The ambiance of the big wood bar and semi-private dining booths and piano in the lounge was darned classy. The food was plentiful and tasty. OK, the “pot roast” was more like dry sliced roast beef (I told the waitress; no additional gravy was forthcoming.) But the potato pancakes with bacon and sour cream were great.

And at how many other places can you even find bouillabaisse on the menu?

I looked in vain for any “validate parking garage tickets here” notices inside the joint, and found none, which made me happy I’d grabbed the last available “one hour maximum” parking meter on Fourth Street near the Gold Spike, pumping it full of all the quarters it would take.

Until I returned to my car after an hour and 10 minutes (it would have been longer, but we skipped dessert) to find one of those gimpy city employees who drive around in circles in those little electric carts, looking for people whose shiny new cars indicate they might be able to pump a little economic lifeblood into our decrepit downtown, had left me an envelope with a pre-printed message of welcome from those remaining members of the Las Vegas City Council who are not currently under indictment or psychiatric treatment.

The following was not all printed on the greeting card, verbatim, you understand. It was a little more terse. But let me interpret for you their little missive’s real meaning -- the MESSAGE it unmistakable conveyed to me that evening:

“Did you have a good time, shopping in one of the few remaining stores we haven’t seized under eminent domain to build some abandoned boondoggle or dining in one of our fine new downtown restaurants? (You’ll notice there are no old ones.) We hope you did, because you won’t be returning. Didn’t you ever wonder why these downtown places all seem to go out of business after a few months? GO AWAY, AND DO NOT COME BACK. We do not want you here. This place is for winos, argumentative aliens encouraged to block the sidewalks at their narrowest point, and befuddled tour groups of Asian dwarves who don’t know enough to book their stays up on the Strip, outside city jurisdiction, where the room windows aren’t permanently nailed closed with drapes to block the non-laser ‘light show’ from illuminating a ‘room’ little bigger than a broom closet.

“There are plenty of places to shop and eat out in county jurisdiction with FREE GROUND LEVEL PARKING LOTS: GO USE THEM. We don’t want you here. Put an extra $20 in the envelope and mail it to us; shut up and don’t give us any more trouble. You are in violation of the City of Las Vegas Municipal Code. You must respond within 30 days. Write the citation number on your check or money order. DO NOT MAIL CASH. (You know, the stuff that says on it ‘Legal Tender for All Debts Public and Private.’) Screw you; go away and do not come back.”

You have to give it to the folks who run the City of Las Vegas; at least they’re consistent. They drove Andre Rochat out of business at Frogeez (after he’d poured in hundreds of thousands of dollars for the upgrades that city inspectors demanded) by immersing his downtown customers in a blizzard of parking tickets, even late at night when there was no one else around who would WANT to park in the downtown. And now they seem determined to do it again, to some brave (or foolish?) entrepreneurs who have created a couple of classy joints in the Triple George and Hogs & Heifers.

Most downtown merchants actually favored parking meters when they were invented, 80 years ago. The idea was to keep this new phenomenon of automobile traffic circulating, instead of letting mailroom clerks or local residents tie up the limited spaces in front of Main Street businesses all day long.

Nowadays, the system operates more like baiting a trap. And you can bet if anyone proposed getting rid of it, the reply would deal not with how to encourage the vanished locals to come back downtown, but rather with that now-standard bureaucratic rallying cry: “How are you going to make up our lost revenue?!” And they’ll be talking about the $20 envelopes -- not the measly quarters.

With the exception of El Sombrero and the Florida Cafe, which lie considerably to the south, I have found myself venturing downtown for a meal perhaps once a year, since they closed off Glitter Gulch to traffic in order to emulate the failed pedestrian malls of so many failed downtown redevelopment schemes Back East. (Look up New London’s “Captain’s Walk.”) You can bet it will be at least that long before I try again.

I called back the next day -- the bar man at Triple George said they will indeed place a validation sticker on your ticket if you park at the Lady Luck garage, and that Valet Parking across the street at the Lady Luck is free, even if you never set foot in the casino. How an arriving first-time customer is supposed to know any of that, I have no idea.

So, I’m sorry, Triple George -- and anyone else trying to make it, downtown. When my out-of-town company arrives next week, we’ll be dining at India Oven or the fine steakhouse at Boulder Station, and there won’t be any police “greeting cards” on my car in the parking garage when I get back, no matter HOW long we dawdle over coffee and dessert -- even if I forget to have anything “validated.”

They haven’t started calling downtown Las Vegas “NeoNecropolis” for nothing.