Close But No Life Preserver, Lake LV

On our Feb. 22 episode of The Strip, the Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week was a list of Vegas resorts that offer free shuttles from the airport. I came up with the list while working on the hotel content of the VegasMate iPhone -- and now iPad -- app.

It was right at the time the Ritz Carlton and the Casino MonteLago announced their closures out at Lake Las Vegas. We wondered why the LLV peeps hadn't realized that it's an expensive haul from McCarran to get out there and they really ought to make it free.

Now they've come close. The Loews Las Vegas and what's left of the ghost town of a shopping arcade and the rentable condos known as MonteLago Village Resort will provide a free shuttle to the Strip three times a day furnished, evidently, by the tourism board in Henderson, Nev. It's a good idea, although you have to leave the Strip at 10:45 p.m. and that's no fun. These days, it's cheaper to just get a room on the Strip if things are going well than it would be to pay the cab fare to get all the way out to the Loews if you miss the bus.

Sorry, LLV. This only solves half of the problem. Get yourself a bus from the airport, too, and maybe you'll save yourselves from elimination. Also, the press release says to send people here, but I don't see anything obvious about the free Strip-route buses there.

By the way, to see the other hotels that do provide free airport shuttle service, visit the Tourist Tips Section of TheStripPodcast.Com. One surprise: The only downtown casino that does so is the El Cortez. Why are the rest ceding this competitive advantage?

Show is UP: The Presidential Podcast

It's quite a presidential week here in Vegas, so the podcast reflects that with a fascinating chat with Bellagio pianist David Osborne as well as a brief, strangely contentious one with our old pal George Maloof. Fun stuff. 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.

Feb. 15: A Presidential Podcast

What’s it like to host the president in your home? What’s it like to play the piano for the president at his home, that big white mansion in Washington D.C.? We’re about to answer both those questions, Vegas style. Palms owner George Maloof explains how he came to know President Obama and describes the hoopla around hosting him Thursday night for a Democratic fundraiser. Then Bellagio’s pianist David Osbourne talks about performing for six U.S. presidents including the last three at the White House. And while presidents are interesting, Osbourne’s story about the last vice president, Dick Cheney, is particularly bizarre.

In Banter: Harrah's gets P-Ho, Vegas gets Obama love, CityCenter does NOT get Obama love, another Lake Las Vegas closure, Chinese New Year is fun, the Viva Elvis party was not fun and why red ketchup is the new blue tape.

Links to stuff discussed:

Guest host Amy and Bay’s podcast, Grits to Glitz
David Osborne’s website where you can buy his music
YouTube channel for David Osborne work
Planet Hollywood is now part of Harrah's
The R-J’s piece on Robert Earl’s future
A photo of the psychadelic-looking Beijing Noodle No. 9
Articles about Casino Montelago, Hawaiian Tropic, Steve Wyrick and Krave problems
Greenspun v Station Casinos, per the Wall Street Journal
VegasMate, the iPhone app, from RateVegas.Com
Steve’s column about his VegasMate experience
The AP on the proposed McCarran liquor store plan
Steve’s AOLNews.Com and blog post on Chinese New Year
A summary of Viva Elvis reviews and Steve’s review
The classic shot of Gene Simmons pawing Amy’s hair
Steve’s AOLNews.Com piece on Obama’s visit and VegasHappensHere.Com posts on the Bellagio suite and Murren’s hopes

Lake Las Vegas Could Be Drained!!!

It's not funny. I know it's not funny. In fact, it's terrific journalism. John G. Edwards and Alan Maimon have a front-page piece in the Review-Journal today based on a passage in the bankruptcy filings for Lake Las Vegas that indicates that the 320-acre lake could disappear, drained into the wash and sent back to its rightful home in the Colorado River, should emergency repairs on a 7-foot pipe not occur forthwith.

And here, friends, is the greatest understatement in Vegas history, per that filing urging the fix:

Drainage "would be disastrous for the project, because it would be virtually impossible to obtain the amount of water necessary to re-fill the lake, and the project would lose a considerable amount of its appeal were it built around a dry lake bed."

Bravo to the cheeky lawyer who clearly had a swell time writing that! But it gets even better when Henderson's public works chief tries some fruitless spin: "I don't see a ghost town at Lake Las Vegas. It's too nice." Yeah, because millionaires like Celine Dion want to live around a big, smelly pit full of stuff that reckless boaters have been pitching overboard for years.

Oh dear. Read all about it here.

The Strip is LIVE tonight at 7 p.m. PT

The Strip is LIVE tonight with British comic actor and famed transvestite Eddie Izzard, who performs his stand-up at the Palms' The Pearl this weekend. We'll also be chatting about Steve's night at Diablo's and Noir, Wynn's big splash and Lake Las Vegas' woes and we'll have some odd little audio clips to share from a couple of other podcasts.

Come into the chatroom at LVRocks.Com at 7 p.m. or wait until later in the week for the podcast version.

P.S. We lied by accident last week. The Steve Lawrence interview will air next week. So sorry.

Lake Las Vegas Goes Bust

Following on my LVW column's theme of questioning the idea of having anti-Vegas vacations in Vegas at such places as the Trump, there's news tonight that Lake Las Vegas Resort has declared for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

This actually isn't really so much a tourism story as a real estate one. They just haven't sold enough of the homes and, in this market, they likely won't for the near future. This press release linked here indicates that the region's owners took control in January after the prior owners defaulted on $540 million in loans last year. The new operators insist that this will "reinvigorate Lake Las Vegas as a premier master-planned community." Okey dokey.

I've always been baffled by the resorts out there and why anyone would come to Vegas for a lakefront vacation. Montelago Village, the shopping district, has been utterly empty whenever we've been down there. I had taken to referring to the Starbucks down there as the lowest-grossing Starbucks in North America and have been waiting to see if it'll be one of the 600 closed in the coffee giant's restructuring. We shall see...