Bob Stupak

Mr. Stupak was interviewed October 25, 2000

I’ve got a lot of titles. Some that I liked, some I didn’t like: Visionary, gaming entrepreneur, controversial, colorful. I sure like the unpredictable. It goes on and on like that.

I was raised in the gambling business. My father ran a craps game in Pittsburgh for 50-some years. He was running it when I was a little boy until I grew up. My mother did the numbers business on the phone. So that’s all I knew. I thought that’s what big people did when they grew up. So all that came into play the first time I came to Las Vegas in ’65 and I stayed for about a week or so. I stayed at the Thunderbird Hotel. When I came back to the hotel about 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, I was hungry, so I went to the counter in the coffee shop. The waitress came over, and she said, “What would you like for breakfast, lunch, or dinner?” Just that little question and I knew I was in the right place. I knew I was where I should be. I came back plenty of times and decided to settle down here only to get into the gaming business.

There’s Las Vegas, and there’s Flatsville. Flatsville is the rest of the world.