Inside The Mayor's Office

Yes, that cluttered mess in front of that ornate throne of a chair is the working desk of Mayor Oscar B. Goodman. I had a few minutes in his office today when Erich Bergen and I chatted him up about appearing to kick off the Jackson benefit concert this Saturday by reading the proclamation Erich and he are holding below. (He's planning on it if he's not out of town, he said.)



I didn't have quite the time to do as thorough a job excavating the mayor's room as the Las Vegas Sun's Sam Skolnik and Tiffany Brown did in May in this piece and this wonderful slideshow, but I did grab a few fun images. (The printed Sun actually had a diagram of the desk pointing to all sorts of items and explaining them, but I unfortunately can't seem to find it online.)

Here's the latest OBG bobblehead...


...and the rest of the collection.


Thought you'd like to see what movies and books he has down there, so...


That's Mob Law, the documentary about him, and the film Casino, in which he plays himself. Also, there's John L. Smith's biography of him, too.

There's a wall of photos with celebrities, a shelf of gifts from foreign dignitaries. Note whose photo is prominently displayed in the far right here...


Here's a closer look:


Yep, that's La Toya Jackson. And here's some representation of his love of Bombay Sapphire gin, even though he drank a different gin when I wrote the first national profile of him as a politician for US News & World Report 10 years ago.


Then Bombay paid him/his charities $100K and allegiances switched. Really. (See the very, very relevant new trivia question, by the by.)

Here's the closest thing I could find in the room to something you'd find in an average mayor's office, a zoning map of some sort:


But by far my favorite item in the room was this:


It's hard to see, but it's a New York Times piece on downtown redevelopment. Guess who wrote it?

The mayor will be term-limited out in 2011 and is contemplating a run for governor as an independent. He's also encouraging his wife, Meadows school founder Carolyn Goodman, to run. (See this blog post with pix of the school.) He noted that either way, Carolyn doesn't want him bringing all this stuff home with him when his time is up. He's talking about an auction. I wonder who the highest bidder might be on that framed and mounted newspaper clipping above?

Oh, P.S.: He gave me more of his poker chips to give away on "The Strip." The first one lasted in the prize pool all of a week. Details to come.