This Week's LVW Col: The Olds Do Cosmo

Hope everyone has been having a terrific holiday week. Enjoy. -sf

Cosmo...harrumph!

The Olds do the newest Strip property

By STEVE FRIESS

As we made our way past the tri-level chandelier that is the signature of Vegas’ newest playground, two grouches provided decidedly different reactions. Terry, eyes agog, stepped back several paces to marvel. And Walt?

“All they need in this fucking thing is a fortune teller,” he harrumphed. “Now come on, Terry, I’m hungry.”

The ritual was off to a roaring start. Terry and Walt are The Olds, a couple for 35 years, locals for 30 years and, most important, doting adoptive gay grandparents to me since 1996. They’re generous, wise, nosy and maddening, devotees of the Gore Vidal era of cutting gay wit.

The Olds do this endearing thing: They eat at every new casino on the first Saturday it is open. Only this explains why I rode in a minivan with The Olds, their neighbor Frank and The Olds’ two poodles to the Cosmopolitan at 7:30 a.m. on the Jewish God’s blessed day of rest.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

Cosmo Conclusions, A Week Late

By now, everybody has said pretty much everything that's important to say about The Cosmopolitan and, in a very rare occurrence, I find myself in agreement with the consensus. As I discussed or concurred with on KNPR and on The Vegas Gang, The Cosmo:

* Is elegant and pretty in an accessible way that doesn't leave middle America feeling out of place.

* Took advantage of its peculiar, narrow footprint to enhance its urbanistic concept.

* Is what CityCenter claimed it would be -- a metropolitan-esque Vegas resort -- but is not.

* Has all sorts of nifty artistic and design details that make it worthy of exploration.

* Is going to have a murderous problem with ingress and egress because of its narrow porte cochere and garage ramps

* Will be bought by either a large casino conglomerate or someone aching to be on The Strip in a year or so.

* Has some major service problems that are likely to be worked out over time but people might want to wait a few months before booking.

You can peruse my Flickr set on the Cosmo opening here, by the way. It includes about 90 pictures and five short videos taken by my gala companion, Trevor.

Of all the assessments I've read, I find those by David McKee of Stiffs & Georges and Mike E on VegasTripping.Com to be the most insightful. McKee has a round-up post in which he points to several reviews and commentaries and chides me for not having issued my verdict in the milliseconds after Opening Night. Sorry, I was tired after talking about it on those shows and then, as of this weekend, was felled by a heckuva cold. (Good news! In a moment of unusual restraint and decency, I opted not to Tweet the image of a bunny made of phlegm in a tissue yesterday. Growth!)

On Saturday, I took The Olds to Cosmo for an upcoming Las Vegas Weekly column, so I'll hold my fire on that experience so as to not scoop the people who actually pay me to write such things.

However, this should give you some idea what The Olds thought:

I've got some fun, quirky images to share in another forthcoming post. I also will be posting to the podcast feed the audio tour provided by David Rockwell of Cosmo, along with photos from my visit to his studio in New York. So stay tuned, now that I'm back to some vague semblance of health.