Latest
The Deal
Bloody Good
April 19th, 2012
Where’s the best Bloody Mary in Vegas? With hundreds of places to choose from, that’s a tough question to answer. Price, bar ambience and individual tastes all come into play—anyone for a bacon Bloody at the Double Down? I’ve certainly had some good ones at big price points in Las Vegas’ finer restaurants, but for me it always comes back to the deal. Read more »
Character Study
Animal Magnetism
April 19th, 2012
Tara Gearin grew up riding on her parents’ Christmas tree farm in eastern Oregon. It was her love of horses that sent her to Oregon State University on the pre-veterinary track. She’d planned to be a horse trainer when an oceanography course led to an even greater passion for sea creatures. But even with a degree, aquarium work is hard to come by without experience, so when Mandalay Bay’s Shark Reef had an opening for an education assistant in 2006, Gearin packed her bags for Las Vegas. Read more »
Social
Am I Blue?
April 19th, 2012
Bishop Gorman High School star Shabazz Muhammad announced live on ESPNU on April 11 that he would attend UCLA instead of Kentucky or Duke. Read more »
Site to See
Evergray
(InsideInsides.blogspot.com)
April 19th, 2012
Magnetic resonance imaging is creepy. It almost always spells out stress and worry; unlike colonoscopies, no one gets an MRI because they’re fun. 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 »
Vegas Tech
Not the Usual Bedtime Story
April 19th, 2012
As the Internet grows up, more things we once thought amazing have become ordinary or even antiquated. I was reminded of this in a recent conversation about a decidedly non-Internet topic: bedtime stories. Read more »
Labor Smackdown!
In an old-school unionization battle, the gloves come off. Why Station Casinos and the Culinary Union are fighting as if their lives depend on it.
April 12th, 2012
The Station Casinos ads aren’t pushing a product or a service, and they’re not burnishing the company’s name, at least not in the sense of a traditional image campaign. They’re asking you to take sides in a nasty labor battle between Station and the Culinary Union Local 226, which wants desperately to organize at the non-union Station properties. Read more »
About Town
Don’t Sweat It, They’ll Be Back
Five reasons we shouldn’t be surprised about the GSA scandal—this time or the next
April 12th, 2012
Las Vegas is back in the national headlines as a place where responsible people shouldn’t be wasting their money. In October 2010, when the Public Buildings Service of the General Services Administration held its biennial Western Regions conference at the M Resort, the total cost for the event ran to $822,750. Read more »
Seven Questions
Jamie Masada
The Laugh Factory founder on his new club at the Tropicana, the evolution of comedy and George Carlin’s genius
April 12th, 2012
Jamie Masada opened the Laugh Factory in 1979 with the promise to pay comedians a respectable rate, and soon his venue became one of L.A.’s most iconic comedy clubs. On April 9, Masada officially took over Brad Garrett’s former space at the Tropicana, opening a new Laugh Factory outpost, complete with a Comedy Walk of Fame and Stand-Up Comedy Interactive Museum. 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 »
