What’s the deal with those casino buses queued up at 16th and Mission?

Our pal Plumpy has some travel advice for us:

You know those casino buses that are always parked 8-deep at 16th & Mission, packed full of elderly Chinese women? Have you ever wanted to get on one? Tonight I did. It cost $10, but when I got there, they gave us $30 each for gambling. If you hate gambling as much as I do, you’ll probably blow through that at the slots in the first 30 minutes and spend the rest of your mandatory four hour stay sitting in the bar. But! I won $120 off of their free money. How often do you go out for drinks and come home at 4am drunk and with more money in your pocket than you left with? I’m not saying I’d do it again, but I think everyone should do it once.

Peep the schedule here. Thanks, Plumpy!

15 Responses to “What’s the deal with those casino buses queued up at 16th and Mission?”

  1. boris says:

    we went for my roomates birthday! 10 of us with reservations… and they had sold out the bus we had reservations in, 10 old chinese old women and their cane were forced off the bus… we had a great time out there, shitty good and i won $350 off the free money!

  2. MrEricSir says:

    The sad part about these buses is most of the people getting on look like they don’t exactly have a lot of extra cash to lose.

    Of course, you could say the same thing about the lottery — I’ve watched people spange all night just to blow it all on lotto tickets.

  3. Jon says:

    You won money off slots? That’s some luck! Imagine if you played blackjack.

  4. Joshua says:

    I wanna go, who wants to go with me????

  5. plumpy says:

    Oh, I forgot to mention one depressing and very important fact. At least at the River Rock casino (there were like five different ones to pick from, but I obviously don’t know about the others) they stop serving booze at 12:30. Pack a flask.

  6. Chris says:

    I sometimes see those buses when I get to BART a little after 4am. I’m kind of amazed that they pretty much run at all hours. You’ve answered one of life’s great mysteries for me.

  7. kiya says:

    I say we organize in MissionMission reader trip, we can reserve almost the entire bus.

  8. Erik says:

    Casinos monitor this kind of thing pretty closely. If the bus passengers aren’t losing enough money to pay for the buses then the buses will go away.

    However, unless the hipster party crowd gets really big, you can probably count on the elderly chinese gambler crowd to keep the buses cost-effective for the casino.

  9. GG says:

    I can think of a lot of ways I’d rather make $110, but then I’m not really into free drinks or hanging out with elderly ladies. You guys go and report back.

  10. alex says:

    next time I’m in cali… certainly something 2 do 4 a day or 2.