Phil Hagen
Editorial Director
Contact: 868-4557 • Email
He has been editor of some of Las Vegas’ most prestigious publications, including the award-winning Desert Companion, Architecture Las Vegas and Las Vegas Life, which won a Silver Medal for general excellence in 2003 from the City & Regional Magazine Association. He gave up five glamorous years of freelance editing, writing and house-sitting to launch Vegas Seven in February.
Recent Articles
Kris Kristofferson
Nov. 25, Orleans Showroom
December 1st, 2011
It took awhile to get the one-man show in gear on this Friday night. Maybe it was the onstage technical difficulties, which bothered the star and, only in turn, the audience. Maybe it was because we’re not getting any younger: Kristofferson is 75 now (that’s about 110 in Outlaw years), and the audience that filled the showroom seemed even older (hard to believe Janis Joplin hit No. 1 with the Kristofferson-penned “Me and Bobby McGee” 40 years ago).
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Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt
June 9th, 2011
It was like the two legendary troubadours were just passing through little ol’ Henderson, Nevada, and decided to put on a show for the neighborhood, if anybody’d be interested in coming. They’d brought a couple of amps and acoustic guitars. Green Valley Ranch had a ballroom and a bunch of chairs. What else was necessary?
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89Awesome
A tale of two mountain cities and the heavenly road that runs between them
May 12th, 2011
My bias for Flagstaff stems from the nostalgia of having lived there during the formative years of my adult life, in the late 1980s. But that experience also let me in on a fairly objective secret: that this mountain city in the pines is more than the base camp of northern Arizona’s wonderland (the Grand Canyon, Painted Desert, Sunset Crater, et al); it is itself a great destination.
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Why Not?
Why not turn Springs Preserve into our Central Park?
December 2nd, 2010
Sounds like a daydream, but it was part of the original mission statement. Unfortunately, an important aspect of the vision was overlooked: The Central Park seamlessly meshes with the city around it.
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Editor's Note
The Story Behind Our Storytelling
October 21st, 2010
In the fourth issue of Vegas Seven (Feb. 25), James Reza wrote an essay about the need to put on a storytelling session in Las Vegas. These curated but unscripted open-mike events are the rage in big cities on the West Coast, and Reza concluded that they’d be a great fit here, too—not only for us to keep up with the times culturally, but because these entertaining exercises might help us define our city’s “intangible sense of place.”
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Look No Further
The best superintendent for Clark County schools may be right under our noses
July 15th, 2010
Fifty thousand dollars. That’s what the Clark County School District is paying a Nebraska consulting firm to find a new superintendent. And the focus is national, so, come fall, we’re bound to wind up with a pool of outsiders who—and the firm seems confident about this—will not have any embarrassing legal or financial problems.
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More Dave Hickey
May 20th, 2010
Excerpts from Vegas Seven’s interview sessions with art and culture critic Dave Hickey, who is leaving Las Vegas for Albuquerque in August
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How Wrong Was He?
An exit interview with renegade cultural critic Dave Hickey about having to leave the city he has long championed—and what that means for us
May 20th, 2010
Libby Lumpkin tried her best to flatly sum up the end of her and husband Dave Hickey’s 20-year mission in Las Vegas: “Now we will do what we do best elsewhere.” But sometimes words intended to have no emotion carry the most. It was like a scripted response that she was trying out for the first time but couldn’t quite pull off the PR tone.
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Editor's note
The Overnight Epoch
March 18th, 2010
Moving to Las Vegas was like walking in at the end of a movie. Just as I sat down and saw the last flicker of what must have been an epic drama, the house lights went on and everybody got up and left. It was March 30, 1991, and after I unpacked, I did what all Las Vegans did that Saturday afternoon: watch the undefeated Rebels somehow lose to Duke in the NCAA semifinals. All I remember was the stunned silence drowning out the usual Vegas noise, and it spilled over into Monday, which was April Fool’s.
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