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Have you taken a photo that captures

the spirit of Las Vegas this week?

Share it with us at VegasSeven.com/Moment.

Nothing to See Here ...Photo by Jon Estrada

There’s nothing quite like the buildup to a grand opening on

Las Vegas Boulevard. And more than three years after it was frst announced that the venerable Sahara Hotel & Casino—a fxture on the north end of the Strip for 59 years—would be stripped down and remade into SLS Las Vegas, it’s safe to say that thousands across the Valley are anxious to get their frst glimpse of the $415 million resort, which opens to the public at midnight as August 22 turns into August 23. It’s also safe to say that this gentleman, who lives nearby, isn’t among the anxious to visit the new kid on the block. Hey, sometimes tending to life’s everyday chores—like transporting the groceries home sans motor vehicle—get in the way of extending a welcoming hand to the new neighbor.

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News, gossip, sports betting and The Code to unlocking deals at SLS Las Vegas

“When my son was in kindergarten, he was

certain that clouds were made of wool. Time

has brought him science, but the wonder hasn’t

receded.” BREAKING STUFF & MAKING STUFF {PAGE 16}

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BEFORE WE START, let’s fre up The Jeffersons theme song, because we’re movin’ on up (movin’ on up!). See, we might have rapid growth, Michelin-starred restaurants and a world-class performing arts center, but we were never really close to being a capital-C City until recently. In the span of a couple of weeks this summer, it was announced we’d get an Ikea in the southwest and a White Castle at Casino Royale. (Not together … even if you could build a sturdy bookcase out of White Castle sliders.) All the other City stuff, like population density and a strip-mall-per-person ratio below 1-to-1, doesn’t even matter anymore.

Actually, it’s been a good run these last few years for products and busi-nesses popular in the rest of the country fnally dialing up directions to the desert, including the likes of Steak ’n Shake and Dunkin’ Donuts. (Which made a thousand blue-collar East Coast hearts melt at once with the sublime joy that comes from knowing there’s a place to get coffee other than a shop too busy selling Jakob Dylan CDs to notice its brew tastes like the runoff from a dump-ster fre.)

How will we know when we’ve truly arrived as a metropolis, though? When we, in the spirit of both civic pride and Pokémon, collect ’em all:

CHICK-FIL-A: The favorite restaurant of chicken enthusiasts, Mike Hucka-bee and—just gonna guess here—most of the members of Skillet is an obvious place to start. But if this Southern staple known as much for its right-wing views as its addictive poultry had trouble coming to terms with Chicago in the wake of their gay marriage controversy, we can’t imagine they’re going to leap at the chance to open on Industrial be-tween two strip clubs, a sex-toy shop

and what appears to be a used-con-dom recycling facility. Good thing St. George is a short drive away.

CRATE & BARREL: Being the hipper version of Pottery Barn is like being the funniest guy in the Blue Valen-tine cast. But people who look down at Target and up at Gwyneth Pal-trow’s online magazine GOOP need someplace to shop, too. They just have to go to Southern California to do it right now.

FRIENDLY’S: This Northeast favorite is a glorifed diner, sure. But it’s a glorifed diner that produces its own line of ice cream and offers up Reese’s sundaes that are big enough

for roughly two average 6-year-olds to climb inside and eat their way out. You just have to travel to about Dayton, Ohio, to get one. (Friendly’s also offers something called a Frib-ble. Go ahead, just say it out loud. “Fribble.” You’re booking tickets to Dayton right now, aren’t you?)

EATALY: On a more upscale tip, Mario Batali’s Eataly—it’s like an Amazon warehouse for obscure packaged and fresh Italian food—has been rumored to come here for a few years. Rumors Batali himself started by musing about bringing this glorious temple of pasta to the Venetian. Right now the only U.S. locations are in mid-town Manhattan and Chicago, but

expansion plans are under way for Washington, D.C., Philly, L.A., São Paulo, Moscow and London. Mos-cow? Isn’t Russia way too busy invad-ing former states to appreciate the sublime beauty of an olive-oil aisle bigger than your average Walgreens?

WAFFLE HOUSE: If Eataly had a meth-addled cousin that it pretends not to know when they see each other at the bar, it’s Waffe House. The breakfast might be subpar com-pared with a million other places around town, but putting one of these bad boys next to Dino’s would be the cheapest entertainment the rest of us ever got. Corporate is making a huge mistake coming only as close as Phoenix.

HOWARD JOHNSON’S (MAD MEN 1966

VERSION): Time and the inevitable march of culture may have reduced the once-mighty HoJo’s empire to a mere three restaurants, but if they could time-travel a mid-mod orange-roof titan to center Strip and drop Jessica Páre in a booth, we promise to load up on orange sherbet seven days a week. HoJo’s isn’t a destina-tion; it’s on the way to someplace. Someplace like where corporate chef Jacques Pépin once noted they served up “the best Manhattan cocktail in town—it came with a full pitcher for reflls alongside the initial flled glass.” If that didn’t make you weep for being born in the wrong decade, you need to go see if you can fnd where you left your soul. At least you can still make a pilgrimage to Lake George, New York, where one of the remaining HoJo’s celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

MEGA LO MART: Hardware, sundries and Chuck Mangione as spokes-man? When are they going to ex-pand out of Arlen, Texas?

We’ve Arrived! … Well, AlmostWith Ikea and White Castle on their way, we’re fnally starting to resemble a real ‘City.’

If only a few other retail favorites would follow.

By Jason Scavone

By bob whitby

THURSDAY, AUG. 21: Another sign that

summer is coming to a close:

the year’s final Movies in the

Square. Town Square’s free

offering winds down with a

showing of Disney’s Planes

at sundown. Be there or wait

until the series returns in 2015.

MyTownSquareLasVegas.com.

FRIDAY, AUG. 22: Late August means

shopping for school supplies. But a lot of

families in Southern Nevada don’t have the means to buy the

necessary items. Communities in Schools’ annual Fill the

Bus drive helps kids get what they need to be ready for the

bell. The bus will be at Sam’s Club, 7100 Arroyo Crossing

Pkwy., from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. today, and at the Sam’s Club at

8080 W. Tropical Pkwy. from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow.

SATURDAY, AUG. 23: Here’s a brand-new event that should have

legs: the Las Vegas Dash n’ Splash, a 5k run and “epic”

water fight. In a nutshell, runners are armed with squirt guns

filled with colored water. They navigate a course and blast

one another. Chaos ensues. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Craig Ranch

Regional Park. Runners: $25; Spectators: $7 (includes water

shooters and water balloons); LVDashnSplash.com.

SUNDAY, AUG. 24: Did Jesus have to go to

summer school? What constitutes

an appropriate vacation for good

Catholics? The answer to these

and other burning questions

will be provided at Sister’s

Summer School Catechism,

a lighthearted play based on

one nun’s unhappy summer

spent babysitting students who

weren’t paying attention in Catholic

school. The final performances at The

Smith Center are at 3 and 7 p.m. today,

following shows Friday and Saturday. Tickets:

$35-$40; TheSmithCenter.com.

MONDAY, AUG. 25: That strange wind whooshing through the

Valley today? It’s a collective sigh of relief from all the par-

ents who survived summer and are oh-so-happy that today is

the first day of classes for the Clark County School District.

That extra traffic on the road? Same thing. Drive safely.

TUESDAY, AUG. 26: For those about to eat, we salute you—

because you’re going to spend Aug. 22-28 dining at some of

Las Vegas’ best eateries in support of Three Square. Time

once again for Restaurant Week, the embarrassment of prix-

fixe menu riches that both fills your stomach and supports

the area’s largest food bank. You know the drill: Eat at one

of the dozens of participating restaurants,

and a portion of your tab goes to Three

Square. HelpOutDineOutLV.org.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 27: Another sign

summer is coming to a close:

Today is the Las Vegas 51s’

final regular-season home

game. If you haven’t caught

a baseball game at Cashman

Field this year, you can right that

wrong at 7:05 p.m. Tickets: $10-

$25; LV51.com.DE

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[ TECH ]

WHAT TO MAKE OF STARTUP SHUTDOWNS?In the startup game, failure is

not questioned; it’s expected. In

fact, according to The Wall Street

Journal, less than 20 percent

of startups succeed in giving

substantial returns to investors

(and industry insiders will tell

you it usually takes at least three

years before those profits start

rolling in, and sometimes, as

many as seven).

Recently, two of Downtown’s

notable startups joined the

unlucky 80-plus percent: Ticket

Cake, the online ticketing and

marketing platform, closed its

doors in July; and Factorli, a

fledgling manufacturing company

that planned to do small runs of

products for hardware startups,

announced this month it was

ceasing operations.

Ticket Cake began in Utah

in 2011, when founders Joe

Henriod, Dylan Jorgensen and

Jacqueline Jensen became

the main ticket supplier of the

Sundance Film Festival. In 2012,

they moved the company to Las

Vegas and were in the first group

of startups to get seed money

from the then-new Vegas Tech

Fund, the Downtown Project’s

investment arm. Despite having

320 event organizers who

used the platform and despite

processing more than $1.7 million

in ticket sales, the founders

closed up shop three years after

launching. Jensen didn’t wish to

elaborate on the closure, but she

did tell Inc.com in a video profile

earlier this year that they needed

to focus on raising more capital

and the cofounders were still

having to justify small expenses.

Unlike Ticket Cake, Factorli

was only a few months old when

news came of its demise. After

receiving $10 million in funding

from Tony Hsieh in May, energetic

CEO Jen McCabe unexpectedly

parted ways with the startup

and also left her position at the

Vegas Tech Fund. (Downtown

Project spokeswoman Kim

Schaefer says the $10 million will

be redistributed to Downtown,

although she didn’t provide

details as to where the money

will go.)

While the Ticket Cake team

is now resettling into different

jobs Downtown, it’s unknown

what McCabe’s next steps are.

(Attempts to reach her for

comment were unsuccessful).

Meanwhile, this big question

looms: What do the failings of two

Downtown startups that seemed

most likely to survive mean for

the Vegas tech community?

Before assuming the worst,

consider the paper Skill vs. Luck

in Entrepreneurship and Venture

Capital, authored by Harvard

students in 2006. It examined

evidence gathered from serial

entrepreneurs and found that first-

timers only have an 18 percent

chance of succeeding, but those

who fail and try a new venture

have a 20 percent success rate.

While 2 percent may not seem

like much, it suggests failure

actually increases the probability

for future success. – Nicole Ely

Did Jesus have to go to

school. The final performances at The

Smith Center are at 3 and 7 p.m. today,

THE SUN IS SETTING on your California getaway, and you’re ready to trek home to Las Vegas. You leave behind the hell that is Los Angeles traffc and make it to Interstate 15. There’s just one major hurdle left between you and the open road: the Devore interchange.

Before Interstate 215 merges into I-15, at the base of the Cajon Pass, traffc comes to a standstill, with drivers limping for an hour along a stretch of road that under normal conditions should take 10 minutes to navigate.

Several elements are at work here slowing your homecoming. Some 1 million drivers use the interchange each week, commuting from L.A. jobs to cheaper desert housing, heading for Vegas or the Colorado River, and hauling goods cross-country from ocean ports. In fact, 21,000 semitrailers traverse the route daily, slowing to a crawl as the steep grade of the Cajon Pass kicks in. Making matters worse, the freeway also loses a lane, creating what the

Federal Highway Administration has called one of the nation’s worst bottlenecks.

The good news: Work is under way to improve the congestion. The bad news: It’s getting worse before it gets better.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) broke ground a year ago on a $324 million upgrade that will take I-15 from three lanes to four, adding a lane in each direction starting from two miles south of the interchange to one mile north. Crews will also add a 2-mile truck bypass lane off to the right of the interchange to improve fow and safety, Caltrans spokeswoman Joy Sepulveda says. In the meantime, don’t expect to break any personal Southern California-to-Vegas speed records for the next couple of years, as work is slated to continue through mid-2016. One thing you can do before your next trip: Check conditions and sign up for email alerts at DevoreInterchangeProject.com.

The Long Road Home

California road project slowing

I-15 commuters to Vegas

By Brooke Edwards Staggs

shopping for school supplies. But a lot of

and a portion of your tab goes to Three and a portion of your tab goes to Three

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WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THE SKY THIS time of year?

Gargoyles, sheep, mushroom clouds, bunnies, maps of Africa, lost schooners, melting dollops of vanilla ice cream, the profle of George Washington, tacos. Tacos? Yes, tacos.

Come monsoon season over Vegas, the mind gets its annual Rorschach writ in vapor. When my son was in kindergarten, he was certain that clouds were made of wool. Time has brought him science, but the wonder hasn’t receded.

Last year, he built his seventh-grade science project around his photographs of the sky before and during the Mount Charles-ton fre. The dust and smoke had risen from the peaks, joined the sky-bound water and hov-ered rust-orange over the city: The schooner sails had taken on fame; George Washington was, once again, a redhead. One could not tell where the fre’s destruction ended and the sky’s creation began.

But even the purest of skies builds its clouds around the swept-up particles of our dry earth. Up there just wouldn’t be the same without down here. It needs our dust; it’s hard to say whether it’s indifferent to our dreams.

“The Old Testament God re-peatedly says he wants praise,” the writer John Updike said.

“And I translate that to mean that the world wants describ-ing.” Or perhaps it simply wants observing—the upward glance, almost furtive in a world of phone-watchers, the calm effort required to see and smell the sky. (The scent of cloud-cover is its own genre, calling out for the wine taster’s descriptive powers.) This is the season of the plausibly implausible: The rolling clouds give one the sense that the Red Sea could, indeed, be split, and that Moses, or at least Heston, trod desert soil not unlike our own.

This, of course, is all very old-fashioned of me. I am writing to a mental soundtrack of Segovia and Leonard Cohen and the rattle of wind on palm fronds. Which brings me, as things will, to texting, which Updike never linked with God, but which can be a handy way to get a friend to look up. Here, with

apologies to everyone involved, is a snippet of text dialogue be-tween my 13-year-old son and a friend. Both of them live in Henderson, a mile or two away from one another:

Him: Did you see this cloud?Her: What cloud? Does it say “sent” on ur phone?Him: The really dark one. Now it’s right above me.Her: Wait, did you send a pic?Him: No. Look outside.Her: Look outside where?Him: Go outside. And look at that cloud.Her: Where are you?Him: At my house.Her: Then how am I supposed to see a cloud that’s over there?

The happy end to this story is that she did, indeed, go outside, see the cloud, and agree that, yeah, it was a cloudy day. By that time, my son had sent her a video of the cloud. Later, she watched it and at last shared my son’s astonishment:

“Wow, that cloud IS huge. In the video.”

As I was saying, we live in a time of wonders.

Former Vegas Seven editor Greg Blake Miller is the director of Olympian Creative Coaching & Consulting—personal training for the creative mind. Visit OlympianCreative.com.

Look, Up in the Sky! It’s a …

WHAT’S THE PROPER WAY

TO SAY ‘HUNTRIDGE’?

Who knew this was a problem? Though given recent efforts to revitalize the Streamline Mod-erne theater (which opened at Charleston Bou-levard and Maryland Parkway in 1944), I guess it was bound to come up. As someone who waited with my grandmother in lines stretching about 100 feet to the street to score a seat for first-run Disney movies at the Huntridge, and who then enjoyed dozens of concerts during the theater’s second (perhaps third?) life, I’m one of those who embraces the soft, rolling pronunciation of “Hun-tridge,” rather than the hard-syllable “Hunt-ridge” I’ve occasionally heard. Still, that’s not as cringe-inducing as

“Ne-VAW-duh” ... though residents of the Hunt-ridge neighborhood may disagree.

IS THERE A FOOD OR CUISINE

INDIGENOUS TO LAS VEGAS?

I’d vote for steak and eggs. Or, in the words of the late G.L. Vitto, “The Great Boo-fay!”

Seriously, though, “eating local” may be all the rage, but our city is too young, dry and (for most of its history) remote for anything to develop like the Cajun/Creole scene in New Or-leans. I suppose Anasazi-based crops such as corn and squash—both of which my grandmoth-er grew in her Las Vegas backyard—qualify, but unlike Northern Nevada, which has a rich history of Basque immigrants who transplanted their shepherding culture there, Las Vegas has almost always been an import city.

To wit: Flights full of fresh seafood touch down daily in our desert (shrimp cocktail, baby!). But we simply don’t yet have an abun-dant selection of local sources for farm-to-table goods. Most of the foodstuffs found at our farmers markets are more accurately “regional.” While new ideas (hydroponic indoor farms?) are bandied about for growing more here, for now, what few sources we have typically lose ground to development (Gilcrease Orchard is a prime example).

Witness Mario Batali’s heralded Bet on the Farm market at Springs Preserve (reopening December 1). The website clearly states that items are “limited to what’s in season, locally grown in the Las Vegas areas or trucked in from SoCal.” Sure, truly local items (honey, eggs) are offered, but the strongest advantage Bet on the Farm has over your supermarket is that its produce is not flown in from South America. Meanwhile, many of my neighbors have trees that produce copious amounts of lemons, pomegranates and figs … Now there’s a missed opportunity!

Questions? AskaNative@VegasSeven.com.

J A M E S P . R E Z A

Breaking Stuff & Making Stuff

Mad musings on the creative life

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The Swan Songs of SummerHow best to say goodbye to summer? With DJ Jazzy Jef, the Fresh Prince, the brothers Jonas and, of course, little people

IT’S HAPPENING, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT or not. Summer has one thin week-end left on the calendar before the big, offcial Labor Day blowout. Sure, the pools will stay open for another month or so, and the tem-perature won’t dip in any mean-ingful way for at least another three weeks. But the end is nigh.

Which means you’re too late to start up a summer romance. You missed your chance to come up with a summer jam (guess you have to settle for Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”—just like the Killers did when they covered it at the V Festival in England). And there is virtually no chance you can get into camp. (Be-sides, you’re 35—you look ridicu-lous in a neckerchief.)

But there’s still a little air left in the beach ball. If summer is staring down the barrel, it could do worse than getting a Will Smith send-off, dipping back to the time when summer jams were actual summer jams. No, really, because when Smith dropped in on DJ Jazzy Jeff for a surprise appearance at Ditch Friday at the Palms Pool on August 15, he ripped through “Summer-time” (and ripped off his shirt).

After that, Smith got into the Fresh Prince theme, and rocked his “Apache” dance (sans Alfonso Ribeiro), which is cool and all. But where’s the love for Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime?” We thought this was supposed to be on-theme.

Admit it: You were always jealous of your friends who had summer birthdays. They never had to go to school and bring enough cupcakes for the class. Just pure pool parties and water-balloon fghts and no responsibility as far as the eye can see. Joe Jonas got to relive that fne tradition August 15 at Beacher’s Madhouse, where the club hon-ored Jonas the best way it knew how: with little people. Little Spin-ner, the world’s smallest stripper, danced for Jonas—as did a mini Miley Cyrus stripper. Then there was a mini Jonas Brothers concert

for Joe and Nick. That’s when they knew they made it. The following night, Joe, Nick, Nick’s girlfriend Olivia Cuplo and a crew of about 30 took over XS, where Joe hung out with a blonde in a black bustier. She was not, for the record, mini.

A new report suggests that Americans are drinking bourbon at a rate not seen since the 1970s. (We’ve never been more proud of you, America.) A big slug of whiskey might not be the ideal summertime cocktail (which we know, empiri-cally, is gin-based), but the brown stuff is important to the exploding business of craft cocktails. And one of the ground-zero bars for the movement, Chicago’s Aviary (from chef Grant Achatz and Nick Ko-konas, the team behind foodie hajj destination Alinea), is rumored to be coming to Mandarin Oriental, in a rebrand of an existing bar there. Right now Craig Schoettler is the property mixologist at Aria, but be-fore he came to the desert, he was stirring it up at—wait for it—Aviary. By the time it arrives, though, you might have to trade your summer gin for cool-weather bourbon. Oh no. Not that. Anything but that.

LOOKING FOR A BARGAINAT SLS? HERE’S THE CODE

Last year I was a panelist at a table-

games conference, and Sam Nazarian, the

top man at SBE Entertainment, which owns

SLS Las Vegas, was the lunchtime speaker.

During his talk, Nazarian made multiple ref-

erences to the locals market and SLS’ plans

to appeal to that market with “value.”

Really? How does the coolest, hippest new

joint on the Strip do that? After all, SBE is

a company known for its posh Los Angeles

nightclubs and high-end restaurants. SBE

already has a presence in Las Vegas with

Hyde Bellagio, which is a happening place

… with $9 beers. So when I had a chance to

talk with SLS executives, I asked how they

intended to make the nighttime party culture

and the value stance mesh.

The answer was that SLS has done its

homework and realizes that a casino in

Vegas is vastly different from a nightclub

in L.A. Hence, they’ve set “intelligent price

points” for the restaurants and bars relative

to other Strip properties. I won’t know what

that really means till the doors open (at mid-

night the evening of August 22) and I can

make some straight-up comparisons, but the

restaurant plan sounds enticing. One thing I

can confirm right now if you’re looking for

an immediate deal: Get “The Code.”

The Code is the name of the players club,

and it’s clear that SLS wants to leverage the

club for its locals marketing campaign. An

area of the SLS website labeled “Serious

Local Specials” states that customers with

a Code card and local ID will have access to

special happy hours with $5 drinks from 5-7

p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and there

are other benefits for “dining and staying.”

Specific details weren’t clear, but I gathered

that the buffet, which is being touted as a

gourmet-style effort, is a likely target for

discounting to local Code members.

It’s all a little cryptic right now, but here’s

the reality: New casinos almost always open

loose. Sometimes they stay that way. Usu-

ally they pull back. But they almost never get

looser. Hence, the smart play is to sign up for

the club early and see what comes your way.

While we’re on the topic of opening loose,

SLS also says that it will offer a more

player-friendly gambling product (includ-

ing better video poker pay tables) than Las

Vegas Strip norms. My experience has been

that a casino rarely says this then doesn’t

follow through, especially during the opening

honeymoon period. Whether or not SLS lives

up to its promise will be obvious from the

start (and I’ll investigate and tell you about it

here), but this is potentially more good news

for players. Just make sure you obtain The

Code before you play.

Anthony Curtis is the publisher of the Las

Vegas Advisor and LasVegasAdvisor.com.

J A S O N S C A V O N E

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BETTING

LIKE MOST MIDDLE-AGED MEN, the list of people who annoy me grows longer by the hour—and hovering near the top are people who feel compelled to re-veal to others their list of people who annoy them … usually in 140-charac-ter increments (#WhoGivesaF***).

So I’ll spare you the specifcs of my ir-ritation list, but for one exception: I’ve reached the zero-tolerance zone for people who offer up absurdly obvious advice. You know, you really should eat less and exercise more. No shit, Sherlock?

This is why I’ll never waste your time with inane tips, like, oh, I don’t know, “Don’t overreact to NFL preseason re-sults.” Because you already know that, aside from key injuries, nothing that happens in August means diddly once the real games kick off … What’s that, Cowboys fans? Your defense—which was historically horrifc in 2013 (al-lowing 415 yards and 27 points per game)—has surrendered 726 yards and 64 points in two preseason games? And that defense, which lost its top two play-ers from last year to free agency (end DeMarcus Ware) and a season-ending injury (linebacker Sean Lee), faces a slew of talented QBs in Colin Kaeper-nick, Russell Wilson, Jay Cutler and An-drew Luck, plus two games each against Eli Manning (who owns the Cowboys), a healthy Robert Griffn III, and Nick Foles and the explosive Eagles offense?

OK, maybe not everything that hap-pens in the preseason is meaningless. With that, let’s resume my NFL season win-total recommendations with the

NFC East and NFC North, using the best available numbers/odds from MGM Re-sorts, William Hill, Station Casinos and Westgate Las Vegas (formerly LVH) …

NFC EAST

Eagles (9½ wins): I can only call ’em as I see ’em, and with respect to the 2013 Eagles, I saw ’em with Stevie Won-der’s vision: Not only was I sure Phil-adelphia (10-6) would stay “under” its 7½-win total, I tabbed it my favorite play for this division. Suffce to say, I’ve come around on head coach Chip Kelly’s fast-break offense—just not all the way around. See, that of-fense faced one crappy defense after another last year. Not so in 2014, as

seven of Philadelphia’s opponents ranked in the top eight in total de-fense in 2013. Beyond that, I’m not convinced that Kelly has fxed his own leaky defense, which ranked 29th last year. Under (-125, MGM)

Cowboys (8): As if the aforementioned defensive woes and brutal schedule weren’t enough, Dallas has a quarter-back (Tony Romo) coming off back surgery, a head coach (Jason Garrett) who makes Norv Turner look com-petent and an owner (Jerry Jones) dealing with a philandering scandal. Oh, did I mention the last four Cow-boys teams, with far fewer question marks, failed to produce a winning season? No wonder every wise guy in town has a Cowboys “under” ticket in his pocket. Under (-200, MGM)

Giants (7½): Glass half-empty: New York started 0-6 last season and didn’t notch its frst victory until October 21. Glass half-full: Tom Coughlin’s troops closed on a 7-3 run, allowing more than 21 points just three times. The 7-9 fnish marked the frst time since 2004—Coughlin’s frst season—that the Giants failed to at least hit .500. While you can argue New York didn’t upgrade signifcantly in the offsea-son, I’m still willing to bet it will avoid a second straight sub-.500 season—but I wouldn’t even wager the water bill on this one. Over (-155, Station)

Redskins (7½): On one hand, Wash-ington earned every bit of last year’s 3-13 record: It gave up 478 points—only Minnesota (480) surrendered

more—and it got outscored by an average of nine points per game. Dig deeper, though, and you’ll see the Redskins ranked ninth in total offense and 18th in total defense. Should we expect Washington to re-bound to the 10-6 record it posted in RG III’s rookie season? Probably not. But with a schedule that includes the Texans, Jaguars, Titans, Vikings, Bucs and Cowboys (twice), getting to .500 is realistic. Over (Even, Westgate)

NFC NORTH

Packers (10½): The answer: Aaron Rod-gers and Kate Upton. The question: Who are two celebrities worth every dollar they’re paid? Upton goes with-out saying. As for Rodgers: Since 2009, the Packers are 52-19 when he starts under center in the regular season; 3-5-1 when he’s doesn’t. This year, Green Bay should encase Rodgers in bubble wrap, as its schedule includes the Bears (twice), Panthers, Eagles, Patriots and Falcons, plus trips to Se-attle, Miami, New Orleans and Buffalo (in mid-December). Translation: The Packers’ margin for error is slimmer than Upton’s waist. Under (-125, Station)

Bears (8½): Chicago has won at least seven games for nine straight years (hitting 9-7 or better fve times), which is probably why Bears “over” has been hit hard this summer. Two additional reasons: Chicago’s of-fense will be even more lethal than last year (only Denver scored more points than the Bears did), and the defense (ranked 30th in points and yards allowed) can’t possibly be worse. Over (-145, Westgate)

Lions (8): Explosive passing attack, solid running game, talented defensive line, improved offensive line (only Peyton Manning was sacked less than Matt Stafford in 2013)—really, if the pass de-fense is just mediocre, Detroit (7-9 last season) should challenge for the play-offs. … Come again? The Lions hired Jim “Somebody Check My Pulse” Caldwell to be their head coach? I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Over (-160, MGM)

Vikings (6): Minnesota’s quarterback depth chart reads Matt Cassel, Chris-tian Ponder and rookie Teddy Bridge-water. And that’s not even the scariest part. This is: 13 of the team’s 16 games will be played outdoors, including eight home contests at the University of Minnesota (the Vikings’ temporary home while their new stadium is be-ing built). Then there’s the schedule, which begins: at Rams, vs. Patriots, at Saints, vs. Falcons, at Packers, vs. Lions, at Bills. Somebody get poor Adrian Peterson a Kleenex endorse-ment, as he’s gonna be crying a lot this autumn. Under (+145, MGM)

Next week: NFC South, NFC West.

Matt Jacob appears at 10 a.m. Fridays on “First Preview” on ESPN Radio 1100-AM and 98.9-FM.

Trouble in Big DBrace yourselves, Cowboys fans: It’s going to be another long year

This is the fifth year that Going for Broke columnist Matt Jacob has made NFL win-total recommendations, and the fourth time he’s doing so for all 32 teams. Here are the results to date:

2010: 22-10

2011: 8-6

2012: 22-9-1

2013: 14-17-1

TOTAL: 66-42-2

With or without a healthy Tony Romo, Dallas is headed for a fifth straight non-winning season.

BETTING

M A T T J A C O B

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IN A CITY WHERE MONEY IS A MANTRA , a surpris-

ing new trend is keeping Wall Street titans

grounded, even as markets fuctuate. Some

of New York’s most successful fnance and

business leaders—including billionaire hedge

funder Dan Loeb and Bridgewater Associates

founder Ray Dalio—have adopted the daily

practice of transcendental meditation.

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The Yogi BullsBillionaires and celebrities are blissing out as meditation charges

back into the mainstream

By Ben Widdicombe The New York Observer

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craig palacios and tina Wichmann want to show me the secret passage.

The principals of Bunnyfsh Stu-dio are walking me through Inspire, a three-story theater, café, bar and news-stand designed by their Downtown Las Vegas-based architecture frm, and they’re pointing out all the cool fea-tures they baked into it. There are quite a few, from the wall-mounted rails that act as Inspire News Café’s magazine racks, to the raw concrete fnish of the building’s façade, to the 70-something-year-old Heywood Wakefeld theater seats that Palacios and Wichmann sal-vaged from a church.

To my eyes, nearly every design ele-ment of Inspire is a capital-lettered Special Feature. And the architects had to fght for every last one.

“The contractor never really saw our vision,” Palacios says. “Until the day we opened, he would tell me straight-up, ‘I don’t see what you’re doing here.’”

That’s funny, considering how fresh and modern Inspire feels. The news café is a pleasing assortment of surfac-es—glass, wood, concrete and glossy pa-per—framing an ever-changing human portrait. Walk a few steps and you’re in Wayfarer, a dark, mid-century modern bar straight out of Mad Men. Next to it is the 150-seat theater with the afore-mentioned cast-iron church seats, a theater that’s already seen heavy use hosting everything from late-night va-

riety shows to independent flm. You get several entirely different experi-ences at Inspire, and that’s even before you go upstairs and check out the ca-sual co-working spaces, the spectacular rooftop patio, the cozy speakeasy bar Tokyo 365 … and, oh yeah, the secret passage, designed for building owner Tony Hsieh and Inspire proprietor Mi-chael Cornthwaite to get from rooftop to second foor without fghting the fow of traffc to the rooftop party.

It’s pretty impressive stuff, and it seems even more so after Palacios tells me how little direction he got from Hsieh.

“He just said ‘Get on a plane and go check out the lobby of the W Hotel in Austin. It’s what I want,’” Palacios says.

“It was diffcult at frst to fgure out what he was talking about, but very shortly we realized that the lobby of the W is four or fve distinct rooms with differ-ent purposes, and they’re very differ-ent architecturally. You don’t notice when you transition from one to the other, and there are bars everywhere. People are working there during the day, partying at night … and you don’t even notice that transition.”

“The circulation and destination com-ponents of the design were blurred,” Wichmann says. “Rooms there were destinations, but they were also part of the exploration. It’s fun.”

Somehow, Bunnyfsh Studio was able to assimilate those offhanded in-structions and convert a former one-

level 7-Eleven convenience store into a vibrant, three-level urban space with virtually no local precedent. Before I can ask how, exactly, they managed to pull that off, both Palacios’ and Wich-mann’s phones blow up, and the inter-view is cut short.

This won’t be the last time this hap-pens. It’s pretty tough to fnd an inter-view-size hole in Bunnyfsh’s schedule, because this one architectural frm, thanks in part to its gift for under-standing what Tony Hsieh wants and what Downtown needs, is pretty much single-handedly reimagining the en-tirety of Fremont East.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

bunnyfish’s downtown project list is kind of like a friendly Godzilla: ever growing, ever advancing, and chang-ing the landscape before our eyes. It includes Natalie Young’s breakfast-and-lunch joint Eat; the Hydrant Club membership dog park; Cornthwaite’s cocktails-and-charcuterie lounge Scul-lery; the Downtown location of local Tex-Mex favorite Nacho Daddy; the John E. Carson building and several of the businesses inside it, including Bud & Vine, Carson Kitchen, Grass Roots and O Face Doughnuts; the bar, lounge area, “backyard” and crash pads at the Gold Spike; the recently revived Bunk-

house Saloon and its outdoor campus; the former Azul club, now a multipur-pose space called Place; the casino of the Western Hotel, which they turned into a convention hall; and several oth-ers in various states of planning and execution. And they’re not limiting themselves solely to Downtown Proj-ect or Fremont East spaces; Bunnyfsh designed the third Vegas location of beloved coffee bar Sambalatte, now open at the Monte Carlo, and they’re currently helping a client to remake the interior of the Ice House on Main Street, transforming it from a night-club to offce space.

And the neat thing is, you can see the through line in all these places. For such a relatively young frm—Bunnyfsh frst set up shop in Emergency Arts in Janu-ary 2011—they’ve not only amassed an impressive portfolio, but have forged a recognizable style. The Bunnyfsh look is a mix of the raw and the fnished in a constant visual tug-of-war.

Wichmann offers an example from the Inspire build-out: “We had a discussion with the contractor, who said, ‘You’ve got these existing trusses, and you want to keep them. What do you want to do with them? Do you want to paint them?’ And we said, ‘Just dust them off.’

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The Bunnyfish That Ate DowntownTake a look at our city’s ever-evolving core. Like what you see? You can thank two friends

who stumbled into architecture, formed a frm with a funny name and then found themselves in the right place at the right time. B Y G E O F F C A R T E R

house. But Wichmann and Palacios stood frm: No barrel chairs, and no paint on the trusses. Just dust them off.

“We like the tension between new and old—to pay homage to the existing structure and its heritage, but not just add a bunch more old stuff in there,” Wichmann says. “For us, the challenge of design is to bring those two elements together and have them ft.”

David Baird, director at the UNLV School of Architecture, agrees that this approach to the old buildings of Fremont Street—keeping as much of the skeleton as possible, and laying down new skin only where it fts—is the correct one.

“Dealing with the existing building gives it a sense of continuity, [of] his-tory, of the quirkiness that goes with having to deal with all the little pecu-liar things that were done historically in that area,” he says. “A lot of times, when you scrape an area and you build from scratch, you lose a lot of that character. Almost like a patina. Think about the pans that you cook in: You don’t scrub them completely clean. You let them have that patina, and they add to the favor in a way that you re-ally couldn’t [get] if you were just start-ing from scratch.”

HOW TO MAKE A BUNNYFISH

“a bunnyfish is two different things,”Palacios says. “It’s like black and white coming together to become gray.”

The name Palacios and Wichmann chose for their frm is not only em-blematic of their design philosophy, but of the partners themselves. At frst blush, they seem to share a brain: Both are of similar age (Palacios is 42, Wichmann 40); both are stylish dress-ers; both have dynamic personalities. Yet they come from decidedly differ-ent sensibilities. The short story is

“They met at UNLV,” but the long ver-sion is where you fnd all the favors that make the cooking pan.

Wichmann, of Korean and Dutch descent, was born in Tehran, Iran—her father was a civilian military consul-tant—and when her family relocated to America, she was perpetually the new face in the neighborhood: She es-timates that her parents moved around Southern California “maybe 10 times,” trying to fnd better schools for her to attend. Eventually, she got a bachelor’s degree in psychology “with a little bit of emphasis in neuropsychology,” and promptly went to work for a pharma-ceutical research company.

“I’m a pretty detail-oriented and at-tentive person, and so I ended up moving into regulatory affairs and managing FDA audits and things that really are interesting, but not that fun,” she says. “I was in my mid-20s, and I thought to myself, ‘Do I want to still be doing this in 20 years?’”

What Wichmann did enjoy was archi-tecture. Growing up in so many differ-ent new homes, she had almost con-tinual access to construction sites, and 25

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Close encounters: Palacios and Wichmann squeezeinto the phone booth at the Scullery, designed by their Bunnyfish Studio.

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took full advantage of it. “When I was maybe 8 or 9 years old, I would walk up the hill and make friends with all the construction workers. They would put aside refrigerator boxes or scrap pieces of marble, and I’d go up there, I’d bring them down the hill and I’d build things in my backyard.”

In 2004, Wichmann, who took some undergraduate architecture classes at UCLA while pursuing her degree in psychology, began work toward a mas-ter’s degree in architecture through a bridge program, which allows appli-cants with unrelated undergraduate degrees to accelerate their architecture education. By 2007, Tina Wichmann, unhappy FDA auditor, became Tina Wichmann, happy architect.

“I needed to do what was important to me,” says Wichmann, who sealed the deal in 2013 by moving to Las Vegas full time with her husband.

Her professional partner’s route was no less circuitous. A Las Vegas native—his mother was a cocktail waitress at the Four Queens, his father captain of the showroom at the Desert Inn—Pala-

cios’ frst interest was fashion, much to his parents’ dismay. “To come from two immigrant parents and be living in Ve-gas and tell them you want to become a fashion designer, they’re like, ‘Shut the fuck up. Get out of here. You could go park cars and make 75 grand a year. What are you talking about?’”

Palacios left town in 1993 after a short, unsatisfying stint at UNLV (“I was a crappy student”), decamping to San Diego and then Seattle, where he and his wife bought a condo and he did construction jobs. Construction came naturally to Palacios; he’s worked in that world since age 14, and alongside fashion, it’s kind of what gets his heart started in the morning.

But even that love had limits.“I did concrete, masonry, founda-

tion stuff,” he says. “But it got to a point where I realized I was maxed out, like I wasn’t going to be able to go any further.”

He returned to school, soon get-ting an associate’s degree in art at a community college. He attempted to transfer to the University of Wash-ington, but was compelled to return

to UNLV in 1999 because of a clerical issue. Drawing on his twin passions—construction and design—he decided to work toward an architecture degree, and he got one. He’s also about halfway to achieving a master’s in construction management, but says he’s unlikely to complete it. “You remember that part in Forrest Gump where he’s running, running, running, and then he’s just like, ‘I don’t want to run anymore?’” Palacios says. “Well, I just didn’t want to go to school anymore.”

Palacios and Wichmann met while in that master’s program, and soon struck up a friendship. “We had classes together, gravitated together, bounced ideas off each other,” Palacios says.

It’s ftting that the duo’s friendship and professional partnership emerged from … well, from both of them hitting a wall and turning left. It explains why everything they do is suffused with a sense of play—even the company logo is designed to be spray-painted on walls, like a graffti tag—and why each of their projects is distinguished by a fun ele-ment: Nacho Daddy’s wall of beer bot-

tles; the Hydrant Club’s namesake giant freplug; the wonderfully gaudy, 1970s-inspired look of O Face Doughnuts.

This is the kind of stuff you do only after you’ve cleared a few hurdles in your life. You not only do what’s im-portant to you, but also what feels good.

WHEN BUNNY MET TONY

when you look at the firm’s long list of Downtown Project-funded ven-tures, it’s easy to assume that DTP owns Bunnyfsh Studio—or that Hsieh was given some sort of buy-12-get-one-free punch card. In truth, though, these two parties came together through what the DTP used to call a “serendipi-tous collision.”

Late one night, the Bunnyfsh crew was hanging in their Emergency Arts offce when an unannounced visitor arrived. “Suddenly, Tony pops in, and I didn’t know him,” Palacios says. “I didn’t even know what Zappos was.”

Hsieh politely inquired about the renderings taped to the walls, then 26

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Palacios and Wichmann pose during their 2007 graduation from UNLV (1). Years later, the friends formed Bunnyfish Studio, whose Downtown works include the Inspire Theater newsstand (2) and theater (3); the interiors of Eat (4) and Carson Kitchen (5); the Hydrant Club (6); and the secret passage at Inspire Theater, tagged with the company logo (7).

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disappeared for a week. When he re-turned, he brought several confdants with him, including Shift CEO Zach Ware; Zappos executive and Vegas Tech Fund partner Fred Mossler; and Todd Kessler, an attorney with Down-town Project’s real estate partner, Re-sort Gaming Group. “Tony goes, ‘You should come see what we’re doing,’” Palacios recalls. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, cool, give me your card.’ And he said, ‘No, no, grab your stuff. Let’s go.’”

Palacios followed Hsieh to his suite in the Ogden, where Palacios began re-arranging the Post-it notes on Hsieh’s idea wall.

“It was, ‘Laundromat, dog park, gro-cery store, children’s school,’ and as an architect you realize that arranging things in that linear fashion doesn’t work. The deli should be with the gro-cery store, and so on. We started mov-ing things around, and sometime dur-ing that process my heart started beat-ing. I’m like, ‘I don’t even know this guy, and I’m rearranging his stuff.’ And I looked over, and he was smiling.”

That night, Hsieh gave Palacios sev-

eral books on architecture. (“The list of architecture books that he had read surpassed most architectural profes-sors,” Palacios says.) They looked out the window of the Ogden and discussed the growing portfolio of properties Hsieh owned. In the ensuing weeks, Hsieh in-vited Palacios to look at several vacant properties—“We’d go break into a build-ing and crawl around the rafters and stuff; it was great”—but it was all on the level of two friends with a shared enthu-siasm; there was never any business talk.

Then, one day, Downtown Project work began to trickle in. Ware brought them a project that was ultimately killed, and Young asked them to design the interior of Eat. And one night, while Palacios and Wichmann were having a drink at the Downtown Cocktail Room, Hsieh and Cornthwaite approached them with a challenge: a three-story theater, bar and café complex, housed inside a one-story building.

“I remember them saying, ‘We want a theater, we want the bathrooms to be front and center, and we have a lot of stuff we want to put into this

very small footprint,” Wichmann says. “Craig usually has a roll of trace paper and a pen somewhere, so he was able just to go, ‘Well, da-da-da-da-da,’ and they looked at it and said, ‘That’s ex-actly what we want.’”

Continues Palacios: “They took it, rolled it up and said, ‘OK, this is as far as we want to go with this now,’ and we kept drinking and hung out with them the rest of the night. Two days later we get a call from [Resort Gaming Group CEO] Andrew Donner, who asked, ‘What was your involvement with these drawings, who are you, and how many people do you have in your frm?”

One day later, Bunnyfsh Studio had a contract in hand to design Inspire, a project that would lead to many others. Not to mention Fremont East’s frst se-cret passage.

THE TAG

during an increasingly rare free moment, Palacios and Wichmann join me on the rooftop of Inspire. The view

from up there really is one of the city’s best; you’ve got the tourist-fueled chaos of the Fremont Street Experi-ence on one side and the growing and ever-changing Fremont East district on the other.

After a few moments admiring that view—“You should have been up here on New Year’s Eve; there must have been 200 people up here, plus a lla-ma,” Palacios says—the partners lead me around an inconspicuous cor-ner, through an unremarkable door

… and just like that, we’re in Inspire’s secret passage.

There’s really not much to say about it, to be honest. It’s an unadorned stair-well, which empties onto the second foor via another semi-hidden door with a key-card lock. There’s only one thing of interest inside: a piece of sten-ciled graffti depicting a round fsh with rabbit ears. In a rarely accessed hallway, Bunnyfsh Studios actually managed to sign their work.

“We’re both architects and taggers, as it turns out,” Wichmann says, grinning. Then, right on cue, her phone rings. 27

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When you look at the firm’s long list of

Downtown Project- funded ventures,

it’s easy to assume that DTP owns

Bunnyfish Studio— or that Tony Hsieh

was given some sort of buy-12-get-one-

free punch card. In truth, though,

these two parties came together

through what the DTP used to call a

“serendipitous collision.”

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NIGHTLIFEYour city after dark, photos from the week’s hottest parties and a mini resident takes on Surrender

Miami to Ibiza

Bobby 'Runway' Gleason

dishes on the sounds

of SLS’ party spots.

(Spoiler: Sundays have

all gone Pete Tong.)

By David Morris

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MENTION THE NAME BOBBY RUNWAY to anyone on the Hollywood scene and they will immediately tell you that the former Detroit-DJ-cum-L.A.-promoter is one of the most charismatic people they know. While Robert Gleason has left his promoter days behind, he is now responsible for all talent buying (read: DJ bookings) across SBE’s nightlife portfolio in L.A. as well as the new SLS, in Las Vegas. Following a recent walk of the new property, including Life Nightclub, Foxtail and the Sayers Club, we sat down with Gleason, now in his eighth year with SBE, to discuss what will set the resort’s nightlife and entertainment offerings apart from the rest of the city.

Will the music programing be similar across all of the SLS nightlife/daylife venues?

Life, our electronic-dance-music megaclub, will be open Fridays and Saturdays, and then Sundays starting August 31. Foxtail will be more open format and celebrity driven, with appearances, local talent and celebrity DJs. The Foxtail pool will be electronic music, while Life Beach will be a mix of open format and electronica.

Will your Las Vegas bookings mirror what you are doing in L.A.?

While there will be shared residencies per se, Create in Los Angeles has the ability to offer a wider spectrum of music. It’s a place where we try new things and showcase up-and-coming artists and different genres of music. Vegas caters to a more mainstream crowd, and once you typically lock your residents in for that year, you typically do 12 to 20 shows for each resident. So there is not much room to bring in anyone else.

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On the SLS roster, clockwise from left: Pete Tong, Rebecca & Fiona, and Erick Morillo.

A lot of turntable talent has already locked in residencies with other resorts. Does that make your job more challenging?

It does, but surprisingly there are a lot of artists available without residencies. We have also taken a different approach to our bookings. We are a new venue on the Strip, and we want to grow and we want artists who are going to grow with us. We want to build artists and not just take artists for one year and then see them go somewhere else. We want to fnd artists on the upswing of their career, in whom we see potential. Some of these artists may not be megastars right now, but they will be in the next year to fve years.

Can you give some examples?Rebecca & Fiona defnitely—we see

potential in them. We have worked with them a lot; they have a residency with us at Create, and played SLS Miami during Ultra Music Fest. I also think Erick Morillo is a unique booking that some people may view as controversial.

Controversial how?He is in the process of rebuilding

his career, but at the same time he is probably one of the most intellectual artists out there. It is a statement booking, in that we’re not going in the same direction as everyone else on the Strip. We are going after artists who are intellectually minded in their music and want to create something special with us.

We want artists who will leave the fans saying, “We want more.” We don’t want artists in a booth on the stage,

but ones who’s night we can create an entire theme around. That is the concept that will help distinguish Life. We want our guests to know that when they come to the SLS they’re going to get a show.

I’ve been hearing some buzz about your Sundays.

We are going to try to bring in some unique sounds that haven’t been heard in a mainstream format in Vegas before, sounds that have traditionally been done in after-hours formats. We are really going to gear our Sundays toward more of the Ibiza-style residencies, and offer a more intellectual sound. A lot of the Ibiza residents are also very excited to bring their brands over after the summer has rapped. This is something that our VIPs really seem to enjoy, and we hope

that the Vegas industry as well as all of our guests will as well.

Will you partner with Ibiza’s Ushuaia nightclub like you did during Ultra in Miami?

They have their Ants party, and we love that island staple. Our partnership in Miami in March was great, and I can certainly see some cross promotion in the future. I can tell you already that we will be doing a Pete Tong residency [called “All Gone With Pete Tong”], and he will be spearheading our Sundays.

SLS Las Vegas opens to the public at

midnight on the evening of August 22. On

August 23, Life Nightclub opens with Erick Morillo

at the helm. Laidback Luke, Dirty South and Deep

Dish with Pete Tong play Friday, Saturday and

Sunday of Labor Day weekend, respectively.

PARTIES

See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com

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GHOSTBARThe Palms

[ UPCOMING ]

Aug. 21 Benny Black spins

Aug. 22 PJ Produkt and Mark Stylz spin

Aug. 23 Presto One and Exodus spin

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PARTIES

See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com

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TAO BEACHThe Palazzo

[ UPCOMING ]

Aug. 24 Technicolor spins

Aug. 29 Havana Brown spins

Aug. 30 Eric D-Lux spins

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PARTIES

See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com

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MARQUEEThe Cosmopolitan

[ UPCOMING ]

Aug. 22 ATB spins

Aug. 23 Dash Berlin spins

Aug. 25 Carnage’s Black & White Party

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Picture PerfectFood stylist Roni Fields-Moonen gets culinary creations ready for their close-ups

By Al Mancini

AS THE EGGS BENEDICT HITS HER TABLE, it’s already a drop-dead gorgeous dish that would inspire “ooohs” and “aaahs” at any weekend brunch. But Roni Fields-Moonen doesn’t dig into it. Instead, she stares at it, locking a mental image into her mind. Then, along with the chef, she tries to determine what elements are likely to suffer over the course of a 30-minute photo shoot under hot lights. The hash cylinder might break down quickly. The perfectly cooked soft-boiled eggs are a bit unstable, thanks to their runny cores. And the Hollandaise sauce will set over time.

The chef is willing to fre up order after order, replacing them every few minutes to keep them fresh. But that doesn’t work in a photo shoot, where top food photographers might spend 15 to 20 minutes just arranging a plate to get the perfect angle. That’s why today’s photographer has hired Fields-Moonen, who is Las Vegas’ top food stylist.

Over the next two hours, Fields-Moonen plays with every aspect of the dish. She orders a dozen overcooked

eggs that look beautiful and are easier to manipulate. She observes how decorative pepper sauces run over time, then painstakingly adds four a touch at a time to get a version that looks the same, but stays in place. Finally, she assembles a version of the eggs Benedict by hand that would probably offend the chef’s taste buds, but which perfectly represents his visual creation.

Not every restaurant or magazine employs a food stylist, whose job might involve anything from keeping a foamy head on a beer to creating an ice cream sundae that doesn’t melt. Many photographers learn the tricks of the trade themselves over time. But when the budget is there, most print editors and TV producers realize how invaluable food stylists are, and will often fy in their favorites from another city to get the best shots.

Fields-Moonen, who also does hair and makeup, began styling in 1999, while working as an art director for a South Florida magazine. “I started directing all the photo shoots,” she says.

“And we never really had a budget for a food stylist.” While shooting the cover of the magazine’s food issue, she became increasingly dissatisfed with the way a pasta dish looked in photos. So she sat down and styled a more photogenic version. As she got more into the craft, other magazines began hiring her.

She came to Las Vegas in 2011, after meeting her now-husband, celebrity chef Rick Moonen, in Mexico. “I was doing his hair and makeup for this TV pilot,” she says. “And part of [Rick’s] job was to make all these dishes to present to a table of 10, and he was running out of time. So I told him I would help him plate his food.” The chef was a little shocked by the offer, but was impressed with the results.

She soon began styling for all of Moonen’s shoots. And since their relationship brought her to our town, Fields-Moonen has developed an enviable portfolio of top-chef stylings. So the next time a photo of a luscious-looking morsel makes your mouth water, you very well may have Fields-Moonen to thank!

FOOD STYLING TIPS FOR THE HOME COOKWhile the food you

cook at home doesn’t

have to stand up to the

harsh conditions of a

photo shoot, you still

want it to look good

when it hits the table.

Here are a few tips

from Fields-Moonen

on how to impress

your family and friends

with a knockout

presentation.

➜ Choose the

freshest and prettiest

ingredients. They look

and taste the best.

➜ Put your herbs in an

ice bath before using

to keep them looking

super green. And don’t

overcook your veggies!

➜ Use the proper

tools when preparing

your food: a good

cutting board, quality

knife, mandolin and

micro plane will make

all the difference in

your plate.

➜ Contrast on the

plate is good. A

monochromatic color

scheme is often

unappetizing.

➜ Unless it’s

Thanksgiving, three

complementary items

are all you need [on

a plate], with the

possibility of smaller

garnish ingredients.

➜ Let meat rest before

cutting it, unless you

like all your side dishes

swimming in blood.

➜ Pay attention to

the actual placement

on the plate, and

that servings are

proportionately

balanced. Use care

when dishing out

items, and wipe off any

food smears.

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IT’S A SPECIAL COCKTAIL THAT bears the name of its casino.

But it takes an even more spe-

cial cocktail to bear the name

of a beloved casino that once

stood where a shiny new re-

sort now reigns. Such was the

challenge for SLS Las Vegas

beverage director Ryan McCal-

lum, who gives a respectful nod

to the property’s past with his

Sahara Cooler ($15), which will

be served property-wide when

SLS opens at midnight on the

evening of August 22.

It’s a fitting tribute, being

Sahara-orange in hue. “There’s

a libation out there for every-

one,” McCallum says. “As beauty

is in the eye of the drink-holder,

it’s our job to find that perfect

drink for them.” But success

goes deeper into that glass than

just the color: Ketel One Oranje

matches beats with Aperol (a

low-alcohol bitter Italian aperi-tivo flavored with orange peels),

and gives it an alcoholic boost.

Passion fruit puree imparts a

refreshing, sweet-tart charac-

ter; and the Stiegel Radler (a

loooow-alcohol fruit beer) puts

some sophisticated texture on

the palate. In all: a delicious trib-

ute to a venerable patch of Las

Vegas history. Says McCallum,

“It packs a good punch, too.”

Get the recipe at VegasSeven.com/CocktailCulture.

Cooler Than Cool

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A&EMovies, concerts, stage and a French artist with American taste

“There are a lot of incredible local bands that you’re

going to see here and you’re going to say, ‘I did not know

they were this good.’” MUSIC {PAGE 72}

LET’S JUST GET THIS OUT OF THE WAY FIRST: Jason Scoppa used to be a male model. And while he jokes about having gained weight and being too old to feel sexy, this married father of two still carries the effortless, good-natured, open demeanor that comes from be-ing beautiful. The grit of his Detroit background tempers the effect of a

stint in New York and an adulthood in L.A. He’s one of the popular kids, but he’ll let you sit at his table. Add an ear for music, and it seems natural if not destined that Scoppa would ascend the world of nightlife. His latest proj-ect brings him to Las Vegas, where he will open an outpost of his 3-year-old Hollywood hot spot the Sayers Club in

the SLS. Scoppa paused from opening preparations to chat about his aspira-tions for this combined music venue, lounge and nightclub.

What is your vision for translating the magic of the Sayers Club in Hollywood to Las Vegas?

What I like about Vegas is that there’s not a lot of people in this lane, and I think it’s going to work really well here. The times that I have been in Vegas in the past, there has never been anywhere that I wanted to go per se. We’re going to do some of the same things here that we do there.

One of the things you do there is a cover-band show called Sessions, which you plan to host at SLS. The event has done well in Hollywood and even drawn guests such as Prince and Slash. But now that you’re in the land of cover bands, how do you plan to stand out?

It’s a cover show, but it doesn’t have any of the shtick to it—it’s really just incredible musicianship, incredible vocalists and the occasional guest. We don’t have any set order, so we’re basically surfng the vibe in the room. That creates a cool thing between the audience and the show because we don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s proven that particular show will work. … We’re going to be experimenting with residencies from different artists, both new and big talent, as well. So we don’t really discriminate by the level that a musician is at, we just want quality.

You’re looking to blur the lines between a lounge, a live-music venue and a nightclub. What does that look like?

The vision for me has always been like, “I love music, it’s my passion, but I just wish there was a party around it instead of

Say What?The Sayers Club at SLS will be part live-music venue,

nightclub and lounge. How will that work?

Creator Jason Scoppa explains.

By Cindi Moon Reed

CONTINUED ON PAGE 68

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CALL IT A HIPHOPOPOTAMUS

Art collective ISI Group takes over

Brooklyn Bowl once again, this time for

a Call of the Wild-themed show and

auction on August 27. In addition, don’t

miss performances from some of local

hip-hop’s finest: RNR and Marion Write,

plus an open-style b-boy cypher. Maybe

you’ve got your own skills to show? Vegas.

BrooklynBowl.com.

IT’S A SHARK THING

Syfy drew 3.9 million viewers for the July

30 premiere of Sharknado 2: The Second

One. Whether you weren’t among them or

you just want to see the flick in theaters,

August 21 is your best viewing opportunity.

Cinemas across the country (including

several local outposts) will show the

sequel on a big screen for one night only.

Fandango.com.

GOOD DEAL, GOOD CAUSE

Consider one ticket to AFAN’s 28th annual

Black & White Party on August 23 to

be the equivalent of several tickets to

various Strip shows. The entertainment

lineup includes performances from

Jabbawockeez, Jubilee! and Absinthe star

Melody Sweets. Treating yourself to a night

out is even sweeter knowing proceeds

support Southern Nevadans living with

AIDS. AFANLV.org.

FOREVERMORE, FOR NOW

Given the recent announcement that

Trifecta Gallery will close in January, we

recommend you take every opportunity

to visit the Arts District staple until

then. Through August 29, see Su

Limbert’s Forevermore, which was

crafted specifically for the space. The

paintings and sculptures employ a folk-art

aesthetic to explore life’s cyclical nature.

TrifectaGallery.com.

The

HITLIST

TARGETING THIS WEEK'S

MOST-WANTED EVENTS

By Camille Cannon

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By Camille Cannon

ALBUM REVIEWS By Pj Perez

ALT-ROCK

I AM GIANTScience & Survival(Sony Music)

New Zealand quartet I AM GIANT

is back with a second set of heavy,

dynamic rock music that defies trends.

Offering a sound somewhat reminiscent

of Lostprophets, Blindside and even

early Thirty Seconds to Mars, Science

& Survival excels on the strength of

Ed Martin’s acrobatic vocals, backed

by giant guitar riffs, machine-precise

rhythms and surprisingly catchy

melodies. Even when I AM GIANT takes

a breather from its insistent wall of

sound on songs such as the lush, almost

delicate “Dragging the Slow Dance Out,”

the music is still sonically interesting

and emotionally compelling. ★★★★✩

AMERICANA

Alejandra O’Leary and the Champions of the WestHeartspace Timepiece(Self-released)

With a sound as diverse as the cultural

mix hinted by her name, Portland,

Oregon-spawned, Detroit-based

singer-songwriter Alejandra O’Leary

leads her band through nine songs

spanning the breadth of popular rock

music’s history. From the opening

track (“Now Now”)—which shifts from

moody grind to rollicking rave-up—to

the bratty, Blondie-esque “Talk Me

Down,” Heartspace Timepiece works

despite its scattershot approach,

even when the band approximates an

alt-country pose on songs such as

“Windows.” ★★★✩✩

ELECTRO-POP

VowMake Me Yours(The Native Sound)

Deviating from the rest of its

1980s-revivalist peers, Los

Angeles-based duo Vow’s latest

recording—a woefully short five-

song EP—eschews radio-friendly

dance-floor ditties in favor of

dark, driving songs that owe more

than just a small debt to Cocteau

Twins. Featuring the rich, sultry

vocals of Julia Blake, songs such

as “Miles Away” and “Palm” build

on multi-instrumentalist Andrew

Thomas’ rumbling bass lines and

programmed drum-machine beats to

create the perfect soundtrack for a

rainy day. ★★★★✩

[ ROAD TRIP ]

FYF FEST IS LIKE COACHELLA CONCENTRATE If you just can’t wait for Las Vegas’ own

Life Is Beautiful festival on October 24-26, then you should make the trek to the L.A. Sports Arena & Exposition Park for

the 11th annual FYF Fest on August 23-24. In fact, the two festivals have enough variations in their lineup that it’s worth

attending both. Headliners for FYF include Phoenix, the Strokes, Interpol, Haim, Grimes and Earl Sweatshirt. But being

in a music-industry city, the non-headliners are equally exciting: Mac DeMarco, Albert Hammond Jr., Man Man, Future

Islands and Ty Segall. The festival is sold out, but tickets are available on StubHub.com for $121.60 and up, which is about

the same as the original price. Who wants to carpool? – Cindi Moon Reed

Interpol is one of59 music groups

playing FYF.

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SWEEPING UP ODDS AND ENDS—including odd endings, the endings of oddities and a curiosity or two in between:• Iron your leisure suit—the

Australian Bee Gees show has been extended through 2018 at Excalibur. In conveying such news, one should never squander the chance to say that this tribute show is stayin’ alive. Or that it’s got a night fever that just won’t break. Or that I made a couple of jokes that got the whole world cryin’. … I’ll stop now.

• In Judaism, when there is a death, we say “Kaddish,” which is a prayer for the dead. With the merciful expiration of the unfortunate being that was terminally ill from the day it frst drew breath, I will say Kaddish for Pawn Shop Live! Born January 2014 at the Golden Nugget. Died August 2014 at the Riviera. May it (forever) rest in peace.

• Beginning this month, comedian Matt Kazam brings his Defending the Caveman-ish show, called 40 Is Not the New 20, to the Riviera. Suggested subtitle: No Shit.

• Aussie-themed Sydney After Dark, featuring ladies from Down Under shucking their tops, briefy strutted and shimmied before shuttering at Planet Hollywood’s PH Showroom. Producers are searching for a more intimate venue they apparently feel better suits the sensual revue. There’s a counterintuitive joke here about hot women believing smaller is bet-ter. But I won’t make it.

• Speaking of counterintuitive … a production of Mamma Mia that isn’t a hit? Holy Rainbow Spandex, Bat-man! Worldwide, this candy-favored musical is rarely less than a sugar rush for audiences—nearly every version, whether a tour or standing

production, has succeeded, includ-ing a healthy previous Vegas run at Mandalay Bay. This time around, the show, revived at the Tropicana, was tentative and unfocused, at a venue long off the main loop for big-league shows. Does that make the Trop Mamma Mia’s … Waterloo? Nope—just a not-so-cool production that got an appropriately lukewarm response.

• Lower on the show-failure radar was Magia, Latino illusionist Reynold Alexander’s prematurely clipped Vegas debut that arrived at the Clarion Hotel in May for a run through July, only to vanish mid-

run. Though Magia (Spanish for “magic”) was underwhelming in its execution and destined to be little noticed at the off-

Strip Clarion, the suave Alexander is an accomplished magician and culturally unique among Vegas’ plethora of prestidigitators. Despite his disappearance—and with a bigger budget and better positioning—he’s worth a reappearance.

• Finally, in news that reverberated around the planet, Celine Dion announced she’s put performing on hold, canceling Caesars Palace shows through next March, as well as an Asian tour in the fall. Though an illness causing infammation of her throat muscles was part of the explanation, helping her husband, René Angélil, battle cancer while raising their three kids was the driving motivation. Caesars will reshuffe its schedule and go on.

But anyone who prioritizes family over career—you, me, a global super-star—earns a Great Big Standing O.

Got an entertainment tip? Email Steve.Bornfeld@VegasSeven.com.

STRIP BITSCombing through this, that and the other

on the entertainment scene

Her show won’t go on.

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AT THIS POINT IN THE DYSTOPIAN MOVIE cycle, I’m ready for a story about a teenager with zero interest in ques-tioning the system, let alone starting a revolution. A spineless conformist—that’s what the genre needs.

Meantime there’s The Giver, director Phillip Noyce’s flm version of the 1993 Lois Lowry best-seller, which remains a staple of the young adult shelves alongside the Hunger Games and Diver-gent books. So here we are again. It’s the future. Life is like Logan’s Run with shorter haircuts. (That flm, starring Michael York and Farrah Fawcett-Ma-jors, remains the shaggiest of all dysto-pian totalitarian adventures.) Speaking of hair: Meryl Streep, in the steely role of the Chief Elder, sports a ’do that can only be described as “disgruntled food co-op manager.”

So: Future. Planet nearly ruined thanks to “climate control.” Animal and plant life, destroyed. The surviv-ing communities, resembling a post-apocalyptic edition of Long Island’s Levittown, adhere to strict rules of

conduct, conformity, heavy doses of mood-stabilizing drugs for all citizens and a nightmarish take on peace, equality and socialism. As there always is in these stories, a sorting ritual de-termines the role in society each young citizen will play. Our hero, Jonas, played by Noyce’s fellow Aussie Bren-ton Thwaites, is selected for a very spe-cial occupation: that of the Receiver of Memory, to be schooled by the current and controversial RM, played by top-billed Jeff Bridges.

Books are banned in this future, as are “stirrings” of a sexual nature and music, even. The Bridges character is able to transmit knowledge and sen-sory recollections of what snow was like, and the color of an apple. Jonas’ pals Fiona (Odeya Rush) and Asher (Cameron Monaghan) join Jonas in his

mission to change the way things are in this most emotionally Botoxed of all possible worlds. Katie Holmes and Alexander Skarsgard portray Jonas’ parents, who know their kid is special but can’t give him the leeway he craves, lest the entire society crumble.

The world according to The Giver isn’t above killing off elders and unhealthy newborns by the hundreds, a sinister plot point alluded to, nervously, by Noyce and by screenwriters Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide. Like Pleasantville, Noyce’s flm establishes its colorlessness literally; much of the footage is conveyed in black and white or sepia tones, with splashes of color strategically placed to establish what lies beyond the present circumstances.

It’s not a lousy experience. Taylor Swift shows up in a glorifed cameo.

Thwaites has promise; Rush has more than that. But for a movie decrying the concept of societal “sameness,” The Giver is a hypocritical movie indeed. To borrow another phrase from Lowry, each new entry in the teen dystopia genre has become a sort of “comfort object,” imagining a terrible future while placating younger audiences with heroes and heroines who can make a difference. We all need that sort of thing in our pop culture lives, I suppose. But The Giver gives off an air of wearying familiarity, without much in the way of design wiles or cinematic wonder beyond the spectacle of Streep competing for her share of the movie against her own hair.

The Giver(PG-13) ★★✩✩✩

SHORT REVIEWS By Tribune Media Services

MEMORY LAPSE

This classic dystopian

novel fnally gets the

big-screen treatment.

Too bad it’s kind of

forgettable.

By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services

A&E

What If (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩What If brings up the distinctions among wit,

jokes and robotic banter, and this romantic

comedy has a bit of the first and a few of the

second, but it’s largely a case of the third.

The script, adapted from the play Toothpaste

and Cigars, does a few things right. We sense

potential in the early meeting, at a party, of

a med-school dropout (Daniel Radcliffe) and

an animator (Zoe Kazan). From there What

If contrives the usual reasons for the leads

to come together. Why did the film’s charms

elude me? I felt arm-twisted by What If, for all

its tossed-off verbiage and wisecracking.

Into The Storm (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩In the spirit of Sharknado 2, Into the Storm

goes into blender mode and mixes its

elements of wind column terror, smoothie-

style. Top-billed Richard Armitage, an

Englishman doing his best generic heartland

dialect, plays a widower with two teenage

boys struggling to connect with their father.

But Into the Storm, directed with bland ef-

ficiency by Steven Quayle of Final Destination

5, reminds us that unless a movie establish-

es certain baseline levels of human interest,

it runs the not-unentertaining risk of coming

out squarely in favor of its own bad weather.

Let’s Be Cops (R) ★★✩✩✩The laughs are loud, lewd and low in this

spoof of cop “buddy pictures.” Jake Johnson

of TV’s New Girl is paired with Damon

Wayans Jr. in this farce about two losers

losing their way through L.A., a tough place

to be a single guy with zero status. Next

thing you know, they’re walking the streets

in uniform with fake guns and fake name

tags. Co-writer/director Luke Greenfield

(Something Borrowed) lets what few laughs

there are land. Johnson’s timing is sharp,

and Wayans has that Wayans way with dopey

under-reactions to crazy situations.

The Expendables 3 (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩The leitmotifs in Expendables 3 involve

fist-bumps (Sylvester Stallone and Jason

Statham’s primary means of communication)

and that old action standby, the team-

assembly sequence. Director Patrick Hughes

shot most of Expendables 3 in Bulgaria. The

climactic and semi-endless assault features

tanks, helicopters, motorcycle stunts only a

digital effects specialist could love and some

terrible staging and editing. Even so, the

movie’s less a failure than a shrug, and it’s

pleasant in a numbing way to see everybody

again, killing, killing, killing.

MOVIES

Can we trust Jeff Bridges and Brenton

Thwaites with our memories?

Magic in the Moonlight (PG-13) ★★★✩✩This Woody Allen film is set in 1928 in the

south of France. British illusionist Stanley,

played with a tight grimace by Colin Firth,

has been invited by a fellow magician

(Simon McBurney) to debunk an American

mystic working her way through the

Cote d’Azur. Then something happens to

persuade the skeptic Stanley that Sophie

(Emma Stone) is the real deal. Magic in the

Moonlight strolls along, muttering familiar

axioms about the infernal inconvenience

and bedevilment of romantic attraction.

Lucy (R)  ★★✩✩✩In Taiwan, a hard-partying 25-year-old

American studying abroad has just hooked

up with a new boyfriend. He’s a delivery

boy for a drug lord (Choi Min-sik), and

Johansson’s Lucy is forced to deliver a

briefcase to a hotel room. The briefcase

contains a synthetic superdrug. After one of

Lucy’s captors kicks her in the stomach, her

bloodstream is suddenly flooded with the

stuff. She becomes a kind of superwoman.

She’s quite good in Lucy, working both sides

of the street: plausibly terrified victim in

one section, unfeeling bad-ass the next.

A Most Wanted Man (R)  ★★★✩✩It’s impossible to watch the character

anchoring Anton Corbijn’s cool, clear-eyed

film version of A Most Wanted Man without

forgetting the fate of the actor who plays

him, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. As

Gunther Bachmann, the German intelligence

expert created by novelist John le Carré,

Hoffman is an unhealthy specimen, a drinker,

out of shape, though his mind is needle-

sharp. Filmed largely in Germany, under gray

skies, the movie is solid le Carré. It’s chilly

yet humane, and human-scaled, uninterested

in the lethal glories of technology.

Boyhood (R)  ★★★★✩By the midpoint of writer-director Richard

Linklater’s gentle marvel, the round-

faced Texas boy played by Ellar Coltrane

has become a lanky, plaintive teenager.

Linklater made the film with a group of

actors over a 12-year period, starting with

the kids played by Coltrane and Linklater’s

daughter, Lorelei, at ages 6 and 9,

respectively. The audience travels through

the narrative with these characters. I

love Boyhood. In completing this simple,

beautiful project Linklater took his time.

And he rewards ours.

Get On Up (PG-13) ★★★★✩Everything about Get On Up, a provocatively

structured and unusually rich musical biopic,

is a little better than the average specimen

in this genre. What Tate Taylor (The Help)

achieves in his James Brown story works

as inventive showbiz mythology. Most

moviegoers will simply want to know if

Chadwick Boseman, who played Jackie

Robinson in the biopic 42, has even a quarter

of the fierce charisma and a tenth of the

dance moves of the man he’s playing. And

yet the actor, like the film, works in a stealthy

way. Get On Up hits all these high points.

Guardians of the Galaxy (PG-13) ★★★✩✩Like the ’70s cassette mixtape so dear to

its hero, Guardians of the Galaxy scavenges

all sorts of “greatest hits” precedents to

come up with its own summertime fling. It’s

looser, scruffier and more overtly comic

than the average Marvel action fantasy. And

despite the usual load of violence, the film

owes its relative buoyancy to Chris Pratt as

the wisecracking space rogue at the helm.

Pratt seems to be growing into a quirky

action hero before our eyes, the way Robert

Downey Jr. did in the first Iron Man.

ticketmaster.com // pearl box ofce // 702.944.3200 // palmspearl.com

palms.com ©2014 FP Holdings, L.P. dba Palms Casino Resort. All Rights Reserved.

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You were keeper of the Sahara brand from 1982-95. What are your fondest memories?

There was very little walk-in traffc, so you had to run marquee names in the showroom to attract people from other hotels. Don Rickles was there on and off for almost 30 years. We got George Burns to celebrate his 80th year in show business, and we brought him back to the Sahara in the ’80s. He had been a fxture at the Sahara way before I bought it; he introduced Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret on the Conga Room stage.

You’re always trying to get a stable of names to round out your year—we had Tina Turner under a multiweek contract prior to her breakthrough al-bum Private Dancer. We had Billy Preston and Turner together. Even Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Frankie Valli and James Brown. I brought in acts that I really liked—Ray Charles, the great jazz organist Jimmy Smith. We had a lot of talent in those days.

What was Rickles like to work with?If you remember 1982, Las Vegas was really in

a slump. We were hurting. Interest rates were 20 percent, and it was impossible to do business. When I bought the Sahara from Del Webb, I bought Don’s contract for four more years, and here’s what this man did: He knew the place wasn’t doing well, so when we started our promotions with Los Angeles-area travel agents, he volunteered to show up [to the promotions] and work with us. He would get up there and do his act, and the travel agents were going, “What? Here’s Don Rickles.” This was gratis, because he wanted to help out. I never forgot that. What a great guy. What a pro.

What’s the biggest difference between that era and today?

The industry has evolved. You had a live orchestra onstage, you had an opening act, you had a big-name act, you had a gourmet room—in our case, the House of Lords and a specialty room called Don the Beachcomber—and players never paid for anything. When The Mirage opened [in 1989] with superior food outlets and wonderful room products, we discovered that folks would pay up for a better room, food and celebrity chefs.

What did hosting Jerry Lewis’ Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon mean for the property?

Jerry Lewis was doing it for the right reason; it was something we could help out with, and we loved it. Jerry could get all the names to come there. All Jerry had to do was pick up the phone and call Sammy, and Sammy’s there. Jerry’s raised well over $2 billion over the years for MDA. What a dedicated human being to have done that.

What are your impressions of SLS?I’m very impressed with what [owner] Sam

Nazarian did in renovating that property. For me, I guess I would have imploded it and started over. But he took something [that existed], knew what to do with it and he did it. When I walk around inside and look at how the traffic flows and see the overall fairly low cost of entry, I say, “This place is gonna work.” He’s going after a market that’s similar to the Cosmopolitan; it’s going to be a fun place to be.

You still own the land where the former Wet ’n Wild was. Are you optimistic about the area?

Sam’s uniquely positioned long term, because you’re going to have two mega projects creating a new north end of the Strip. Between Genting Group’s Resorts World Las Vegas [the former Stardust] and the old Frontier site purchased by Melco Crown, you have two very big, well-financed companies that know what they’re doing. It’s terrific.

Did you recognize anything on your tour of SLS?There are little things that you can see. If you go

into some of the elevators, you’ll see some of the brass fttings still there. And it brings back a lot of memories for me. I could pick out the spots where we built the new Casbar Lounge, I could pick out the spot where we had the Conga Room. This was where the deli we built used to be. But you really can’t go back.

When I hear things like, “We have to make Las Vegas the way it used to be.” No, we don’t. We’re going to do something different, bigger and better. That’s where I want to go. I don’t want to live in the past. Time after time, folks try it. It just doesn’t work. You gotta go for something new, you gotta take the chances, you gotta roll the dice, and that’s exactly what Sam Nazarian has done.

What’s new at Lowden’s Pioneer Hotel & Gambling Hall

in Laughlin? Find out VegasSeven.com/PaulLowden.

Paul LowdenThe former Sahara hotel owner on the power of marquee names,

why he’ll always be grateful to Don Rickles and why

SLS will succeed on the north end of the Strip

By Paul Szydelko