Posted by On October 30th, 2014 I found myself strolling the concrete carpets that blanket America’s most notorious neon city, that pillar of excess that is Las Vegas. M’lady and had I arrived early for Phish’s Hallowe’en run and had a day to kill – which can be quite dangerous in such a casino-laden town – so we did our best to avoid the bells and whistles of chance and instead hopped the bus to downtown Vegas where we strolled the promenade and ate a meal at the Heart Attack Grill that was much more memorable for their kitschy hook than it was for their overtly unhealthy food.
After lunch we decided to check out the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, not that we had anything to hawk. Though it might not be well known by its name alone the Gold & Silver is the most famous pawn shop in the world, the business staffed by three generations of the Harrison family and their bumbling sidekick Chumlee: Pawn Stars.
Back in my younger days if I happened to be flipping through the channels and happened upon Antiques Roadshow I would tend to linger, but I always felt like there was one thing missing from the show’s concept. So the person brings in their unique item and learns all about it from the expert and the segment always ends with the big reveal, “…and how much then do you fancy your 18th Century Victorian widget-holder might be worth, eh? Hmm? Any thoughts whatsoever?”
“Well no, I only paid three pounds for it at the rummage sale a fortnight past, I was almost ready to take it to the tip…”
“Well, I’d wager that when you hear what I’ve got to say you’ll be glad you didn’t. Your widget-holder is worth, are you ready for this, hmmm? I’d give it a value of…five to six thousand pounds!” The surrounding crowd breaks into applause as if the appraiser had just swallowed a cricket bat whole whilst riding a flaming unicycle anticlockwise around a football pitch.
“Oh…my word, I had no idear!!! Why, thank-you!” (It always drives me crazy when they thank the appraiser, like the guy has just written them a cheque or something.)
And here is where the missed opportunity resides. As the programme segues to the next segment I would invariably start yelling at my telly, “Well, offer her fifteen hundred quid for it!!!”
And that’s exactly what Pawn Stars does. It’s basically “Antiques Roadshow, the Greed Edition”, and I’m a fan (though I could really do without the in-between storylines that follow the poorly-acted fabricated antics of the four main characters throughout their daily grind, but nothing’s perfect.)
Okay, this is getting long and I haven’t even started yet, so allow me to get straight to it:
The shop sits in a decidedly unglamorous lot on the fringe of downtown Vegas. There was an extensive curated lineup to get into the place but when it moved it moved fast; we were inside within five minutes. Once you’re through the door you literally tour the shop following a roped-off Ikea-ish lazy river of people meandering past the display cases and shelves laden with pricey nostalgia and one-of-a-kind items. Yes, pieces that have been featured on the program are marked (up) as such; yes, there was an entire wall given over to Pawn Stars merchandise; and no, none of the actual pawn stars were anywhere to be seen.
It certainly seemed to be much more of a tourist attraction than it was a pawn shop.
Once you weave through the cordoned tour customers were free to backtrack or mill about. As I was doing just that I noticed m’lady talking to one of the employees, and she seemed to be signing something. “What’s up?” I asked, sidling up to her. “They are filming an episode of the show, so I just signed us up to be in the background,” she remarked casually. And just like that, we were extras on a show that is broadcast in 135 countries worldwide (as Rick mentioned to us all after the segment was shot).
About twenty of us were corralled out the back of the Gold & Silver and into – get this: and exact replica of the Gold & Silver. Yep, turns out that many (but not all*) of the episodes are actually filmed in a soundstage pawn shop that has been built behind (and attached to) the original. It was exactly the same except it had higher ceilings that were criss-crossed with studio light rigging, and the stuff “for sale” in the display cases was regular garage sale junk.
We were told simply to meander around the shop and not look at Rick Harrison as he’s making his deal. Our segment featured a minor celebrity: Jonny Fairplay – who became famous for being the sleaziest lying scumbag in the history of Survivor – who was there to sell his autographed copy of a Red Hot Chili Peppers album. We lingered around the fake shop looking at fake stuff (like a cheap Epiphone guitar hanging on the wall or a recent copy of Sports Illustrated under glass) for about an hour while the show’s producer took take after take to complete his shoot.
I can report that the show is indeed unscripted, but between takes the director said things like “let’s try it one more time and make sure you say that line about _____ again,” or “I liked that but how about doing it again while you scan the liner notes…” And it came as no surprise to me that they stopped filming to google both the band and the album so in the next take Rick could reel off the info like he knew it all along, “Well, the Chili Peppers got together in 1983 and released their first album a year later. They are one of the biggest selling alternative rock, funk, punk rock, and psychedelic rock bands of all time…”
Fakey Fakerson.
Anyway, I won’t spoil it by telling you if they made the deal or not, but if you ever see the episode you can see me in the background wearing my Kermit-green Kermit the Frog baseball cap. In one scene the “expert” almost bumps into me as he enters the shop.
In all it was a successful way to kill much of the afternoon for free and an interesting look behind the curtain of ‘reality’ television. And it was a fitting middle event of a triple-shot of Vegas-style bigger-than-life façade entertainment that started with a lunch that had been purposely ensconced in lard (even the coffee!) and ended with a the imaginary fire and water spectacular that is Cirque du Soleil’s O.
Did I mention that Vegas is a pillar of excess? And the Phish run hadn’t even started yet.
(You can watch an edited version of the segment by clicking here.)
*The trick to knowing if the segment you’re watching was taped in the real shop or the artificial one is to examine the front door. If you can see through the door it’s the real deal; the door of fake pawn shop has opaque frosted glass.
Todd Man Out 