I just looked at the date of my last post.  It's been not only been a long time since I wrote anything, but years.  COVID-19 may have been indescribable for most of us, creating fear at every turn, but there have been a lot of coronaviruses coming through Las Vegas (a result of 39,000,000 tourists from around the world coming through town) - and I've caught all of them, beginning with the lovely little thing that had me go from feeling terrific to 105 degree fever in 20 minutes and ending with a lovely "stomach bug" that kept me in bed for two months barely able to eat.  Thank goodness for Pedialyte and Lay's Potato Chips.  

But enough excuses, let's get to the changes in Las Vegas in the last few years.  The Riviera is gone - a parking lot.  There's new convention space built on the Paradise Road side of the property - built during the pandemic.  It's not open to the public yet, but it looks great from the outside.

The "Blue Elephant" at the corner of Elvis Presley Way (formerly Riviera Boulevard) and The Strip is still a Blue Elephant.  It went up in a flash and stopped just as quickly.  The furniture that had been ordered is now at the Plaza downtown.  There have been a couple of owners of what was originally called the  Fountainbleu, but nothing is exiting yet.

The SLS, which had been the Sahara since the 1950's, is back to being called the Sahara.  It's considered a good decision by many old time Las Vegans.  The Lucky Dragon west of the Strip on Sahara was only open for a little over a year.  It had the greatest chandelier that hung over the small casino, but when I was there, it only one customer - me.  They filed for bankruptcy in 2018.  It was sold and is now called The Ahern.  

After years of stops and starts, the Resort World hotel/casino on the old Stardust property is about to open.  They requested local mural painters donate their time and talent to a project in the hotel.  That did not sit well with some people.  

This last year has been pretty freaky driving down the Strip and seeing only a car or two and police vehicles parked at the entrances of casinos to keep people from wandering in.  Bally's had a rat problem, which has been resolved, as a result of no one being in the building.  Those nasty critters chewed through some wires and caused a blackout.

The Golden Steer on Sahara a block west of the Strip and Ichobad's on east Flamingo are my two favorite restaurants for great food and wonderful atmosphere, especially for the older crowd.  

Best of all - Las Vegas is back.  It's not exactly the same.  Some companies have cut back on entertainment (a big mistake in my opinion), and Caesar's World thinks paying for parking is a good move  It may be - but no for locals.  But old timers in Las Vegas swore the town would come back bigger and better than ever.  I wasn't as sure.  I'm glad to say I was very wrong.  Fremont Street is shoulder to shoulder.  The casinos are busier than I've seen them in two decades.  The D and the new Circa were taking head counts when people entered and left to make sure they weren't over the limits to capacity.  And today everything is now open at 100%.

White Cross - There's a New Girl in Town

I have been going to the lunch counter at White Cross at The Strip and Oakey since the first time I came to Las Vegas.  It's always been a little dreary, but the food has been fantastic, consistent ... and expensive for the atmosphere.  But it has always been worth the price.  Many big business deals have been made at White Cross over the last forty years.  The customer base has been eclectic.  A well dressed woman on her way to work might be sitting next to a bum who wandered in off the street for a cup of coffee, and he was sitting next to a casino owner.  That has changed.  The power brokers and bums don't hang out there any more, but the food is still good, and it's worth a visit.

Mr. Papas ran the lunch counter for 37 years.  Its had three names over the last decades.  It was the Liberty Cafe for years.  Then it became Tiffany's about six years ago.  Both under Mr. Papas's regime.  And just this month there is a new owner, and it has been renamed Vicky's Diner.  It has also been cleaned up considerably since Vicky step in.  The old dessert case that was decades old is gone.  In its place a clean red wall and a couple of nice paintings.  There are new menu boards and new menus and new energy. When you come to Las Vegas this is the historic place to stop for lunch, dinner or a midnight snack.  They're open 24/7. 

White Cross Drugs and the lunch counter are historic in Las Vegas.  At one time the drug store was the only place in Las Vegas to buy cosmetics.  Showgirls got their false eyelashes and Max Factor there.  It was busy all night long, and it was the only place in the area to buy liquor.  But the drug store closed seven years ago and took with it many memories.  Some of the employees had been there since the 70's.  Two years ago it reopened as the neighborhood grocery store.  The prices are a little high except for the Boar's Head deli, which are standard prices everywhere.  The liquor choice has grown considerably from when it was the pharmacy.  And it is convenient for both the people in the neighborhood and tourists.

So stop in.  Have a hamburger at Vicky's and pick up a bottle of wine at the grocery store and become a little piece of Las Vegas history.

The Riv Does It Right

At last one place in Las Vegas is doing it right.  About a year ago I was walking through the Riviera and remembered how exciting it was the first time I was there.  Like every place in Las Vegas at the time, you could smell the money in the air.  Everyone was dressed.  There was hooting and hollering at the tables.  You could hear the money falling into the trays from the slots.  There were red dollar racks tucked between the machines.  Now, it was barely hanging on.  There were three or four people playing the machines.  The Splash Bar, which had always been busy, was gone.  There were more employees than customers.  But there was something different in the air.  There was a sense that something was happening. 

Coming in through the convention area, I noticed that the lights were on and somebody was home.  The check-in desk had been moved to the back instead of being tucked in an off-the beaten track corner.  It was about 9:30 at night.  People were checking in.  The Pick-a-Pearl kiosk that had been there for years was gone.  So were the other little stores, but that wasn't bad.  There was a sense of hope in the air.  I cornered an employee and asked what was going on.  "We have new management," he said.  "It's like the old days.  She walks through the casino and asks our opinion.  I've been here for twenty years.  For the first time I have hope that things will change."

I have made a tour through the casino about once a month since that day, and it has been interesting to watch the changes.  It's not the floor moves or that the coffee shop, always one of my favorites, is closed (I can't even find where it had been they've done such a good job with their remodeling.)  It's watching the business comes back that is fascinating.  It's amazing what can happen when management knows what's its doing.

A year ago, one of the first things I noticed, besides the lights being on, was the music.  I was too loud.  It was lousy, and the volume wasn't level as you walked the casino.  That has been fixed.  People were still checking in at ten o'clock at night.  The new bar at the Asian restaurant was busy.  So was the bar at Wicked Vicky's.  There were three conventions going on.  The machines were busy.  The tables were busy.  The energy is rising, but you can feel that it's not done yet.  It will only get better.  

There's a facebook group, Las Vegas, The Good Old Days I'm sure will love the changes.  This is the perfect place for them to get together and reminisce.  It's the one place in town that is "Vegas."

What is Las Vegas?

The answer to the question "What is Las Vegas?" is quite simple and hasn't changed in a century.  Las Vegas is a five mile strip of highway that runs through the desert that ends in "downtown" a.k.a. Fremont Street.  Of course there is no downtown any more.  The days when Fremont Street had a movie theater, furniture store, Woolworths, and Coronet, restaurants, a grocery store and more are long gone.  Downtown itself is now nothing more than a handful of barely surviving casinos with kiosks down the middle of the street under what is advertised as the worlds largest neon sign.  Until a year or so ago there were also a small collection of quaint little houses and two or three blocks of by the week motels that had been there forever.

Photo:  The unfinished Fountainbleu

Around the time of the big Real Estate boom it was announced that Zappos was moving its headquarters to downtown.  It was going to bring ten thousand new people downtown.  It sounded great - even after the Real Estate bust.  Tony Hseih of Zappos and another group decided to revitalize downtown.  I am fond of revitalization of neighborhoods.  I'm from Chicago.  Some great old, declining neighborhoods are now the "in" spots to live.  When I was a kid, my mother talked about how the neighborhood she lived in grew, declined and was reborn.  BUT Las Vegas isn't Chicago . . . or New York, or even L.A.  It is a five mile strip of highway through the middle of the desert.  That's what it was, and that's what it will be forever . . . or until the powers that be realize it can no longer survive on gambling, tourism and minimum wage jobs, especially not since you can play the slots within driving distance of any place in the country whether it be bingo parlors or a full blown casino on an Indian reservation or a river boat on the Mississippi.  Oscar Goodman, a self-admitted drinker's, dream for downtown while he was Mayor was a block of one bar after another.  Little happened except a new neon sign heralding "Fremont Street East" while he was Mayor, but Tony Hseih has stepped in and in the last year all the old souvenir shops and vacant buildings are now bars. Viva Las Vegas!

The rest of Las Vegas - what most people think of as Las Vegas at least - is the Strip.  I think there are twenty casinos now.  Huge buildings that pay tribute to destinations around the world - rather than Las Vegas itself.  Most of the Strip is torn up most of the time which means the Strip is actually about two and a half miles.  Recently, in an attempt to get people to know where they lived and why they should get a business license specific to the business's location, a county official explained it by saying, "Elvis never played Las Vegas and the song should be called Viva Clark County."   People who live here don't get it so why try to explain it to those who visit.  It makes no difference.  They are coming to see the five miles of road through the middle of the desert that ends at Fremont Street and the world's largest neon sign.  

Truth is - there ain't much here.  On the other hand, you don't have to shovel your car out from a mile high drift of sunshine either.

  

Minimum Wage in Las Vegas

The Trickle Up Theory

When the Real Estate boom was at its height, a distraught young woman, working a four day convention services job for nine dollars an hour lamented that there were no good jobs in Las Vegas.  She didn't know what she was going to do.  She had moved here, and now she couldn't find work that would allow her keep up with her bills.

Duh!  Why would anyone move without checking out the employment possibilities?  But they do and this woman did.  This is what I told her.  

All work in Las Vegas is minimum wage.  We don't have industry.  Office jobs, if you can find one, don't pay much over minimum wage.  Unless you want to work in the cleaners, the 7/11, or retail, don't come here. Casino jobs are minimum wage - or darned close to it.  People live on tips, and even that has dried up because of debit cards and ticket in-ticket out.  If we don't work for tips, we work at the bottom of the pay scale.  Can you teach?  If so, you'll make a little more.  Grocery stores have a union.  They do a little better in pay and benefits, but it's still retail.  I've known construction workers (illegal) who were working for twelve dollars an hour - less than half union scale.

Entertainers, if they can find work, are being offered less than they earned thirty years ago.  The Entertainment Capital and Gambling Capital of the World is no longer a place to live - at least if you want to make a living.  Now, if you're here for the weather, you've come to the right place.  I've never once, in twenty years, had to dig my car out of snow drift or worry about sliding on the ice.  It gets hot, but the day after it cools off you forget how hot it was and start saying to people on the street, "Isn't it a beautiful day?"

But what prompted me to write about the sad state of earning capability in Las Vegas was the fast food workers - I think it's McDonald's workers - picketing for higher wages.  They think having no education, and in many cases barely being able to speak English, entitles them to fifteen dollars an hour.  If they can get it, good for them.  But there is a "trickle up" problem with that.

I have a friend who has managed a Starbucks for years.  She feels the few people who work for her deserve to be paid a "living wage" as do all fast food workers.  She believes all CEO's make too much money.  That profit should be passed down to the people who make those profits possible.  I can't say I disagree with that sentiment.  Fifty years ago my father, a union carpenter who always worked for over scale, believed the same thing about the CEO's of GM, Ma Bell and the other major corporations,  BUT . . 

This is how "trickle up" works.  Fast food workers, most with little education, get their salary doubled.  Then the bottom of the rung college educated substitute teachers who are working for fourteen dollars an hour say, "I have a college education.  If fast food workers had their salaries doubled, mine should be doubled."  So that is done.  Now the regular teaching staff that is making twenty-five dollars an hour is ticked off because they've spent years in school getting master's degrees and probably still have school loans hanging over their heard.  They want their salary doubled, and it is.  Soon everyone's salary is doubled and what has happened?  Fast food workers are still at the bottom of the pay scale.  Everyone has gotten their salaries doubled.  The cost of everything we buy has risen in order to pay those new salaries, and the CEO's are still making obscene salaries with stock options.  

I like the dollar menu at fast food places. I like the ninety-nine cent stores.  It like the sound of "It's only a dollar."  I supposed I could get used to the dollar ninety-nine menu or the everything a dollar ninety-nine store, but why, when in the end, it's all the same.  Fast food workers won't move up the food chain with a living wage, they'll simply be paid more to stay in the same place they've always been. And in a few more years they'll want to double their salary again and everything will Trickle Up again.  

Equal Pay for Equal work

President Obama signed an executive order recently declaring that women should receive equal pay for equal work.  There's nothing wrong with that.

However, my question is . . . does this order also mean that women who are now paid more than men for doing the same job get a pay cut?!

In 2014, when men have been so emasculated by women's lib and by the laws already on the books, I sincerely doubt what they are paid has anything to do with what's in their pants.  

In regard to what women are paid - pay is about negotiation skills.  You get what you ask for - or demand.  If a woman doesn't ask, she doesn't get. Perhaps Obama's Executive Order should have been that ALL women be required to take a class in negotiation before applying for a job. 

Jubilee - Revisisted

Jubliee at Bally's

On Thursday night we went to see the revamped Jubilee show at Ballys.  Jubilee is the last surviving Showgirl show in Las Vegas. Beautiful, topless girls.  Extravagant costumes with feathers and  jewels.  The girls and Jubilee are Las Vegas history and a large part of why the city was called the entertainment Capital of the World.  The millennial version of showgirls in Las Vegas are the acrobats in the Circ shows.  Extravagant costumes but circus acts.

In Friday's issue of Neon, the entertainment section of the Las Vegas Review Journal, Mike Weatherford reviewed the show.  It's always nice to find someone, especially  a venerable entertainment reporter like Weatherford, who agrees with all of your opinions. 

Frank Gaston, Jr., hired to revamp the show, may be a good choreographer and know the current version of a rock and roll show (he worked for Beyonce), but he does not understand putting on a major production show like Jubilee.

Only the last ten or fifteen minutes and a couple of numbers during the show were reminiscent of spectacular cabaret show glory.   

Both Weatherford and the friend I saw the show with, himself a choreographer of the highest standing, objected to the opening of the show when the star slides down a pole.  They both saw it as her sliding down a Stripper pole.  I did not.  I saw it as pure circus!  The stage is dark.  The spotlight snaps on and there is the star.  She does not slide down the pole like a fireman nor does she work it like a stripper.  She comes down like a well trained "bally broad" (a circus term for the girls who work above the ring, performing a ballet on the ropes). It was, in fact, one of my favorite parts of the show.  However, it all went into the toilet almost immediately.

The opening number was beautiful, although, I do not understand topless dancers in 2014, when you can see your favorite reality start or rock and roll performer naked or near naked anywhere on the internet, in their shows or on television.  I found the topless girls shocking when I first saw the show thirty years ago.  I find them distracting today.  The show is (or should be) spectacular enough not to need such nonsense.  I'd much rather be wondering where I could a fancy, jeweled bra than wondering if the dancer had breast implants or thinking she needs them.  

The narration throughout the beginning of the show makes little sense.  While the narrator is adequate, she sounds bored or bewildered by the whole thing.  In the beginning it seems that she it talking about the show Jubilee being revamped. In the second half of the narration you begin to realize she is talking about the star and finally, way too late in the story, the star is given a name - Katherine Jubilee.  Then, suddenly, the whole narration ends, and we finally get a show.

At one point the stage is completely vacant.  The action takes place overhead where half of the people in the audience can't see it.  I watched the people in front of me stare at the stage and begin to get antsy because nothing was happening in front of them for such a long period of time.  

The lighting for many of the numbers was horrible.  You can't enjoy something you can't see.  There was a raincoat and umbrella number with three male dancers that was good - except the lighting was so poor you had to struggle to see it . . . and it was completely out of place with the rest of the show. However, the dancers were excellent as was the choreography.

There was a long number that reminded me of an average "Platters/Coasters/Marvellettes" show, a little 50's walk down memory lane that has been on the Strip for close to twenty years. It was a boring, average few minutes that had no place in show like Jubilee.  It might have worked if the performers had Broadway stage presence.  They didn't.

All in all, the revamp of Jubilee was disappointing and needs a second re-do ASAP.  I went from wondering what the disconnected narration was about to looking at a blank stage to being bored with the 50's "stuff," to the lack of energy in the revamped Titanic number except for the last dance sequence, to wondering why the umbrella number was in the show and why I couldn't see it without straining, to - at last - the excitement and costumes of the showgirls in the finale.  Spectacular, spectacular costumes.  Thankfully, Gaston left that part of the show intact because the finale alone is worth the price of the ticket.