The Show is UP: Mafia Wars, Vegas Style

On account of my travels next week to NY and Alaska, we're providing a supersized, double episode of The Strip focusing on the two duelling mob attractions coming to Vegas soon. Plus, there's an interview edition of the Tourist Tip, to boot. Click on the date below to listen or right-click to download and listen at your leisure or subscribe via iTunes or Zune.

Aug. 9: Mafia Wars, Vegas Style
...with Meyer Lansky II & Dennis Barrie

Immediately after Mayor Oscar Goodman was elected, he got into political hot water for suggesting the city open a mob museum. And yet in the next 18 months, Vegas will be getting not one but two of them. The Las Vegas Mob Experience is set to open at the Tropicana in December and the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas is due sometime in 2011. In this supersized episode of The Strip, we’ll hear from prominent proponents of both. First, Steve speaks to Meyer Lansky II, the grandson and namesake of the legendary mob boss who first sent Bugsy Siegel to Las Vegas. Then, later, we have a conversation with Dennis Barrie, the curator for the downtown entry into the mob-artifacts sweepstakes. Barrie created the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. and was at the center of a major controversy in the late 1980s over the display in a n museum of sexually explicit Robert Mappelthorpe photos.

In Banter: Banning hula hoops, some gay-straight observations about topless shows, the Cosmopolitan gains steam, news on the Garth Brooks scalping front and more.

Links to stuff discussed:

The Las Vegas Mob Experience at the Tropicana, opening this year
The Mob Museum that opens downtown in 2011
The R-J on the hottest July ever
VegasHappensHere.Com on Steve’s new car
VegasTripping.Com on Cosmopolitan’s new marquee
Cosmo’s CEO John Unwin is the first chief exec in Vegas to Tweet
VegasHappensHere.Com on the city’s effort to bar hula hoops
Yelp’s entry on Shibuya, a letter-writer’s favorite place
Steve’s New York Times piece on the Mob Museum and possible stimulus money
The Cincinnati Enquirer outlined Dennis Barrie’s court drama with the Robert Mapplethorpe photo show
The Mapplethorpe bullwhip-up-the-butt image referenced in the interview [NSFW]
Barrie’s other museums, the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, the International Spy Museum and the Woodstock Museum
Michael Cornthwaite’s Downtown Cocktail Room and The Beat Café as well