if you try to walk from one end of any of the modern casinos to the other, you feel like you need to catch an airport tram between terminals. But not at the Mirage.

When you take something over, real maturity and leadership is recognizing that perhaps change is not the answer. Being the smartest suit in the room sometimes requires embracing the maxim, “discretion is the better part of valor.”

Even from a pure capitalist play, it sure seems misguided. Why would you abandon your competitive advantage and trade something unique to become and look pretty much like all the other undifferentiated giants?

Sure, I write this with more than a twinge of nostalgia, but the uniqueness of the Mirage was not a mirage. It had no equal.

In 10 years, maybe some wise maven will buy the logo and brand of the long-dormant Mirage and build a new one much like the old one, and same as in 1989, hundreds of thousands of people will be lining up to get in, while the Hard Rock sits as just another, sterile behemoth.

William Choslovsky is a lawyer in Chicago who comes to Las Vegas twice a year — when his wife allows — to visit some of the money he’s left behind over the decades.