A&E Features
From Back Beat to Front Man
With distinctive drumming and sound instincts, Ronnie Vannucci helped launch the Killers to stardom. Can he do the same with his own band?
July 7th, 2011
On a recent lunch date with Ronnie Vannucci Jr., the drummer for the greatest rock band ever to emerge from the Vegas desert, I arrive early and pick a gunfighter booth in a dark corner of an old downtown tamale joint called Doña María. The booth is private, away from the lunch-hour clank, and tape-recorder friendly. Vannucci swings open the door, spots me and immediately changes the plan. Read more »
Goodbye to a Classic
The vintage Vegas sounds of the Fontana Bar are about to go silent
June 30th, 2011
Bellagio’s Fontana Bar, which is closing July 5, is a choice setting for such people-watching. A Vegas lounge of a dying breed, it has no cover charge, a variety of house bands, a dance floor and a great Strip view. It also has a slew of notably older or delightfully dressed-up people drinking tall fruity drinks, and a swanky aura that promises something fun, or funny, is about to happen. Read more »
Art
In the Black
Painter Jerry Misko turns off his trademark vibrant style and crowdfunds his latest mural project
June 23rd, 2011
For more than a decade Jerry Misko has served as our city’s foremost visual poet, forging a language of bright color and neon that evokes the Strip at night. Indeed, no one has embraced the vivid veneer of Las Vegas—its crackling energy and buzzing garishness—with more success than Misko. Read more »
Empire of Laughs
Big Al’s Comedy Club is little Joe’s next step in conquering Vegas stand-up
June 16th, 2011
Joe Sanfelippo is not just a fan of comedy; he is a student of the business of comedy. He’s always looking for an angle, an opportunity to present something different. If there is a need, he looks to fill it. Read more »
iPhoning Home
Local professor documents Las Vegas via Hipstamatic app
May 5th, 2011
The Alicia Motel on Fremont Street isn’t much to look at with the naked eye in broad daylight. It’s just another seedy, crumbling, inexpensive respite in downtown Las Vegas. But in Dr. Gregory Robinson’s new exhibit, Vegas From the Hip, an image of the Alicia possesses the alluring qualities of a cherished family photograph kept for years in an old scrapbook—overexposed, tinged with nostalgia, mystery-flecked. Read more »
Feature
Good Bye and Good Luck
A salute to the greats who died in 2010, by the New York Observer’s star film critic
January 5th, 2011
The word goodbye takes on a somber and rueful new meaning as I begin the annual task of wrapping up an old year by waving adios to the bearded man with the scythe, and welcoming a new kid on the block with his year to grow. We lost so many famous and celebrated people in 2010 that by midsummer I already had 35 pages of handwritten names. So before we begin anew, join me in a toast to those who departed in the year just ending. “Attention must be paid,” wrote Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman, and that applies to one and all. Read more »
Stage
British Invasion
James Flames brings the unique theatrics of Underground Rebel Bingo to the Hilton
November 17th, 2010
Where else would a bingo club start but in an old church? “We found a bingo cage and the balls in the basement where we stored the booze,” says party promoter-turned-head bingo caller James Flames (real name James Gordon). He had been using a London church as a venue for his “debauched” End of the World Parties, but bingo soon took over. Read more »
Feature
Another Day on Paradise
Thoughts, observations and confessions from a low-rent apartment in the shadow of the Strip
November 3rd, 2010
It was a swath of desert a half-mile east of the Strip, wedged between a trailer park and driving range. Power lines threaded the sky. Chain-link fences and cinder-block walls (“The Ridgecrest Boyz Wuz Here!”) formed its border. It was littered with syringes, paper cups, plastic bags and glass. Read more »
Games
Unexpected Art
In a fictional Las Vegas, pixels become the palette for the end of the world and beyond
November 3rd, 2010
What a brilliant idea for a video game: Set a post-apocalypse in the desert Southwest and position Las Vegas as the only surviving city—one part Bartertown, one part … hell, it sounds like Las Vegas now. After all, we’ve been hit by something of an economic cataclysm, and we’re still standing, right? The only thing missing is the giant wall that surrounds the city, as it does in the alternate universe of the video game. Read more »
Reading
Greatest Book of All Time
Boxing behemoth re-released at a lighter weight—and a price that photography lovers and sports fans can afford
October 6th, 2010
Muhammad Ali is such a beloved cultural icon, and his achievements—both in and out of the boxing ring—are so significant, that no standard biography can do the man justice. You simply cannot tell the full story of the only boxer to win the heavyweight crown three times in a couple hundred pages with two dozen pictures neatly inserted down the middle. Cannot be done. Read more »
