Vegas in the News
Big, Even in a City of Excess
As President’s Day weekend draws to a close here in Sin City, I feel like heaving a big, “Whew!” And I didn’t even go to the All-Star Game, celebrate Chinese New Year’s, get married on Valentine’s Day, attend the MAGIC show, spend a three-day weekend on the Strip, or go hear Barack Obama give a speech. I didn’t even take today off, but I still feel as though I’ve run some sort of gauntlet. If the last three days didn’t bring a record number of visitors to my fair city, it sure felt that way. I’ve even heard it described as a “perfect storm” of a weekend.
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None Dare Call it Super
Super Bowl has come and gone once again, leaving millions and millions of dollars behind in the city that will never be its host. It’s amazing to me that Las Vegas reaps all the benefits of the most popular football game of the year without contributing a cent to its production. And not only is Sin City exempt from underwriting any Super Bowl costs, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (of “What Happens in Vegas” fame) isn’t allowed to buy even one minute’s worth of advertising during the television broadcast…
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Hooters in Need of Support
What? Hooters is failing in the city of hooters? It seemed impossible last January, when old San Remo was still going through his makeover. Women turned out in American Idol numbers to see if their racks were awesome enough to land them the right to wear tight T-shirts and orange hot pants while they shuttled beer…
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No Smoking…Not
Las Vegas: The Last Bastion of Smokers’ Rights. That’s how I thought of it when I came here in 1997 when I was doing publicity for a smoking cessation campaign sponsored by Nicorette Gum and the American Cancer Society. While I didn’t feel as though I had to wear Kevlar as I handed out literature and spoke to reporters in front of city hall, I did have the distinct feeling that I wasn’t particularly welcome. If you can’t smoke in Las Vegas, the message was, there’s something wrong with the world…
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The Big Freeze
Easily the number one question I get asked by people who don’t live here is, “How do you stand the heat?” It’s a good question, but there’s another one on my mind right now. It goes something like this: “What the !#%@!! is all that water gushing down my driveway?” Somehow, I never dreamed I’d be dealing with a pipe leak caused by a hard freeze in the land of endless summer…
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