Las Vegas Weekly

Editor’s Note: My ride’s here

Illustration: Scott Dickensheets

I think it will take this time.

I’ve left the Weekly’s editorship twice before, each time returning after a few months, thus raising all sorts of questions about co-dependence and separation anxiety. Sometimes, editing this paper is a fizzy, caffeinated rush—transforming each week’s cat-herd of details into a completed edition we give away to 70,000 mostly terrific readers. I imagine it’s like the kick of conducting an orchestra, and not only because you wave your arms a lot—it’s coordinating the efforts of talented people into something enjoyable and, hopefully, useful. As you might imagine, that’s some tough shiznit to let go of.

But my third act is up, and I’m sure we can all agree: No fourth. As the press release announcing this change noted, I’m 48 and my successor is 26. Time for a fresh new era at the Weekly. For my part, I’m off to the Las Vegas Sun as its metro columnist. I’ll get to tell stories about Las Vegas, have a lot of fun and tangle with the copy desk, all the things that got me into journalism in the first place.

So tag along as I swan down memory lane one last time; after eight years there’s a lot to recall. My personal highlight reel includes some of the national-level writers who’ve published here: Esquire’s Tom Junod contributed a weirdly perfect fiction about Barry Manilow; GQ’s Tom Carson examined the enduring power of “Gimme Shelter”; Tom Chiarella of Esquire wondered whether Vegas has a soul; Dave Hickey wrote about Hunter Thompson and Jack Kerouac; Esquire editor David Granger recalled giving Andre Agassi a haircut; John Lombardi considered Mike Tyson, Joan Didion and radical journalism; Mark Dery dissected Naked Lunch and David Bowie; we ran excerpts from the Vegas novels Beautiful Children, by Charles Bock, and The Delivery Man, by Joe McGinniss Jr.; and in one of the most entertaining pieces in the history of the universe, GQ writer Andrew Corsello recalled an early Agassi tennis match. Stunning stuff.

Even more important are the co-workers who made this job great: Kate Silver, Damon Hodge, Benjamen Purvis, Max Jacobson, Josh Bell, Steve Bornfeld, Joe Schoenmann, T.R. Witcher, Greg Blake Miller, Martin Stein, Xania Woodman, Julie Seabaugh, Liz Armstrong, Aaron Thompson, Joshua Longobardy, John Katsilometes, Kristen Peterson, Rick Lax, Abby Goldman, Joe Brown, Laura Davis, Wes Gatbonton, the amazing Ryan Olbrysh, the wise Spencer Patterson, the ass-bustin’ Ken Miller. And I’m particularly happy to have been the editor for Stacy J. Willis’ remarkable run of deeply felt, superbly written, human-scale Weekly journalism; it was an editor’s dream. Fist bumps to all of you.

This thing is now in Sarah Feldberg’s hands. I hope she enjoys it as much as I did.