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Ask a Native
How Did Naked City Lose its Clothes?
May 22nd, 2013
Understanding the intriguing no-man's-land south of Downtown. Plus: Will this be Helldorado's last rodeo in its current location? Read more »
About Town
Splash in the City
As Downtown revives, the venerable Muni Pool is the place to chill
May 22nd, 2013
On a hot May day, I pause mid-lap, resting my forearms on the Las Vegas Municipal Pool’s edge. The big glass doors that form the southern edge of the pool area are open, and a soft breeze wafts through. Only a handful of children have arrived as early as me; their laughter gives my workout a bubbly backdrop. There’s no place in the city as serene, I’m certain. Read more »
Seven Days
A curated guide to this week in your city
May 21st, 2013
Time you learned a bit about one of this city’s most interesting landmarks, the Las Vegas Moulin Rouge, which both opened and closed in 1955. It was central to the civil rights movement in this town, and was owned by the first black woman to hold a Nevada gaming license. Read more »
Real Estate
High-Rises and the Return of Cheap Credit
Get ready for another round of low-down-payment mortgages
May 21st, 2013
Yet another sign the real estate market is on the rebound: Even high-rise condos—the sector most brutally clobbered by the Great Recession—are looking attractive to lenders today. Read more »
Comrade Grumpy's Peeve of the Week
Taxicab Blues
May 21st, 2013
There are times when I have to take a taxicab. And sometimes, just every so often, Steve Wynn is there. Read more »
Seven Questions
Seven Questions for Ted Pretty, Fox 5 Weatherman
The weatherman on his job’s degree of difficulty, aggravating car-wash owners and the most miserable part of a SoCal vacation
May 21st, 2013
Ted Pretty sees you watching him deliver the weather every morning on KVVU Channel 5, and he knows what you’re thinking: “A lot of people think weather guys are dorks and dolts and very boring guys and nerdy. And they’re right, for the most part.” In Pretty’s defense, he never intended to be a weather guy. His career began as a reporter/photographer at a TV station in Kearney, Nebraska—“a total hellhole”—and he quickly graduated to morning-show features reporter at stations in Pocatello, Idaho, and Champaign, Illinois, before a similar job at Las Vegas’ Fox affiliate brought him to the desert in 1999. Read more »
The Week
Will Reform Outlast the Reformers?
James Guthrie may have been ahead of his time
May 21st, 2013
Washington, D.C., and Nevada have a few things in common: We both like to talk about budgets, we’re both home to dysfunctional representative bodies, we both asked lightning-rod reformers to turn around floundering school systems, and in both cases the reformers left without finishing the job. Read more »
Character Study
The Golden Touch
Bodybuilder brings the gift of bronze with tanning business
May 21st, 2013
During the early days of Las Vegas’ pool-party explosion, Mervat Berry found a void in the scene: LGBT events. So in 2009 she created a gay-specific pool event, Sunkissed, at the Luxor, and later moved the party to Mandalay Bay under a new name, Hydrat. Read more »
Generation E
Can a little electricity co-op lead Nevada to the promised land of renewable energy?
May 17th, 2013
In the not-too-distant future, a woman gets home from work in Bakersfield, California. As she walks in her house, she reflexively flicks on a light. Little does she know, the electricity entering the lamp over her head comes from a solar plant in Nevada’s Amargosa Valley via a high-voltage transmission line owned by Valley Electric Association (VEA), a nonprofit co-op based in Pahrump. Read more »
Seven Questions
Seven Questions for Linda Quinn, Discovery Children’s Museum CEO
The Discovery Children’s Museum boss on her career path, the rebirth of her facility and what our museum community is lacking
May 15th, 2013
As a onetime CPA, Linda Quinn certainly knows how to crunch numbers. But these days, when the Discovery Children’s Museum’s CEO cracks open the books, she probably has to crunch the numbers a few times, just to make sure they’re accurate. That’s because since moving from the city’s Cultural Corridor to its new digs in Symphony Park, the museum has been a huge hit—so much so that in the six weeks since the March 9 reopening, Quinn says the museum sold as many memberships as it had in the previous year. And over the eight days of spring break, the museum welcomed more guests than in any previous month. “We are seeing 4½ times more volume than at the old facility,” she says. Read more »
