Living Las Vegas

Real Life in the Shadow of the Strip

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Top Vegas Hotels: Bellagio, Luxor, Rio

The Elfman Cometh

The Las Vegas Review-Journal has been part of my morning ritual since I moved here. Early on, I noticed that the music reviews by Doug Elfman were always excellent. Not only did the guy write with a fluid pen, he said stuff that was worth paying attention to. And in addition to posting brilliantly creative negative opinions, his accolades were marvelous, too. It’s rare that a reviewer is equally gifted at panning and raving, but Elfman had the knack…

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It’s (Always) Showtime!

One great thing about living in the shadow of the Strip is that you can go to a show almost any time you get the urge. The only limiting factor is the price. With tickets running anywhere from $20 to more than $200 apiece, a serious show habit could easily compete with a recreational drug addiction. Fortunately, there are a few ways to reduce the cost of entertainment besides the time-honored method of gambling a lot and getting “comps” …

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Out With the Old, In With the New

I still can’t claim I’m a Vegas native, but early Tuesday morning, I took one small step closer to feeling like one. I headed to the Strip to watch the New Frontier come tumbling down. It was my third implosion since I began living in Las Vegas, and the second one I’ve attended this year…

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Standing on the Corner, Watching All the ‘Bots Go By

For the third time in four years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held a robot race and invited the public to come and watch the spectacle. This time, the event was billed as the “Urban Challenge,” because, unlike the first two events, which were held in the howling desert, this contest required the ‘bots to navigate city streets and interact with traffic. They even had to share the road with each other, something the organizers claimed had never happened on earth before…

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Ten Years Behind L.A.

Ten years behind L.A. I’ve heard it said about Las Vegas, but I’ve never been quite sure what it meant beyond the usual putdowns: “unsophisticated,” “uncultured,” and “well, you know, retarded.” It’s difficult to be magnanimous in the shadow of such descriptions, but it’s possible that those suave Angelenos have a point dangling below their up-tilted nostrils. California passed a “no smoking in bars” law over a decade ago. At the time, such a restrictive rule seemed unimaginable in Las Vegas, but now, Nevada voters have passed their own anti-smoking law by a surprisingly large margin…

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Living in Las Vegas -- what's it really like? Ten local writers share news & views from Southern Nevada.