Thursday, April 30, 2009

This Week's Col: How Top Chef Can Save Vegas

Here's this week's "Strip Sense" column. Eat it up. -sf

Now we're cooking
Top Chef is filming its latest season in Vegas -- could it be the answer to our prayers?
By STEVE FRIESS

We’ve been waiting for a lifeline. The obituaries are being written, and, unless you’re Oscar B. Goodman or Pollyanna or someone allergic to statistics, they hardly seem premature. Las Vegas is drowning in debt and red ink, our houses are rapidly approaching worthless, our unemployment rate is speeding toward a record, our casinos are echo chambers, and our taxes are, regardless of what the Review-Journal thinks, going up. Pretty soon the obits are going to become autopsies.

Something needs to change. Something big. Something game-changing. And late last week, that wished-for antidote may have arrived.

Top Chef began filming Season 6 in Las Vegas on Monday. This could easily be the start of the recovery.

Stop. Hear me out. It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds.

Remember how seminal that 2002 season of MTV’s The Real World at the Palms turned out to be, not just for George Maloof’s nascent themeless off-Strip resort but also for kicking off the What Happens Here Stays Here Decade? Remember how watching those silly characters cavort and mate in that fantastical suite imprinted upon a generation the impression of Vegas as the coolest, most creative place on the planet to party?

Yes, one phenomenally successful TV show did all that. And it could happen again.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com.

2 comments:

aunt stephy said...

what about the new katy perry music vid? I think that could be a big help too. makes vegas seem fun again.

Bay in TN said...

Steve, I'm sure you didn't pick the photo that ran with that article. It's a good article that spells hope for LV, but I want to yell at whoever inserted that picture and added a misleading caption. That's from last season's Top Chef in NYC. We're quick to complain about LVRJ mistakes like that; who's going to get LasVegasWeekly.com to fix it?