Is this really Las Vegas? People are picnicking on a huge green lawn shaded by oak trees and cottonwoods. There's a cool breeze, even though it's almost the Fourth of July. The sandstone ranch house looks like a movie set, and the red rock mountains look like New Mexico. Well, it isn't really Las Vegas, at least not yet. Las Vegas is creeping closer, but one ridgeline still separates the burgeoning metropolis from Spring Mountain Ranch... Continue reading »

The idea of powering a car with electricity is nothing new. As far back as the mid-nineteenth century, inventors were motorizing carriages with batteries. Even back when the word “smog” had yet to be coined, the advantage of electricity over petroleum-based fuels was obvious. Electric cars were cleaner, quieter, and a lot easier to start [...] Continue reading »

New meaning for “eye in the sky;” Steve Wynn observesthe Golden Nugget from the Fremont Street canopy I’ve never known Fremont Street without its “Experience.” The canopy has shaded three blocks of Fremont for nearly ten years, and I’ve lived here less than five. “Oh, it was different before,” old-timers have told me. “Grittier, dustier. We miss [...] Continue reading »

The chair I'm sitting in reminds me of Sunday school—it's the stackable kind with a straight back and a Naugahyde seat. The room is dark, and a disembodied male voice is instructing me and the other 200 people sitting on Sunday school chairs to make sure our cell phones are turned off. Then the lights come up on the bare stage in front of us, and a woman walks out from a wing. She starts talking... Continue reading »