I've played one of those spots by union square. Was fun to feel like a gangster for an evening but ultimately not a crowd I want to spend a lot of time around.

Hah. That's posh. They used to have apartments all around NYU stuffed with slot machines they brought up from Atlantic City. Club members got a key to let them just go play slots. But I never played or dealt downtown. This gem was in a basement in Harlem up on Malcolm X, steel door and heavy security, 2 blackjack tables, a couple poker tables and some slots. I knew the manager because he came every morning for breakfast to the restaurant on the upper west side where I was a waiter, and we got to talking poker every morning. He asked me to come deal, so they'd pick me up in a decked out black Lincoln Navigator with tinted windows after I changed from my waiting shift, I'd deal for 8-10 hours and make 5x as much as my regular job, and then they'd drive me back. I don't even remember the cross street.

Let's just say your money isn't going to anything good if you play in one of those places.

Wild. The slots thing - seems so easy for someone to rat on them and then so easy for the cops to break it up.

The Manhattan one was poker only. Steel door with a camera, get buzzed into a second door where you talk to somebody and they only buzz you up if they recognize you.

The poker room had two nice tables and a little bar where you could buy drinks. TVs playing sports. Seemed to be Asian-run.

Similar setup, this was Italian.. but yeah they used to get rooms busted by cops all the time. They had trucks full of slots. No one even sat in those places, they just went to pick up the cash every day (I know this because I accompanied someone on their rounds to pick up cash from the slot machine apartments once, and was kinda shocked that some of them had no one inside at all. Just like, some studio apartment on 14th and another on Canal and another on Ave B. Wall to wall with slightly used slots hah)

[edit] There was also one night I showed up to work only a few hours after the cops had raided the poker room, and they were just getting back up and running.

> "Build what makes you happy..." is a darn good philosophy, btw.

Thanks! I wish I'd say it's my daily driver, but I still work for money.

Cheers =)

Seriously though, I think making clients happy still makes me happy, if I like what they're doing and I get to impress them a bit. I guess it would be more fun to be able to live only on passion projects, but I know I'm lucky even to be able to keep the hope alive and keep creating.