Monday, June 29, 2015

Opelousas: The Casino Hum

The Evangeline Downs Casino is in Opelousas.

I hear tell some of the money from the casino gets earmarked for road maintenance in St. Landry Parish (and Opelousas is in St. Landry Parish), but I'd like to see which roads actually get such attention. The potholes in Opelousas - and even Interstate 49 that runs through St. Landry Parish - are plentiful and vicious.

Evangeline Downs Casino, Opelousas, Louisiana. June 2015.


 But that's not what I'm writing about.


I'm not a gambler, because I figure if I want to piss my money away, it would be more entertaining for me to light a match to it and watch it burn rather than lose it to a whirlybird machine and go into the pockets of ...who, exactly? Somebody who doesn't need any more of it, I'm quite sure. On the other hand, I guess burning my money won't create local jobs.

But that isn't what I'm writing about, either.

No, it's about the hum. I go to the casino to listen to music at Zydeco's, the smoky circular bar, or to the Friday Fais-Do-Do in the Event Center. I walk through the casino with all the machines and I don't always hear it, but I often do - a static hum that ripples the air. Maybe it's like when a choir gets warmed up and sustains the same note for a long time. I think it's a result of many machines singing their songs and, while the machines might have different songs, there are notes that overlap to create a wide, sound-wave swath.

Some day I'll ask one of the casino workers if they hear the hum when they go home, too.

I thought to google on this topic, and incredibly, here is a two-hour 'soundscape' of a casino - sometimes you can hear that hum.

  

No comments: