The Strip Sense

Lead Photo Don’t “Believe” the hate

Steve Friess | Thu, Oct 9, 2008 (midnight)

The week before Mystère opened at Treasure Island, an enraged Steve Wynn tore into the creator, Franco Dragone. “This is shit,” a red-faced Wynn shouted. “It’s a fucking German opera.”

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Flower Tower

Steve Friess | Thu, Oct 2, 2008 (midnight)

Andrew Fonfa doesn’t want me to write this. He knows I have to, he knows I want to, but he also wants us to know that everything in this column is entirely speculative.

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He Dunne it

Steve Friess | Thu, Sep 25, 2008 (midnight)

As recently as 10 days ago, I was just like most of you out there. I had absolutely, positively, 100 percent no interest in whatever tawdry affair would unfold in a criminal trial that was news solely because it involved one Orenthal James Simpson.

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Star Blight

Steve Friess | Thu, Sep 18, 2008 (midnight)

I was pushing my editor at a major newspaper hard last week to let me do a piece on Donny and Marie Osmond’s surprising resurgence as a resident act on the Las Vegas Strip. She wasn’t buying it.

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(Not quite so) right

Steve Friess | Thu, Sep 11, 2008 (midnight)

As the election cycle heats up and money flies in every direction for the political parties and their causes, several members of the media have branded our own Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson the right-wing version of financier George Soros.

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What happens in Beijing…

Steve Friess | Thu, Aug 28, 2008 (midnight)

Back when I lived in and covered Beijing earlier this decade, I used to have this odd little game I played with my friends...

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Lead Photo Digital Vegas

Steve Friess | Thu, Aug 21, 2008 (midnight)

Even for me, even with all that I say and write and do to evangelize the cause of digital media in this city, it was a stunning, perplexing, delightful moment. My husband and The Strip Podcast co-host Miles Smith was similarly surprised. He arrived a little late, and, looking around the room, he asked me, “Are all these people here for this? Are you sure they’re not just hanging out here because they saw the lights were on?”

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Weirdest grudge match ever: ACLU v NERC

Steve Friess | Tue, Aug 12, 2008 (7:46 p.m.)

Gary Peck is a little bit ticked off with me. Earlier today on the New York Times Web site, I broke the story that the Nevada Equal Rights Commission had declared gender-based prices violate Nevada law. The five-page ruling has some wacky stuff in it and has the potential to fundamentally change how many Las Vegas Strip resorts do business, both of which I’ll get to shortly.

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Leave Boyd alone!

Steve Friess | Thu, Aug 7, 2008 (midnight)

Within hours of last week’s not-terribly-shocking news that Boyd Gaming was halting construction on its $4.8 billion Echelon project, message boards and blog comment sections across the web filled with a reaction that surprised me.

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The price is … strange

Steve Friess | Thu, Jul 31, 2008 (midnight)

I am not one of those 9-11 conspiracy nuts. I have an eccentric British pal who does believe that George W. Bush, despite his incompetence at ordering in lunch, was behind the most horrific events of our time. This friend is constantly forwarding e-mails asserting that the Baltimore family behind Vegas casino implosions actually imploded the World Trade Center and made it look to the stupid people of the world as if some “hijacked” airplanes caused their fall.

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Fee for all

Steve Friess | Thu, Jul 24, 2008 (midnight)

Before you roll your eyes and groan, hear Adam Russin out. He’s not trying to get any money, he’s not trying to draw any attention to himself, and he’s absolutely, positively not trying to ruin your good time. He just has a simple question that seems to have only one logical answer. And very soon, odds are good the state will agree with him, and a lot of melon carts will be upset. Russin’s question: How can anyone seriously believe it is not discriminatory to charge a man more than a woman for the same access or service?

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Lead Photo Trump-atross?

Steve Friess | Thu, Jul 17, 2008 (midnight)

I'm sitting at the lobby bar of the undeniably pretty Trump International Hotel on a Sunday evening about to tuck into a $21 burger and sip from an $8 pink-grapefruit soda. I didn’t mean to splurge on dinner here, but I popped in to take a look-see and realized that this was the only thing for me to do. Which is, of course, the big problem here. The slender gold tower with the most famous name in real estate emblazoned atop it is a bafflement to all who consider its existence. It is also, by a large measure, the very last place most Las Vegas tourists should ever feel comfortable visiting.

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Flush in the pan

Steve Friess | Thu, Jul 10, 2008 (midnight)

Joanna Freund and her boyfriend, George, have flown in all the way from Toronto to be here at the 2008 World Series of Poker’s Main Event. Neither of them actually is playing in the tournament, but they’ve watched it on television for years, and, the weak U.S. dollar being what it is, they figured they could make a holiday out of it and see their favorite poker players in action.

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The world needs a poker star

Steve Friess | Thu, Jul 3, 2008 (midnight)

t was a Monday, I was overdue on more than one assignment—including that week’s Strip Sense entry—and I don’t usually watch sports on TV anyway. But the human drama of a hobbled Tiger Woods somehow managing one amazing comeback after another in the U.S. Open was so compelling that it even made watching privileged people using a crooked metal stick to hit a small white ball across a water-guzzlingly lush and exclusive private park worth my attention.

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Lead Photo Boom cycle

Steve Friess | Thu, Jun 26, 2008 (midnight)

Every now and again, if you’re around Vegas long enough, you hear about the June 20, 1955 issue of Life Magazine with a Moulin Rouge showgirl on its cover. The issue is, to many, the “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment for Vegas journalism for the question its headline asked:

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A&E

Impressionist concrete
“How do you bring the desert into the casino?” asks architect Drew Gregory, of the firm assemblageSTUDIO, led by Eric Strain. The answer? One thin piece at a time.
R.I.P. Art Bar (May ’05-September ’08)
When Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes dropped his pants onstage last February, he ensured the Art Bar would live on forever in Las Vegas concert folklore.
In vacuum
Catherine Borg’s new exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Collective is scary. It’s called Untitled, the perfect name for an exhibition that relentlessly tackles the immense terror of nothingness.

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Cocktail of the Week

Cocktail of the Week Oct 9, 2008
by Xania Woodman

Blueberry Crush

None of a blueberry's natural antioxidants actually make it through the re-distillation process into this blueberry-flavored vodka. But throw in a handful of fresh blueberries (out of season after this ...
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