Sunday Media Musings for Tourists

I caught up on some of the media I had missed this week this morning and wanted to point out a few things:

* NFL fans ought to bookmark this Review-Journal link so they know which bars to go to to watch their games with like-minded fans. I've used this in the past on the podcast as a Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week, a very useful guide that more tourists ought to use. Cool interface, too. When I say bookmark it, though, I mean it, because you'll never find it again on that ridiculous website if you don't.

* If you want to hear something truly, positively weird, listen to the first five minutes or so of KNPR host Dave Berns' "State of Nevada" interview on Wednesday morning with comic Bill Cosby. Honest to God, I have no idea what Cosby is saying and Berns' valiant efforts to make sense of it was fruitless, too. But since it's Cosby, there's something fascinating about it anyway. I'm not all the way through this interview yet, but already I know it's going to be a thrilling mess.

* I just noticed that Life Magazine's website now offers a pretty photo album of 26 Cirque du Soleil photos. They call it "Cirque du Soleil's Freakiest Acts" and, really, it's not, but the photography is terrific, colorful and fun. Downside: Only three Vegas images -- I think just one of an actual moment in one of their six-going-on-seven shows -- and none of its best, most eye-popping and "freakiest" show, Ka.

* Two Las Vegas Weekly pieces (other than my own column, natch) are of great tourist interest this week. First, Dr. Dave Schwartz of UNLV and DieisCast.Com stands up for you (and us) against the presumption that people who love Vegas and gambling are stupid. Then Richard Abowitz writes glowingly about RateVegas.Com's Hunter Hillegas' groundbreaking Vegas Mate iPhone app. Buy it at the iTunes store or win a subscription by being right and being picked in my show's biweekly trivia questions, by the way. And unlike that Monte Carlo-Hotel 32 thing we debunked recently, this is a real app.

Las Vegas - Is Boom Overextended?

Yes, that's the famous headline from this June 1955 Life Magazine issue. And the focus and topic, in these tough economic times, of my Las Vegas Weekly column. I actually wanted to provide a scan of the entire Life spread but the Weekly folks didn't do it and my printer/scanner broke for good the other day. So you'll all have to wait!

Boom Cycle
Can Las Vegas ever be overbuilt?
By STEVE FRIESS

Every now and again, if you’re around Vegas long enough, you hear about the June 20, 1955 issue of Life Magazine with a Moulin Rouge showgirl on its cover. The issue is, to many, the “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment for Vegas journalism for the question its headline asked:

“Las Vegas—Is Boom Overextended?”

It’s a punchline to many on the Strip. Six months ago, Sheldon Adelson himself referenced it in an interview in advance of the Palazzo opening in response to my question about whether the city could be overbuilt. The implication was that almost since the dawn of the destination, naysayers have wondered whether the city could continue to sustain its own urge to constantly grow.

The reason I bring this up is because, by some quirk of fate, I found a copy of that very issue for sale for a mere $25 at the Casino Chip and Gaming Tokens Collectors Club convention at the Riviera last week. I’d bought a copy before, but it was sealed in plastic and never read; the fact that I now had a shot at another copy, unwrapped, on the exact 53rd anniversary of its publication was a minor thrill I couldn’t refuse.

It also took on more resonance this year because Vegas is in one of its worst slumps ever. Occupancy and room rates are down, gambling revenues are on track to fall for only the second time since 1970, the last time being in 2002 following 9/11.

At the very same time, the frantic building continues unabated. The various CityCenter structures, the Fontainebleau, Wynn’s Encore, Echelon and a new Caesars tower all are poised to add more than 19,000 high-end rooms to the already staggering inventory in the next couple of years. Now Adelson is looking at moving the Sands Expo Center elsewhere to make room for 7,000 more rooms, Wynn wants another 5,000 in place of his golf course, Station Casinos wants 10,000 more just west of the Strip in its Viva project and someone—maybe the Plaza folks, maybe not—is going to do something big on the former Frontier property.

Which brings us back to where Las Vegas was in 1955 when that seemingly foolish headline and article were written.

Read the rest HERE