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 Mother of All Hooters

Hooters have to be bigger and better in Las Vegas. Everyone knows it, and that’s a big reason there are so many plastic surgeons in the valley. The results are everywhere, not just on the Strip. I stand next to amazing racks practically every day at Starbucks, the grocery store, the post office. It’s hardly news, but Las Vegas really is Hooter City…

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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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The South Coast: Baptism by Fire

In Rome, it’s the Spanish Steps or the Pantheon. In San Francisco, it’s the Ferry Building or Coit Tower. But in Las Vegas, it’s always casinos that give you your bearings. The Stratosphere tower and the beam from the Luxor Pyramid anchor the two ends of the Strip, and everybody in the valley identifies neighborhoods by means of the nearest gaming destination…

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Book Review: Vegas, the Mob, and the Dead Pig on the Dance Floor

The phrase that keeps jumping to mind when I try to sum this book up is “raw material.” Michael Broderick has packed not only the story of his life within these pages, but also quite a bit about the evolution of Las Vegas over the last forty years. No punches are pulled, because Broderick published the book himself, thereby sidestepping any revisions an editor might have suggested. This is both a plus — these are unexpurgated, undiluted memoirs of life in the Mob years in Las Vegas…

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