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Some say there are no second acts in the life of a magic dragon. Others say there’s no such thing as dragons, or magic. Piff the Magic Dragon proves all skeptics, dragon deniers and literary tropes wrong five nights a week from deep within his Flamingo lair. Thursdays through Mondays, he and his faithful canine cohort, Mr. Piffles, fill the Flamingo Showroom with audiences that saw him garner a golden buzzer on America’s Got Talent and nearly fool Penn & Teller.
It turned out a lot of Americans thought much of Piff’s talent, although he’s quite British, and, although Penn & Teller ultimately recognized the methods behind his magic, the two celebrated illusionists were impressed by his originality.
Determined to be the first dragon with a magic show on the Strip, Piff convinced the Flamingo to let him set up a lair inside the iconic property where he’d vie with legendary headliners and the bombshells of “X” Burlesque for entertainment appetites. He had a base with people who saw him on AGT and Penn & Teller: Fool Us, and his reputation grew by word of mouth despite his courageous battle with, as he calls it, “reptile dysfunction.”
Six years after he made his debut at Bugsy’s Cabaret, Piff now finds himself in a larger venue with a runway that allows him to engage with the audience on a new level. No one does better crowd work on the Strip than Piff. He’s a master at deflecting disruptions to the flow of his show during audience participation segments, whether the participant is a nervous adult or mischievous adolescent.
Also very present is Mr. Piffles. Part emotional support animal and part one-dog security detail—his genteel demeanor misdirects from his powerful paws and sharp teeth—the green-clad long-haired chihuahua’s unrestrained enthusiasm and fearlessness is both contagious and integral to the onstage chemistry between himself, Piff and perpetually moving Las Vegas showgirl Jade Simone.
Piff has been sighted performing close-up magic in front of Flamingo for passersby, who find the fire-sneezing mythical creature’s sleight-of-hand foolproof and enchanting, once they realize he doesn’t want money in exchange for taking his photo. As of late, he’s channeled his magical abilities into other directions. He released his first full-length special, Reptile Dysfunction (available on YouTube), and toured with tragicomic singing clown Puddles earlier this year.
It seems like the entire audience lines up outside of the showroom for photos with Piff, Mr. Piffles and Jade. The trio stay to greet every fan, most of whom are seeing Piff live for the first time. It’s a magical connection made via card tricks, sly-but-family-friendly comedy and shameless exploitation of Mr. Piffles’ charisma and invulnerability. Yes, there are such things.
Flamingo 702.777.2782
Comedy and magic meld for Piff the Magic Dragon’s hilarious show
By Matt Kelemen
Photo by Christopher DeVargas
Corner Bar Management’s Ryan Doherty talks shop about his popular Las Vegas venues
By KIKO MIYASATO
Cheapshot you’ve visited the downtown area of Las Vegas, you might have noticed a certain shift over the past decade. What was once an area that few tourists and even locals stepped foot on—save for under the bright lights and comforts of the Fremont Street Experience—has become a utopia for drinking, dancing, dining and the digging of cool atmospheres. One street that has received great fanfare is the Fremont East District. It’s here that you’ll find a memorable night of revelry. And that’s thanks in part to Ryan Doherty and his company, Corner Bar Management.
Boston native Doherty never meant to stay in Vegas. While studying hotel management at University of Massachusetts Amherst he decided to study one semester at UNLV’s exchange program. That was 1996, and he’s been here ever since. While finishing his undergrad at UNLV, he immersed himself in Vegas’ nightlife industry. That industry led him into the world of marketing, printing and media, which led to linking up with the late Tony Hsieh, Zappos founder and downtown champion, who helped open Doherty’s business-oriented mind to the opportunities of a renaissance in a once rundown and forgotten area of the city. By 2012, Doherty had signed the lease on a building to open his first downtown venture, Commonwealth, on Fremont East. That was followed with The Laundry Room (a speakeasy inside Commonwealth) and Park on Fremont, and the launch of his hospitality group, Corner Bar Management. “We had been swept away by the romance of being downtown,” Doherty says. “I got addicted to building stuff. That was the main driver. I started diving deeper into design. I wanted to keep building more spaces. I started working with better artists. We started thinking as you build these venues, you’re breathing life into an old building, but also into the neighborhood.”
The past few years, under the CBM umbrella, Doherty and his team have continued to add hot spots to the stretch
Lucky Day
–Ryan Doherty
of Fremont East including the bars We All Scream, Lucky Day, and Discopussy; restaurant Peyote; and bar-theater hybrid Cheapshot. (CBM also dipped into the museum realm with the opening of Museum Fiasco at AREA15.)
“The best thing about having all these venues on the same street is that it makes downtown feel more personal to me, more intimate,” he says. “Years ago, I stopped inviting people to a specific venue, and now I invite them to a neighborhood … Our goal is to create places for our community to gather, to support the arts and to spark conversation. We’re going to continue to create new venues that do just that.”
With all of Doherty’s venues, which is his favorite? It’s his most-recent opening, Cheapshot, and its accompanying variety show, Miss Behave’s Mavericks. “I like this venue so much right now,” he says. “Everyone always asks me what my favorite venue is, and I say, ‘Whatever the next one is.’ But I keep coming back to (Cheapshot) because it’s just so fun to watch the people onstage interacting with the audience. There’s a recipe to throwing a really good party, but there’s this whole different recipe to keeping everyone engaged for 90 minutes with the show and having lots of personalities
Discopussy
to manage and the variety act is like 14 different acts throughout the night with nine different people.”
Going over his other venues, for lovers of tequila and mezcal, Lucky Day loves
Museum Fiasco back with a huge assortment of the spirit and inventive cocktails. For lovers of house and techno music, Discopussy is a bit of a throwback to the underground rave days, with a warehouse-style space
We All Scream and a big dancefloor that will keep feet moving all night. For childhood whimsy mixed with adult playground, We All Scream has quickly become a hot spot for scoops of ice cream mixed with delicious cocktails, a monster sound system and a huge second-floor balcony that overlooks the action of Fremont East.
While the drinks flow freely inside all his ventures, guests are in for more than a buzz. “The trendier the bar is, the shorter the lifespan will be,” he says. “Legacy matters in bars and we want to be around for decades. My goal is to build timeless venues that don’t feel gimmicky. Our spaces are essentially large-scale art projects that lean on technology, sound immersion and visual stimulation to create an environment that feels more like an art installation than a bar.”
And he’s right. Just take a look at the graffiti murals splattered across We All Scream, the playful art-meets-industrial space of Commonwealth, the secret-garden setting at Park on Fremont, the explosion of lights on the ceiling of Lucky Day, the retro-desert design of Peyote’s
Peyote
patio, and the vaudevillian vibes and circus-style art encompassing Cheapshot.
“We go out of our way to fill the spaces with art and make it very immersive,” Doherty says. “… Our bars are among my favorite galleries in the world. They’re open all night and are inviting for every person of every walk of life to experience. So many people who walk into our venues have no idea they are entering an insanely carefully curated gallery filled with contemporary artworks.”
More than 25 years later since Doherty moved to the desert city, through his many career incarnations and many popular venues, we close the conversation with what success looks like. “There is something special about rescuing an abandoned building and turning it into a
The Laundry Room
Park on Fremont
–Ryan Doherty
working establishment,” he says. “If you do that enough times in the same area, you not only revive the property, but you start breathing life into the entire neighborhood. I want them to write the story of downtown and at least have them mention us, like these guys added a layer that is still around. I want to leave Fremont Street better than when I found it. That’ll be the measure of success.”
By Brock Radke Photo by Christopher DeVargas
Illusionist Jen Kramer reaches 500 Westgate shows
The Magic of Jen Kramer recently passed its groundbreaking 500th performance at the Westgate Cabaret at Westgate Las Vegas, and it happened the day before its star’s 30th birthday. We caught up with the city’s only current headlining female magician to both celebrate the milestone and find out how her show has evolved.
I like to think of the show as a continually evolving thing, and while I’m proud of what I’ve created so far, I want to keep beating my own best, keep improving. It’s amazing how a tiny change in the way you say something can make a real difference in the audience reaction. Sometimes I’ll add an entirely new routine, so there are some parts that are totally new from when it first opened, but there have been lots of smaller tweaks as well. It’s been an exciting process and a fun, creative challenge.
When the show was on pause, I did a lot of work making adaptations to the show so it would work well in the new normal, coming up with different variations and ways to accomplish routines. We wanted to be prepared so that no matter what, we could give the audience a fantastic experience. Audience participation is so important to me because it means every single show we do is a little different. The audience makes the show what it is. They say limitations inspire creativity and it’s true. It definitely pushed me.
That’s something I love about magic, working through different challenges and figuring out the best way to do something. There are many different ways of accomplishing a routine and so many factors go into it.
Westgate Las Vegas
westgatelasvegas.com There are so many things going through my mind. There are the memories made with the audience and the awesome team I get the privilege to work with at Westgate. Ultimately for me, magic is all about connecting with people, that genuine human connection, and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to do this thing I love so much and get to connect with people through magic.
It’s not just a kids’ show, it’s perfectly appropriate for kids and adults, and to me it’s just great to see families at the show. It really does remind me of the first magic shows I saw and what that meant to me when I was a kid, developing an interest in magic. I’ll see (multiple) generations coming together, and sometimes I’ll get to gather after the show and talk magic with a group of young aspiring magicians. That’s just so much fun and so rewarding.
Silk Sonic engages audiences with talent and charm
By Matt Kelemen
There’s one song by Silk Sonic that can and should only be heard live in its proper context at the superduo’s Dolby Live at Park MGM residency. “We Took Your Phones Away” is not on Silk Sonic’s debut album and may have started out as a soulful interlude Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak insert between “Skate” and “Love’s Train” at An Evening with Silk Sonic, but it also is a literal boast, as phones have been bagged at performances during the two previous stretches of dates.
These shows are dance parties meant for full engagement of body, mind and especially soul. In the world of randomness we currently inhabit, Mars and .Paak want to close the windows to social media and have all eyes on them, all ears equalized for sound and all feet moving to good-time music that evokes another period when people turned to dance music for a temporary escape from troubled times.
Silk Sonic music is organic with songs that are state-of-the-art homages to sounds of the ’70s. Vocal harmonies and Philly-soul production values hearken back to a wrinkle in time when disco beats were produced by live drummers and mirrored balls were de
Photo by John Esparza
Dolby Live at Park MGM Aug. 16 & 18-19, ticketmaster.com
rigueur in nightclubs. Mars and .Paak don wide-collared shirts and fern-bar fashions for the concerts and are joined by band members for choreography inspired by vocal groups like the Chi-Lites and the O’Jays.
It’s a musical formula that’s not formulaic. Following their muse has paid off big time for Mars and .Paak, with An Evening with Silk Sonic the album debuting at No. 2 on Billboard’s album charts upon its release in November. The subsequent awards season found the duo picking up honors for R&B album of the year at iHeart Radio Music Awards in March. In April, it won in all four Grammy categories the single “Leave the Door Open” was nominated for.
Mars also won “Top R&B Tour” at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards in May for last year’s Bruno Mars at Park MGM residency. While recognition for the music and performances were well-earned, the awards shows gave Silk Sonic a chance to spread the gospel of soul to television audiences and garnered a ton of publicity. The duo’s performance of “Love’s Train” at BBMA “crushed,” according to NBC News. Silk Sonic blasted through Vegas-inspired party anthem “777” at the GRAMMYs with a Beatle-wigged .Paak getting wicked on his drum kit and Mars delivering funk riffage on a seafoam-colored Stratocaster.
Both of those performances were at MGM Grand Garden Arena and gave fans a taste of the full live band, complete with horn section. Considering the location of its Dolby Live shows, it seems like Silk Sonic adopted Las Vegas as its home city, making it enticing to come to Vegas to experience the joyful affair that is An Evening with Silk Sonic. Snatches and snippets may be available on social media, but Silk Sonic has created the ultimate retro-soul dance party that must be attended in person. Your phones are taken away for a good reason.
