Living Las Vegas

Real Life in the Shadow of the Strip

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Top Vegas Hotels: Bellagio, Luxor, Rio

Roads from the Ashes: An Odyssey in Real Life on the Virtual Frontier, by Megan Edwards

Off-Strip Attractions

Mt. Charleston Getaway

It must be all the neon that makes people who don’t live in Las Vegas think that the city lies on a vast and arid plain. Driving into town on Interstate 15, the bright lights seem to render the mountains surrounding Las Vegas invisible. When you tell your average Los Angeleno that you can go skiing 45 minutes from Fremont Street, they think you’ve got to be talking about a Disneyland mountain and Styrofoam snow. But as any local knows, they’re delightfully wrong…

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Farewell to the Castaways

In another city, a hotel like the Castaways (formerly the Showboat) might be a prize landmark, but here in Las Vegas, it was just something to get rid of. Once able to claim “the largest bowling alley in the world,” the Castaways’ glory days ended a few years ago in sudden closure after mismanagement mired it in bankruptcy. The doors shut so fast, they practically slammed in the faces of scores of bowlers arriving for a tournament. But things happen fast in Vegas…

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Let There Be Lake

To people who live in Las Vegas, “The Lake” usually refers to Lake Mead, that other-worldly wonder created when Hoover Dam blocked off Boulder Canyon. I say “usually,” because there are other bodies of water that also generate comment. The “water features” at the Bellagio and the Wynn resort are called lakes, and so are “The Lakes,” a set of man-made ponds in a high-end residential development on the city’s west side. But the one most likely to compete with its big brother on the Colorado is a relative newcomer in Henderson: Lake Las Vegas.

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San Gennaro Does Vegas

To outsiders, it might seem strange that a city with world-class rollercoasters on its main drag gets excited when a carnival comes to town. You’d think that a portable Ferris wheel might be a little ho-hum to people who can go up in the Stratosphere tower any day of the year, and that a petting zoo featuring a goat and a rooster could seem awfully tame compared to the white tigers at the Mirage or the lions at the MGM Grand.

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Oasis in the Asphalt: Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park

The City of Las Vegas is proud to be a hundred years old, but there’s something older with a significant birthday this year, too. Celebrating its founding in 1855 is the Old Mormon Fort, the first permanent structure erected in the Las Vegas valley.

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