Opinion
Green Felt Journal
With Oseland Aboard, SLS Could Be a Winner
May 10th, 2012
Wynn alum Rob Oseland just might be the right man to lead the transformation of the Sahara into SLS Las Vegas. Read more »
The Latest Thought
Working Warriors
For Nevada's Guard and Reserve members, serving the nation is only half the battle
May 3rd, 2012
Gary Sallee drops into a chair across from me in the otherwise empty Nevada Department of Transportation training room and, in his soft Kentucky drawl, tells me a little about his journey as a U.S. Air Force Reservist. Read more »
Comrade Grumpette
Cig Tossers
May 3rd, 2012
Ah, spring. Fresh, clean air. Crisp sunny mornings. Flowers blooming everywhere. There’s nothing like a morning walk this time of year to make you appreciate the corpse-like bouquet of a cigarette, abandoned and still burning on the sidewalk, flicked out of a car by someone who thinks that whole crying-Indian-anti-littering campaign in the 1970s doesn’t apply to them. Read more »
Green Felt Journal
Renovating the Grand
May 3rd, 2012
If you’ve been to the MGM Grand in the past few months—or even checked its website—you probably noticed that they’re renovating the place. And that might not seem like such a big deal—casinos evolve all the time—but in this case, owner MGM Resorts International and contractor Thor Construction are making history. Read more »
Comrade Grumpette
Tape-Measure Receipts
April 26th, 2012
Paperless is the future, right? So why is my grocery-store receipt long enough to be toilet paper for a small nation? It’s not that I bought so many items we need a ledger capable of parsing the federal deficit—I’ve got two bags of groceries and three bags of receipts. Read more »
The Latest Thought
The Upside of Greenwashing
How a low-down, double-dealing dark art just might be raising our consciousness
April 19th, 2012
Green marketing purports to sell us products, but what it really sells is a more benign vision of the world—and of ourselves. It starts from the assumption that we know something is wrong with the way we’ve been living, proceeds to flatter us with the assumption that we care about fixing what’s wrong, and then proposes that we can fix it by buying the right stuff. Read more »
Green Felt Journal
The Man Behind The D
April 19th, 2012
Although the energy of Tony Hsieh and other non-gamers has helped fuel the transformation of downtown Las Vegas, a cadre of Fremont Street casino owners also deserve credit. Derek Stevens is prominent among them. Stevens is overseeing two downtown remodeling projects: the addition of a new high-roller gaming area and 16 suites to the historic Golden Gate (the building housed the city’s first hotel, which opened in 1906), and the transformation of Fitzgeralds into The D. Read more »
The Latest Thought
Downtown, Unbuttoned
The city wanted to keep the homeless from sleeping in a downtown plaza. So it ruined the plaza.
April 12th, 2012
Earlier this year, the city affixed more than 200 hard white plastic “buttons” onto the benches of the corridor and the planters of the adjacent plaza. Against the sandstone benches and mauve planters, the white buttons look ludicrous. They’re normally used as roadway traffic devices. Needless to say, roadway traffic devices are neither an intelligent solution to homelessness nor a way to craft quality public space. Read more »
The Latest Thought
The Terror of the Inexplicable
Madness, atrocity and a world without answers
April 5th, 2012
The hearing was the surreal thing that all post-tragedy hearings are. The family sat in the second row, waiting for the judge to arrive. The news media—the familiar gaggle of camera tripods and cellphones and TV faces—stood 15 feet in front of them in the empty jury box scrutinizing their every move, taking pictures in the awkward silence. The courtroom was so small it forced an intimacy, a direct imposition of the public eye on a confused and traumatic moment. Read more »
Green Felt Journal
The Gaughan Also Rises
April 5th, 2012
This week, a reunion of sorts took place in Summerlin, as the JW Marriott Resort & Spa and the Rampart casino, which had operated as separate units for a decade, were consolidated under the new ownership of Hilfreich Stiftung, a Liechtenstein-based foundation. Overseeing the transition and helming the new, combined operation is Michael Gaughan Jr., a third-generation casino executive who’s seen plenty of changes in his hometown, and who is now helping to write the next chapter for one of its most idiosyncratic casinos. Read more »
