In the cards California’s Bicycle Club Casino is reinvented with a new look, focus and mission. By David McKee
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n its 30-plus years, the Bicycle Casino, in Bell Gardens, has led a colorful life. “The Bike,” as it’s known to players and locals, was founded in 1984 by George Hardie Sr. The elder Hardie, however, was not fortunate in his choice of financiers. His backer, Sam Gilbert, was alleged to have underwritten the Bicycle Club as a means of laundering drug money. In April 1990, a federal court in Miami, Florida, ordered the Bicycle Club to be forfeited to the government to satisfy a tax lien. Thus, the U.S. government would find itself for much of the 1990s in the piquant position of running a California card room. The Bike – today the Bicycle Casino & Hotel
-- regained private ownership and respectability in 1999, when current CEO Hashem Minay and business partner Robert H. Carter bought the property. “In 1984, it was primarily designed to be a 1890s poker parlor. The emphasis was on poker, the promotions were poker, the events were related to poker. So even though they had Asian games, the emphasis was on poker,” Carter recalls. He and Minaiy came along at a time when the landscape was shifting. They added jackpot poker: “It didn’t really expand the market but it did solidify it.” The Bike was now perfectly positioned for the advent of the World Poker Tour in 2002. “Once that became televised, everyone started playing,” Carter
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