Sam Sweet at The Baffler:
Gardena’s poker clubs were the product of a legal loophole in California’s 1872 gaming legislation, which outlawed gambling but made an exception for the specific style of draw poker. (Draw poker being the preferred game among nineteenth-century legislators.) No California localities abided poker except Gardena, where a savvy investor named Ernest Primm exerted enough pressure to earn a permit for his first club in 1936. By the 1960s, the Gardena clubs numbered six: the Rainbow, the Monterey, the Normandie, the Horseshoe, the Gardena, and the El Dorado.
With its free meals and cocktails and stage shows, Vegas catered to losers. Gardena catered to regulars. It offered them nothing but poker. Instead of taking a percentage, the clubs made money by selling time. Every half hour, a red light would appear on the clock and players would hand a few dollars in chips to roving “chip girls” who deposited the rent into their sagging aprons.
more here.