This week's LVW col: Frank Gehry

Here's this week's LVW column the Vegasy stuff that didn't fit in my forthcoming NYT piece on the Ruvo Center. You'll be able to hear Gehry for yourselves on the next episode of The Strip, a very rare opportunity as he does very few in-depth interviews at all, let alone ones used for radio or podcast. Join us 5-6 pm PT at LVRocks.Com for that. -sf

Frank Gehry likes Vegas...
...or maybe not

By STEVE FRIESS

"I’m fascinated with some of the architecture, fascinated with it,” the legend on the line insisted. “I mean, that little one with the castle that looks like a cartoon?”

“Yeah, the Excalibur,” I answered knowingly, expecting a punch line.

“That knocks my socks off,” the legend said in all seriousness. “You never see anything like that on that scale outside of Disneyland, you know? But Disneyland doesn’t ever build it that big. So it’s fascinating to see—it’s enlightening too. It’s interesting. That’s one of my favorite buildings there.”

In my head, I’m saying, Are you shitting me? But you don’t ask a man like Frank Gehry that question. At least not that way. Instead, I said it this way: “The Excalibur castle is your favorite building on the Strip?”

He laughed. “It’s one of my favorites.”

Shhh. Don’t tell Cesar Pelli, who gave us Aria, or Helmut Jahn, who designed the Veer. Or certainly not Lord Norman Foster, who has had the ignominy of envisioning a hotel-condo tower for CityCenter, only to have it shorn nearly in half because of construction defects, and then used as a billboard for an Elvis show. CityCenter’s fine, but $8.5 billion later, the man known—debatably, but still known—as the Greatest Living Architect has a soft spot for ... the Ex?

“One of the critiques of CityCenter is that the architecture is evocative of architecture of a lot of other cities,” Gehry said. “I know Vegas is trying to become a real city, so that’s the discussion and they kind of achieved it. But when you see it finished you say, ‘God, I wish it were more Vegas.’”

It’s such a strange remark, especially considering that the fact that we now have a Gehry building is also part of the discussion of Vegas becoming “a real city.” But that was the strange tension that ran throughout my half-hour interview with the 81-year-old visionary, a vacillation from what would seem like indictments to high praise for our city.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

The Vegas Alt-Weekly Gay Problem

You expect alternative weeklies, thriving as they do among left-of-center political aficionados, to be havens for gay readers. It's the last place I expect to find antiquated language, stale information or overlooked yet obvious story angles.

I wasn't going to even say anything after I saw a piece in this week's Las Vegas CityLife by Jason Whited in which he conducted a Q-and-A with Mark Ciavola who has formed a conservative gay group called Right Pride. Whited uses the term "gay lifestyle" not once but twice even though the stylebooks of the Associated Press, New York Times and Washington Post all expressly say not to do so. (It's inaccurate, see, because there is no one "Gay" Lifestyle same as there's no one "straight" or "Jewish" lifestyle.) I planned to give Whited a pass on his clunky terminology because he's more pro-marriage equality than Ciavola so it seemed nit-picky to bitch.

But then, after glancing at Steve Sebelius' attempt to write a piece on The District similar but much less entertaining than the Las Vegas Weekly cover that Rick Lax did in September on Town Center, I arrived at Amy Kingsley's piece about Vegas country-western bars.

The piece seemed to have been written to serve a catchy (although actually cliche) headline, "Beers, steers and queers." And here's the strange queers part:

Anything as macho and all-American as cowboy culture runs the risk of becoming kitsch. And that's exactly the approach of Charlie's Las Vegas, a western-themed gay bar in an industrial district near The Orleans. Unlike its pearl snap buttoned-down counterparts on the outskirts, Charlie's plays its country influences for laughs, with frequent appearances by a drag queen Dolly Parton.

Charlie's has the same cheap drinks, dance floor and line dancing as other country bars, plus better looking bartenders. And the people here are very friendly. You get a little flash with your country bar experience, including a boot-shaped disco ball, but it's nowhere near as over-the-top as Revolver. And there's very little chance you'll ever run into Roger Hedgecock or the Tea Party Express. Unless, of course, they make new members out of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig or former pastor Ted Haggard.

Gosh, it almost sounds like Kingsley went there for her assignment, doesn't it? And again, the writer is clearly in our court philosophically. Just one problem: The drag Dolly Parton hasn't appeared in "well over a year," according to Boan, manager at Charlie's.

Moreover, the reason why this passage struck me is that the Charlie's I remember -- it was called Backstreet back when I was single and living a different Gay Lifestyle, see -- wasn't some cheap facsimile of a CW bar. It was the genuine article, only for gays. "We're absolutely a real country bar," Boan said.

Kingsley, like Whited, seemed to think there was one sort of gay, the kitschy, fey sort; hence The Gay Lifestyle. Gay CW bars -- and there are many all over the U.S. and even a national line-dancing tournament -- usually dispell this notion. The clientele are typically rougher, hairier and sometimes paunchier. They may enjoy a little drag with their beer or bingo, but this crowd is unlikely to be the show-tunes-obsessed, diva-idolizing sort who show up in costume for Cher concerts.

Folks who hang out at Charlie's don't do so because they're paying homage to country-western bars, they do it because they love the scene but are afraid they'll be beaten to a pulp if they tried to dance with their partners at a mainstream one. And they're probably correct.

Meanwhile, just to show I'm an equal-opportunity whiner, I can't say I'm too impressed at the moment with my own Las Vegas Weekly colleague, Abigail Goldman, who landed an interview with America's now-retired first legal male whore. Patrick L. "Markus" Norton has left Shady Lady after having a handful of clients, heading back to the porn world he eschewed in interviews when he got this gig.

Y'see, the whole reason the brothel industry was scared of legal male prostitution was because of the potential for LEGAL FOR-HIRE GAY SEX to occur. That's the issue. If that wasn't a prospect, the other brothel people wouldn't care because they know that male prostitution for female clients is a non-starter as a business model in the middle of nowhere.

Norton shut down his earning potential, it would seem, by telling Details Magazine that his "sphincter is not for sale." Surely, then, Goldman would ask him about that, about whether he was offered money to go gay-for-pay, whether any guys came by asking for a line-up. Here's someone who is in a unique position to say what the market demand might be for legal gay brothels.

But, no. It appears she didn't ask. Too bad.

Your #MJ Money At Work!

One of the edicts Erich Bergen and I gave the Clark County Public Education Foundation when we handed over roughly $100,000 raised last summer at the "Las Vegas Celebrates The Music of Michael Jackson" benefit was that we'd have some tangible, observable results.

Tomorrow night, I get to see the biggest observable result, a fund-raising concert at Sierra Vista High by the Canadian modern-classical group Barrage. The CCPEF spent $5,000 of our dollars on bringing them to perform and then six schools have sold tickets at $10 a piece to the show to support their school orchestras. That way, the money may have potentially doubled and we provide an artistic experience for the students and community.

Here's a couple of Barrage videos from their YouTube channel:

Lovely and fun, right? If you want to go, it's at 7 p.m. and I hear there may be a few tickets left. Here's who you can call:

• Sofia Velazquez, Lawrence JHS: 799-2540, ext. 4063
• Christina Hekkert, Fertitta MS: 799-1900, ext. 4063
• Barbara James, Rogich MS: 799-6040, ext. 4063
• Shelly Burger, Sierra Vista HS: 799-6820, ext. 4051
• Ryan Watson, Coronado HS: 799-6800, ext. 4051
• Chuck Cushinary, Clark HS: 799-5800, ext. 4051

I'll be there but, unfortunately, Erich remains in Los Angeles. If you're coming, please let me know!

The show is UP: Wynnterview Time

Here's this week's show! Beyond the chat with Mr. Wynn, it's unusual for the fact that Miles is the one offering up a lot of on-the-Strip experiences and views. So enjoy. Oh! And the first 10 listeners to email asking can have codes for the new VegasMate application for the iPad. Click on the date below to make it play or right-click to save it and listen at your leisure. You can subscribe, too, (it's free!) in iTunes or in Zune.

April 4: Wynnterview, The Podcast

It’s become a cliché on this program to say that when our Steve sits down to chat with Steve Wynn, you never quite know what’s going to happen. But it’s a cliché because it’s true, so fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a wild ride as the Steves pick over the Wynn divorce, recent art acquisitions and a spirited political discussion over the economy and health care.

In Banter: Miles – yes, Miles – goes on a Strip bender, the R-J thinks Pink’s is literally BEST, Frank Gehry thinks Excalibur is literally the BEST, Illinois and NJ think Macau is the WORST and much more.

Links to stuff discussed:

Ben Spillman’s work at the R-J and his site, NevadaOutdoorNews.Com
Food scribe Max Jacobson on the Jazz Brunch at the Wynn
The Asian Equation recipe on VegasHappensHere.Com
RateVegas.Com’s Hunter Hillegas is a famous iPad geek now
The VegasHappensHere.Com drama re: Wynn, Philly and a photo
Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Best of Las Vegas results
News of the Social House move from TI to the Crystals from the Sun
David McKee of Stiffs & Georges on the Macau-Vegas drama and the food critics’ big new book
The R-J breaks the story of the prostitude’s retirement to porn
Photos from the visit to Steve Wynn for this week’s interview
Steve’s Las Vegas Weekly column on the Wynn divorce
Link to a story about another billionaire divorce that seemed good and went south

For Real: Wynn on Strip Tomorrow

A few months ago we promised a Wynnterview on the program only to have to pull it at the last minute when The Steve said he preferred that that conversation not be aired. At that time, he said he would do an interview specificially for the show, so that's what we were doing last week at the Country Club Restaurant.

That conversation airs Saturday on a special edition of "The Strip" that kicks off at 4:30 p.m. PT. Join us live at LVRocks.Com for that. Wynnterviews tend to bring out larger chat crowds than usual, so that's always fun. Of course, the podcast edition will be available later this weekend.

Emily and I will be doing one episode of "The Petcast" at 4 p.m. for those of you who like animals. The interview will regard an ASCPA program that resulted in the spay/neuter of more than 71,000 animals in the Gulf Coast region since Katrina.

Since there's already a drinking game for The Strip -- take a slug every time Miles curses -- maybe we could come up with one for The Petcast? Chug every time Emily says, "Archie"?

LVW Col: Inside The Wynn Divorce

We've all wondered for a while what the deal has been with the Wynn divorce. Finally, I asked. And here's the answer. Or about as much of the answer as anyone's ever really going to hear on the record. You'll be able to hear all about it, too, on this week's podcast with Steve Wynn. More on that tomorrow. First, the column. -sf

The loving dissolution
of Mr. and Mrs. Wynn
Inside perhaps the most expensive,
possibly the most civil,
divorce ever



By STEVE FRIESS

Up to now, I had never asked. Sure, I’m as curious as anyone, but there are so many more important topics to discuss with both Steve and Elaine Wynn that, in my past interviews with them, it seemed ridiculous to waste precious time. But last week, for some reason, Steve was in a very giving mood. Early in our interview, he’d said two very kind things about the woman he officially divorced late last year, so I couldn’t help it.

“I have to ask, and if you don’t want to answer, I understand, but you clearly still have a very good relationship with Mrs. Wynn,” I said.

"She’s my buddy, she’s my best friend,” he intoned. “I love her.”

For many people—especially those of us who have endured ugly breakups that did not involve billions of dollars—this may seem baffling. Steve Wynn became involved with British divorcee Andrea Hissom while he was still wed to his wife of 46 years. He hardly even kept the relationship a secret, and within a year he and Elaine were divorced. Yet she remained on the board of Wynn Resorts, she took up residence in a different villa at their Wynn-Encore property—both paying rent to the publicly traded company, in fact—and life seemed to carry on.

In fact, a few months ago I found them eating together at the Sinatra restaurant at Encore during the week their divorce would be finalized. They seemed to be in intense conversation, so I didn’t say hello until I thought Elaine had departed. But then she returned, and I found they had precisely the same comfortable chemistry I’d observed in the past. When they left Sinatra, the visionary with the degenerative eye disease gripped her elbow for guidance as I’m sure he’s done thousands of times before.

In the intervening months, America baffled over the affectionate relationship of another prominent ex-couple, James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow. As desperately as Us Weekly and that ilk wanted to gin up a feud between the Oscar-nominated directors, it fell flat, because they just kept being so darned caring toward one another in the press.

Yet Cameron and Bigelow have been divorced for many more years than they’d been married. And while they explained that they had just realized they weren’t suited for one another, Elaine and Steve Wynn were, in fact, perfectly suited for one another for nearly a half-century. They met as teens, built a family and more than one empire together. They’d even divorced once before, in 1986, only to remarry in 1991. At their second reception, Mr. Wynn quipped, “We regret to inform you, the divorce did not work out.”

So far this time, it did work out, and the Wynn dissolution offered up all the ingredients for a really dishy drama.

Read the rest HERE

Abandoned Kitty, Anyone?

Remember this? That cat needs you, whoever you are.

Four months ago, my "Petcast" co-host Emily Richmond noticed this cat hanging out around her house. She and her neighbor have now determined that this cat is homeless, that someone moved away and let her behind. They've been feeding her but they can't take her in. In Emily's case, she's allergic to cats. In the neighbor's case, she's got 3 territorial cats that wouldn't put up with it.

The NSPCA shelter is full. The Lied shelter will euthanize the cat. She's apparently very friendly and affectionate but is getting thinner and needs someplace to go. Miles and I are considering it but we have two very weird, moody dogs and we're really unsure whether they'd put up with it.

So, it could be up to you. Anyone?

Does Jennifer Lin Regret The Error?

UPDATE #2: The paper ran this correction today, but the online version remains incorrect and the correction is not even appended to it.


This is Jennifer Lin, reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, with Steve Wynn. We'll get back to them in a second. But first, a little story.

Years ago, I taught one semester of journalism at UNLV. For the final, I took my students to meet wine expert Andrew Bradbury at Mandalay Bay and had my students, few of whom were legitimately literate, interview him. He was the owner of a cool wine shop called 55 Degrees and wine director at the Charlie Palmer restaurant Aureole. I gave my students a cheat sheet of information and warned them that anyone who misspelled Aureole would automatically flunk.

None of them did, but I got seven different spellings for "Andrew Bradbury." I gave up teaching.

I tell this tale because today I learned that it's not just nearly illiterate Nevada college students who are careless even when information is handed to them on a silver platter. A piece today by Lin in the Philadelphia Inquirer about Steve Wynn's plans for Philadelphia includes this passage:

During an interview last week, Steve Wynn, the company's chairman, showed sketches of his vision for the Philadelphia casino to a Las Vegas blogger, Steve Freiss. Freiss took a photograph of one of the drawings and posted it on his Web site, www.WhatHappensHere.com.

Freiss wrote that Wynn "watched me shoot the photo," but later told him to remove the image from his blog because of a "gross misunderstanding."

See a few errors in there?

I am utterly astonished. No, really. I didn't think you could get to be a staffer for a paper with that sort of fine reputation and make such a show of being so sloppy. I get that sometimes my name gets misspelled; it's even happened to my in bylines in The New York Times. But she didn't just screw that up, she invented a whole new website. I mean, you're here at this site. So was she. Look up. It's right there in big letters. With my name. She couldn't have emailed me in the first place, in fact, if she had misspelled it.

What's also interesting is that Lin chased me for two days to get a contextual remark about what happened with that casino photo. As I am also a working journalist endeavoring to gather information for my own stories, I was a little hard to reach, and ultimately early yesterday afternoon I provided her with this e-mailed statement:

Mr. Wynn laid out several renderings for me to see and pointed out certain design features but specified the one I ended up shooting as the most accurate. He stood by me as I shot the image with my iPhone. The image was posted for five days before his office raised concerns and Mr. Wynn himself then called me to ask me to take it down. We did not speak -- I missed his call as I was on an assignment -- but his assistant said he was apologetic and that there had been a 'gross misunderstanding.' I acceded to his request because I recognized the possibility that Mr. Wynn, who suffers from a degenerative eye disease, did not realize I was using the phone to take a photo. Either way, though, he showed me the rendering, knew we were on the record and never suggested I could not describe what I was seeing or that there was a timetable that was sensitive.

All she ended up doing was quoting what I wrote in an update to the original Philadelphia post on this blog. Now, I'm no nationally published journalist -- oh, wait, I am! -- but I usually prefer to use actual comments I obtain from the actual source if that's at all possible. It makes me seem, oh I dunno, like I've done some new reporting. Which she did!

There is another way to do this. Don't take my word for it, though. Read all about it. Journalist Kellie Patrick Gates, with whom I worked a decade ago at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, talked to me on Monday and wrote a piece for PlanPhilly.Com on essentially the same thing. Here's my part of that one:

Friess said in a phone interview Monday evening that Wynn brought a group of renderings to lunch. "When I asked if I could keep them, he said no," Friess said. "But he pulled out one of them, and he stood by while I took a photograph of it. It was my understanding that image was for my use as a journalist. Mr. Wynn now says it was a misunderstanding."

Monday evening, Friess removed the image at Wynn's request and updated his post with an explanation of why he did so.

The image shows a white building with many columns. A large glass bubble on the top suggests an atrium. "During our interview, he laid out photographs of the podium of the Encore property in Macau next to renderings of the Philadelphia property and made note of very specific design similarities between the two," Friess said. Wynn told the gaming control board in early March that he planned to draw on his new Macau property for the Foxwoods design.

This whole thing is a pain in my ass and I really didn't want to discuss it very much. Evidently, even showing me the renderings caused Wynn a great deal of headache with the Pennsylvania gaming authorities. Had he instructed me that there was an embargo on the material, I would have agreed to adhere to it.

It may seem strange journalistically that I'd allow myself to be bullied by Wynn, but I acceded to Wynn's request to remove the image for a number of reasons. First, I felt that it was vaguely possible he didn't realize that my iPhone was a camera. Second, Philadelphia is a big story back East but Steve Wynn is a far more important source to me on many other topics. Third, it had been up long enough for my core readership to see it and for many others to copy it for their own sites. And fourth, to refuse to do so could've invited litigation and God knows I can't afford that over something this insignificant to me.

I have answered journalists' questions on this and explained my decision on this site because I believe in transparency and because I would want other journalists to respond to me if I had such reasonable questions.

Look, I'm far from perfect. I make careless errors in stories, too. Everyone does. Usually, though, I get names right because that's just so fundamental. And the thing about Lin is that the entirety of the messy passage suggests a broader problem. These actually were difficult errors to make.

What's more, Lin is front and center of a YouTube video called "Steve Wynn Reveals Shocking Ignorance" -- she called it "infamous" despite the fact that my nephew's Dum Dum The Lollipop video has about as many views -- in which she catches Steve Wynn seemingly not in command of the historic facts surrounding the region of Philadelphia he is developing. Watch:

The fact is, the drama of the Philly casino is really an internecine dispute between the state, which decided that's a good place for one, and the city, which feels its authority has been usurped. That's a good one and it may become Wynn's problem, but it's not Wynn's fault. If he's a little fuzzy over the development history there, so what? He knows he's in the process of getting a license. I suspect he would happily have had the thing somewhere other than along a row with a Wal-Mart and an IKEA. But he decided to go for this opportunity; it's not like he ever lobbied anyone to put it there.

I digress, but only because I just find the Philly media's overall efforts quite weird and misfocused. And now I know that the lead print reporter covering this for the largest paper in the market isn't terribly interested in being accurate about little things.

I shot Lin an email a little while ago. The subject line was "disturbing" and the contents of it were: "You not only misspelled my last name but fabricated my website. It's VegasHappensHere.Com. What the hell?"

Let's see how/if she responds.

UPDATE: Lin left a voice message acknowledging the name misspelling but baffling over the website mistake. She seemed unaware that she wrote "WhatHappensHere.Com" instead of "VegasHappensHere.Com," repeatedly saying she didn't understand what she'd done incorrectly on that front. Congrats, LVCVA, your slogan has actually brainwashed Americans into subliminally replacing the word "Vegas" for "What." Lin also indicated she'd run a correction tomorrow on my name. Apparently fixing it on the Web immediately didn't occur to her. That's the first and fastest thing I do to make amends when I screw up. Oh well.