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.

Segregation - Prejudice - Racism

When I was growing up, we only had segregation, which was good because everyone likes to live with their own, and prejudice, which was bad (at least in our house) because no one should be judged by the color of their skin or their nationality.  I wouldn't like it if someone called me a honky or a cracker, therefore, I didn't call other people names they wouldn't like.  I was about three when my mother taught me "Enny, meeny, miney mo."  It was followed by catch a colored man by the toe . . . because it was not polite to call black people niggers.  They preferred to be called colored, and we were to show respect to everyone.  

When we moved into our house in the hoioty-toity Chicago suburb, there were no colored people in town, but then there were only 14,000 people and a lot of vacant lots.  Sometime when I was in junior high, I remember one of the kids telling me there were still Jim Crow laws on the books in town.  He told me "that means black people have to be off the street by sundown."  That was stupid, and if there was such a law, no one paid any attention to it.  Of course, we rarely saw a colored person in town.

Colored people were the people who got on the el at Ridgeland.  That was the street of demarcation in Oak Park.  Colored people lived east.  White people lived west.  There was no "back of the bus" on the el that I can remember.  We were all grateful to get a seat.  The most important thing my mother taught me about colored people then was that colored women were beginning to bleach their hair.  That was not good. The texture of their hair and the bleach didn't do well together.  Their hair tended to turn orange rather than blonde, and it usually looked bad with their skin tone.  They should let their hair be the way God made it grow.  (She believed that until she went gray and began a personal love affair with Nice 'n Easy).  I remember sitting at the counter at Walgreens on State Street having a nickel coke when a colored woman with bleached hair came and sat a few stools down from us (hmmm, I just thought about that.  Walgreens. Lunch counter.  Pre-Rosa Parks.)  Anyway, my mother leaned over to me and whispered, "See what I mean about colored women bleaching their hair.  Look how funny it makes her skin look."  I looked.  She was right.

I knew about segregation.  I learned about prejudice when I was about five.  My aunt and I were waiting for the bus in Chicago and a warm spring day.  It took forever for the bus to come, and she finally had to do her magic trick of lighting a cigarette and poof, the bus would appear within a minute.  But while we were waiting, a colored mother and daughter were standing off to one side.  The daughter was a year or so younger than I, and I remember thinking she was cute but had on a hat with a wide brim that put her face in a shadow.  So I walked over to her, bent the brim of her straw hat back (and probably broke it), and said, "There.  Now everyone can see your pretty face."  

My aunt called me back to her side and told me I shouldn't have done that.  I wanted to know why.  She answered, "Because we're not supposed to mix with colored people."  That was a stupid rule.  My new friend and her mother got on the bus before my aunt and I.  They went to the back of the bus, and I followed them.  My aunt called me to come sit beside her at the front of the bus.  "But I want to sit with my friend." "You can't.  You have to stay up here."  That was another stupid rule, telling me where I had to sit on the bus.   There were a lot of stupid rules, but ones about where you could sit on a bus and who you could talk to were really, really stupid.

I don't think I had any other interaction with a colored person until I went away to college when I was seventeen.  While I was filling out the application for the dorm room, there was a question about having prejudice against colored people.  It was so dumb, I had to ask my mother what they meant.  She said they were making sure there were no problems in the dorm (whoops - pre-Rosa Parks again) by putting people with a roommate they would fight with or feelings would get hurt.  She didn't imagine there would be many colored people at school.  I asked her how I should answer the question.  She said, "Why should you care?  Somebody else has nothing to do with who you are."

Interestingly, when we moved into the dorm, the only person who had said they would have trouble with a colored roommate was the person who got the only colored girl on the floor.  I remember her telling me, "I learned a lesson today.  When I complained about being in a room with a colored, they told me it was done on purpose so so I would get over my prejudice.  They're right because she's nice."

There were a bunch of us who went everywhere together that first few weeks of school, including Marcia, our new colored friend, - until the night I learned about intra-racial prejudice.   About six of us were walking into a sock hop.  We stopped right inside the door to check out the guys (what else do eighteen year old girls do at a dance).  Marcia saw a fellow from her neighborhood she didn't know was at school.  "Ah.  I like him.  But he never looked at me at home.  Now that he knows I'm smart and at college, maybe he'll talk to me."  At that same moment the guy spotted Marcia.  His voice was so hateful.  "Hey, Marcia.  What are you doing with those white people?  What did you do, some up here and become a white lover?  Get over here."  We were all shocked.  Marcia was devastated.  She looked at him and him demanding tone.  She looked at us.  In a split second the bright, happy girl we had walked in the door with shriveled before our eyes.  "I guess I'd better go over with them."  "No," we protested.  "I have to," she said and never went anywhere with us again.  She became a recluse at first, sitting in her room studying, and then started staying out until just before curfew every night.  She had been such a happy girl.  She became so unhappy, and that one incident broke up our little group and had everyone walking on tenterhooks around each other.

I'd known what segregation was since I was a kid.  In one fleeting moment I learned what prejudice was.  I didn't like it.  

But then, later that summer, came racism.  Did things got better after Martin Luther King's March on Washington?  I've been told they did.  What I know from experience is they got very different - overnight. And racism is a far dirtier word in my vocabulary than segregation or prejudice.

Killing Las Vegas

Back in the good, old days - when the Mob ran Las Vegas and there was no crime (except for a few bodies in the desert of people who wanted to be criminals) - the casino owners owned everything on their property. There were no vending machines.  No cigarette machines.  No franchise restaurants.  The entire casino operation was ONE business.  No single department had to be profitable.  The entire business had to be profitable, therefore, the restaurants could offer a ninety-nine cent breakfast or a four ninety-five prime rib.  Food promotions and give-a-ways were all part of getting people through the door to make money from gambling.  At some of the casinos you could get six dollars in nickels for four dollars in cash.  Las Vegas was different from the rest of the world, and it ran more efficiently, but sometime in the mid-eighties that began to change.  

The first casino to bring in a franchise restaurant was the Riviera when they put in a Burger King.  Burger King, of course, paid rent and that company, separate from the casino, had to be profitable on its own.  With that single change Las Vegas began a downhill slide with little possibility of recovery.  Casinos are no longer businesses with a bottom line of their own.  They are miniature cities which house dozens of different business under one roof - all of which must be profitable individually.

In a meeting a few days ago regarding why live entertainment has died in Las Vegas, someone said, "Casinos are catering to the under thirty-five crowd.  They charge a hundred dollars to get in the door and three hundred dollars for a bottle of liquor and play nothing but canned music."  We all nodded our heads in agreement and went on to discuss how to overcome the situation and bring live entertainment back.

It wasn't until the meeting had broken up, and I was home in the quiet of my little office that I thought, "Wait! The casinos aren't catering to the under thirty-five crowd.  Their lessees are."  The business of casinos is no longer entertainment and gambling.  They are landlords.  Today most restaurants in casinos are franchises.  Perhaps buffets are the exception.  Entertainment is four-walled, meaning the entertainers lease the rooms to put on their own show.  Shop space is leased.  Every individual entity within the casino has to meet their own bottom line, and casinos no longer do that with gaming.  They do it by leasing space, charging exorbitant prices for rooms, and keeping their labor costs down with ticket in-ticket out slots and automated bill breakers.

Not long ago I walked through two of the mega-resorts on the Strip at eight in the morning.  There was a total of six people playing the machines and three people at the blackjack tables at one casino.  There was a total of twelve at my next stop.  If the little five thousand square foot neighborhood casino down the street from me only had that many customers at four in the morning, they would close!  But it was worse at the mega-resorts I visited that evening.  About eight o'clock the same day, when dinner should be over and the four-walled shows hadn't yet started and people should be gambling, I did another reconnaissance mission and counted a total of one hundred and twenty-five people at machines and the live gaming tables in a casino with more than a thousand machines.  The taxes on the machines alone has to be budget-breaking.  No wonder casinos can no longer afford to pay entertainers and loss leaders on food.

Live Entertainment in Las Vegas - Taxed to Death

Taxed to Death

Las Vegas is the Entertainment Capital of the World.  Huh?!  It used to be, but the Nevada Gaming/Entertainment tax has killed live music in the casinos.  In the glory days of Las Vegas there was entertainment everywhere.  Seven days a week -twenty-four hours a day there was something going on somewhere.  I remember (centuries ago) seeing Kenny Rogers and the First Edition at the lounge at the Sands. There was no one in the lounge, but they played their heart out, and everyone in the casino listened and knew they were there.  Ten years ago there were bands that played the lounge circuit.  Monday nights at the Maxim talent night filled the entire casino.  The "showroom" at the Four Queens was actually a lounge.  The Platters played there sixteen weeks a year for ten years to a full room with people standing outside four and five deep to watch.  I was a "railbird" going from casino to casino hanging over the railing (most casinos had brass railings around the lounges) to watch amazing live performers. 

About ten years ago all of that came to an end.  I missed the music, but I didn't think much about why it had happened.  I simply assumed that the casinos had become too cheap to pay the entertainers.   Then a few months ago we called a downtown casino about doing an event in their meeting room.  The answer - not if you have live entertainment.  Why?  Because of the Live Entertainment Tax.  Live Entertainment Tax? What's that.  We found another venue.  They said . . . we'd love to have you, but NO live entertainment. We won't pay the taxes.  So we started looking into it.  It turns out the "new" gaming-entertainment tax isn't new. It was put in place ten years ago - when live entertainment disappeared in the lounges.  But it didn't just disappear, it was murdered by the State of Nevada.  For Las Vegas, a city where the economy has gone to hell in a handbasket in the last decade, this may be the dumbest tax ever.  In the good old days of Las Vegas when it was the Entertainment Capital of the World, people went to a show, and an 18%  tax was added to your bill.  That was fine.  But now . . . .

The Stratosphere charges a ticket fee to take the elevator to the top of the tower.  If they have live entertainment at the top, the elevator ticket has a live entertainment tax added.  Then there is live entertainment tax added to the food and drinks and any merchandise sold.  So how do you avoid the tax? Kill the entertainment . . . and the careers of all the entertainers in town who were here when Las Vegas was the Entertainment Capital of the World.

It's not simply that the State of Nevada shot themselves in the foot when it comes to one of the major draws for its cities that sit in the middle of nowhere, they have shot entertainers in the heart!  

Why should tourists come to Las Vegas if it's nothing more than a collection of two and a half miles of tall buildings with slot machines?  You can see tall buildings in any big city in the world - most with more architectural integrity than anything in Las Vegas!  If you want to drop your money in a slot machine, there's an Indian Reservation or River Boat within driving distance of anyplace in the country.  

People who live in Las Vegas talk about the good old days when the Mob ran the town - and ran it right. The corporate mentality of "it's about the bottom line" has killed a city where you used to be able to smell the money!   The dealers all knew your name at your favorite casino.  It was exciting.  Now it's ticket in-ticket out.  Nobody knows your name - or cares to.  Change people don't exist.  Cocktail waitresses can't make a living because no one has cash.  And the president of the country has told conventions not to come to Las Vegas driving a stake through the pocketbooks of cab drivers, hairdressers and bellmen who can no long make a decent living.

Nothing can be done about ticket in-ticket out or no one carrying cash, but there is one thing that can bring back some of the excitement and glory of Las Vegas . . . LIVE entertainment.  Get rid of the idiotic tax! Bring back the music.  Do something to make Las Vegas special, because not only is it no longer the Entertainment Capital of the World, it is no longer the Gaming Capital of the World.  That title goes to Macao - a half a world away.

The Learning Village - Las Vegas

At last something new in Las Vegas to be excited about - the Learning Village on Fremont Street, a collection of portable classrooms with a nice little wrought iron gate at the entrance.

First let me say that Las Vegas has the BEST library system anywhere. I grew up in a small town that had a fantastic library. It was in an old colonial mansion with huge white columns, a wide staircase entrance and creaky wooden floors that made you tiptoe. It sat in the middle of a lush green, city block square, park with an ice rink, a flagstone fish pond, a lapidary museum and a botanical conservatory. In Las Vegas, when people ask if I've seen the conservatory at the Bellagio at Christmas, I roll my eyes and say - so what are bunch of zinnias or chrysanthemums. In a town of 40,000 we actually did beautiful, but that's another story.

Las Vegas, despite the local mentality that says everything - including the movie theaters - has to be in a casino, has an amazing library system. While the libraries, and there are more than a dozen, may not be in the middle of a perfectly landscaped park, the buildings are architecturally interesting with theaters, an art museum at one, a children's museum at another, atriums, computer labs, meeting rooms in every size for whatever the group might be, and great staffs. There is always something going on.  However, despite the great libraries, this town, with a population of two million, has been missing a community based "learning center." We finally have one.

It's not in some old dilapidated building like Chicago or a run down, former motel like the San Fernando Valley - buildings with character even if it is on the questionable side. It's in portable classrooms, plopped on Fremont Street next to Tin Can City. - (They seriously need to do something about the exterior of that place.)

Yesterday I went to a class at the Learning Village for the first time. I assumed, by the address, that it was at Tin Can City. I wandered around and finally found someone to ask. They pointed to a collection of what appeared to be construction trailers next door. It was exciting to see that there is finally something to bring the community together, but disappointing to see that they had torn down a perfectly good, usable motel, which would have served better, in order to install shipping containers as a "mall" and trailers as the learning village. But there's no accounting for common sense. When they expanded the library in my home town, they slapped an extremely modern, glass addition onto the beautiful old colonial mansion.

But no matter how unappealing the buildings are, Las Vegas finally has the Learning Village, something I have been whining about needing for two decades. So it's common, and boring, and ugly and lacks character. At least it's here.