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

The Springs Preserve

The Springs Preserve is open. About a decade in the planning and building, this new attraction occupies the spot where water first made the Vegas Valley attractive to human settlers. Billed as the Las Vegas version of New York’s Central Park, the Springs Preserve was…

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Days of Wine and Mobsters

Las Vegas is in love with its mobsters. Even though anyone who has ever read the slightest tidbit of Las Vegas history knows that Bugsy Siegel didn’t found the place, he gets the credit. And not only that, he gets the glory and romance. The most commonly repeated cliché in Vegasland is, “Things were so much better when the mob ran this place.” …

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Book Review: Cullotta

Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster, and Government Witness, by Dennis N. Griffin and Frank Cullotta

I can’t say I was dying to read this book. Sure, mobsters make great cinema, and sure, I watched the last episode of “The Sopranos” along with the rest of the country. But I still don’t find hit men very appealing, and that’s what Frank Cullotta is, an old killer who ratted out his former cohorts when it looked like he was going to get the same bullet-in-the-head treatment he’d been dishing out himself…

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Helldorado Days

When I first moved to Las Vegas, a new acquaintance described it as “a sweet Western town.” I remember thinking he was nuts, but over the course of the last seven years, I’ve begun to discover what he was talking about. Often completely overshadowed by the glitz of the Strip is a community whose members ride horses, cultivate beards, and reminisce about the good old days when all it took to cause a traffic jam on Las Vegas Boulevard was three Packards and a milk wagon.

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Book Review: Skin City

If you’re interested in finding out more about what’s happening in Vegas these days (and staying here), allow Jack Sheehan to be your Sakajawea. In Skin City: Uncovering the Las Vegas Sex Industry, he takes his readers on a tour to gentlemen’s clubs, swing parties, porno video awards ceremonies, interviews with madams, sheriffs, strippers, prostitutes, gigolos, and many other hard-working folks who help keep Las Vegas’s reputation for sin fresh and well-deserved.

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