It's beer season! If, as I do, you happen to like men in lederhosen and oompah music, this is good news. Ever since I spent two years in Germany, I've liked autumnal traditions involving oversized mugs and shouting "Hoi! Hoi! Hoi!" I've checked out three local Oktoberfests so far. Continue reading »

There must be an ecclesiastical law requiring Greek Orthodox churches to raise money by selling food. If there is, let's hope the patriarch never repeals it. I don't know where I'd go for an annual fix of saganaki... Continue reading »

It's been years since I first heard about how you can pick your own fruit at the Gilcrease Orchard, but somehow I never made my way up to the northwest corner of Las Vegas to experience it firsthand until yesterday. Continue reading »

Hoover Dam will be seventy years old next year. This means that if it were on the Strip, it would have been blown down at least a decade ago. But if age isn't beauty on Las Vegas Boulevard, it is in the Black Canyon of the Colorado. Hoover Dam may not be the newest, biggest, or most expensive of its kind, but a million visitors a year don't seem to care if it doesn't merit any of those superlatives. Continue reading »

Two words have been reverberating in the back of my head all summer. "Road trip" began as a whisper sometime back in May, and it grew steadily more insistent until it was a bellow I could no longer ignore. Summer is made for road trips, and summer is almost gone... Continue reading »

Sharks in the Desert: The Founding Fathers and Current Kings of Las Vegas by John L. Smith Irresistible. That's the one-word last sentence of Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith's latest book, Sharks in the Desert. And no, I didn't read it first. I started at the beginning, and then munched my way through every word, just the way you'd eat a large box of popcorn. And when I got to "Irresistible," I smiled. That's how the book was. From Bugsy Siegel to George Maloof, I couldn't have stopped reading even if I had wanted to. Sharks in the Desert is a book you can't help devouring to the last kernel, and even then, it tastes like more... Continue reading »