California Bell Club Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Street parking is legal again, so this is back to being an easy park and grab. The cache is on the curb side of the new fence.
This is a traditional cache with enough space for a geocoin or similar small items. Please bring a pen or pencil.
The location has an interesting history which seems to be quickly fading into the past. The California Bell Club opened here in 1979. The old address was 4901 Eastern, on the southwest corner of Eastern Avenue and Rickenbacker Road. The Bell Club was the first poker room to open on the east side of Los Angeles. Poker rooms had operated in the City of Gardena since 1938.
When the California Bell Club opened in 1979 the only version of poker considered to be legal in California was five-card draw. An 1872 law had outlawed “stud horse poker”, but draw poker was not included on the list of prohibited games.
The Bell Club was the first to offer Pai Gow Poker in 1985. This was a playing-card variation of an old Chinese game played with black tiles that resemble dominoes. It pushed the limits of California law at the time, but eventually was declared to be legal. It remains very popular today in California and Nevada.
In 1987 California card rooms started offering Texas Hold Em and 7-Card Stud. These variations had long been considered illegal in California but were popular in Nevada and the rest of the country. The courts eventually decided that these games were also not prohibited by the 1872 law. In the last decade, the internet and television have made no-limit Texas Hold Em enormously popular.
The California Bell Club closed sometime in 1988. It reopened as the California Regency Casino in 1991. This club lasted for a few years, before closing and reopening as the Bell Jackpot Casino. This establishment went out of business in August 1995 and sometime after that the place turned into the warehouses and offices that you will find there today. I think geography was a factor in the demise of these casinos, since the location is about a mile from the nearest freeway ramp.
There are two poker chips in the cache for the first and second to find. One is a 50-cent chip from the California Bell Club and one is a $1 chip from the California Regency Casino. I left a photo of the chips in the cache for future finders.
FTF were SprayPaint and AWEMM. Congratulations.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Tenl zvag gva. Zntargvp.