More Crippling Departures At LV Sun

The utter deconstruction of the momentarily Pulitzer-caliber reporting staff of the Las Vegas Sun continues in earnest this week with another batch of crucial departures:

* Michael Mishak, the sole Vegas-based political writer left in the stable, is off to Sacramento to the L.A. Times' California statehouse bureau. Mishak was supposed to head to Washington D.C. to take over the paper's capital bureau for Lisa Mascaro, who left last month for the Times' D.C. bureau. With Mascaro and Mishak gone as well as Patrick Coolican (off to the L.A. Weekly after the June 8 primary), that leaves just David McGrath Schwartz in Carson City and nobody in Vegas with any history to cover the critical Reid-v-Whoever race.

* Alex Richards, the paper's key computer-assisted reporting expert, is off to the Chronicle of Higher Education very soon. That means bye-bye to substantive data analysis for a while.

* Stephanie Tavares, an environment reporter, is off to law school in Vermont. Her husband, the extremely amusing Brendan Buhler, was one of the 37 who lost their jobs in the Greenspun Media's Great Purge.

* Joe Brown, formerly a culture writer for the Sun who moved to be a writer/editor at the Las Vegas Weekly amid the Great Purge, is leaving the magazine and the city.

There are two ways to look at this. First, the past year has seen the largest en masse elevation of Vegas journalists to important national publications in the shortest period of time I've ever seen. It's a testament to what the Sun has been, at least for the past several years, that these opportunities are coming to these young, hungry journalists. Now's the time to snap up some new whippersnappers with potential and do it all again, to see if lightning can strike twice.

But the timing just could not be worse. The entire political team vanishing in arguably the most important political year in Nevada history? Add education scribe Emily Richmond's departure for eight months or so to Michigan for a fellowship starting in August and they're also without their ace heading into two other critical events, the selection of a new superintendent and the fiscal bloodbath that will be the state's 2011 Legislative session.

It's an honor that we've had reporters serving this city who get to bounce on to such cool stuff, but for them all to be doing so at the same time leaves the stable depleted. The R-J's political staff does their jobs well, but what I've enjoyed in recent years about the two newspapers is that the Sun can cede some of the day-to-day to the R-J and yield some insightful yarns and sophisticated analysis. It's hard to imagine who's going to be providing that analysis now.

The show is UP: Paul Rodriguez

Stars say the darnedest things, don't they? This may be the first time "blockbuster" and Paul Rodriguez were used in the same sentence, but wow, he really unloads. Here goes. Subscribe (it's free!) in iTunes or in Zune. Click on the date below to make it play or right-click to save it and listen at your leisure. Enjoy!

May 31: Paul Rodriguez In Not Amused

When was the last time you heard a newly minted Strip headliner complain that he’s unhappy with his host resort and already flirting with defecting to competing properties? Well, fasten your seat belts because never-shy comic Paul Rodriguez is about to knock your earbuds off. Rodriguez, who started at the Tropicana last week to middling reviews, explains – get this -- what’s wrong with his own show. Rodriguez, one of Comedy Central’s top 100 comics of all time, is also owner of the Laugh Factory in California where Seinfeld star Michael Richards had his racist meltdown which, he said, was incredibly good for the comedy club’s bottom line. He also had some new details about the Gloria Estefan-themed show expected to come to the Trop.

In Banter: Bye to Dennis Hopper, Gary Coleman and Woo Restaurant, hello to Surrender/Encore Beach Club, and eff-you to downtown's Plaza.

Links to stuff discussed:

Paul Rodriguez’s website
Paul Rodriguez’s famous skateboarding son’s site
Tickets for Paul Rodriguez show at the Trop
Rodriguez’s very funny opening act, Shayla Rivera
VegasHappensHere.Com coverage of the opening of Encore Beach Club and Surrender
Norm Clarke’s piece on the Beach Club
The Twitpic of Steve’s chocolate pancakes at Society Encore
The Strip’s interview with Roger Thomas when he revealed the design of EBC/Surrender
Dennis Hopper’s obituary and his 2006 Strip appearance
Nu Sanctuary at Town Square
Changes to dining at Cathouse reported by John Katsilometes
Firefly in downtown Las Vegas
Gary Coleman’s Vegas ties on The Surreal Life
MGM Mirage iPhone apps that we can’t try because of it’s for 3GS devices
Woo Restaurant closing at Palazzo
Steve’s LVW column about how LVS screwed over Woo Restaurant
Las Vegas Advisor’s news ticker
Mike Weatherford’s C+ review of Paul Rodriguez
Rodriguez’s involvement with a water-rights fight, the Latino Water Coalition for Farmers

TOLDJA: Wynn HQ not going to Macau

Steve Wynn sat down with CNBC on Thursday for a lengthy (for TV, anyhow) chat that is available in three parts of 5, 7 and 2 minutes respectively. You can click on the image above to watch the first part and go to CNBC.Com to see the rest.

The important stuff:

* In Part 1, he backs off on the notion of moving his HQ to Macau, redefining it as "splitting his headquarters" and that he'd be spending more time there. He says he didn't mean for people to "jump to the conclusion that we're leaving Las Vegas." Now where did we get THAT ridiculous notion from? Could it be because he told CNBC in April, when asked whether he would move his HQ to China, "It is not improbable or unrealistic. ... I'm seriously considering that and I am weighing the implications of how I engineer that."

* In Part 2, he basically exposes the instinct that ended his marriage in talking about how people of his generation are desperate to recapture youth or forestall old age. "They're like me," he said of many of his customers. "They want to grow old ungracefully and, at any price, cling to immaturity." This is something to boast about? Really?

* In Part 3, he says the coming room renovations at Wynn Las Vegas that begin this summer and will last until March 2011 will cost $87 million or, interestingly, $18 per room per night occupied.

You can watch Parts 2 and 3 and read the written piece that accompanies them on CNBC's site. The article includes some stuff not heard on the video, including Wynn worrying about what happens if his cocktail waitresses gain a couple of pounds. He also tells CNBC that Encore Beach Club servers stand to make more than $100,000 a year, although there's no word whether he'll force them to share tips with the pool boys.

REISSUE: Dennis Hopper on The Strip in 06

We're still on for today's recording of The Strip at 5 pm PT at LVRocks.Com, but I wanted to toss this up because I thought it'd be timely.

Dennis Hopper, the former chairman of the (hopefully just) mothballed Cinevegas Film Festival, died today. In his memory, we're re-issuing this episode from June 2006 featuring an interview with the legendary filmmaker and actor.

It was a really good conversation, bouncing around from his roles with James Dean and on "24" to his involvement with Cinevegas and his accomplished art career. You can listen download the episode by right-clicking on this link or click here and it'll just play. It's kind of fun vintage, opening as it does with our show's original theme music and featuring chatter from Miles and me about things like his low-carb diet and what MGM Mirage needed to do for the Monte Carlo.

The interview was recorded via Skype, though, and the sound quality isn't as good as how I do it now.

The Strip and Petcast Are Live Sat

Join us from 4-5 p.m. PT for two live episodes of The Petcast followed by The Strip from 5-6 p.m. at LVRocks.Com.

For the Petcast, we've got a spokesman from the AAA talking about their 750+-page travel guide for pet owners and then the manager of the Flamingo Las Vegas' Wildlife Habitat.

The Strip features a blockbuster, comic Paul Rodriguez laying waste to his performing home of The Tropicana and its execs. Yikes. Really.

Join us and fellow listeners in the chat room and see us on webcam. Or pick up the podcast later. Your call. I gotta go take my sister to Firefly now. Bye.

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.

Maybe THIS is Grandmother McClain?

Don't worry, this is a funny one and NOT another epic post dissembling the McClain-Manendo campaign drama. Promise.

Lost in this debate, I fear, is the fact that I'm OK with McClain hammering Mark Manendo on his alleged history of sexual harassment. That's politics. I don't like gay-baiting, I don't like political consultants who pretend they didn't realize they were gay-baiting when it's part of their usual artillery and I don't like mainstream newspapers allowing one of the state's most powerful Democrats to hide behind anonymity to circulate unproved rumors. Unlike Jon Ralston, I find that the antithesis of "super solid" journalism and he would, too, if it had been done by the R-J.

Anyhow, a pretty odd mailer landed in State Senate District 7 addressing the sexual harassment matter. It's perfectly fine, fair game. Here's what the front looked like:


Uh, who IS that woman? In fact, is it really a woman at all? And what does he or she have to do with any of this?

Here's the top of the back of the mailer:


There she is again! Her identity and relevance are never explained, and as you see the headline "Mark Manendo has a long history of preying on young women" is just below her. Is this what Grandmother McClain and her crack campaign team believe is a "young woman"?

Yeah, yeah. I'm sure it's just some clip art of some scold. But she or he occupies the nearly half of the front of this postcard! And, also, you're campaigning in a liberal Democratic district so isn't it, in a political sense, a good thing that "he's just not right"?