The Latest Thought
The Latest Thought
The Return of Sprawl Thinking
Will Las Vegas overbuild again?
June 5th, 2013
First, the good news: Home and land prices have hit the bottom and bounced. There is plenty of buyer demand, and even condos are hot again. Banks seem more willing to lend. And even with the sobering subtext of scant inventory tied to housing appreciation, we can’t help but think things are getting better. Read more »
The Latest Thought
The Art of Knowing Joyce
Two generations, after-school lessons and a life-changing teacher
May 14th, 2013
Many people—outsiders and locals alike—make fun of Las Vegas for being slow, obscure and devoid of culture. If you agree, you never met Joyce Straus. We recently lost a huge piece of our city and our lives when she died at age 77. The people who loved Joyce knew it was coming. So we prayed and hoped, but we knew cancer can get the best of the best among us. This time it did. Read more »
At the Ballpark, Live for Today
The beautiful uselessness of baseball in the present tense
March 27th, 2013
To invoke the romance of baseball, in the fashion of George Will or Ken Burns, is hopelessly unfashionable. This I will not blame on sabermetrics—the applied science of baseball statistics that Michael Lewis’ 2004 book Moneyball cast as the brainy yin to the blockheaded yang of baseball traditionalism. As any baseball fan knows, the numbers are an indispensable part of the romance. Read more »
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The Long Shadows of Vegas Hubris
Even if the Fontainebleau and Harmon are imploded, we should always remember them
February 14th, 2013
There’s been a lot of talk over the past year about what should be done with the Harmon and Fontainebleau. The former, the subject of litigation, has been decried as a public-safety hazard that should be demolished. The latter, since its purchase by Carl Ichan in February 2010, has been rumored to be slated for disassembly and implosion. Read more »
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The Case for Interstate 11
As the second Obama term begins, Nevada’s wish list should start with a vital connection to the south
January 17th, 2013
Interstate 11 is also consistent with Gov. Brian Sandoval’s economic development program, which has identified logistics and operations as a key industry sector. Phoenix is already a major shipping hub, and once the port in Punta Colonet, Mexico, is completed, the need for warehousing, freight logistics and distribution centers will increase. That means more business investment and job creation in Southern Nevada. Read more »
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The Las Vegan’s Guide to Unexpected Giving
This holiday season, make sure your altruism’s built to last
November 15th, 2012
The reputedly jolly season, with its Dickensian inspiration, is a great time to get your good-neighbor juices flowing. The key is to keep it going after that—because practicing philanthropy on an average Wednesday in January, when there are kids to drop off and bills to pay and Modern Family to watch? That’s hard. Read more »
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Fifty Shades of Halloween
Somewhere along the way, adults swiped the holiday right out of the kids’ goodie bag
October 25th, 2012
Surely I can’t be the only one who waxes nostalgic for the time when Halloween was mostly about kids taking over neighborhood streets, filling pumpkin buckets and pillowcases with candy until they tore a rotator cuff. I can’t be the only one disturbed by the over-commercialization of yet another holiday. Read more »
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The Organization Man
Mob nostalgics favor bloodlust and glamor, but Vegas’ real connected guy, Moe Dalitz, was all business
October 18th, 2012
In the CBS version of Las Vegas in the 1960s, it’s pretty easy to know who the bad guy is: Michael Chiklis’ mobbed-up Vegas antihero struts around his casino wearing a black fedora, has federal witnesses bumped off, and tries to charm the new sheriff with free champagne. He’s smooth, cunning and completely in control. Read more »
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Riding With the Entitled
In which our resident bus rider argues that drivers are big-time beneficiaries of a government handout
October 11th, 2012
So let’s not forget that public transit isn’t about “us” and “them,” and it never has been. For all the recent talk of “creating community” in Las Vegas, the truth is that we’ve always had it. We all work in the same hospitality-driven culture; we all avoid doing things on the Strip except when we don’t; and we all travel the same roads to get where we’re going. Only now, we’re taking different ways of getting there—and for our own good, we all have to acknowledge that one way could be as good as another. Read more »
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Signs of the (Disappearing) Times
Vegas Vernacular captures the past as we build the future
October 4th, 2012
Las Vegas being Las Vegas, though, a share of self-awareness has always come from outsiders. Las Vegans were proud of the hotels of the Strip in the 1960s, but it took three Philadelphia-based architects—Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour—to produce the seminal book Learning From Las Vegas and make the case that the architecture of the Strip was the antidote to boring, functional modernist style that was then in fashion. Read more »
