It holds us tensely in that moment of first impression, holds us longer than any gambler could sustain, forces us to parse this room. We look down and across the floor. Zahalka shoots from the vault, the airy domain of the initial gasp. There is so much room, but the meanings up here are thin. The real action is scripted at waist level.
Rumours circulate here, secret corners where machines are wildly generous, dealers who bear a curse.
Like the breathtaking tack that junks up the room, these stories attest to the existence of holes in the system, anomalies in the house's grasp of mathematical probability. You can hear this floor, not conversation, the room is too big for that, but the drone of leisure spiked with panic. In the middle of this climate-controlled anxiety rises a mesa, a secure totem, rock solid amid shifting fortunes. In leisure, we enjoy the familiar in unfamiliar circumstances and vice versa. The trottoir roulant, a mechanised footpath, 3.5 kilometers of moving track, with three speeds, makes its debut at the Paris Exposition of 1900.