Column/Pictorial: The Chip Monk & The Strip Church

If that's not the coolest stained glass in the history of Catholic churches, I don't know what is. (Click on it to enlarge and see the uber-Vegasy detail.) It's the lower portion of the panel in the far northeastern window of the main santuary and is actually tough to find, tucked back behind where the choir and organist do their things. Here's another, closer shot of the 1975 artwork. Just one of those casinos is even still standing.

I was at Guardian Angel to do this week's Las Vegas Weekly column about the Chip Monk, the fellow whose job it is (or was) to go cash in casino chips dropped in the collection baskets. They used to get more than $2,500 a month that way and he used to be able to cash them all at Caesars or the Trop, but times have changed. Go read all about him in my Las Vegas Weekly column.


Meanwhile, here's a Flickr slideshow of images of from the church and my visit. One fun part is that many of the stained glass panels were paid for by famous Las Vegans like Danny Thomas and Wilbur Clark, as you'll see.

And here's just one shot I thought was artful. I call it "Two Cathedrals."

The Show is (has been) UP: Louie Anderson & Peter Sagal

In all the hullabaloo surrounding my Eating Las Vegas column and then preparing for the big Thanksgiving feast I just blanked on posting the show to TheStripPodcast.Com. It was in the feed for iTunes or Zune subscribers as early as Tuesday. That's free, y'know, as is the iTunes software. But today I caught up, so here we go. You can click on the date below to get it to play or right-click on it to download it to listen at your leisure.

Nov. 22: Wait Wait, Don't Tell Louie
SPECIAL AUDIO: TSA DIRECTOR TALKS ABOUT
ENHANCED AIRPORT SCREENINGS

Louie Anderson may spend a lot of time joking about his weight, but he’s also getting serious about doing something about it. The legendary stand-up comedian, whose act is suddenly fresher and funnier now that he’s left the Excalibur for a eponymous showroom at the Palace Station, is focusing on new material, new endeavors and a new emphasis on living healthier. He explains to Steve this hour what incidents and family tragedies have prompted this as well as why he plans to chronicle his battle of the bulge in daily video blogs. Plus, which line of Steve’s questioning really annoyed him and why are the Louie-hosted years of the Family Feud not available for reruns? That’s coming up. Also, the NPR show “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” came to the Paris Las Vegas this week and Steve, fan boy that he is, sat down with host Peter Sagal in, of all places, Barry Manilow’s dressing room to find out what questions he decided NOT to ask Wayne Newton.

In Banter: Wait Wait in Vegas, a new dining "guide," the slot business ponders you, Cosmo images leaking, Harrah's cancels its IPO and the Wayner gets approved for his museum and tour plans.

Links to stuff discussed

Get tickets to Louie Anderson’s show at Palace Station
Louie’s site, Twitter and the correct Facebook page
Hear the Vegas edition of Wait Wait
Faith Salie’s site
VegasHappensHere.Com sneak-peak pictures of Cosmopolitan
Wayne Newton wins approval for his planned tours and museum
The Strip episode of audio of Steve’s G2E panel from 2009 on Encore design
Our 2006 interview with Louie Anderson
The Amazon.Com listing for the book “Eating Las Vegas”
Harrah’s is delaying its big plans and canceling its IPO
Yelp! On Hash House A Go Go, Rosemary's, Bouchon and China MaMa

Pictorial: Encore Beach Club

[Update: See Norm today for more fun stats about EBC.]


Until I started writing this post and moved that image to the top, I continued to think the new 60,000-square-foot spread that the Wynn folks build where the Strip porte-cochere for Encore Las Vegas once stood was known as the Switch Beach Club. Evidently, they've gone to Encore Beach Club and Surrender, an indoor-outdoor nightclub.

Whatever they're calling it, it opened today and already lots of douc...err, customers willing to pay $40 (for guys) and $30 (for babes) were lined up. There is, by the by, no discount if you're staying at Wynn or Encore. And the fancy cabanas, which I'll get to in a sec, can cost as much as $750 a day to rent. Recession schmecession, eh? (There's also no Asian Equation on the bar menu out there, a great, great scandal indeed.)

If you want to gorge yourself on images and video, I have a Flickr batch, as does Hunter Hillegas here, and the Wynn folks have posted a YouTube video. Anyhow, here are some of my pix as usual with my narrative and random thoughts.

This view...


...covers a lot of ground in showing off the place. That thing in the middle is some sort of shower apparatus with what's clearly a stripper pole in the middle. Hmm. The structure you're looking at was part of the old porte cochere, according to Hunter, who saw them move it. The Wynn publicity peeps actually didn't know that.

Under that structure is...


...gaming! And that means that if you say you want to play, they've gotta let you in -- and you gotta play. That's the law.

There are eight of those bungalows -- cabanas are evidently so Aughts -- and here's a view from one of their front porches. (There are also 26 cabanas.)


There are four bungalows each on two levels, and each has a balcony overlooking the Strip. If anyone actually walked north of Encore -- is there anything there that's not terrifying? -- that would be fun to observe. Instead, you get front-row views of the mocking half-built Echelon and empty never-to-rise Plaza. But here's a more flattering view:


Hi, Hunter! He and I were evidently the only media to ask for a preview tour of the place, one hour before its 11 a.m. opening. Beth Jinks from Bloomberg, with her enchanting British accent, was also present for a little while but "out of personal curiosity" and not to write about it.

Here's what it all looks like from the Strip:


Hate to say it, but it kinda has a little of the faux-olde San Fran look of this:

Here's something that that place sure doesn't have:


Ever wonder what sort of technology those bungalows that you and I will never be able to afford have? Here's the lighting switch panel for one:


Each bungalow has a full-service bathroom with sink, toilet and shower. But given the cost, this kill-joy admonishment over the potty seemed unfair to me:


This is Vegas! If I want to be lewd or invite my harem into the shower with me in a private bathroom that I'm spending a mint on, I should be allowed, no?

I found this piece of art on the back wall of that casino area a bit bold:


Hunter had far better images of the inside of Surrender than I did, but I did like this cracked-mirror shot of us that as very Lost-Flash-Sideway:


Hmm. Maybe the Encore Beach Club is the place we all created for ourselves so we could meet up in the afterlife but if that were so, where the hell were Smitty, Tim and Michele and Chuck Monster? [End of Lost geek-out.]

It's all very serpentine, very Original Sinesque in there, as Wynn designer Roger Thomas first revealed to me. So here's the snake version of that huge crystal dragon in Wazuzu:


The pillars all had these statues:


Alas, Switch is not gone or forgotten. In fact, the original gimmick restaurant, where the walls and ceiling change form every 20 minutes -- "Would you LOOK at those fucking curtains?" Smitty famously mocks -- now has a glass wall looking out on the pool. The place will be open for lunch and there's a poolside menu, too:


One reason I love previews is so we get moments and images like this, where the dudes are setting the drapery just right:


And I'm a big fan of one thing that did that has nothing to do with nightclubs or dayclubs or whatever else. They built a bridge from the Wynn parking garage to the Beach Club area that also allows access to the Encore casino.


That means no more walking halfway around the world to get from one side to the other. Yay.

Finally, I love odd signage and I have never seen the guy and gal in the bathroom icons...


...with swimsuits drawn on. Does the guy have his hands down the front or the back of his trunks?

Again, to see more, visit my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vegashappenshere.

Pictorial: Chinese New Year in #Vegas

You gotta hand it to the Harrah's peeps. Staging their lion dance for Chinese New Year on Sunday under the main porte-cochere was brilliant for ... Donny & Marie! I knew the minute I snapped this it would become THE shot that AOLNews.Com would used for my piece on the second-biggest gambling event of the Vegas year.

It's a fun time around Vegas, with lion dances galore and decorations that, frankly, are more impressive than what Vegas does for Christmas. I mean, what does the Venetian-Palazzo do quite like this:


There's something amusing to me about arraying a 16.5-foot-long tiger in front of a restaurant called Cut. Not sure about the feng shui of that. And, of course, I needed a closer shot of the girl in the huge Chinese-debutante-prom dress. Wow, huh?

Here's Caesars' main entrance and the Augustus Tower...



...and Wynn Las Vegas:


Chinese New Year is such a big deal, it's one of the five (or is it six?) seasonal decoration changes that Bellagio's Conservatory observes. I didn't make it over there, but reader Mike Dobranski (Follow him on Twitter) did and gave me permission to use these shots. The tiger's fur is dried botanicals.


It's no surprise, really, given the huge business Chinese players provide. I counted at least 15 resorts doing lion dances this year -- ARIA and the Orleans were the last, doing them tonight -- but I caught the ones at Caesars and Wynn on Sunday for my story.

Caesars deserved the love because it was their idea first. They did the first Chinese New Year celebration in 1975. The lions and dragons first set off firecrackers in the porte-cochere, then shimmy through the casino. They stopped at the threshold of Beijing Noodle No. 9 and the high-limit gaming parlors to fling lettuce -- a symbol of prosperity that hit me in the back -- and then went through both. Most folks were entertained...



...but the lady in the blue in that last shot maybe not so much.

At Wynn, the dance began in the south porte-cochere, where executives including Wynn President Andrew Pascal and high-roller special guests painted the eyes of the dragons, part of the ritual.


After this, about 2,000 special guests were treated to a banquet in a ballroom in which Wing Lei executive chef Richard Chen served up abalone that costs about $2,000 a pound and other delicacies.

Today, I went with a blog reader for Wing Lei's fabulous Chinese New Year's dim sum menu. If you're around, they're offering that until Thursday, Feb. 18, but it costs $58.88 a person.



Finally, my favorite. It may be the Year of the Tiger...


...but somehow this panda is making it ALL about her, huh?

Danny Gans On His Own Mortality And Legacy

I've just reissued the March 2, 2006 interview on "The Strip" podcast with the late impressionist Danny Gans, which you can hear by clicking here or download by right-clicking on here. It's a now-poignant half-hour that ranges from his views on his critics to his health regimen to his memories of how his ticket prices escalated over the years.

But the part that was so interesting was this exchange in which he explained what he wanted to be remembered for and why he didn't mind not being more famous. Here's the transcript of what he said, responding to that very question:

No, it doesn’t [bother me] because it is by choice. For someone listening, that might be a hard thing to understand, but I have times, if I elaborated on it, you’d think I’d be making up all the things that have been offered my way from sitcoms to motion pictures to talk shows. I don’t want that. I’m a family guy and I really treasure my privacy. So it is more important for me to be home with my wife and kids and be able to play golf and be with my friends than be on the cover of TV Guide? I really love doing my show but I don’t step out and say, "OK, I’m going to do that sitcom and that movie and that thing." It’s going to take away from the time I have with my kids while they’re growing up.

A conscious decision that Garth Brooks made several years ago to pull back so he could be with his children, I made that decision 15 years ago when no one knew who I was and I stepped into an opportunity where I was offered a one-man show on Broadway for a limited engagement for three weeks. I did the three weeks and I was offered a year on Broadway. I had already started doing some of the TV stuff and I turned down a lot of it but since I was in New York I said I’d do it so I did “Regis and Kathie Lee” and I didn’t like it. I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like the attention that goes along with it.

I had friends in the business who said, "You have no idea how lucky you are to be able to do what you do and not have to worry when I go outside because there’s going to be paparazzi every place. Hold on to that because you’re going to regret the fact that 50 years from now, when you’re about ready to go on to the next side, you look back at your life and you can say, 'I had a fulfilling life because I had a successful marriage and had raised three wonderful children and I had a career that I loved to go to every day or my marriage didn’t last and I don’t even know what the heck happened to my kids but hey, man, I was on three sitcoms and I did 17 films, people are gonna remember me forever now.'

What’s more important? Well, to me, honestly, from the bottom of my heart, it’s the family and being able to get up every morning and living my life as opposed to being the guy on the cover of People magazine. I have absolutely zero interest in that.

Here’s just one example. Just before I came to the Mirage, Aaron Spelling was a friend of mine and he said, "Look you gotta do a sitcom for me." I said, "Aaron, I don’t have the time, what am I gonna do?" He said, "Look, sign a contract that you won’t do another sitcom for anyone except for me." I said, "OK, I’ll do that for you." So we signed this contract and he gives me a ridiculous amount of money just to not do anything. And he writes the treatment, we start getting a casting call together the whole thing. He wants to do a pilot. I said, “Aaron, let’s really talk about this. Let’s talk about the day in the life of a sitcom actor. You can’t film it in Vegas so I’ll have to go to L.A.” He said, "Oh, we’ll private jet you up and back and I guarantee you it will make it on the air, it’ll have at least 13 episodes, I’ll put millions of dollars behind this, everyone will know who you are, you’ll be on the cover of every magazine, it’ll be huge, believe me, it’ll be a huge hit."

To make a long story short, Steve, a typical day would have been on Monday morning fly to L.A., do a table reading for four hours. Then I would rehearse, jump on a plane, fly to Las Vegas, take a cab to the Mirage, do the sound check, do the show, by the time I get home it’s 2 o’clock. … Do that five days a week, then on Friday, which would be my day off in Vegas, fly to Los Angeles and film two shows in L.A., then they have the weekend off but I have to go work at the Mirage on Sat or Sunday. And then Monday, it starts all over again. In other words, what is your motivation here. If I was single, I would do that, but I’m not.

Well, Mr. Gans, if you are measuring your life based on your devotion to your family, you were certainly a success. I bet you were a heckuva dad.

Somebody dislikes Encore

Well, I'm sure more than one person does. But since I had yet to read anything in the media that was seriously critical of Encore Las Vegas and its design, I thought I'd post the link to Tony Illia's Las Vegas CityLife critique in which he states that Encore lacks "restraint."

A few excerpts:

Wynn, always the pitchman, believes it's his greatest achievement yet. "Intimacy and richness is the difference with Encore," says Tom Breitling, the former Golden Nugget owner-turned-Wynn employee. "It's really like a boutique hotel." But nothing about the 653-foot-tall, 2,034 room mega-resort seems small or boutique-like. ...

...There is an island bar that somewhat resembles a circus merry-go-round, with four TVs and six gaming tables. There are also daybeds, lounge chairs and a sunglass-cleaning service....

...The main casino is drenched in bordello red,...

...The building is a type of large brown package, nay, present, waiting to be opened. But one architect called it a UPS truck turned on its side....

...The attention to detail is stunning, albeit excessive....

...Encore is trying too hard to impress. Every square inch is adorned with a texture, pattern or contour. There are no blank spots that simply let you breathe and experience the space. The composition is overwrought, too tightly packaged together. It can be suffocating. Encore is a sensory overload. Wynn's need to dazzle and overwhelm guests doesn't always pay off. ...

And, to be fair, he closes with this trying-to-end-on-an-up-note bit:

That said, Encore improves upon Wynn Las Vegas in many ways. The main entryway off Las Vegas Boulevard is much better. Guests pass through the front doors into an uplifting double-height space with diffuse daylight, trees and flowers. Casino corridors have natural light, which is a bold but pleasant surprise; sunlight has long been an industry taboo. The floor-level backwall is also entirely glass, allowing sunlight inside, blurring the line between indoors and out. The retail promenade, meanwhile, is wider and more leisurely than Wynn Las Vegas, which seems cramped at times. And the rooms are splendid. The mood is more relaxed, less kinetic. Glass-encased showers, deep tubs, floor-to-ceiling windows, and plasma TVs in both the bed and bathrooms encourage a pampered, lazy attitude. Rooms have couches, ottomans, writing tables and wireless Internet access as well as fine art prints and safes.

Contrast this to the glowing reviews by UNLV's Dave Schwartz in the Business Press and the Christopher Reynolds of the L.A. Times, the paper whose architectural critic once said the Wynn Las Vegas' theme was "midrise office tower in Houston, circa 1983."

I'm not saying Illia's wrong or that his opinions are invalid. I'm just posting this because they're almost the only critical thing I've seen written about the new resort.

The Show is UP: Happy 2009!

Happy New Year, everyone. Enjoy! Hear the show by clicking on the date or right-click to download it and listen whenever you want. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here.

Jan. 1: ...And A Wynning New Year

We’ve walked through Encore with him and chatted him up about everything from that damaged Picasso to the exact curvature of his resort towers. So what’s left to talk about with Steve Wynn? Well, it’s Steve Wynn, so there’s always more. We finish playing our pre-Encore interview tonight with discussion of Wynn’s athletic prowess, his concerns about the economy and a little Gandhi chit-chat, too.

In Banter: Switch at Encore, the view from Capital Grille, Criss Angel on Larry King, Danny Gans’ Encore poster and free coffee at Silverton.

Links:

Find the site for Bagelmania here
Heidi Knapp Rinella’s Top 10 restaurants reviewed in 2008 is here
See the Danny Gans poster at Encore here
Read more about the Silverton’s Starbucks offering and other casino freebies here

An Encore From Last Night

Many others documented the opening far better than me, and I urge you to head over to EncoreOpening.Com to see all the terrific commentary and photos provided by Hunter at RateVegas.Com and Chuck Monster at VegasTripping.Com. Also, Dave McKee had some insightful thoughts on the design of the property that you can find here.

But here's a 6-minute video episode of The Strip showing the Wynns as they declare Encore open for business. The people who were already inside were either invited friends or hotel guests. Click on the image to watch, and sorry as always for the shaky camera work. It may be better to merely listen.


Here's a better still show of the couple:


I went on to dinner with Hunter, his wife Megan, Chuck, Mike E and listener/reader Brian Fey as well as a couple of new friends at Sinatra, where the Wynns dined nearby with Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf among others. It was an outstandingly delicious meal.

As I took the long march from Sinatra to the Wynn south valet to get my car, I went through the shopping esplanade the connects the properties. It was after 11 p.m., the place had been open for three hours, and the line was, as Miles likes to say, bananas. This is where it started...


...and it went on...

...and on...


...and on, into the Wynn casino. There were at least 800 people in that line. And there were others at other entrances. Wow.