Steve Friess is a 2011-12 recipient of the prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he will be studying the impact of the rapid expansion of Vegas-style gaming on Asia. He's a podcaster, author and Vegas-based freelance journalist who writes regularly for USA Today, The New York Times, Newsweek and many others. His column, "The Strip Sense" appears every Thursday in the Las Vegas Weekly. His books include "Gay Vegas" from Huntington Press and Knopf Mapguides' "Las Vegas." Friess co-hosts the weekly celebrity interview podcast The Strip Podcast "The Strip" with his husband, Miles Smith, the executive producer at KSNV-TV, Channel 3. For four years, Steve also co-hosted The Petcast with Las Vegas Sun education scribe Emily Richmond.
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We're having some sort of problem with iTunes and our final -- and several recent special -- episodes of "The Strip" have not been making it into the RSS feed. We're working on fixing that right now, but all of the recent episodes since the iTunes snafu began are listed with links to your right on this blog. I hope to have TheStripPodcast.Com fixed and updated as soon as possible. FYI, We urge you NOT to unsubscribe from our RSS feed because you just never know when a random special might surface there. I still have some good stuff sitting around waiting for my time to edit and post. It could be a while, but it will happen.
Anyhow, here's the show you and we have been simultaneously waiting for and dreading. Enjoy, and listen all the way to the end.
After six years, this is the final regular episode of "The Strip." The show, which debuted on Sept. 1, 2005, was co-hosted by journalists and life partners Miles Smith and Steve Friess. In this emotional episode, we recount the top 10 moments of the show as voted on by listeners, talk about the changes in their lives and play some classic old clips including a never-before-published 6-minute rehearsal in which they discuss what they show should be about and how they'll go about doing it.
The top clips include great moments from Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Curtis, Jim Murren, George Wallace, Johnny Mathis, Sheldon Adelson and, of course, Steve Wynn.
Links to the original episodes that spawned the Top 10 moments list:
Here we go again. It's sort of a two-fer, but instead of one gigantic show, we did two. Enjoy. Click on the date below to play or right-click to save the show. Or you subscribe -- for free -- in iTunes or Zune and you'll always get it first. -sf
It was by far the most hyped – and to our minds the best – new show to hit the Vegas Strip this year. Celine Dion has returned to the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in a self-titled production that is radically different and vastly better than “…A New Day,” her groundbreaking first run in the vaunted showroom. Legendary TV producer Ken Ehrlich directed “Celine,” so we spoke to him at length about the intriguing decisions he, the singer and her husband made. Why didn’t they include the closing-number special effects when they opened in March? Was it weird to rehearse Celine’s duet with herself? What’s the story behind that French song that makes her cry every night? Why wasn’t the songstress at the United Center when Ehrlich produced two star-studded final-week shows for Oprah Winfrey last month?
In Banter: Anniversaries! Wynn Politics! TV Show Tapings! Maloofs! Monorail Bashing! and more.
Open & Banter: Start to 24ish Ken Ehrlich Part I: 24-58ish Trivia/Poll/Letters: 59-59ish Ken Ehrlich Part II: 1:00-1:25ish TSTToTW: 1:25-end
I caught up this morning on the weekend papers, and this stuff is worth your eye:
* Howard Stutz of the R-J puts together the surprising detente between Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson, right down to the suggestion by Adelson that the epic rivals will soon dine together. Oh, to be a fly...
* Tom Gorman of the Sun has a most awesome Q-and-A with Sir Patrick Stewart on his plans to create a Vegas-set version of "The Merchant of Venice." It reminds me of the time I saw "Taming of the Shrew" staged as a Western starring Morgan Freeman and Tracey Ullman and put on by Joseph Papp in Central Park. (Side note: I once considered titling a podcast interview with Adelson as "The Merchant of Venice" but opted against doing so because because the play -- or at least the title character of Shylock -- is so notoriously anti-Semitic. I went with "Mr. Sands Man" instead.)
* J. Patrick Coolican, who has been refreshingly diversifying his columns from the monotony of politics that the Sun is addicted to, gives us a terrific piece on a 25-year-old kid living at Veer for $1,000 a month plus valet parker duties. Money quote to make Jim Murren, who pictured a different grade of humanity living in these units, cringe: "The amenities -- you can't beat 'em." Party on, dude!
* Adrienne Packer geeks out on data collected by an 81-year-old monorail obsessive who has empirically proven that, for the most part, it's faster and cheaper to walk from one casino to another than to ride the ill-placed transit system. What's more, the creative codger's analysis also indicates that the oft-cited panacea for the monorail's woes -- a link-up to McCarran -- won't work, either.
Of course, there are some jeers:
* Why does Sad Shermy still have a column in the newspaper he has legally imperiled and whose circulation he ruined? I'd much rather have seen them hold over ex-editor Thomas Mitchell's columns because at least they were (usually) original and smart meditations on a topic that doesn't get enough press, first amendment matters. Instead, we have Sad Shermy writing the same old predictable babble, only not as well or as thoughtfully as other conservative commentators who actually do some reporting.
* I adore the work of Adrienne Packer, so I hope she doesn't take this the wrong way, but the absence of any coverage of the passage and Sandoval signing of AB511, the bill that makes Nevada the first state to legalize DRIVERLESS CARS for road use, is simple dereliction. This is a major, major legislative and technological development. I understand why Carson City scribes would overlook it because they had the budget and everything else to cover, but transportation writers ought to be all over this. So should technology writers, but neither the R-J nor the Sun have one of any merit, a glaring problem. (I'm trying to get the link to my piece on this from the iPad-only The Daily.)
Check out this YouTube video on the driverless cars for background and some amazing visuals:
This could be real on the roads of Vegas a year from now, thanks to the law. Really.
* Steve Bornfeld of the R-J applied his typical staccato, sentence-fragment style to his coverage of the Daytime Emmy Awards in a piece that essentially chronicled the construct of the red carpet and the backstage post-win appearances. I do understand the instinct toward media navel-gazing (see this blog post or this whole blog!) and the desire to behave above and apart from the media silliness of such events. But in this particular case, he actually missed the story, which was how offended the audience and Emmy brass were that Oprah Winfrey did not show up for her own lengthy tribute. There was noticeable hostility in the Hilton theater as well as all over Twitter, and I'm pretty surprised that Oprah didn't just snubbed this crowd but also passed up a much-much-much-needed opportunity to plug her flailing network and its unwatched offerings. Didn't Oprah quit so she could focus on that? Also, why did they lie and pretend that Celine Dion was singing live from the Colosseum during the show when Celine's part was taped four days earlier? That sort of stuff would've made an interesting, Vegas-centric wrap-up.
* I'm completely puzzled that (a) this below is front page news, (b) that the paper misspelled the name of its own reporter of 426 years (It's Przybys, not Pyzybys, as it was corrected later online) and (c) that they ran with this thoroughly misleading headline:
What "history" was made? A California woman won a beauty pageant. She's not the first. She's not the last. She's not even all that interesting a woman, except she seems to have acquired a bit of Tudor lust thanks, probably, to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. If there was some history made -- beyond the fact that every day is technically historic -- then John Pryzyzyzbys didn't tell us what that might've been.
* Journalists really must stop bitching, especially publicly on Twitter, about the quality of the free seats they get at various events. It truly embarrasses to them to behave so openly entitled, and it distracts from the quality of their coverage. Do they think their readers are sympathetic to the complaints of a group of people who seem to expect special treatment? This came up, too, during the opening of Celine's show at the Colosseum. The whiners' lack of self-awareness is kind of unbelievable.
* Finally, where the heck was the print coverage of the Starkey Hearing Foundation's mission to provide 100 underprivileged kids in Clark County with free hearing aids on Saturday? Those hearing aids cost probably $2,500 each, so that's $500,000 in donated, customized equipment alone, but more importantly there were some amazing and heartbreaking stories there. But never fear, I volunteered and I'll be columnizing about that this week for the Las Vegas Weekly. Also, because I know someone at KSNV, they did this:
Steve Wynn appeared for about six minutes on Fox News today in a town hall setting with Republican pollster and savant Frank Luntz. Luntz is an old friend of Wynn's; Wynn had told me long ago that Luntz field-tested Le Reve versus Wynn Las Vegas to decide which to call his resort.
You can hear the audio of that TV appearance by clicking here. Thanks to Hunter at RateVegas.Com for grabbing that for me.
It was really a weird appearance. He spoke of how "only in the control of the people and the better life of my people" does the enterprise flourish, that employees who are uncertain or whose standard of living is in peril won't attend as well to his guests. I get what he was trying to say, but I'm fairly sure Luntz would not have advised the use of the word "control."
But the bit that stunned me was Wynn claiming he voted for Barack Obama in 2008. We know that soon-to-be-ex-wife Elaine was gaga for Barry and that she forced Steve to socialize with the Obamas, where Wynn admitted to being charmed. But is it not a bit of a surprise that in all the many, many rants that Wynn has made to me, to Jon Ralston, to whoever on Fox or CNBC flips on a camera for him, he has never once said this before? He gave not a cent to Obama and the legal limit to John McCain -- and gave the legal limit again for McCain's 2010 Senate campaign, by the way -- but he VOTED for Obama?
I'm not saying it isn't possible. In fact, Wynn and I spoke at length in December 2008 as Encore was opening and he actually told me off the record -- although now that's moot because he has now said it on national TV, too -- that he had, in fact, voted for Obama. But there was something about the moment that rang false to me anyway; it felt like he was trying to seem like he had picked the winner after the game was over. I felt like if he really had, he would say so publicly then when Obama was popular and see what sort of benefit he could derive out of being "in," either genuinely thanks to Elaine or opportunistically on his own, with the White House.
But if Steve Wynn did vote for Hope and Change, why's he so mad about the health care reforms Congress has passed? This was precisely what Obama promised he would do, it was a cornerstone of his campaign; did Wynn think the president was lying about how important this was to him? If anything, the reforms that were passed are less intense and government-driven than those that Obama spoke about on the stump.
And another thing. Wynn said on Fox today that his health care costs had been increasing by 8 percent a year since 2005 and that since the new law -- which has not even gone into effect yet in any meaningful way -- he's up 10 to 12 percent. And then he tells Luntz that what he wants is for the government to "get off health care. Let private enterprise figure it out."
But didn't he just say that private enterprise, the system as it was, was responsible for consistent 8 percent increases in costs every year? That's sustainable? Health costs rising ridiculously faster than inflation is a way to keep his employees' standard of living intact? What? Does any of this make sense? He was OK with 8 percent increases EVERY YEAR but a 10 percent one is suddenly the worst thing that has ever happened?
Finally, and only slightly off topic, I will observe with fascination whom, if anyone, Mr. Wynn supports in our upcoming special Congressional election between Republican Mark Amodei and Democrat Kate Marshall now that Amodei has posted this as his first TV ad:
Can Steve Wynn seriously afford to support a China-bashing candidate for Congress from his own state? China is the reason why Steve Wynn has been able to keep so many of his employees employed! Were it not for the obscene profits in Macau, Wynn surely would have laid off many more people and been as imperiled by the horrific Vegas economy as MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment. It's easy, in fact, to make the case that Amodei's "nightmare" of China kept the official Nevada unemployment rate from hitting 20 percent.
Oh, the political pretzels we twist. What a fun summer ahead!
A few other thoughts and stuff from what I've seen around the press this week...
1. It's a publicity stunt, people: I thought the El Cortez room design contest was cute, too, and we mentioned it on The Strip. But, seriously, folks, it's a very clever pr gambit. Everyone seems to think it's news and that there's some bigger truth to be gleaned from it. It's not and there isn't. Look for every hotel to copycat this because, damn it's good for free advertising.
2. Musta missed that: So the NFL came down from the heavens just before Super Bowl kickoff to force its Fox affiliate here to kill $360,000 in Station Casino ads, and the local media was silent. Not even in Steve Bornfeld's TV column. More proof that if I cover or break something, our MSM ignores it. Shameful, unprofessional and shortsighted.
3. Musta missed that, too: So Steve Wynn goes off and tells the world how delighted he is that the Chinese meddle in and micromanage his business and nobody in the Vegas MSM even reports it. Again, Mr. Wynn, who believes Barack Obama is a Socialist, sings the praises of a dictatorship that can actually, tomorrow, confiscate his enterprise. That's not even worth putting on the record?
4. Ravella's reverie: There's a new owner/operator in Lake Las Vegas, and they opened up this week. Great. But, still, I found this passage from the R-J pretty funny:
[Ravella owner] Dolce reached out to the six restaurants in the adjacent MonteLago Village, developing a system that gives Ravella guests preferred dining reservations and the ability to charge meals to their rooms.
The charge-to-your-room part is smart, but seriously, when has it ever been difficult to get a seat at a restaurant in the ghost town known as MonteLago?
5. And nobody said, "Huh?": The R-J had a piece up on Saturday about the fiscal and ridership woes of the Las Vegas Monorail and this is part of it:
The number of people who boarded the train last year fell 13 percent compared with 2009 to 5.2 million, just more than half of what the monorail carried during its first full year of operations in 2005. Ticket sales also declined 13 percent, to $23.2 million.
Advertising, which brought in $2.3 million as recently as 2007, dropped to $190,000.
Now, I'm no ad genius, but they've still got 5.2 million riders on the system and millions more who see the train snaking along its tracks every day. They can only get $190K in ad revenue from that? Huh? WTF?
6. Steve Sebelius, Nazi? Actually, I'm greatly enjoying Steve's new political column in the Review-Journal. It really feels like, relieved of the pressure to oversee the CityLife staff and production, he's doing better, more interesting and better-written pieces that feel far less predictable than what I found in CityLife. I'm particularly impressed that the R-J is giving him -- a liberal! -- the most prominent position in its Sunday Opinions section, one previously occupied by former publisher and failed Reidslayer Sherman Frederick.
Still this, at the bottom of his column today, made me giggle:
7. Equal Embarrassment Time: OK, the R-J isn't the only ones with some typographical challenges this week. This, from an ad in my own Las Vegas Weekly, is a little embarrassing:
I just got through listening to Steve Wynn on a conference call with gaming analysts and shareholders regarding earnings, which were robust thanks, of course, to China. I'll get back to that in a moment.
First, though, some breaking news. It's Marilyn's fault. Asked about how new Wynn Las Vegas president Marilyn Winn Spiegel was fitting in, he sang her praises and offered this example:
I remember one conversation I had with Marilyn was about six weeks after she came. She came to my office and said, "You know, Steve, we have tremendous success with nightclubs and our very popular, hip restaurants. I think our steakhouse, SW, is the most successful restaurant in Nevada." She said, "The public taste has changed. We have a five-star restaurant, a Michelin-star restaurant, a five-diamond restaurant in Alex. People don't want to sit for three hours and eat dinner that way anymore. I'd rather repurpose that restaurant. I know that you love the idea that one of the restaurants has all those Michelin stars, and we've got three of them in the building. This one in particular, this gourmet kind of restaurant, I'm not sure we can't use that space more effectively in another way." And frankly I would have never questioned that restaurant on my own. Marilyn made me question that restaurant and she was right. It's a simple example of that was something she brought to my office that I would have missed. There's been more of that sort of thing.
So there it is. Yes, John Curtas, Alex was sacrificed on the altar of the nightclub set. By my calculation, Marilyn would have come to Wynn with this idea in late December and Alex was shut down not a month later. Spiegel came to Wynn from being a regional president for Harrah's. She's intimately involved with what's become of the Rio as well as Caesars Palace since the company took it over. I shudder to think of what she might have done with Bellagio's Conservatory had she been in charge back in the day. What a waste of non-money-making space! I fear Wynn is losing touch with his own philosophy that not everything needs to make money in order to add something intangible to the overall package that is his resorts.
If I were Paul Bartolotta, by the way, I'd be hugging ol' Marilyn even closer right about now. Seriously.
Meanwhile, the earnings call was fascinating, too, for how disturbingly, uh, solicitous Steve Wynn is towards the Chinese government. He said the Macanese authorities are very involved in the design of his resorts there by telling him what they'd like to see. You think even they buy that?
And then, a bit later, he said this:
About six weeks ago, Mr. Wen Jiabao (the Chinese premier, left) came to Macau and he said he hoped that the prosperity that was being enjoyed by the resort industry in Macau was being shared by the workforce. That was followed immediately by public comments by the (Macanese) chief executive. When our company hears those kinds of comments, we don't wait for a week or a month, we respond instantly and we increased the line employees ... by 6 percent. We were the first to do that not because we wanted to be first but because we respond directly to leadership given to us by the government. that's an important part of our strategy, of our identity in that community. Our job is to constantly refresh the notion that we are humble, proud and grateful to be allowed to be part of that scene and the way to do that in China is to take good care of your employees.
Why if I didn't know better, I'd think Mr. Wynn got ahold of the talking points of the Democratic caucus in the Nevada Legislature or the Culinary 226! Can you even imagine if Brian Sandoval or Barack Obama weighed in on what he might do with his profits? It gives me a headache, imagining it.
I know he's saying this stuff for the benefit of the Chinese media. But it is still very peculiar to American ears, especially knowing his list of grievances with the Obama Administration and others. He's bowing to Chinese demands because the nation can confiscate his business overnight if it so chooses. That's all.
Something about the sudden closure next week of Alex at Wynn doesn't compute. My Las Vegas Weekly editor Sarah Feldberg broke this news yesterday with this peculiar passage:
A Wynn representative pointed to the strains of the economy as the reason for the restaurant’s closing, adding that “high-end French dining is not what people want these days.”
That's really very strange for a few reasons. First, Guy Savoy at Caesars Palace seems to be doing pretty well, as is Joel Robuchon at MGM Grand. High-end French dining is like the little black dress; it just doesn't ever go out of style. Especially in Vegas.
Second, as austerity measures go amid a recession, this seems like a strange choice for Wynn Resorts for tightening the bottom line. Wynn and Encore attract the highest-end customers who come to Las Vegas, and now they're basically announcing that the fancy people can't afford great French food anymore? That's a serious idea? Especially given the many, many very expensive restaurants across the Wynncore plain?
Third, Alex has been a major calling card for the property since the beginning and, as Steve Wynn has often said, sometimes you don't calculate the value of an attraction based on how much money it makes but what it adds intangibly to the property and experience. This is Wynn's most prestigious and award-winning (Michelin two-star!!!) restaurant, beloved by foodies and food journalists not just for Alex Stratta's cuisine but also for that gorgeous sunken dining room architecture. It is a transformative experience just to walk in, let alone sit down for dinner.
This just feels like a personality or financial conflict being blamed on the broader economy. Has any other super-duper-expensive Wynn shop or restaurant closed? If the economy was depressing sales, you'd think that would be a problem that would show up in other elements of the business, no? Should we be worried, given this statement, about Wynncore's ability to cater to very wealthy customers? Will we be seeing a decline in other areas of the business?
Perhaps Alex wanted more money and Wynn refused. Or maybe another resort has wooed him with more control or money? Maybe Alex wants to go to New York? Maybe he doesn't want to make vegan food? Maybe Alex, always a pleasant figure in person, is an egotistical jerk?
It's just a sense I have, but I suspect the personal relationship between Stratta and the Wynns deteriorated in some way. When I ate there with Mike E and his posse about a year ago, the chef de cuisine told us that Elaine Wynn had not eaten at the restaurant since the night the Wynn opened when, incidentally, Alex hosted her birthday party. Remember, the "Hello, Dolly!" staircase motif of the place was Elaine's idea; surely she would've enjoyed dining there for that reason alone. Steve Wynn was an increasingly rare presence as well. Wynn only came in when a business associate was with him, the chef said.
The other peculiarity of all this is the timing. They really have to shove their most successful and famous chef out the door in a week? Without even a statement from Wynn about how great Alex is, how much he has brought to the enterprise, how sorry he is to see him go and good luck? If they had been planning this for a while, wouldn't they want to give the mourning food world ample time to have one last meal there? Wouldn't that, in fact, drive sales and make a little scratch?
This feels a lot like another unceremonious dump we covered recently, doesn't it? [P.S. to Al Mancini et al.: This closure's another reason you should have done an iPhone app, not a book. Just sayin'.]
You might recall I was up in Sun Valley this past June for an interview with Parry Thomas, the legendary Vegas banker, Steve Wynn mentor and father of Wynn design guru Roger Thomas. At long last, the piece is out in Sun Valley Magazine.
The magazine's website offers it two ways, as a two-part web readout and in the actual magazine configuration. If you'd like to see it in its native format, pictures and all, click on the Digital Edition link along the right side of the home page. (This won't work when the Winter 2011 edition is no longer current, future readers.) It's pages 82-85 and then page 106. My bio is on page 20.
Here's a Las Vegas Weekly column that's three scoops in one! Yippee! Of course, if you listened to The Strip, you heard about all of this two weeks ago. Just saying. Enjoy! -sf
With Cosmo open, welcome to the Era of the Next Little Thing
By STEVE FRIESS
“You know what would be phenomenal?” Oscar Goodman bellows as we stride from City Hall down Las Vegas Boulevard to a menorah lighting on Fremont Street.
This is the guy who got the performing arts center and Cleveland Clinic to sprout from a toxic train yard, moved the notion of a mob museum from appalling to brilliant and, most recently, poached Zappos from Henderson to occupy a city hall that didn’t need replacing but will be replaced nonetheless.
Yes, sir. Tell me. What would be phenomenal?
“See, what I’d like to do when I’m not the mayor anymore and can invest out here, I’d love to buy this property over here and put in that ‘giant eye’ Ferris Wheel that they have in London over there,” he gushes, pointing at an empty lot on the east side of the road.
“You want a Ferris wheel Downtown?” I answer, disappointment disguised as deadpan.
“It’d be phenomenal.”
To which I resist the urge to retort: “What is the obsession Vegas has with building a fucking Ferris wheel?” Caesars Entertainment chief Gary Loveman hankers for one, too, near Flamingo Road, but Wall Street won’t give him the money. Several have been considered for parcels around the Strip through the years, but you know what attraction no Vegas tourist has ever told me he misses here? A fucking Ferris wheel.
Above you can see the very basis of the theory behind Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The talking points for the $3.9 billion resort opening Wednesday is that it will fill a niche of an alleged 59 million Americans who are part of the "curious class." The media has chowed down on that "narrative" for this opening, and we shall see in coming months whether it's correct.
But what is it? Well, Unwin drew me a picture earlier this month during my interview with him. You may want to reference that picture when you listen to the conversation, which is in the podcast feed now and can be downloaded by right-clicking here. (It'll also appear on your iPod if you listen that way. Not sure about other devices.)
What you see above is Unwin's case for different forms of high-end Vegas resort concepts. The poles run from themed to design-driven and from spirited/vibrant to refined/proper. The B in the lower left is Bellagio, the W is Wynn, E is Encore, P is Palazzo, A is Aria, CP is Caesars Palace and up there in the upper right corner is a C for Cosmopolitan.
Now, I could draw any number of arbitrary grids and create a construct that leaves me alone in a gigantic class. But, as I pressed Unwin in this interview, he's really going after exactly the same folks that Jim Murren said he was after a year ago, the moneyed, urban, educated set. Wynn and Encore go after them, too, but with the belief that when those people go on vacation, they want lush luxury, not concrete and glass.
We shall see where this goes, won't we? It strikes me as a lot of hype masquerading as demographic analysis.
Happily, the interview is not dominated by that kind of chatter. You also get to hear Unwin react to Steve Wynn telling me two weeks ago that the Cosmo is "an extraordinary example of ill-conceived plans" that won't get as much out of pedestrian traffic as Unwin believes.
Steve Wynn's still not sure how well Cosmopolitan will work out. He's not knocking the current operators, but he has some reservations. Some are the same as the concerns he had earlier this year when he described the ingress/egress issues he envisioned for it.
Friess: So you have actually been throughout Cosmo? Do you like the design of it?
Wynn: They have a nice room, Steve. You know, a nice commodious room, much better than Fontainebleau. The public area is layered on four levels or five. The entrance and exit of the place is [with a French accent] impossible. The access to the building is a nightmare.
Friess: Although for pedestrians its a lot easier than Aria, for example.
Wynn: Yeah, for pedestrians. If you are going to live off the people walking from Planet Hollywood, you will make four cents -- FOUR CENTS! -- from the people on the street in front of Planet Hollywood. Choke to death! This market can't exist on that type of stuff anymore. This market needs occupancy, big mid-week occupancy with conventions and stuff like that.
On the topic of whether it should ever have been built -- which he is quick to remind everyone is not the fault of the people running it now -- he doesn't hold back much, either.
Wynn: It's on such a difficult site. The access is so murderously challenging for the management. You know, the way we check in and check out 3,000 rooms on a Sunday. Right?
Friess: Right.
Wynn: How do you do that in that building?
Friess: You mentioned that. You mentioned that about the driveway was the first thing you noticed when went there was that the configuration of and I didn't quite get it until I went there myself but the configuration when you drive in is very weird.
Wynn: My point is that the Cosmopolitan is an extraordinary example of ill-conceived plans. If that young man they brought in, that nice man from Harrah's, if he makes a go of this, he gets the Nobel Prize.
That "nice young man," Cosmo CEO John Unwin, responded to all of this in my interview, which I just posted into The Strip Podcast's feed. Download it by right-clicking here or subscribe for free in iTunes or Zune.
MGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren was just talking about not wanting to damage his brand, but yesterday he began doodling on a starchitect's building, so it's hard to take him seriously, isn't it? Yup. That, above, is a sunrise shot of the beginnings of what is no doubt going to be a hideous wrap of Aria. That was shot by guest host Amy, and listener/reader Weston P. sent along this closer version:
I'm not the only one who hates this, of course. We shouldn't need to lecture MGM Resorts on the importance of respecting their architecture, but Weston thinks people should do so anyway:
I, for one, am disgusted by it. They began today and three glass panels now have wrapping on them. How can MGM go so low as to deface one of the prominent luxury hotels in our skyline for who knows how long?! Hopefully, they will receive a few harsh phone calls about this. I know I am going to do my best to talk to someone as this is, in my opinion, appalling.
Sing it, brother! Oh! Guess who else hates wraps? From last week's interview:
Friess: Would you ever put one of these advertising wraps on your resorts? Steve Wynn: When hell froze over. Friess: And why? Why wouldn't you do it? Wynn: It's terrible, terrible looking.It's OK if you're running a Motel 6 or a low-end place like Circus Circus. Friess: The county just gave MGM permission to put a wrap on Aria for their Viva Elvis show and I'm just really offended by this idea. I mean I took them seriously when they said they are doing something high class with their architecture and then they throw up bumper stickers all over it and it gives everybody who hates Vegas a chance to say, "Look at that." Wynn: This is the same group that built the place. It's the same brain that built the place.
Meanwhile, the worst part is that what they appear to be putting on that gorgeous building looks even worse than we expected. This was the VegasTripping.Com mock-up:
The VT gang gave the MGM gang too much credit. That, above, would be stately and dignified compared to what they're actually doing.
I'm the first to confirm Steve Wynn's engagement to Andrea Hissom directly and officially, and it's kind of funny how it happened.
Late last week, I interviewed The Steve for a few upcoming stories. I did not know that he was engaged because I'd been too busy and had fallen behind on reading the R-J. Wynn had instructed his publicist, Jennifer Dunne, to warn me NOT to ask him about the engagement, but she didn't get to me in time. Of course, I didn't know anyhow. And then we were talking about how he has reacted emotionally and creatively to the Vegas economy and this happened:
Wynn: Vegas was good because I could do my thing. Las Vegas was good because I could do what I loved doing.
Friess: Right.
Wynn: It's just convenient that it was Las Vegas because that's where it was possible. Now it's Macau.
Friess: And now Las Vegas is not where it's possible?
Wynn: That's right, not at the moment.
Friess: How long do you think it will be?
Wynn: There's always tomorrow.
Friess: Do you think in your lifetime you will be building another...
Wynn: It depends on when the market comes back and how healthy I am. Right now, I'm feeling great. I skied 15,000 vertical feet today, and I'm engaged to my girlfriend and that's great.
Friess: You're engaged?
Wynn: For three days now.
Friess: Wow. I had not heard that yet, no kidding.
Wynn: It's been in all the papers, you've missed it.
Friess: Well, I haven't looked at Norm. Congratulations. When is this big wedding going to be?
Wynn: We don't, we don't have any idea.
Friess: Wow.
Wynn: I got engaged Thursday, I mean Tuesday night in Sinatra. The two of us had dinner and I...
Friess: Were there a lot of people there?
Wynn: No, just her and I. Well, there were other people in the restaurant who saw it. That's how I guess it got in the paper. I didn't make an announcement or anything.
Friess: Did you get down on your knee?
Wynn: No, I would have had to get under the table. I was just like, try this on. She had tried a dress on and it had to be altered and I said, 'Good thing you tried that on. You should always try things on to make sure they fit properly. Incidentally, try this on.'
Friess: That's how you said it, at dinner? In the beginning or the end of the meal or what?
Wynn: The beginning.
Friess: And then, you just sat there and ate dinner anyway?
Wynn: Yeah, and ordered a bottle of expensive wine.
I'm ashamed to say I didn't ask the one question any self-respecting US Weekly scribe would know: What about the ring? Sorry. Others will have to fill you in.
What's interesting, though, is comparing this account to ones other journalists have written up based on scuttlebutt. According to one account, Wynn and Andrea were in a private room, he popped the question at the end of the meal, they're plotting a spring wedding and he asked very "traditionally." Hmm.
We got back to the LVRocks.Com studio again after a couple of weeks for this episode, which includes what many emailers have said was the blowout grammatical argument of all arguments at the very end. So check that out as well as all the rest. Good stuff. 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. Or, of course, subscribe for free in iTunes or Zune. -sf
Nov. 14: Mysterawockeez! ...with Brian Dewhurst and Phil Tayag
Just as the seminal Cirque du Soleil production Mystere was celebrating an astounding 8,000 performances at Treasure Island last month, the hiphop dance crew Jabbawockeez began a residency a t the Monte Carlo. The two have more in common than you might suspect, both being starless, wholly original visual spectacles that seemed unlikely to make much of a splash in Las Vegas. Mystere, obviously, has. We’ll have to see how Jabbawockeez does, but we’ll hear from stars of both in this episode. First, Steve talks to Brian Dewhurst, who was artistic coordinator for Mystere when it opened in 1993 and in 2000 began performing as a clown in the show. Then, later, we’ll have Steve’s interview with Phil Tayag, the youngest original member of Jabbawockeez. In Banter: Chip Lightman moves on from Donny & Marie, Rita moves on from Harrah’s, MGM Resorts wants to move on from the Harmon, Steve Wynn has moved on from meat and more.
It's entirely possible Steve Wynn could kill the goose that lays his only genuine entertainment golden egg since, well, since he hired Danny Gans at the Mirage.
I don't know how I forgot this item in the earlier post of Wynnderfulness, but as you probably saw on my Twitter or Norm's column or David McKee's blog or in skywriting over Talladega, Wynn is jacking up the Garth Brooks tickets by $110 to $253, including taxes and pencil-sharpening fees and whatever else.
That's well and good, given the manic demand. And it is a wonderful show. In fact, as the ads in every Wynncore room quotes me from my Las Vegas Weekly column as having said, it's the best thing I've seen on Las Vegas stage, ever.
But Brooks had made such a big deal out of being affordable for his fans, and there is no way he can stake that claim anymore. Not to mention, on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, he's taking a shellacking for this. The idea that $500 for a couple for a show is affordable to anyone but the wealthiest or most dedicated among us in this economy is pretty ridiculous.
And here's the thing: It didn't need to be this way. For some reason, Wynn and Brooks seem insistent on sticking with the one-price-fits-all scheme. When the tickets were (arguably) undervalued at $143, that made a little bit of sense. But now, if I'm paying $253, I want to be down in front, not in the last row of the balcony. Why don't they do what every theater has done forever and have more affordable seats farther away? In fact, make the gulf bigger -- make it $300 for the first 10 rows, then lower and lower as the mom jeans and baseball cap on stage gets more and more distant from the viewer.
Differential ticket pricing is how everyone gets to see the show, Mr. Gaines. Wynn's already got the super-duper anti-ticket-scalping practice in place, right? Or do they? I mean, if I'm paying $253 a seat, are they really going to get all badass on me about buying it for my grandma or reselling it if I get sick or whatever else?
If I remember correctly, Wynn said that Garth could get out of his contract whenever he wants to. If this extravagant price sours Brooks fans as much as it seems in the blogosphere so far, he may decide that the Garth Brooks brand is being damaged and pull out. I wonder who keeps the plane.
I've been a quiet little blogger the past few days, but what better way to get back into the action than to take note of the fact that there's just been an explosion of Wynn-related fodder in the past week. Some of it and some thoughts on it:
* Steve Wynn, Eponymous. I've got a piece up on Portfolio.Com today that is another entry in their series on business people whose name is their brand.
* Steve Wynn, Vegan. John Katsilometes flexes his outstanding writing muscle and observatory skills in his Las Vegas Weekly cover on Mr. Wynn's newfound vegan zealotry. Given how many of the interviews with Wynn that I've aired involve him eating something, John's opening passage is particularly ingenious. I'd feel jealous of Kats for this scoop except that he was precisely the right reporter to do it, having spent the summer being vegan himself. Also, for the second consecutive week, the Weekly's cover was nothing short of brilliant. On a related note, Robin Leach had a follow-up scoop in getting Wynn to say he's changing his will to emphasize his animal-rights interests.
* Steve Wynn, Action Hero. There's a riveting video interview with Wynn with Prannoy Roy from the Indian TV station, NDTV. It's weird because the interviewer is a thorough suck-up who doesn't challenge a thing and is given to such pronouncements as "You singlehandedly changed Las Vegas!" But the exchange turns from banal to absolutely fascinating when Wynn gives the gritty details about his experience when his daughter, Kevyn, was kidnapped in 1993. That stuff starts at about 24:30 if you want to skip Wynn try to sell himself to the Indian government for potential casino opportunities as well as his now-standard anti-Obama dissertation. He goes on for about 15 minutes, and it is classic Steve Wynn storytelling at his best, most emotional.
* Steve Wynn, Harrah's Poacher. Of the oddest bit of news that has emerged from the Wynn world lately, it's that Elaine Wynn's nephew, Wynn Las Vegas president Andrew Pascal, is leaving the company. Odder still is that he's being replaced by Marilyn Winn Spiegel, longtime Harrah's executive most recently regional president of three Vegas properties. Both pieces of these developments are peculiar. Pascal had seemed likely to become Wynn's heir; could it be that the Wynn divorce is, in fact, creating awkwardness between her family and him? Or maybe he's gotten a signal that he won't be the heir apparent and wants to make a name for himself in some other way? The filing indicated that Pascal had no conflicts or disputes about the company's approach or mangement, so what gives then?
Meanwhile, though, with all those folks in house looking for a chance to shine -- Tim Poster, remember him? -- Wynn hires away a veteran of the company that does things exactly the opposite of how he does them. It would be like Prada hiring the head of J.C. Penney's, no?
Seriously, I have never in my entire history of talking to Steve Wynn ever heard him say a complimentary thing about the modern Harrah's operation. And on last week's earnings conference call he even went out of his way to dis Harrah's chief Gary Loveman over the all-too-familiar design to your left. Here's the passage:
And I was walking out of the Borgata [in Atlantic City], which I want to look at and there next-door was Harrah's, with a curved tower and asymmetrical roof, a very poor, homely copy of the Wynn Las Vegas. And I called up Gary Loveman, and I said, "Hey man, have you no shame?" I mean, and in the building was in the wrong proportion. In order to do what we do with our building, it has to be horizontal in its proportion or doesn't look right. And this one was verticals, which just looked like sort of a tall rectangle with point on one end. And he said, he gave me an answer, he said, "Well, duplication is a serious form of flattery." I found that relatively unsatisfactory answer. I think maybe someone should try to do their own thing instead of doing bad copies of other people's things. But we do give the boys a chance to louse up what they think we're doing.
Ouch. I realize Winn Spiegel had nothing to do with that design, but it's also not as though she has been running Caesars Palace, which is the closest thing Harrah's has to a Wynn. Huh.
Oh, there's also some news on Wynn and the whole drama with his dealers and tip-sharing. For some reason, this story has never really intrigued me that much, but if you care, check out Liz Benston's account.
Below are links to the final episodes and last week of special editions of The Strip Podcast. Right-click on any of these to save and hear at your leisure. Otherwise, click on them and they should play. Enjoy, and thanks for the wonderful years.
Aug. 27: Steve's Valedictory Speech To Lambda
Aug. 26: Steve on LVW Radio Mag Regarding Jockey Club Aug. 24: Steve on KNPR on the future of Vegas newspapers
Aug.23: Steve's KNPR Exit Interview
Aug. 22: Steve on KNPR on Eureka, NV
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