Photo of Stacy J. Willis

Stacy J. Willis

Stacy J. Willis has worked as a writer and editor for the Weekly for four years. Prior to that, she worked for the Las Vegas Sun and the Arizona Daily Star. When not on the clock, she builds hot rods from scratch in her suburban garage.

Contact Stacy J. via e-mail

Story Archive

It’s the pits
A mine proposed less than three miles from Anthem is drawing fire from residents and politicians alike
Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009
A mine proposed less than three miles from Anthem is drawing fire from residents and politicians alike.
Welcome to beautiful Henderson, er, Rochester?
Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009
Welcome to “Rochester” Nevada, located in Henderson... at least that's what Google Maps says. Stacy J. Willis reports on the textures of life there.
In praise of libraries
Books are only the beginning
Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009
The best thing about a library is that when the world breaks into pandemonium you can hide in the stacks.
Las Vegas appears to only be growing in intolerance
Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009
Hello, rising wave of intolerance, I haven’t seen you in a while. I was tempted to believe that momentarily we had dispatched with the villainization of gay people; because, yawn.
There's a battle over the hump in Pahrump
Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009
Pahrump—a town known for legal brothels and guns—is battling over the city’s image.
Death’s answer man
The spokesman for the Valley’s largest mortuary talks about cremation, neckties and his first embalming experience
Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009
The spokesman for the Valley’s largest mortuary talks about cremation, neckties and his first embalming experience.
What’s wrong with a few fake dead children?
One Pahrump couple puts their fascination with death to good use—making custom coffins
Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009
One Pahrump couple puts their fascination with death to good use—making custom coffins
Fresh, yes; easy, we’ll see
Notes on Alice Waters, local growing and the slow-food movement
Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009
Notes on Alice Waters, local growing and the slow-food movement.
Can Anybody Be Trusted?
How the story of Tire Works, Nina Radetich and the state of Nevada adds up to a farce about integrity
Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009
How the story of Tire Works, Nina Radetich and the state of Nevada adds up to a farce about integrity.
Tattoo U.: LV Ink offers hopeful artists a chance to start needling
Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009
Lemons, pig ears and then human flesh - the journey of aspiring tattoo artists.
A love note on the passing of another payphone
Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009
Stacy J. Willis responds to news that the Las Vegas City Council might remove the pay phone at Las Vegas Boulevard and Oakey because it attracts “unsavory characters" (Review-Journal).
Free parking, anyone? Monopoly World Championship rolls into Vegas
Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009
The Monopoly World Championships are coming to Las Vegas. Get your thimbles and wheelbarrows ready!
A hearty discount at Origin India ... but at what price?
My ethical dilemma over Yelping for cheap food
Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009
One writer's ethical dilemma over Yelping in exchange for discounted chicken tandoori.
One night, two stories: Slices of life from September 23
Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009
An uncomfortable speech at the Fifth Street School Wednesday night or writer Stephen Elliott, barefoot and wearing a gray T-shirt, at a backyard literary event. You pick who had the better night.
Eight things that would’ve been even funnier had I been stoned at Atlas Theatre’s production of "Reefer Madness"
Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2009
Adorable, drooling pit bulls are less adorable when they're not on the leash and we're not stoned.
Oh, and Jim Gibbons, too!
Harry Reid calls plans to dump California trash in Winnemucca a “threat to Nevada’s dignity.” Could there be others?
Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2009
Harry Reid calls plans to dump California trash in Winnemucca a “threat to Nevada’s dignity.” Could there be others?
30-second chinchilla review
Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009
Is the fighting chinchilla our new “yo quiero” chihuahua? Our AFLAC duck? And what the hell does it have to do with Vegas?
Stripper Poles R Us
From dolls to Miley Cyrus, culture is raising the bar on a Vegas icon
Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009
Get your tween up on that stripper pole, preferably with grandma and a chunky boy clutching a bucket of Diet Pepsi in the other hand. The pole belongs to us! The people!
In this corner, Floyd Mayweather …
… in the other corner, so much else
Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009
Showmanship and boxing have always been united, but with Floyd Mayweather Jr. the nature of the show shifts, and at some point, objectively, the boxer is less boxer than multitasking reality star.
‘The good I can do outweighs the bad that can happen’
The jail ministry of chaplain Bonnie Polley poses a hard question: Why should we care about these people?
Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009
She’s a sweet little old lady, and her existence among the darkest lives in Vegas—daily with the homeless, criminal, mentally ill, lost, screwed-up, prostituting, pimping, addicted, hurting, violent people—is an alarming and exciting thing. It can’t be this simple: Nice Episcopalian housewife and mother of three spends her life holding the hands of the criminal and destitute because Jesus showed up and told her to.
Back (aaah) to (aaah) school (choo!)
Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009
Back to school, and swine flu warnings abound. The paranoiacs among us are freaking out.
Where's the passion?
A health-care forum yields little drama, while a workshop on the domestic partnership law proves—too pragmatic
Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009
A health-care forum yields little drama, while a workshop on the domestic partnership law proves—too pragmatic.
Facebook
Local MugShots is giving Las Vegans a one-stop shop for all the city’s bad guys
Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009
Local MugShots is giving Las Vegans a one-stop shop for all the city’s bad guys.
Home in Vegas
CONSIDERED: bathrooms, community, America, your attitude, the eight ball, mother, hardship, responsibility, bugs, war, comfort, cops, neighbors, money, bureaucracy, the kindness of trees
Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009
Vegas has always been a peculiar place to call home. Upon deciding to move here, people often get a queer look from friends and family—Vegas? To live?
Giraffe at a bus stop
This moment is brought to you by Clark County Parks and Recreation, Friends of Winchester Park Public Art Committee and the Regional Transportation Commission
Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009
This moment is brought to you by Clark County Parks and Recreation, Friends of Winchester Park Public Art Committee and the Regional Transportation Commission...
Whole lotto love
Easy-money fever at the state line, with stubbly Howard and the Lexus kids
Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009
Easy-money fever at the state line, with stubbly Howard and the Lexus kids.
Catchy and Caribbean
Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009
There’s something super summery about Caribbean flavor in August. So imagine our delight to find that Las Vegas’ Super Summer Theatre is producing Once on This Island.
Money for Nothing
Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009
The riches-to-rags stats just keep pouring in. This time, it’s the sad decline in the number of Las Vegas millionaires, coupled with a boom in the number of Nevada food-stamp recipients.
You gotta see this: the Hoover Dam Bypass
Thursday, July 30, 2009
If you haven’t driven over the hoover Dam lately—and by driven we mean inched along at a torturously slow, environmentally damaging pace in traffic backed up to Vancouver—now’s the time to disregard all that, pile in the station wagon and add to the havoc.
Keep your sex away from our locals
One man’s fighting to prevent mobile billboards from encroaching on neighborhoods
Thursday, July 30, 2009
When Dean Dupalo saw mobile billboards featuring half-naked girls in his neighborhood, he felt a line had been crossed. “I could understand them traveling up and down the back streets, but certainly not roaming around residential areas,” he says.
Keeping the faith
To know more about Ensign the man, it helps to take a look at the company he keeps
Thursday, July 30, 2009
To know more about Ensign the man, it helps to take a look at the company he keeps.
Love This Website!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Turning any media into print online seems a little off-kilter, but sometimes you just want to read a story.
Never-ending stories
Four missing people over 30 years, four lives with no closure. Police think a Las Vegas businessman may be involved. But with no bodies ever found, will we ever know what happened?
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Four missing people over 30 years, four lives with no closure. Police think a Las Vegas businessman may be involved. But with no bodies ever found, will we ever know what happened?
Do your Girl Thing
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Political feminism? The elegantly feminine? Back-stabbing mean-girl themes? A dozen local artists are taking on the challenge interpreting “It’s a Girl Thing” in a new exhibit at Reed Whipple Cultural Center.
400 feet of NIMBY?
Or is there something essential about Searchlight’s anti-wind-farm sentiment?
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Or is there something essential about Searchlight’s anti-wind-farm sentiment?
Hush, Mr. Hampton
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Oy. It’s a given that John Ensign is unethical and should get gone. Right now, it’s poor, poor pitiful Doug Hampton who’s annoying the hell out of us.
Capital stooges
From Jim Gibbons on, the nation’s governors are putting the goober in gubernatorial
Thursday, July 16, 2009
On a breezy day, Gov. Jim Gibbons stood on a grassy lakeside and announced, using sports metaphors and rambling vagaries, his resignation. For the good of Nevada. He wore a sharp red jacket, black skirt and heels; hair in a neat barrette.
In the age of miracles
As social-service cuts get absurd, perhaps the only practical solutions are the impractical ones
Thursday, July 16, 2009
It seems that trash is calf-high here in the homeless corridor on Main, jammed between tents and makeshift encampments. You find yourself wishing for a broad-scale miracle, because practical solutions seem elusive.
Guess who’s back in town?
Thursday, July 9, 2009
It’s a match made in female-stereotype heaven almost 40 years ago: Charo and Vegas. The boobs, the big blond hair, the campy flirty cuchi-cuchi whatever—Charo was Vegas before Holly got her first implant.
'It’s easy to have an idea; it’s harder to implement it'
The road to foreclosure hell is paved with ‘good faith’
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The road to foreclosure hell is paved with ‘good faith.’
Dunk this!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The idea of Dunkin’ Donuts’ new Dunkin’ Run website was, I thought, to order your doughnuts online and have them waiting for you at the drive-through. Sounds deliciously over-convenient.
Red, white and green!
Isn’t it time we gave up those noisy, environmentally unfriendly fireworks, anyway?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Isn’t it time we gave up those noisy, environmentally unfriendly fireworks, anyway?
Interview Issue: Candice Nichols
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Center's director helped pass the domestic-partnership bill passed at the Legislature this year, the gay community and why today's Jesus Camp kids are now indifferent to homosexual youth.
Interview Issue: The Rev. Deacon Bonnie Polley
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Clark County Detention Center Chaplain discusses what made her interested in helping prisoners, plus Rev. Polley's work with a domestic violence victim convicted of killing her husband.
Does scandal matter?
G-Sting, the guv’s missteps, Ensign—is anyone learning anything?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
There’s a certain poetry to the news of former Clark County Commissioner Dario Herrera’s impending release from prison coinciding with the news of Sen. John Ensign’s extramarital affair.
A tragic statistic
Crimes against children are on the rise, but let’s not be so quick to blame the recession
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Crimes against children are on the rise, but let’s not be so quick to blame the recession.
Death of a big cat
Lions, Christians and the mechanics of blame
Thursday, June 18, 2009
When Midas, a 10-year-old lion, got very sick, and there was a chewed-up half of a toy football in his cage, the first thing zoo director Pat Dingle thought was that the Roman Catholics killed his lion.
Coffee topped with art
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The top of any truly loved coffee beverage is a canvass, a small but alluring place for the artiste/barista to create a thing of visual beauty. Skilled baristas make patterns, leaves, snowflakes, Curious George faces, lions and more.
Fruit from the Blackberry bush
Thursday, June 11, 2009
What kind of pop-culture machinators would we be if someone didn’t immediately publish a small gag book about what might appear on Obama’s BlackBerry?
Settlement blitz!
Unclogging the backlog of medical-malpractice cases
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Retired judges probably ought to be relaxing at a pool party, cosmopolitans in hand, the voices of angry litigants a thing of history. But instead, they are holing up in District Court hearing rooms in the Regional Justice Center, trying to resolve piles of medical-malpractice lawsuits (sans martinis).

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