Desert Companion - April 2023

BOATS ON THE GROUND A PADDLER’S-EYE VIEW OF THE DROUGHT

KEITH LEE FEVER IS EVERYONE REALLY A CRITIC?

Road Trip

Five mountain getaways within a day’s drive

PLUS OUR RESIDENT BACKPACKER’S FIVE TRAIL ESSENTIALS

SPORTING LUXURY WITH ATTITUDE

ALL THINGS

11 COMMUNITY Spiegelworld + Nipton = truly new or same old thing?

By Lille Allen

16

POLICY A guide to the ’23 legislature’s proposed environmental laws

By Paul Boger

18 SHOP

A seasoned hiker shares five trail essentials

By Ryan Vellinga

20 MINI-GUIDE Headed to L.A.? Don’t miss these museums

By Mike Prevatt

22 DISCOMFORT ZONE Love thy (Cali) neighbor as thyself

By Eric Duran-Valle

35 CULTURE Blooming good shows, concerts, and festivals

By Anne Davis

39 FILM

Will the Beverly Theater boost Vegas’ art house film scene?

By Josh Bell

40 BOOKS

Two heroines search for health, happiness, and equality

42 WRITER IN RESIDENCE

A boater’s view of what’s at stake on the Colorado River

By Meg Bernhard

FOOD+DRINK

32

THE CRITICS

Pardon TikTok food reviewer Keith Lee for this disruption By Soni Brown DEPARTMENTS

44 HISTORY

Resurrecting Model T car culture, one weekend at a time By Sarah Bun

48

THE RURALS

Tecopa’s Renaissance man to the rescue By Michael Hanson

TAKE A HIKE!

The White Rock Hills Loop Trail serves up a scenic sample platter of all there is to love about Red Rock

By Heidi Kyser

PHOTO BY Daniel Burka/ Unsplash

BROADWAY SEASON SUPPORTER

To learn more about our season, go to: TheSmithCenter.com/Broadway

Editor’s Note

GET AWAY

I’m writing this on the three-year anniversary of the COVID pandemic lockdown’s official start. No one wants to think about that horrible time, and yet ... it’s worth remembering the promises we made ourselves during those months when we languished in uncertainty over our health, jobs, and toilet paper supply. “I’ll eat takeout off the good China, just for fun.” “I’ll tell my parents I love them every time we talk.” “I’ll use all my vacation time this year.” Etcetera.

How’s that working out for you?

We can’t help you dance like no one’s watching (other than suggesting you do it at one of the events in The Guide, pp. 35-37), but we can definitely help you use up those vacation days. For our annual travel guide, we focus on mountain towns within a day’s drive of the Vegas Valley, a no-brainer for a region filled with people who not only love to hike, hunt, camp, fish, and otherwise recreate outdoors, but also are always looking for new destinations to escape the summer heat (p. 62).

And speaking of the heat, it’s rising globally on average due to humans spewing stupid amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, in case you hadn’t heard. I’m not a fan of “holidays” allowing people to pretend for one day that they care about something they should care about all the time, but Earth Day is as good a time as any to note that we have to do something about climate change, like, now. Less sarcastic and cynical than I, the writers reflecting on the environment for this issue take a personal, pragmatic approach to their stories. Northern Nevada reporter Paul Boger rounds up eco-bills making their way through the legislature (p. 16). From a boat floating down the Colorado River, writer in residence Meg Bernhard ponders what’s at stake in the drought (p. 42). And guest contributor Stefan Lovgren shares an adaptation of a chapter from his forthcoming book about a megafish that used to inhabit the Colorado — and why it doesn’t anymore (p. 54).

These useful and beautiful reads are best enjoyed on the deck of a lodge in the warm spring sun. You promised yourself more of that, so get to it.

Happy trails, Heidi

Lille Allen is a Latinx designer and writer based in Las Vegas. Currently the in-house designer at Eater, Lille was previously associate art director at The Believer. Her writing can be found in Hyperallergic, McSweeney’s, and little pieces of trash across America.

Stefan Lovgren is a journalist and filmmaker based in Las Vegas. He has been a regular contributor to National Geographic’s numerous media platforms since 2003 and writes about a wide variety of environmental issues. He’s coauthor of Chasing Giants: In Search of the World’s Largest Freshwater Fish, as well as several soccer-related books.

Eric Duran-Valle is a writer from and based in Las Vegas. His writing has appeared in TheList.Vegas, In Parentheses, The Colored Lens, and Las Vegas Writes anthology. The most valuable thing he owns is a red Fender Jaguar.

PRESIDENT & CEO Mark Vogelzang

COO Favian Perez

EDITOR Heidi Kyser

ART DIRECTOR Scott Lien

ASSISTANT EDITOR Anne Davis

DESIGN INTERNS Alyssa Noji, Ryan Vellinga

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Allison Hall, Markus Van’t Hul, Britt Quintana

REVENUE SYSTEMS SPECIALIST  Marlies Vaitiekus

WEB COORDINATOR Stanley Kan

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Lille Allen, Nicholas Barnette, Josh Bell, Meg Bernhard, Paul Boger, Soni Brown, Sarah Bun, Scott Dickensheets, Eric Duran-Valle, Michael Hanson, Jason Harris, Heidi Knapp Rinella, Stefan Lovgren, Nicole Minton, Mike Prevatt, Gab Rodriguez, Lissa Townsend Rodgers, Lourdes Trimidal, Ryan Vellinga

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Tim Bower, Gregg Carnes, Brent Holmes, Bronson Loftin

CONTACT

EDITORIAL: Heidi Kyser, (702) 259-7855; heidi@desertcompanion.com

ADVERTISING: Favian Perez (702) 259-7813; favian@desertcompanion.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS: Marlies Vaitiekus (702) 259-7822; marlies@desertcompanion.com

WEBSITE: www.desertcompanion.com

Desert Companion is published bimonthly by Nevada Public Radio, 1289 S. Torrey Pines Dr., Las Vegas, NV 89146. It is available by subscription at desertcompanion.vegas, or as part of Nevada Public Radio membership. It is also distributed free at select locations in the Las Vegas Valley. All photos, artwork, and ad designs printed are the sole property of Desert Companion and may not be duplicated or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. The views of Desert Companion contributing writers are not necessarily the views of Desert Companion or Nevada Public Radio. Contact us for back issues, which are available for purchase for $7.95.

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The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas

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The Desert Speaks

Is the solitude that various settlers keep seeking in Nipton an illusion? Spiegelworld will be the next to find out

BY Lilie Allen

The trip begins just off Interstate 15, on exit 286 for Nipton Road. Past the Mojave National Preserve Ivanpah Road entrance, you will find a recently repainted sign reading “HISTORIC TOWN AHEAD.”

The letters, a deep brown against the white wooden background, imitate vintage rodeo signs. In the distance, nestled between enormous eucalyptus trees, is the so-called magical town of Nipton, California.

Crossing train tracks on a Sunday afternoon, I arrive at the center of town. It’s a set of small buildings — a honey shop, a trailer park. Exiting the car, I turn into a tourist. I am now one of many souls curious to understand why Spiegelworld, a Las Vegas entertainment company, would choose to buy a town in the middle of the desert for $2.5 million.

Founded in New York City in 2006, Spiegelworld sells comedy to a specific audience, perhaps one that considers Cirque du Soleil a high-brow enterprise. Each of its shows on the Strip (Absinthe, Atomic Saloon Show, and OPM) combines crude jokes

IDEAS, CULTURE, FOOD, AND OTHER WAYS TO USE THIS CITY

with incredible circus acts. Performers of all sorts — contortionists, sword swallowers, musicians — are woven together with a slight narrative touch.

Nipton is only one part of Spiegelworld’s expansion. The company has been dreaming big for quite some time. This summer, it is going beyond the desert, opening a permanent residency in Atlantic City, New Jersey, alongside a second location of its Italian American psychedelic restaurant, Superfrico.

On a Zoom call, Scott Armstrong, president of Spiegelworld’s Las Vegas office, explains the vision behind the company’s Nipton endeavor. For a high-profile representative of an irreverent entertainment machine, he gives a surprising answer. Spiegelworld seeks the tranquility the town provides, with its 30 or so residents living in a narrow stretch of private property nestled between public lands. In a press release, the company explains Nipton will be a “living” town, where performers can “retreat to dream, create, and undertake unfettered artistic experimentation.”

The myth of magical Nipton begins in 1905, when developers of the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad put a stop at a small miners camp called “Nippeno.” As a historical marker in town tells the story, rail traffic turned the previous wagon crossroad into a bustling hot spot, serving ranchers and miners.

In the mid ’80s, Californian Gerald Freeman purchased the town, and it thrived by catering to workers during the local gold boom. In a 2014 New York Times profile, Freeman, a miner himself, said he dreamed of creating a self-reliant, self-powered town, his fear of climate change driving him toward sustainability. His vision was real, his zest for the

town contagious. The Times profile mentions some of Nipton’s then-residents who were attracted to its “peace and solitude.”

In 2016, two years after the profile was published, Freeman died. His wife, Roxanne Lang, put the town up for sale.

A year later, Phoenix-based American Green purchased it for $5 million. The company aspired to a similar dream as Freeman and Spiegelworld, hoping to establish an oasis — this one cannabis-themed. Despite Delta International Oil & Gas buying the town from American Green in 2018 for $7.7 million and giving American Green rein to continue developing its cannabis venture, it eventually failed. Lang foreclosed on the property after payments stopped coming in, according to the Wall Street Journal. From Nipton’s main road, some of the large-scale public art that American Green installed is still visible in the distance.

In 2019, Spiegelworld held its company retreat at Nipton. According to Armstrong, the company fell in love with the town’s charm, with the feeling of being out there. The idea comes up again: peaceful.

When Lang put the town up for sale yet again, Spiegelworld jumped at the opportunity to purchase the land. The company dreams of Nipton eventually becoming its headquarters.

The more I prod into Nipton’s future during my interview with Armstrong, the bigger the dreams get. He speaks of a resort with greater accommodation capacity, a way to transport visitors to and from Nipton, a restaurant, and immersive entertainment. This is what Spiegelworld hopes to create: an all-encompassing experience. Visitors would travel to Nipton in Spiegelworld transportation, spend the night at a Spiegelworld resort or hotel, dine in Spiegelworld eateries, and leave the town slightly changed.

If the company’s current ventures are any indication of what to expect down the road, visitors can look forward to a kitschy theme, an enthralling atmosphere, and pop-up performances. (Or, as the company puts it, the “all-the-way Spiegelworld experience.”) It’s all a dream, one Spiegelworld hopes to achieve in small installments, starting this fall.

NIPTON’S CALMNESS IS manufactured. Not by circus or cannabis companies, or hoteliers or resource extraction outfits, but by the mechanisms and byproducts of centuries of colonization and land theft. Nipton is on the ancestral territory of the Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute), Nüwüwü (Chemehuevi), and Newe Sogobia (Western Shoshone).

In Nuwuvi and Newe (Shoshone peoples) epistemology, the landscape is alive, everything within it connected. “The trees and the rocks and the air, the water, they’re all our cousins, part of us, related to us,” tribal representatives write in a recent study exploring landscape and geography. The founding principle of interconnectivity says land should be cared for to support everything around us, to maintain a balance.

SCOTT LIEN

The peaceful nature people perceive out there is inherent to the land; our process of dreaming and changing it alters the balance. Perhaps this piece of now-private land would have remained permanently uninhabited if miners hadn’t settled there. Perhaps it was meant to be a natural oasis.

It’s hard to wrestle with the history of how these 80 acres came to be “private.” How a Las Vegas entertainment company came to own it, to impose its dream on it. During our call, Armstrong mentions the company is in conversations with the Bureau of Land Management to explore its land options for future Spiegelworld dreams in Nipton. The settler mission to expand remains.

In the press release announcing the latest purchase of Nipton, self-appointed mayor Jim Eslinger says, “You need to have respect for the Mojave, and the desert will tell you if it is happy or unhappy with what you’re doing.”

The town’s previous successes and failures may be a reminder that to dream in Nipton is to dream on stolen land. Only time will tell what the desert thinks of Spiegelworld’s vision to build something grand in this small town that only few call home.

Among Nipton’s current residents are two Spiegelworld project managers, working away during the week. The Sunday I venture out there, I hope to find them living a life, though it’s hard to imagine what that could mean.

The existing structures visible from the main road are utilitarian. An old bar or saloon in the middle of renovations. The hotel hidden behind a fence. Somewhere within the private property is a giant well, covered in tarp. There’s something there, but one can’t make out what.

Out in the land, touching it, I know everyone is looking, though no comes out of their living quarters to inquire why I am here. Maybe they are used to the Clown Town tourists, the motorcycle thrill seekers, the cars driving through in search of moving landscapes. There’s no place to hide.

I happen to park next to one resident. We exchange a polite “Hello there!” as he jumps into his bright blue truck. He has just exited a room in one of the main buildings off the road. After he drives off, I peek into the room. It’s Nipton Laundry, the sound of its washing machine the sole sign of life in this town.

At 1:20 p.m., a cargo train runs through, passing on the tracks at the edge of town. For a few minutes we have no way out. The churning of the washing machine is washed out, the train’s booming now the only noise for miles. The illusion of Nipton’s tranquility slips away. ✦

HEAR MORE: Spiegelworld’s venture in Nipton from KNPR’s State of Nevada

Spirit Moves

Now that Spirit Mountain’s National monument designation is official, what’s the future of Avi Kwa Ame?

BY Anne Davis

Avi Kwa Ame (or its Anglicized equivalent, Spirit Mountain) is likely familiar to environmental news watchers. And since President Biden officially designated the sacred area as a national monument under the Antiquities Act on March 21, Spirit Mountain will likely become familiar to all Nevadans soon, too.

Biden’s declaration was the culmination of decades of work by Indigenous and environmental advocates to block more than 500,000 acres of Native ancestral land about 80 miles south of Las Vegas from development. Taylor Patterson, the executive director of Native Voters Alliance Nevada, says, “All of us, as Indigenous people, have fought really hard to hold onto our traditions, and to be able to access the same places that our ancestors did is really vital for all of our youth and the generations coming up after us.”

National monument status means Spirit

Mountain is excluded from future development proposals (a point of contention recently) and will close what advocates call a “doughnut hole” of unprotected land between California and Arizona, creating a corridor of continuous protected space between the three states.

U.S. Representative Dina Titus, who predicted the designation would come this spring, emphasizes how beneficial the new National Monument is for all involved. “It’s bringing more dollars to the area, it’s going to save a sacred place, it’s going to protect the land, it’s going to keep it from being developed,” she says.

Avi Kwa Ame National Monument also represents the determination of Indigenous Peoples who consider the area sacred. UNLV anthropology professor Nicholas Barron says actions that some people see as strictly symbolic can have

significant material impacts on tribal communities. “It’s just another way for a tribe to exercise their sovereign rights through these avenues that we don’t always necessarily see as being inherently political,” Barron says.

The conversation on Avi Kwa Ame has not ended — it’s simply shifted to focus on a new stage of the conservation process, Patterson says. “Next on the list is just figuring out what type of management plan works best and allows the most sovereignty for the Fort Mojave Indian tribe and some of the other tribes that are involved.” ✦

FOLLOW UPDATES: At press time, state and local officials were reacting to the president’s declaration.

Avi Kwa Ame is considered a sacred space for 12 Indigenous tribes and is home to Native rock art, the world’s most expansive Joshua tree forest, and numerous endemic species of wildlife. Here’s a snapshot of the road to preservation.

 Spirit Mountain conservation was notably discussed by Yuman elders in 1988, when they laid out a preservation plan.

 In 1992, the Fort Mojave Tribal Council passed a resolution to protect Spirit Mountain as a way to fight encroachment and damage.

 Seven years later, at the approval of the Bureau of Land Management, Spirit Mountain was added to the National Registry of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property.

 In 2002, the mountain and its 33,500 adjacent acres were named the Spirit Mountain Wilderness.

 2019 brought renewed calls for protecting the area: The Fort Mojave Tribal Council once again passed a resolution, this time urging officials to designate Avi Kwa Ame as a national monument.

 In 2021, in response to the Fort Mojave Tribal Council’s resolution, dozens of other tribal nations and city governments also endorsed national monument designation.

 Over the past few years, Avi Kwa Ame has been the proposed site for multiple wind farms.

Sources: Bureau of Land Management; honorspiritmountain.org

Legislating Green

A guide to the environmental bills introduced in this year’s legislative session

BY Paul Boger

Nevada lawmakers have shown a growing interest in addressing the state’s environmental needs. In 2019, they revamped renewable energy standards. During the 2021 session, they took steps toward electrifying the state’s transportation system. So far, in 2023, they’ve drafted 16 pieces of legislation dealing with water. Others look to increase wildlife and habitat protection, and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Examples follow.

ACCESSING NATURE

Outdoor recreation is big business in Nevada, bringing almost $5 billion into the state’s economy annually, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Between Lake Tahoe and the Ruby Mountains, from the Jarbidge Wilderness to Lake Mead, the state’s natural areas are under threat from climate change and overuse by people.

AJR3 — Proposed by Assemblywoman Sarah Peters (D-Reno) and Howard Watts (D-Las Vegas), this resolution would kick off the process of amending the Nevada Constitution to include language guaranteeing every resident the right to a clean and healthy environment and that the state must protect its natural resources. A change to the constitution, it would have to be approved twice, once this session and again in 2025, and then go before voters in 2026.

AB164 — Call it the anti-screen time bill. To get more kids outside more often, this legisla-

tion from Speaker of the Assembly Steve Yeager. (D-Las Vegas) would create a study to find ways to incorporate more outdoor recreational opportunities in public school curricula. It also looks to teach kids to be better stewards of the environment.

WATER CONSERVATION

One good precipitation year won’t fix the American West’s water woes, and despite above-average snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and Rockies, water levels at Lake Mead continue to shrink. That’s why lawmakers are considering a handful of measures to recover every last drop of reusable water.

SB176 — Amid the patchwork of complicated, contentious water laws, one rule has remained relatively constant: Those with the oldest rights get to take their share first. But there’s not enough to go around in some basins. Sen. Pete Goicoechea’s (R-Eureka) has proposed creating a state program allowing the engineer’s office to buy water claims in areas where groundwater is overallocated and retire them — forever taking them off the market.

AB220 — The Southern Nevada Water Authority estimates there are as many as 15,000 private septic systems in the Las Vegas Valley. To regain some

of the water trapped in those tanks, AB220 would require all privately owned septic tanks within 400 feet of a community sewer in Clark County to connect to that system by 2054. It would also create a program to help pay at least half the cost for property owners to make the switch. SNWA estimates each septic system could generate as many as 315,000 gallons of water annually.

PROTECTING ANIMALS AND WILDLIFE

At almost 110,000 square miles, home means Nevada to 309 endemic species, making it the country’s 11th most species-diverse state. Yet many of those animals are at risk, including 94 plants, 26 invertebrates, seven fishes, two amphibians, 16 reptiles, 26 birds, and 27 mammals.

AB112 — Vehicles kill more than 5,000 wild animals in Nevada every year, creating both ecological and financial problems. According to the Nevada Department of Transportation, vehicle crashes caused by animal collisions cost the state roughly $20 million annually. This bill would allow the state to use federal dollars to build and maintain animal crossings over state highways.

AB102 — This bill would ban killing contests, which ranchers and hunters have used to control animal populations they’ve considered pests for generations. The measure protects beavers, bobcats, coyotes,. mink, muskrats, ot-

ters, rabbits, skunks, and weasels. Anyone caught organizing a competition could face fines of up to $30,000. Those caught participating could face a $1,000 fine.

ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE

If you think it’s hot in Las Vegas now, then buckle up, buttercup! Temperatures have already risen by two degrees over the last century, and that growth rate will likely worsen. Clark County’s Climate Vulnerability Assessment projections show temperatures climbing by more than seven degrees by 2050 and eight to almost 13 degrees by the end of this century. For some lawmakers, it’s become imperative to take steps now to prepare for life in a changing climate.

AB131 — The Las Vegas Valley becomes a heat sink by summer’s end, and nowhere is it felt more than greenspace-starved east Las Vegas. Assemblywoman Lesley Cohen’s (D-Las Vegas) bill would create an Urban and Community Forestry Program under the state’s Division of Forestry. It would promote, develop, and maintain tree canopies in communities across the state, with particular attention on traditionally underserved neighborhoods.

AB71 — Advocacy groups such as the Nevada Environmental Justice Coalition want lawmakers to create rules requiring employers to ensure workers have access to shade and water, and train them in spotting signs of heat stroke and what to do about it. Lawmakers want to study the issue for a few years to determine which communities are most burned by the changing climate. ✦

HEAR MORE Environmental coverage on KNPR’s State of Nevada.

Catherine Trifiletti

A designer shows and tells how to be sustainable with style

BY Anne Davis

Local fashion designer Catherine Trifiletti takes sustainability so seriously that after she moved to Las Vegas in 2013, she founded her own hospitality uniform brand to present businesses with stylish, eco-friendly options. Her “mother earth manufacturing” philosophy is inspired by both the patterns and textiles of nature. Trifiletti put together a favorite outfit for Desert Companion with tips for dressing sustainably on any budget.

My style philosophy …

My family’s from Sicily, so my core is Italian luxury. I like things that are made really well; I love beautiful fabrics, colors. It’s funny, though, I can be very natural in the mountains hiking, and then I could be in one of my fabulous suits that’s really bold.

My jacket …

It’s vintage Valentino ($900, originally). I got it a very long time ago! This is one of my favorites, made from a linen/flax blend. And there’s no lining inside the jacket, so it works really well where (the weather) is a little bit hot.

My pants …

These pants (Catherine Trifiletti Ltd, $89) are a hemp and spandex blend. The thing about hemp is you have to wash it a bunch of times, because it can be a little course. But if you add spandex into the blend, it breaks down the fiber.

My shirt …

From EnviroTextiles ($25), this happens to be certified organic hemp and certified cotton.

My accessories …

The necklace and earrings are Lapis Lazuli (Elvia Avila Diseñadora Artesanal, $49). I think natural stones are just so beautiful. They’re unique. And when you buy handmade jewelry, it’s going to last you a lifetime.  My friend has a fabulous shoe store in Philadelphia

called Bus Stop. I asked her if she could send me a vegan or cruelty-free bag, and this one she sent is from Matt and Nat ($160).

My shoes …

Faux suede Sam Edelman mules ($90). I stand all day, so it’s got to be comfortable! And they go with everything; they’re a natural color with a little speckle of black like a leopard print, which I love. ✦

Gear Me!

Desert Companion’s backpacker-in-resi dence shares his essential items to make hiking carefree

BY RYAN VELLINGA

1 PATAGONIA HOUDINI JACKET

The Houdini is the most versatile piece of gear I own and something I bring on all my outdoor adventures. It packs down small, blocks the wind, and retains enough body heat that I don’t need any other outerwear on brisk spring mornings. $109, REI

2 CASCADE MOUNTAIN TECH TREKKING POLES

Costco is a gold mine for high-quality, affordable hiking gear, and the CMT trekking poles are an example of that. I’ve used them for 700-plus miles, and they do exactly what trekking poles need to do … for about half the price of other poles. $80/pair, Costco

3 BLACK DIAMOND DISTANCE 8 RUNNING PACK

Although I’m not a trail runner, I’ve found the comfort that comes from running-veststyle straps is unmatched by those of other packs. The eight-liter capacity is perfect for my three-liter water bladder, extra layer, lunch, and the 10 essentials. I can also fit plenty of snacks in the front strap pockets! $160, REI

4 PLATYPUS HOSER 2-3L WATER BLADDER

From my experience with water bladders, simpler is always better, and the Platypus Hoser is as simple as it gets. I’ve used the same one for 10 years and haven’t experienced pinhole leaks, finicky tubes, or part failures. There are many newer models, but the Hoser remains my go-to for its ease-of-use and simplicity. $30, Sportsmans Warehouse

5 INJINJI TRAIL MIDWEIGHT CREW SOCKS

Nobody wants to receive socks as a gift, but if someone gives you Injinji socks, respond with your biggest hug. These funny-looking toe socks help prevent blisters between your toes and the rest of your feet. $17, REI

6 SUN UMBRELLA

I couldn’t find one at local gear shops, but this item is worth breaking your online shopping moratorium. Lightweight sun umbrellas are essential for my late spring desert hiking. The luxury of portable shade has dramatically improved my enjoyment of desert hiking. It allows me to go out longer and take breaks anywhere under the harsh sun. $39, Gossamer Gear ✦

You Oughta be Among Pictures

Institutions for the visual arts abound in Los Angeles

BY Mike Prevatt

Gems such as the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art and Neon Museum notwithstanding, Las Vegas is not exactly a museum town. But there is one four hours southwest. Los Angeles is an enviable treasure trove of cultural emporiums, and your next trip there should include a few of them.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (lacma.org): The largest art museum in Southern California, LACMA boasts 150,000 works, and its exhibitions — which draw heavily from modern and contemporary art — are big-ticket events. Bonus: the new-ish Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (academymuseum.org) next door, where Agnès Varda gets as much floor space as Steven Spielberg.

More day tripworthy museums!

Nevada Northern Railway Museum

A 90-minute sunset ride highlights this homage to Nevada railroading in Ely. (nnry.com)

Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

Cozy up to the actual fossils of the swimming dinosaur in Austin. (parks.nv.gov/parks/ berlin-ichthyosaur)

Southern Utah Museum of Art

Just footsteps from the Utah Shakespeare Festival theaters in Cedar City, this museum boasts a Renoir, a Dali, and lots of regional art. (suu.edu/suma)

Lost City Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art ( moca.org ) If The Broad museum is modern art’s greatest hits compilation, then MOCA is its concept album. The main building on Grand Avenue downtown hosts the institution’s big and bold exhibitions, while the smaller Geffen Contemporary space features more audacious works.

Hammer Museum at UCLA (hammer.ucla.edu) The cultural anchor of Westwood Village, the Hammer lives up to the social consciousness aims of its parent university. Works by artists from marginalized backgrounds dominate the space. Make it a daylong art walk by venturing into campus for the globe-spanning Fowler Museum (fowler.ucla.edu) and iconic Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden (310-443-7000).

La Luz de Jesus Gallery ( laluzdejesus.com ) Los Angeles’ ode to lowbrow, underground, and post-pop art gets a playful space — if not a proper museum — east of Hollywood’s tourist traps. You’ll never be happier to walk through a gift shop than this one, full of gifts and novelty items your kids might actually want.

Norton Simon Museum (nortonsimon.org ) Those avoiding the bustle and gridlock of L.A. proper can find what I call “the Getty Lite” in Pasadena. It’s a formidable mix of historical and modern art — mostly from Asia and Europe — with an Eden-like sculpture garden, all of which you can knock out before having to feed the meter again. ✦

Recovered Pueblo artifacts and modern exhibitions comprise this multicultural Overton gem. (Bonus: Michael Heizer’s Double Negative land art piece sits 28 minutes away.) (lostcitymuseum.org)

Nevada State Railroad Museum Boulder City’s cultural institution on wheels — and like its northern counterpart, sometimes it moves. (www.boulderrailroadmuseum.org)

— Mike Prevatt

MOCA The main space on Grand Ave. in downtown L.A.

Serving Las Vegas for 50 Years

Valley Hospital is your healthcare provider in the heart of Las Vegas. From achieving award-winning, high-quality acknowledgments to training new physicians, patient health is at the center of all that we do.

24/7 Emergency Care

Valley Hospital is a Primary Heart Attack Center certified by The Joint Commission and the American Heart Association®. In addition, we’re proud to be recognized as High Performing by U.S. News & World Report for 2022-2023 in stroke and heart failure.

Specialized Services

We offer advanced cardiovascular, neurological, gynecologic oncology and surgical programs. Treatments include minimally invasive techniques using advanced technology.

Recognized for Patient Safety

We’re proud to have earned an “A” Grade in the Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Grade for Fall 2022. This means that we meet or exceed strict patient safety standards, including protecting our patients from errors, injuries, accidents, and infections when they visit us.

Home Means …

Not being afraid to (honestly) compare yourself to California, or any other state

BY Eric Duran-Valle

My high school chemistry teacher was a boisterous man with a thick Boston accent. Even at 7 a.m., he was always ready to begin class with some anecdote about how his home state of Massachusetts was much better than little old Nevada, especially when it came to education. I didn’t think much of it. Not a fair comparison, right? Massachusetts had schools such as Harvard and MIT and was really far away. Who cared what they were up to?

One day, he asked, “So what are you guys, the Golden State?”

“The Silver State,” I corrected him with gusto. Even then I was a zealous Nevada patriot. “The Golden State is California.”

He laughed. “Well that makes sense, doesn’t it? They put you in second place!”

THE AMERICAN MYTH is built on the idea of westward exploration and settlement, leaving behind the claustrophobic network of East Coast cities for wide-open spaces and blue skies. But that narrative seems to be reversing. In the past few years, Californians have been moving as far east as Florida. For the first time in history, California lost a congressional seat after the 2020 Census revealed that the state’s population growth had significantly stalled from 2010 and was outright flat from 2017 on, according to the Associated Press.

It’s easy to dunk on California. To the rest of the country, the whole state is populated by vain, sunbleached influencers who spend all day sipping lattes, getting high, and lounging at the beach. Who doesn’t remember the California tourism ads featuring the Governator, with a painful pun about “board meetings” superimposed over videos of surfers and skaters?

Wherever you go, making a joke at the expense of California is sure to get you some street cred, but it’s especially valuable currency in its immediate neighbor to the east. Californians have long been moving to Nevada for a lower cost of living, but that trend has accelerated in recent years with the expansion of remote work options during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, why would we not want to be like California? Put down that pitchfork! Bear with me for a moment. From the 30,000foot perspective, California is a prosperous state. In John Steinbeck’s era, it was the mecca of plentiful work, particularly in

agriculture. In Steve Jobs’ era, it was the nucleus of technological progress and innovation.

The more provocative image, and the one from which critics draw, is that of a state overburdened by myriad socioeconomic issues. High rates of unhoused people, a skyrocketing cost of living, and worst of all, the traffic.

A slew of political hopefuls running for office in Nevada have made vilifying “Californication” their campaign platform. A recent notable example is Adam Laxalt, who, during his 2018 bid for governor, promised to “keep our state from going the way of California,” according to the Nevada Independent . Echoing Donald Trump’s campaign promise of building a wall along the southern border, some Nevadans, on both sides of the political aisle, suggested extending that wall around California. This idea also caused infighting here at home. Much of rural Nevada figuratively cast Las Vegas out, considering it too California-adjacent. A friend of

mine, who moved from Vegas to Reno for school and now lives in Carson City, showed me a graphic T-shirt that extended “The Wall” around Clark County as well.

Laxalt’s strategy proved unsuccessful, as he lost by almost 40,000 votes to his Democratic opponent, Steve Sisolak. But consider this, too: The current speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, is a Republican from California’s 20th district. Two 20th-century Republican presidents, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, held office in California. Yes, there are Republicans in California, and plenty of them are coming to Nevada. And while 2018 was a pretty blue election, Republican Joe Lombardo’s win in 2022 gave it a purple hue.

As far back as 2013, Alan Greenblatt reported on this phenomenon for NPR. In his article “How California Is Turning the Rest of the West Blue,” Greenblatt acknowledged that the migration of Californians all over the Mountain West was a contributing factor to some states becoming more progressive, but the “growth of Hispanic populations has been more important, in terms of shaking things up politically.” He also pointed out that those who are leaving California would likely consider themselves conservative by their home state’s standards, but they’re considered liberal when they arrive in Utah, Arizona, Idaho …

THERE IS DEFINITELY a partisan explanation for California hate. But the sentiment can be felt on both sides of the aisle, particularly when it comes to housing prices. I spoke with a California transplant who arrived in Vegas in 2017, and she openly admitted that real estate investing was her motive for the move. “The Golden Knights were just getting started, and the Raiders were going to be here not long after. It just made sense,” she says.

My previous landlords were investors from California. And when I was applying for a mortgage, my loan officer explained, “These Californians, they sell a lean-to for $700,000 and make cash offers here.” You don’t have to be a Republican to be rubbed wrong by that.

But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s not unique to Nevada. For one, supply chain issues have caused the pace of new building to slow nationwide. Planet Money reported that the Biden administration increased the duties on lumber imported from Canada, which has kept lumber prices, and subsequently the cost to build new houses, high. Second, corporations have been buying up tracts of single-family homes all over the country and converting them to rentals. That, combined with shortterm rental companies such as Airbnb taking up space, means slim pickings for first-time homebuyers.

And let’s not forget that our sprawl, at least in Southern Nevada, is reaching its limits. Where building isn’t impeded by the physical edges of our valley’s mountain ranges, there is tension between developers, government agencies, and conservationists about where city limits should end. Are Californians exacerbating this tension? Maybe. But think about who’s most vocally pro-growth. See any overlap with the anti-Californication crowd?

WHEN MY CHEMISTRY teacher made that comment about us being “second place” to California, I wanted to take a beaker full of whatever chemical we were working with that day and throw it in his face. But I was a bad student, so I probably would have just splashed him with 100 milliliters of distilled water. As an adult,

I understand that visceral feeling as one of shame, jealousy, and inferiority.

Let’s be honest. California has the fifth-highest median household income ranking in the nation. Nevada is down at No. 24. Nevada’s minimum wage was recently raised to $10.50 per hour. California’s is $15.50. California ranks 20th overall in education, per the US News & World Report rankings — not the best, but still better than Nevada at 40th.

It’s hard to wrap your brain around every single issue that plagues our state. After the financial crisis of 2008, it was easier to believe that immigrants had taken all the jobs than to face a complex meltdown of worldwide banking systems mixed with incompetence and greed. There’s no emotion in analysis; there is an abundance of it in scapegoating.

We might have more in common with our western neighbors than we think. Desert Companion writer in residence, Meg Bernhard, who’s from California, says, “It’s upsetting to know that I won’t be able to afford property in the place where I grew up.”

The fact is, Nevada is growing in ways not seen before. Las Vegas is steadily becoming an American metropolis with its own sports teams. Reno has become a burgeoning center for tech. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, as the saying goes.

So, let’s not define ourselves by what we’re not. It’s not that Nevada is Not-California or Not-Arizona or Not-Utah or Not-Massachusetts. We’re simply Nevada, and people come here from all over the country for what we, uniquely, offer. We’ll grow, change, and adapt because we’re a community, not a museum piece. And Home Means Nevada, no matter where you’re from.

DEAR DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION....

BY Nicholas Barnette

Inspired by the demolition of the I-15 Tropicana overpass being dubbed “Dropicana,” we have some name sugges tions for future headache-inducing, traffic-boosting projects on Las Vegas streets:

r Charlest-undone

r Desert Inn-ding It All

r Flaming-no

r Rain-onyourparade-bow

r Viking Funeral

r Scary-land Parkway

r Summerlin Parking Lot

MEDICAL TOURISM

Patiently Waiting

Las Vegas was supposed to be building a healthcare travel industry. How’s that going?

BY Anne Davis

Las Vegas civic leaders have long dreamed of a thriving medical tourism industry. In 2011, the national Medical Tourism Association launched its local initiative (and accompanying tourist guide), aiming to establish the city as a medical tourism destination for both domestic and international travelers. In 2014, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Au thority (LVCVA), medical tourism advocacy group Las Vegas HEALS (Health, Educa tion, Advocacy, and Leadership of South ern Nevada), UNLV, and the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance partnered on a Regional Strategic Plan for Medical and Wellness Tourism. According to Doug Geinzer, HEALS’ former CEO, the plan included the “three legs to the stool” of medical tourism: health and wellness conventions, spa and wellness tourism, and medical tourism.

During the height of this excitement, in August 2012, current Desert Companion Editor Heidi Kyser wrote about the nascent medical tourism industry. Advocates and medical professionals told her optimistically how the next 10 years would bring success for the medical tourism market here.

Has it? We circled back to take the industry’s pulse. Here’s an update from those three sectors of the business.

MEETINGS AND CONVENTIONS

Unsurprisingly, this category of medical tourism has seen the strongest growth in Las Vegas over the past decade. After bottoming out during COVID, the convention industry has rebounded spectacularly, with the LVCVA estimating five million people attended

a convention in 2022, up 126 percent from the year before and only 1.5 million visitors away from pre-pandemic attendance highs. “On the medical conferences, I’d say we probably hit 10 out of 10,” Geinzer says. “That was by far the biggest area of success.”

SPA AND WELLNESS TOURISM

Geinzer considers this aspect of medical tourism another overall win for Las Vegas: “On wellness tourism, I’d say probably eight out of 10.” The pandemic boosted outdoor recreation activities such as hiking, biking, and rock climbing at local national parks (all of which fall under the wellness category).

“We had a lot of folks that moved from colder areas of the country to Las Vegas to work remotely,” Geinzer says. He adds that the ability to get more sun and excercise may increase these transplants’ self-care regimes.

MEDICAL TOURISM

Building a robust medical tourism industry in Vegas has proven to be a bit trickier, though why is hard to pin down. The LVCVA and its former (as well as only) medical and wellness tourism manager, Cheryl Smith, declined multiple requests for an interview. “Our healthcare infrastructure didn’t support it as much as we thought it would,” Geinzer says.

Though Vegas hasn’t hit all the medical tourism milestones advocates hoped it would, it has had some successes. Recent abortion restrictions in neighboring states and the Dobbs decision have caused an uptick in people traveling to Las Vegas to access reproductive services — a form of medical tourism. Jas Margarita Tobon, program manager for the Wild West Access Fund of Nevada, a donation-based fund to help people procure abortions, says she’s seen her caseload double since last summer. “We’ve seen an influx of out-of-state callers since then,” Tobon says, “from Arizona and Texas mostly.”

Despite the challenges, medical tourism boosters remain as optimistic as they were a decade ago about the city’s potential. “The fact that Vegas is such an amazing tourism destination — I think it only has the potential to grow,” says Jonathan Edelheit, the chairman and cofounder of the Medical Tourism Association. “If you have a destination where you have great healthcare, but you don’t have any tourism … that’s tough. But I feel like Vegas has a continual customer base that will only grow over time.”

We’ll check back in on that in another 10 years. ✦

SENSE OF PLACE

Vegas Kid Getaway

Locals casinos gave my immigrant family places to hang out, like Strike Zone Bowling

BY Lourdes Trimidal

Near Sunset and Stephanie, Sunset Station Hotel and Casino stands as a marker of Henderson’s southeast side. Driving by it on my routes through the area sometimes unlocks a small part of my childhood – Strike Zone Bowling Center. My family and I frequented the spot during the Sunday midafternoon hours of my elementary and middle school days.

More than a decade later, my sister and I found our way there again one recent afternoon. Walking up to Strike Zone, I noticed its unremarkability. Tacked onto the side of a nondescript, brown building, away from the casino entrance, its purple neon entrance sign is the only indication of a venue. Inside is a huge, empty

lobby leading up to the casino area, where stray slot machines are scattered at the far end. The brown, orange, and red lines of the carpet make obscure, endless patterns — the quintessential flooring of a Vegas property.

Past the second entrance of Strike Zone, the room stretches out with more decorated flooring, now spotted with blue neon lighting from above. This runway was my siblings’ and my track to the registration counter, which we raced to get there first. The familiar, deafening sound of knocked-down pins and the thud of bowling balls welcomes you. As a family of seven, we registered for two lanes because each lane only allowed four players. This time, my sister and I played at a single lane without bumpers, a graduation from our childhood crutch. The hot-pink 8-pound ball was the one I’d always played with, and picking it up again reminded me of the times I shyly walked by the other lanes to find it.

My family usually played a couple of rounds, or until boredom set in, and Dad, the best bowler, would have to play the rest of the game for us. Despite bowling almost every weekend, my scores never got any better, only averaging a little more than 100 points. Nothing seems to have changed in adulthood, judging from the one round I played with my sister.

Growing up as a Vegas kid meant never taking a picture at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign until you were an adult because your family avoided the Strip like the plague. It meant visiting Station Casinos properties and other local hotels tucked away in suburban nooks at least once a week. While my parents emptied their pockets in the slots, I roamed the dusty, smoked-filled halls of neighborhood casinos, looking for a getaway like a tourist on the Strip. That getaway, for me, was bowling centers, arcades, swimming pools, and movie theaters — family recreation spaces that I thought were normally housed inside hotels, a phenomenon I now know to be uniquely Vegas. These were indoor playlands for my family, immigrants living in the southeast side of Henderson since arriving in 2004. Along with Sunset, we also frequented Green Valley Ranch Resort & Spa and South Point Hotel and Casino for bowling, movies, and buffets.

Strike Zone is nothing special, but seeing it again, I appreciated the memory of what these spaces meant to my family back then. It means even more for the professional bowlers and local clubs, or to senior citizens and veteran groups who have weekly bowling meetups. When three Station Casinos properties were demolished last year, the bowling community recollected their time haunting the alleys of those hotels. Strike Zone’s demolition day will probably come during my lifetime, making way for a newer resort. I don’t bowl anymore, but perhaps I’ll also be left reminiscing about it. In a city with hotels that are so ubiquitous they seem as natural as the desert, the bowling centers are burrows of cozy leisure for us, the desert rats. ✦

All You Can’t Eat

Are the Vegas casino buffet’s salad days over, or is it coming back for seconds?

BY Heidi Knapp Rinella

With buffets gradually — and quietly — slipping into oblivion across the valley, many lovers of the all-youcan-eat extravaganzas are finding themselves asking: Is the Las Vegas buffet dying? Maybe not.

“To misquote Mark Twain, their demise has been greatly exaggerated,” says Mehmet Erdem, an associate professor in the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is a destination city, and most destination cities are known for a food item or style of cuisine, he says. Think: cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, or Cajun/Creole food in New Orleans. Las Vegas is known for indulgence in pretty much every category. In dining, that often means a lavish buffet.

Erdem says he remembers his own first visit to Las Vegas as a tourist in 1997, when he went to the Flamingo for lobster and steak — for $9.99.

“It was crazy,” he says. “Lobster, steak, and a buffet.”

But it’s been a while since the Strip was peppered with bargain buffets. Starting

with Wicked Spoon at the Cosmopolitan in 2010 and followed by Bacchanal at Caesars Palace in 2012, the steam trays faded away and individual servings — with, in many cases, on-demand preparation — arrived. Taste, quality, and appearance became more important than bargains, and prices went up accordingly. But it was still culinary excess, albeit an updated version, with some of the newer buffets offering as many as 500 choices.

“Vegas resorts are telling people this is part of the experience package,” Erdem says. “You’re not going to get this kind of experience anyplace else.”

The locals buffets, on the other hand, were long viewed as loss leaders.

“The goal was not to make money,” he says. “The goal was to bring locals in. Then comes COVID. One of the things COVID taught the industry was we need to do more with less and generate revenue more carefully. They’re looking at revenue generated per square foot. Revenue techniques didn’t happen just after COVID, but COVID put it more in focus.”

Indeed. In a May 2020 earnings call, Frank Fertitta III, CEO and board chairman

EL RANCHO BUFFET: FILE PHOTO/LAS VEGAS NEWS BURREAU

TWO CULTURES TWO CUISINES SIDE BY SIDE

of Red Rock Resorts, parent company of Station Casinos, sounded the death knell for locals’ beloved feeding frenzies.

“Buffets generate traffic, but they definitely were loss leaders,” Fertitta said at the time. “So, we’re going to narrow it down to basically the restaurants that were the most popular.”

He was addressing initial phases of reopening, but buffets never returned to any Station casino, and in some cases, such as Red Rock Resort, their spaces have been converted to full-service restaurants. (As for other locals buffets, the ones at South Point and JW Marriott/The Resort at Summerlin are back in operation.)

But Anthony Curtis, publisher of Las Vegas Advisor, which since 1983 has been closely following gaming-industry trends including dining, thinks the coronavirus was a convenient scapegoat.

“I think for the most part, the buffets were a tough thing for the casinos to stop,” Curtis says. “I think that COVID was exactly what the casinos wanted to get out of them.”

And he’s dubious that locals buffets were simply lures to draw gamblers into casinos — something he says has been discounted over the years by “people deep inside.”

“I’m the only one who disputes that buffets are loss leaders,” he says; it’s just that “they don’t make the money they want them to make.”

Curtis has watched as a number of buffets were converted to spaces for individual, compact, quick-service restaurants. “The food court is the new buffet,” he says. “Oh, excuse me, food hall.”

Some of these conversions have occurred in the tourism corridor. David Strow, Boyd Gaming’s vice president of corporate communications, says the old buffet at the company’s Fremont Street location was converted to casino space, with a food hall opening in December in newly constructed space behind that. The restaurants there, he says, include national chains such as Steak ’n Shake and Dunkin’, and local restaurants including Craft Kitchen and Tomo Noodles.

“They’re restaurants where you can eat quickly, but they’re going to be high-quality dining experiences,” says Strow, adding the company identified that as a need Downtown. So far, the company is “extremely pleased with the buzz we’ve gotten and the results” through increased traffic, he says.

In late December, Proper Eats food hall

opened in the former buffet space at MGM Resort’s International’s Aria on the Strip — a place Erdem says had not long before been updated to the tune of several million dollars.

Jason McLeod, culinary director of Proper Eats, which is operated by Clique Hospitality, says diversity was foremost when the space’s restaurants were selected.

“If there was a group of six or eight people — families or bachelor or bachelorette parties — how did we eliminate the ‘no’ vote?” he says. “That was the biggest thing we talked about in the very early stages. Overall, all of the stalls fell into place where we thought they would.”

Like Boyd’s Strow, McLeod says the response so far has been strong.

“We predicted that Temaki (Bar), Egghead, and Lola’s Burgers would be our top three,” he says. “But Laughing Buddha has really taken off.” Other options include

Wexler’s Deli, Shalom Y’all, and Pizzaoki. While Aria has been an exception to the bigger resorts maintaining and improving their buffets, Erdem notes, MGM also owns the next-door Cosmopolitan, whose Wicked Spoon is renowned.

McLeod says he’s spoken to some longtime Aria guests who were excited by “the freshness of the food hall.”

Curtis, though, says lots of Las Vegas Advisor readers have expressed dismay at the shift. “‘Very disappointed’; we get that all the time,” he says. “‘When are the buffets going to come back?’”

He says to stay tuned. “The term we’re all so sick of hearing is ‘pent-up demand,’” he says, but it’s a valid point. Because of the COVID closure and stimulus money, people have been flocking back to town — no matter what. “It’s not sustainable,” he adds. “We’re getting to the end of that. We’ll see what happens. These halcyon days, I think, are coming to an end.”

And maybe further changes are on the horizon. “Absolutely, they’ll adapt,” Curtis says, referring to casino companies. “If there’s some bottom-line pressure, then of course they will. That’s my advice to these customers: If you want to see things going back to the way they were, vote with your feet and don’t patronize what’s in its place.” ✦

The TikTok video zooms in on Keith Lee’s face as he begins his review of a burger and fries from the Southern Taste Seafood truck near Flamingo Road and Bruce Street. Lee had come across the patron-less place while riding his bike the night before, in mid-January. “I’d never seen this food truck before — the foodie in me got interested immediately,” he says.

The former MMA fighter wears a deadpan expression as he relays the story of his encounter with Gary Shanks, Southern Taste’s owner, backing up critical parts with snippets of phone video. Lee had started to decline to order from the food truck because of a shellfish allergy, but Shanks asked him to come back the next day, when he’d make something with new utensils and oil.

At this point, Shanks has no idea that Lee is a food reviewer with more than 11 million followers. As commenter @ebethisme says, “He has no clue what wave is about to hit his food truck.”

So, Lee returns the following day at noon. “Again, empty,” he says in the video. Shanks keeps his word and makes Lee a shellfish-free burger to go, which Lee ranks at 8.9 out of 10. Southern Seafood has since seen a 900 percent increase in sales.

During the video, Lee also tells how he paid Shanks $450 for the meal using fan gift donations he’d received during a previous livestream of a charity food distribution event. He plays the food truck owner’s stunned reaction to the huge payment and ends the video with, “This is why I love doing what I do.” The day after the video is posted, viewers donated $30,000 more to Shanks.

Lee started his channel in 2020, posting meals cooked for his family and reviewing takeout. Then in 2021, after losing two fights in a row, he was released from his six-figure contract fighting with Bellator MMA. Full-time content creation became the way Lee provided for his family. His appeal is understandable, and his viewers’ trust is palpable. He doesn’t seem to have anything to shill. He pays for his food and gets it to go. It’s hard to suspect grift from a man seated in his preschooler’s PAW Patrol chair.

This year, Lee has appeared on “Good Morning America,” “Inside Edition,” and the popular YouTube series “People vs Food.” This past February, during TikTok’s inaugural Visionary Voices, Lee was  honored as an “industry disruptor.” (He didn’t respond to Desert Companion’s interview requests.) What does it mean to disrupt a sector that’s

CRITICS

The Keith Lee Effect

Will social media kill the restaurant star?

BY SONI BROWN

one of a city’s main economic drivers? As a rising dining destination, how should Las Vegas process the role of someone like Lee?

Two names top the results of an internet search for “Las Vegas food critics”: Keith Lee and (frequent Nevada Public Radio contributor) John Curtas. Traditionally, food critics such as Curtas have been seen as trained epicureans who do more than visit a restaurant once. They eat, drink, sleep, and breathe food. They keep us up to date with trends and emerging talents. They notice subtle menu changes that point to what’s unfolding in the zeitgeist. Consider how restaurants started offering comfort foods in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Traditional critics reminded us that in times of stress we need the feel-good neurotransmitters triggered by Mom’s re-created meatloaf.

Food criticism is not always about taste. It takes into account a restaurant’s menu quality and atmosphere and incorporates the critic’s regional expertise. When Curtas says the Strip “is a big yawn,” as he recently did on KNPR’s State of Nevada, I believe him. Why? He’s seen it all and knows when casinos are rehashing played-out concepts.

Still, the field was rife for disruption. Traditional critics can be haute cuisine sycophants or heartless, picky eaters who don’t understand the intensity of a service job. Hence, their portrayals as snobs in The Menu, Ratatouille, and other films, as well

as the success of podcasters such as (former Nevada Public Radio producer) Lorraine Blanco Moss, who worked in kitchens before launching Two Sharp Chefs and a Microphone. Full-time professional critics are rare in a field where anyone can post a Yelp review and media companies have reduced or eliminated their restaurant review budgets.

Of course, amateur criticism has its own problems. As a former chef, who went to culinary school in my 20s, I know that no matter how much we connect on apps, it’s hard to give sound reviews to food that’s traveled. And despite their charm, influencers such as Lee often have little to no relevant background education or training. Why should I trust their evaluation?

Viewers feel happy when they see Lee use his platform to elevate a struggling restaurant. His poker face — a result of his social anxiety — adds to the surprise when the video ends, and Lee says the restaurant is making money and hiring staff. Yet, the audience is spared the growing pains that happen after a viral review. How does a small business with a kitchen and staff accustomed to a few covers a day prepare for around-the-block lines? Lee’s viral boost doesn’t help restaurants get into a rhythm, or sort out supply and staffing issues.

And a bad Lee review can be a disaster. A negative review of the food and service at The Pepper Club’s happy hour caused Lee’s followers to harass and threaten a teenage hostess there. The restaurant suffered from hundreds of negative reviews. Lee tried to mitigate the damage by tipping the hostess generously and asking followers to stop the hate. But the damage was already done. What is the way forward after a vindictive online mob destroys a restaurant’s reputation?

The essential debate about criticism isn’t new, though it’s shifted to new platforms. It would be nice if the remaining restaurant critics who do their job well didn’t have to compete with influencers and user-generated reviews. But “disruptive” amateurs such as Lee clue followers in on small neighborhood restaurants — a useful benefit in our city of siloed, master-planned communities.

Perhaps most importantly, critics haven’t always given their audiences a range of cuisines and price points that’s as diverse as the population they’re speaking to. If they could take this page from Lee’s playbook, and merge it with their own form of credibility, then we followers would get all the expertise, and all the fun. ✦

Bibimbap Fried Rice Omelette

At Jawgogi’s in Vegas Test Kitchen

BY Jason Harris

The thing I like most about Stephen Lee’s omelet at Jawgogi’s is that it feels both like a completed dish and a base on which to build. Lee, who was Esther’s Kitchen’s chef de cuisine for more than four years, is now experimenting with his own creations at Vegas Test Kitchen. He emphasizes that his cuisine is “American Asian” not Asian American.

This dish already stands on its own, but as Lee continues to build his menu,

Sesame seeds, sesame oil, and nori contribute to the flavor profile’s complexity.

The rice is seared on one side to mimic traditional bibimbap, which gets a crunchy bottom from cooking in a hot stone pot.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see this om elet accompanied by namul, the sautéed vegetables often served with traditional bibimbap. And between the rice and the eggs, a protein such as shrimp would be another natural addition.

Lee is onto something here, and it will be exciting to see how his menu evolves with more of his American Asian flavors. ✦

Jawgogi’s, Vegas Test Kitchen, 1020 E. Fremont St #120, vegastestkitchen.com

Sushi-grade rice bombed with doenjang (Korean miso paste) and gojijang (Korean chili pepper paste) creates a pungent interior.

A fluffy French omelet with cheddar cheese ties the rice and eggs together.

“Imaginative, playful, and wonderfully optimistic!

Music by Matthew Pierce

Choreography by Septime Webre

THE SMITH CENTER NEVADA BALLET THEATRE

“An over-the-top and wildly eclectic production!”

“The delight is infectious!”

— OTTAWA CITIZEN

CULTURE The Guide

Local events this April and May hit high notes, from rockin’ festivals to intimate readings

BY Anne Davis

MUSICAL THEATER

Six the Musical

MARCH 21-MAY 7

>>>My inner theater and history nerds are both infatuated with this Tony Award-winning musical about the six wives of England’s King Henry VIII. The often comical, occasionally touching play is an homage to both Henry’s wives and the music divas on which the musical is modeled. Couple that with its similarity in tone and execution to Hamilton — whose compelling music and diverse casting transformed Broadway — and you get a romp that lives up to its mantra: Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, live! Times vary, $78-138, the Venetian’s Palazzo Theatre, venetianlasvegas.com/entertainment

THEATER The Piano Lesson

APRIL 7-24

>>>Written more than 35 years ago, August Wilson’s classic work on financial hardship and the comfort material possessions can provide is still painfully relevant today, with the wealth gap growing and fears of recession looming. The Pulitzer Prize-winning story probes the Charles family’s difficult decision to sell their beloved piano to stave off poverty during the Great Depression. The sale of this treasured heirloom demands that the family confront their own ghosts, as well as those of their ancestors who owned the piano before them. A Public Fit’s production is being co-produced with the College of Southern Nevada, and has enlisted the talents of actor Ranney Lawrence (known

professionally as Ranney). An accomplished Wilsonian, Ranney is intimately familiar with Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, and brings a seasoned touch to an already emotionally stirring story.

2p and 7p, $40, CSN’s Backstage Theatre, apublicfit.org

FOOD FESTIVAL 626 Night Market

APRIL 8-9 AND 22-23

>>> Las Vegas’ food festival scene continues its post-lockdown boom with a growing slate of events, including 626 Night Market. Already an established favorite among Californians (the name comes from the San Gabriel Valley’s area code), the 626 is gracing Southern Nevada with its curated selection of food, alcohol, and merchandise vendors focused on local small businesses. For entertainment while you nosh, there’ll be

live music, too. 1-10p, free, Location TBA, 626nightmarket.com/ vegas

LITERATURE Ahmed Naji: A Reading

APRIL 12

>>> BMI at times brings internationally acclaimed authors to local literature lovers, and the next of those times is April 12, when Ahmed Naji is slated to give a public reading from his body of work. Naji, the current BMI City of Asylum fellow, holds the distinction of being the first writer imprisoned for his work in modern Egyptian history, following the publication of his novel Using Life in 2016. If you can’t make it to Naji’s event, don’t worry; the institute has plenty of other events slated for this semester, including a reading with local investigative reporter and Nevada Writers Hall

of Fame member Sally Denton. 7p, free, UNLV’s Lied Library, blackmountaininstitute.org

CONCERT Concert 4kids

APRIL 13

>>> Orchestral concerts can be moving and enlightening experiences for adults, but for kids … maybe not so much. Well, fret no more (get it?)! The Henderson Symphony Orchestra comes to the rescue with Music 4Kids, a program allowing littles ones to touch instruments, sit in for live (and shorter) orchestral performances, and meet the musicians. This year they’re presenting Gregory Smith’s "Orchestra Games," formatted to introduce kids to each instrument. 10:30a, free, Dollar Loan Center, hendersonsymphonynv.org

FESTIVAL Viva Las Vegas

APRIL 27-30

>>> Set your curling irons to “victory roll” — it’s time for the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend, back for its 26th installment. Count on the usual classic car shows, live music and dance, vintage fashion shows, and the general retro vibe. $40-250, The Orleans Hotel and Casino, vivalasvegas.net

ART EXHIBIT Soliloquy

MARCH 9-MAY 12

MUSIC FESTIVAL Reggae in the Desert

MAY 6

>>> The city’s biggest Reggae festival pairs hot Caribbean beats with Vegas’ warming May weather. Headliners this time around include Eek-A-Mouse, the Wailers, and Morgan Heritage. Besides music, the festival also boasts an impressive number of Carribean-inspired food, beverage, and merchan-

>>>Anthony Bondi’s “Soliloquy” breathes new life into the old art form of collage, reimagining it by incorporating analog techniques into digital pieces. One remarkable aspect of the collection is Bondi’s use of classic Vegas motifs juxtaposed with ordinary people, creating what he describes an “intersection,” where exhibit visitors can explore what Vegas means to them in all its transitory, impermanent glory. Gallery times vary, free, Core Contemporary, corecontemporary.com

SOLILOQUY Old art form, new approach

dise vendors. 11a-11p, $75-204, Clark County Amphitheatre, reggaeinthedesert.com

CONCERT High Japanese Culture with Yoko Fitzpatrick

MAY 13

>>> May is AAPI Heritage Month, and to mark the occasion, the West Charleston Library introduces visitors to the traditional Japanese koto, a cross between the Western harp and violin. The instrument is capable of producing music both melodic and haunting, and will be used to play some of the Yoko Koto Ensemble’s best-known songs. Led by award-winning Koto player Yoko Fitzpatrick, the Ensemble also includes her husband, Dennis, an accomplished Shakuhachi flautist. After the performance, Yoko

LECTURE Virgin Valley History

APRIL 12

>>> “Who are we?” is the question driving the Virgin Valley History Museum’s current lecture series focused on the lives of previous generations of Southern Nevada residents. The series is nearing its end, but there’s still time to catch the last two installments: “Make it Last,” detailing how food was cooked and preserved, and “Surviving Summer,” which is a pretty self-explanatory title for a lecture dedicated to how our forefathers and -mothers coped with the heat (presumably without cranking the AC to 52 degrees for five straight months). 5:30-6:30p, free, Mesquite Library, mesquitenv.gov/events

invites guests to show her their kimonos or try playing their own jams on the koto. The event is designed to be an introduction to traditional Japanese music and dress for Japanophiles of all ages. 3-4p, free, West Charleston Library, (702) 507-3964, lvccld. bibliocommons.com

BALLET The Wizard of Oz

MAY 13-21

>>> Ballet, The Smith Center, and a modern fairy tale — oh my! In this stage adaptation of the classic 1939 movie (and much earlier novel by L. Frank Baum), Nevada Ballet Theatre puts a new twist (ha! I’m on a roll) on Dorothy Gale and her hapless friends. Like the film, this stage production is replete with technicolor-worthy costumes and sets,

and injects levity into a potentially scary tale through the choreography, making it suitable for younger audiences. I have to warn you, though: Toto the terrier is not a real dog. Still, he does run across the stage frequently, much to the delight of the audience. I can’t speak for everyone, but this is a show I won't be clicking my heels in the middle of, wanting to go home. Times vary, $31-155, The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

LITERATURE Reading

and Signing: The Octopus in the Parking Garage

MAY 18

>>> Show of hands: How many of you remember the viral photo of an octopus stranded in a flooded Miami parking garage?

You’d be forgiven for forgetting (it did happen in 2016), but Bob Verchick, a climate law scholar who worked with the Obama administration, was so haunted by the image that it became the title of his latest work, The Octopus in the Parking Garage: A Call for Climate Resilience Traversing the globe to show how other cultures and countries are attempting climate resilience, the book insists we must be willing to change our own strategies as fast as the climate itself is changing. Of special interest to fans of our 2023 writer in residence, Verchick travels to the Mojave Desert (home of the expansive, and endangered, Joshua Tree forests) to see how the environment and its stewards are adapting to more extreme conditions.

If this sounds up your

alley, then you’ll want to meet Verchick in person and pick up a signed copy of the book at his May 18 event. 7-8p, free, The Writer’s Block, thewritersblock.org

CULTURAL FESTIVAL Africa Day 2023

MAY 27

>>> According to the latest U.S. Census estimates, almost 12 percent of Vegas residents are African American. To celebrate that 12 percent’s outsize contributions to local culture, nonprofit African Diaspora of Las Vegas hosts the annual Africa Day Festival. This year’s festival celebrates the foundation of the Organization of African Unity, which happened on May 25, 1963, and signaled the end of the continent’s long and difficult colonial era. Drop by to experience authentic African cuisine, hear live music, participate in craft projects, and learn about the history and significance of the holiday from those who’ve defined it. 10a-6p, free, Craig Ranch Regional Park, africandiasporalv. org/events/africa-day

WHO ARE WE? That question drives a Virgin Valley History Museum lecture series.

Over Done

When it comes to public art, hustle may be displacing substance

BY Nicholas Barnette

The similarities between Mr. Doodle (whose real name is Sam Cox) and Pretty Done (Adam Rellah), evident when viewing their art side by side, run deeper than style. And Cox and Rellah have both been compared to pop artist Keith Haring, an activist who rose to prominence during the AIDS epidemic, which ultimately cut his life short at 31. Yet neither Cox nor Rellah, although invoking the Haring brand, offer fresh spins on Haring’s conception of pop art; nor do they echo Haring’s embrace of political art. While Haring riffed on his influences by playing with form, medium, and perspective, Cox and Rellah appropriate Haring’s recognizable brand in service of their (commendable) hustle. Is it style over substance? Compare for yourself.

READ MORE: Nick’s full analysis of Pretty Done’s Las Vegas work is available online.

SURVEY SEZ

Mr. Doodle

 Dresses in doodle attire

 Creates designs that abound with smileys, doodads, gamma rays, and the like

 Told The Mil Source that his intention was to paint until “the entire Earth is covered in doodles”

 Last year covered every surface of his $1.5 million mansion in his signature scribbles

 Has brand deals with Fendi, Puma, MTV, and Samsung

Pretty Done

 Has been known to don a doodle suit

 Demonstrates an affinity for happy faces

 Superimposes familiar symbols, such as flamingos and the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign, against doodle backgrounds

 Told Las Vegas Weekly, “I want to paint the world … I want to paint a plane. I want to do an air balloon”

 Has work in several buzzy downtown spots, as well as larger local venues, such as Allegiant Stadium

Rando results from unscientific studies

Keith Haring

 Cites Belgian artist Pierre Alechinsky and French painter Jean Dubuffet as influences

 Used his art to confront government inaction on the AIDS epidemic, mobilize support for the South African anti-apartheid movement, and tackle other sociopolitical topics

 Foundation has licensing deals with Zara, Target, Levi’s, Tommy Hilfiger, and Adidas

 Of all Americans, Nevadans have the highest interest in crypto-currency, a tally of search terms revealed.

(cryptobetting.org)

 Coincidentally, we also love movies more than 45 other states’ residents. Our favorite? Horror. (japan-101.com)

 Las Vegas had the fourth-largest industrial real estate sale in the country last year.

(CommercialEdge.com)

 Also, based on such strict criteria as “beer lover- friendliness,” we are the No. 1 city in the U.S. for bachelor parties, or as lawnlove. com calls it, “creating boisterous memories with the bros.”

The Next Art House

As the Village Square era ends, the Beverly's begins

BY Josh Bell

When Act III Theatres opened its Village Square location at Sahara and Fort Apache in December 1997, it was the only movie theater in the fast-growing Summerlin area. Because of various corporate mergers, the expanding Regal Cinemas chain absorbed the theater in 1998, and it quickly established itself as the city’s primary location for what movie theater bookers call “specialty” releases: independent, foreign, and art house films. Previously, some of those films had been booked at the two-screen Gold Coast Twin, which closed in 2000, but the 18-screen Regal Village Square had more flexibility, as well as proximity to an audience eager for nonmainstream fare.

More than 25 years after its opening, on February 12, 2023, Regal closed the Village Square location, ending an era of moviegoing in Las Vegas. Less than a month later, a new era begins with the long-awaited Beverly Theater, at 6th and Bonneville Downtown, celebrating its grand opening on March 3. No one planned it that way, but it’s hard not to see the two events as a symbolic passing of the art house-cinema baton, at a time when movie theaters are facing challenges on multiple fronts because of COVID-related shutdowns and the rise of streaming.

“I don’t attach Regal to art house films,” says Kip Kelly, the Beverly Theater’s creative director. “I don’t know that there was enough of a slate for me to really latch onto (Village Square) as an independent spot to see films.”

With its single screen, the Beverly will focus more on booking art house releases, which Kelly estimates will make up 70-80 percent of the theater’s programming, alongside live music and literary events. Films will show seven days a week, between two and six times a day, with ticket prices set at $10.

Grand opening events include recent Sundance Film Festival premiere Past Lives and 2017’s First Reformed with a live appearance from filmmaker Paul Schrader. After that, Kelly anticipates a mix of first-run releases and repertory programming. Upcoming bookings include Oscar-nominated Polish drama EO, acclaimed documentaries

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Framing Agnes and Sirens, and revival showings of Todd Haynes’ Carol and John Carpenter’s Escape From New York

The Beverly’s state-of-the-art facility, substantial support from namesake philanthropist Beverly Rogers, and location amid other major downtown cultural offerings instantly make it the most high-profile art house theater in Las Vegas. But there are other venues that provide alternative moviegoing options in town, from the drive-in screen at Snappy Burger on North Decatur (where recent showings range from Back to the Future to Alfonso

Cuarón’s Roma ), to the long-running Sci Fi Center in New Orleans Square (which has a premiere event celebrating B-movie studio Troma Entertainment scheduled March 31 and April 1).

Local film festivals have also been longtime champions of independent and foreign films, and Kelly hopes to eventually include festival programming at the Beverly. For now, events such as Boulder City’s Dam Short Film Festival, the Las Vegas Black Film Festival (set for April 20-23 at Century 16 Suncoast), the Nevada Women’s Film Festival (June at MEET Las Vegas), and Sin City Horror Fest (November 1-5 at Art Houz Theaters) continue in other venues.

Those festivals have all returned to in-person events following some pandemic-era virtual editions. “Last year was our first year back (in person), and it was probably our best year ever,” says Nevada Women’s Film Festival executive

director Nikki Corda. “I think people were just really ready to come back together for the film festival experience.”

Not every movie theater survived the pandemic shutdown. Similarly, not every film festival has made it back. The Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival, once the longest-running film festival in Nevada, held virtual screenings on a regular basis through early 2022, but is now on hiatus as festival director Joshua Abbey works on a documentary about his mother, artist Rita Deanin Abbey. The Las Vegas Queer Arts Film Festival, which held two editions before the pandemic and mounted a virtual festival in 2021, will not be returning. “It was a challenge, trying to bring back that pre-pandemic momentum that the festival had going,” founder Kris Manzano says.

The Las Vegas Film Festival, which had become the premier general-interest film festival in town, still lists canceled 2019 dates on its social media and has made no announcements regarding future plans. Corda says she doesn’t know what’s going to happen with local film festivals in the future, adding, “Judging from our experience last summer, I feel positive about it.”

Kelly may discount the importance of Regal Village Square to the evolution of art house cinema in Las Vegas, but Corda is one of many local film mainstays who appreciated its value. Highlights of her experiences there included seeing the documentary

Three Identical Strangers and Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place. Manzano remembers going with a friend to see Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. “I went to see something before it left, but it’s empty on the (theater listings) app,” local filmmaker Adam Zielinski said on February 14, a day before the theater’s initially announced closing date. “It’s heartbreaking.”

The Beverly should soothe some of that heartbreak for Zielinski and others, and Kelly plans to embrace the local film community, both festivals and filmmakers. “If there’s a filmmaker who’s put together something that is worthy of a screening or premiere in Las Vegas, then we can give them that opportunity,” he says.

Regal neglected Village Square toward the end of its run, leaving it with a broken HVAC system in summer 2022 and ending its lease as part of a company-wide bankruptcy restructuring. That appears unlikely to

happen at the Beverly, which has Rogers’ and her staff’s full support. “We really designed this place for locals,” Kelly says. “We just want people to come here and keep coming back.”

That’s been the dream of every art house cinema operator in Vegas for the past three decades. Now, it’s the Beverly’s turn to try and make it a reality. ✦

co-founder Vinnie Fiorello says. “It wasn’t supposed to last at all, but it’s lasted 50 years.”

Fifty years?! Does a punk rock museum mean that punk is dead, like the mummies of the Egyptian Museum or the dinosaurs of the American Museum of Natural History?

Scott Crawford, director of the Washington, D.C., punk/hardcore documentary Salad Days and author of the accompanying book Spoke, doesn’t think so. “I’ve never subscribed to the idea of punk being dead and never will. Every new generation redefines it and makes it something entirely their own,” he says, adding that museums are essential to “helping to document and preserve such an important cultural movement. It’s only natural that some of the people that were informed by punk rock are now in positions where they can create such a space.”

MUSIC

Punked Up

What’s a museum for an anti-institutional movement doing in Las Vegas?

BY Lissa Townsend Rodgers

Our hometown of gaming tables, showroom stages, and celebrity chef restaurants is developing a reputation as a home to something else: weird museums. From neon signs to cursed dolls to Tommy guns, collections of the unusual have succeeded where fine art has failed. The newest addition to the roster may be the most unexpected — not just for Las Vegas, but anywhere — as the Punk Rock Museum prepares for its expected April opening. How does a cultural movement founded on sweat, spit, safety pins, and smashing institutions turn itself into, well, an institution?

“Punk rock is more than just ‘smash the state.’ There’s passion and creativity. Its influence has reverberated through art and other music forms and education, even the way that people approach doing business,” museum

The museum’s collection will be organized chronologically, from early ’70s Blondie relics to last year’s Amyl and the Sniffers merch. But there will also be a focus on the punk scene of various cities. “Before the internet, you had this sort of tribalism of San Francisco punks and L.A. punks and New York punks and Chicago punks and being able to show that sort of tight-knit group — the shows and the clubs and the photos and some artifacts,” Fiorello says. The relics of punk rock tend to be ephemeral: flyers, setlists, T-shirts, ’zines, cassette tapes, and 45s, although there are some sturdier items such as club signage and leather jackets. There are also guitars, but their durability may depend on museum guests, since visitors will be able to actually play the instruments used by bands such as Rise Against, Sick of It All, and Pennywise.

There’s one thing Crawford would like to see — or hear — within the museum: “In addition to the flyers, photos, and usual ephemera, I think keeping an audio archive that includes first-person accounts of various shows, events, and personal stories would be a nice addition — kind of like a punk rock StoryCorps, if you will.” And the museum will have its storytellers, although you won’t be able to press play on them without getting your hand smacked: Members of bands such as Agnostic Front, Anti-Flag, L7, and more will offer personally guided tours for smaller groups (and a bigger ticket price).

The Mob Museum, the Neon Museum and the Atomic Museum, among others, all represent major parts of Las Vegas history. But punk rock is a minor part of the city’s past … at best. While there was indeed a scene here, it was no New York or Los Angeles, or even Boston or Minneapolis. Which is actually

HEAR MORE Kip Kelley talks about the Beverly on KNPR.

part of the reason the city was chosen, according to Fiorello. “People have big thoughts on New York punks to L.A. punks, or L.A. punks to San Francisco punks. But Las Vegas is a very neutral city,” he says.

If punk is neutral on Vegas, there was a time when Vegas was definitely not neutral on punk. (Former Desert Companion editor) Andrew Kiraly, who booked and played shows back in the ’90s, recalls struggling to find places to put on bands. “The punk scene had to deal with really strict laws, so we had to go kind of DIY,” he says. “We had venues like the VFW hall on Main. There was the Tubes — that was a series of drainage tunnels. Losee Road — empty places at the edge of town, industrial infrastructure meets desert. There was a place called the Caves because they were actual physical caves.”

If Las Vegas is a punk rock Switzerland, it’s also a place that’s fiscally feasible for both the museum and its patrons. “If we were going to put that same size, 12,000 square feet, of a museum in New York City, it would cost an exponential amount more money, and the same goes for Los Angeles or London,” Fiorello says. “Vegas is set up for people from everywhere to be able to go there, stay there at a reasonable price.”

Of course, it’s not as though the Punk Rock Museum is in a corporate casino or tourist trap. It’s on Western Avenue near the train tracks, down the street from a 7-Eleven, next door to a strip club. And Las Vegas’ one globally renowned contribution to punk culture will be represented within the museum: The bar will be an outpost of the legendary dive, the Double Down Saloon. “In Las Vegas, punk bars and (Double Down owner) P Moss kind of go hand-in-hand,” Fiorello says. “We’re lucky to have him involved.”

Fiorello continues, “Moss did say something very right on the money. He said, ‘You don’t know what this space is gonna become. You have to open it and let people come. They gravitate to what they like, and it takes on a life of its own, and it becomes what it’s supposed to become, not what we think it’s supposed to be.’ He meant the bar, but that’s the spirit of the museum, the spirit of punk rock music.”

It’s also a spirit that has found a home in a town that never wanted to give it one. Punk indeed. ✦

BOOKS Ballad Buster

A country western singer’s last tour is fodder for a subtle critique of music-industry sexism

BY Gabriela Rodriguez

IN ONE SCENE of Stephanie Clifford’s recent novel, The Farewell Tour, a close friend of main character Lillian Waters dies. Waters, a country western musician, can’t make it to the funeral because she’s got a show scheduled at the Golden Nugget — an extremely important gig in for an artist like her in the 1970s, when the scene is set. It underlines not only Las Vegas’ significance in the music industry at that time, but also the sacrifices passionate women musicians such as Waters must make to succeed.

Indeed, the entire story is constructed around a door closing. The novel begins in 1980 with Waters’ career-ending medical diagnosis. A seasoned musician, who’s had her share of ups and downs, Waters embarks on one last summer tour to pay homage to herself, her fans, and country music writ large.

Toggling between that timeframe and flashbacks to pivotal moments in Waters’ career, Clifford explores the challenges women in music face. Waters struggles to make herself more palatable

to listeners by adjusting her hair, clothes, mannerisms — all while racing against time. Bits of her true self occasionally spill out, until she can no longer maintain the industry’s curated version of her.

Many details give the book depth, from the history of socalled “hillbilly” music in Washington state during the Great Depression, to rich descriptions of key country figures throughout the genre’s eras. But the most compelling element is the main character herself. Waters is a refreshing and intense artist whose candor kept me rooting for her at every stage. Her story of redemption, unrequited love, and growth brings the reader along on tour. It’s a gig you don’t want to miss.

The Farewell Tour, by Stephanie Clifford, 352 pages, $24.89, Harper

Top Notes of Empathy

Gayle Brandeis breathes new life into harrowing, heartbreaking, and joyful moments

BY Scott Dickensheets

THE ACT OF breathing is richly symbolic in ways that author Gayle Brandeis finds useful for her new essay collection, Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss. It neatly illustrates the body’s permeability: We pull the outside world into us — oxygen, pollutants, whatever

else — change it, and force it back out, underlining our vulnerability but also our capacity for transformation. Like creativity, breathing is both a conscious choice and involuntary function. Breath is a potent metaphor, she tells us, “because it exists right at the nexus of body and mind.”

The book is thematically arranged according to different modes of breathing (“Quiet Breathing,” “Painful Breathing,” etc.). Brandeis, a UNR creative writing instructor, has led the sort of episodic, often-challenging life that can nutrify a gutsy essayist: bouts of debilitating disease, heartbreak, and, most intensely, a mother whose operatic swells of mental illness ended in suicide. The wrenching “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying” juxtaposes her child’s birth with her mother’s death just days later. “Joy” is typical of her method: In writing about her mother’s favorite perfume, Brandeis braids memory and experience with snatches of science and history into a complex meditation on grief and the power of the senses. Despite the foregoing, this book is not a downer — there’s a revitalizing warmth to “Shadow Son,” in which a young man can’t accept that Brandeis isn’t his birth mother. There are top notes of empathy and social justice throughout.

The book’s last essay describes how a scary bout of COVID unplugged Brandeis’ ability to write — which, in one of Drawing Breath’s most surprising turns, she’s okay with. “The world doesn’t need more of my voice,” she says. Maybe it needs something else from her: the pay-it-forward generosity to “empower other voices.” It’s as if everything that’s come before has finally allowed her to breathe easy.

Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss, by Gayle Brandeis, 226 pages, $18.95, Overcup Press ✦

Local library officials talk about books and more.

Desert Drift

Rafting the Colorado River in search of what we’d lose if it ran dry

BY Meg Bernhard

The raft will launch from a highly protected area, a place with a similar level of security to the White House, our driver tells us as we wind down a narrow road to the banks of the Colorado River. He makes a hairpin turn, and Hoover Dam comes into view, a mass of concrete wedged between walls of black rock canyon. At river level, the dam towers above, 726 feet tall, 1,244 feet long, and 660 feet thick at its base. An engineering feat. I imagine all the water pressing against the dam. What that water would do if it were free. The Bureau of Reclamation has demanded that the seven states relying on the river cut their usage in the face of megadrought, but the states

cannot come to an agreement. I want to see what we’ll lose if we run the river dry, so this morning, I’m taking a rafting tour 11 and a half miles down the Colorado. Pam West, one of four other people on the tour, says she remembers feeling the spray of water at Hoover Dam after she moved to Las Vegas in 1969. Lake Mead’s water is measured in feet above sea level, and back in the ‘60s, the lowest it ever hit was 1,088 feet. She could never have imagined what it would look like today, at 1,046 feet. Twenty years ago, when the megadrought began and the water levels dropped, when the bathtub ring began to grow and once-submerged islands appeared, she came to the reservoir and wept.

THERE ARE SOME 450 miles of river in front of us, 1,000 behind. The five of us — me, West, her friend from Florida, and two visitors from Ohio — clamber into the barge-like raft to begin a journey that will span only a fraction of the river’s length. The water around us glints and shifts in color: navy, turquoise, emerald. Before the river was dammed, the water was brown with silt and sand, but today it’s clear, with a visibility of 25 feet in most places along the stretch we’ll be traveling, our guide, Kathleen Wood, says.

Wood starts the motor, and we glide. We are in Black Canyon, suspended somewhere between Nevada and Arizona, and my cell phone’s clock toggles between Pacific and Mountain Time. I’ve never seen the river from this vantage before — I’ve only ever visited shorelines accessible by foot — and I marvel at its abundance. Patches of green erupt from the cliffs and riverbanks: arrow weed, mesquite, creosote, brittlebush, which, in some crags, blooms bright yellow. In Lone Palm Canyon, what was once a single palm tree has, over the years, proliferated into a dozen.

Wood points out features I might have

missed. Desert varnish, a charcoal-colored, oxidized coating that forms in arid environments, smears across canyon walls. In one cove, a stream of geothermal water shoots from volcanic rock, as if it were a spigot, and hits the cold river with a burst of steam. Maidenhair fern, which, Wood tells us, is difficult to grow in controlled environments, drape from the ceiling of a cave shaped like an ear. We drift by a cluster of pink-needled barrel cacti clinging to a cliff, and Wood grins. The past few years, they’d been parched and shriveled from the prolonged drought, she says. But now, after last year’s monsoon and this winter’s storms, the cacti are swollen.

Wood tells us to look out for animals. Red-tailed hawks. Common coots. We should pay special attention to bighorn sheep, whose bodies blend in with the rock. Wood’s worked on the river since the 1980s, and for decades she’s kept a journal documenting what she sees each time she’s out. She’s logged bank beavers and egrets, peregrine falcons and herons, and, every once in a while, a bald eagle.

August 11, 1999: “Warm, sunny, south breeze. Beautiful day. Lots of sheep. 5 to 6 groups of 15-20 or more.”

October 16, 2002: “Beautiful, peaceful morning. Brisk upriver. Laid in sun like a lizard to warm up, just below H.D. catwalk. Two osprey dancing at site.”

April 12, 2006: “Cool breeze until 10 am. Cool gust, wind in middle of trip. Sheep, ewes and babies.”

When I ask her what changes she’s noticed since she started working on the river, she doesn’t miss a beat. The heat in the canyon. The drought. “You hardly see sheep anymore,” she says.

IN 1857, Joseph C. Ives, a lieutenant who would, during the Civil War, fight for the Confederates, tried to map the Colorado by traveling upriver in a steamboat. When he reached Black Canyon, the boat hit a rock, leading to the eventual end of the expedition. “The region is, of course, altogether valueless,” Ives later wrote. “It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed.”

Of course, his prediction was wrong. Today, the Colorado is one of the most regulated rivers in the country. From the beginning, we took too much from the river. In 1922, the federal government brought together seven Western states — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, California, Nevada, and Arizona — to create the Colorado River Com-

pact and apportioned 16 million acre-feet of water to divide among themselves. Notably, the agreement excluded tribal nations, the original inhabitants of the Colorado River basin, and Mexico, where the river empties. (Mexico would gain rights to the river some twenty years later, and tribes would reclaim them in piecemeal fashion through courts and legislation.) The year 1922 was unusually wet; in reality, the Colorado normally carried 14 million acre feet per year, not 16. Today, we’re lucky if the river flows at 12 million.

I grew up in Southern California and depended on the Colorado River. I didn’t know that. I only knew my water was reliable and seemed everlasting. Much of the water I drank was imported, via aqueduct, from Lake Havasu, a reservoir on the border between California and Arizona. Kids would talk about “going to the river” with their families for the weekend, but my parents weren’t river people, so we never went for fun. I do remember stopping at Lake Havasu on our way back from a road trip to Arizona when I was 10 or 11. As we walked over a replica of the London Bridge, made with the original’s exterior granite blocks (a placard said), my mom rolled her eyes at the obviously drunk people stumbling around us. I had no idea that this was a major water source for millions of people, including me.

A decade later, when I finished college and returned to California to report for the Los Angeles Times, rivers captured my interest. That year had been a rainy one, ending what was, until the current drought, the driest period in California’s recorded history, and the Sierra Nevada snowpack was bigger than any time in recent memory. Then, in June 2017, a heat wave melted most of that snow, and rivers to the south were now colder and faster than they’d been in years. People accustomed to the low, weak water of drought-stricken rivers were drowning. One afternoon in July, I sat by the Kern River in central California and watched the water churn past, stronger than any water I’d ever seen.

On the Colorado River raft, we drifted past an old concrete tower, now home to cliff swallow nests. A few miles downstream was another tower, this one wooden and rickety, connected to the opposite side of the canyon by a suspended steel line. Before Hoover Dam was constructed, Wood said, men would walk a mile from their quarters along a path built into the cliff, cross the river by way of pulley, and descend the tower to read the gauge at the bottom, which measured the river’s water level. Why, I wondered, did they have to go through all that trouble if they could’ve just

paddled upstream instead?

Wood explained: Before damming, the river was too powerful to paddle upstream.

DURING THE LATE spring, I pulled a back muscle attempting to hoist a heavy suitcase onto a storage shelf. For days, it spasmed, and I feared I was stuck with chronic pain. Then, I went to the Colorado. It was a hot day, around 100 degrees, but the water was 53. When I jumped in, the cold shocked me, like a series of blows to my entire body. Water approaching 50 degrees quickly can induce hypothermia, but I stayed in for a few minutes, watching ducks drift lazily downstream. On the shore, water evaporated from my body within minutes. At home, I noticed my back pain was gone.

I visited the Colorado many more times last year, mostly during the summer as a respite from the intense heat. We’d throw our towels and chairs onto a rock at Willow Beach and swim out to a small island, emerging before we lost feeling in our toes. I loved the first shock of the cold; it always jolted me into feeling every part of my body.

During my final visit to Willow Beach in October last year, a large swath of riverbed previously covered by water was now dry, exposing humps of black sludge and slime that smelled of dead algae. I was first horrified, then confused. A friend reminded me that scheduled releases of water from Hoover Dam were lighter in the winter, and I was struck by our hubris. The water was low because people decided it should be.

AFTER THREE HOURS on the river, we docked at the Willow Beach marina, and filed into a van to drive back to the rafting company’s parking lot. Purple and yellow wildflowers bloomed along the side of the road, new life after the winter’s heavy rains. Despite the rain, the drought is not over. It’s gotten so desperate that the Desert Research Institute, with Save Red Rock, has begun seeding clouds in canyons. Yet miles west of us, new houses and subdivisions were going up at the edges of Las Vegas. In the decades she’s lived here, Pam West has seen millions of people move to the area — kids who will have no idea where their water comes from.

“One day,” West says, “we’ll turn on the tap and water won’t come out.” ✦

Meg Bernhard is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Her book on wine and power will be published by Bloomsbury in June.

THE SOUND OF SELFRELIANCE

By Sarah Bun

Like a lot of people, on a typical Saturday morning Tom Collins meets his friends for breakfast. But unlike most, he gets there in a 1915 Ford Model T. His vintage beauty isn’t for display, Collins says; it’s for driving. He does about 60-100 miles a week around town. “I love the way the Model T sounds,” says Collins (who is not the former Clark County commissioner, incidentally). “That’s what drew me and my wife in.”

Collins is the president of the Southern Nevada Model T Club, or SNMTC. I met him last spring outside Peg’s Glorified Ham n Eggs on West Sahara. Every Saturday morning, Collins and other club members take their Ts for a drive and have breakfast somewhere in the valley. Anyone is welcome to join them, whether they own a Model T or not. I’d glimpsed them as I drove by, and then made an impromptu U-turn to go back and get a closer look.

I parked near Collins’ car. As I got closer, I read the engraving on the side: “Southern Nevada Model T Club.” My jaw dropped. Henry Ford’s Model T? A fan of auto history, I could hardly contain my excitement. I remembered learning Ford’s response when he was told producing the V-8 engine was impossible: “Do it anyway.” The Model T turned out to be an extremely popular vehicle, a major contributor to the growth and development of cities in the West. It changed how people viewed transportation and travel. And I was standing in front of one now.

Collins, who wore a jean jacket, jeans, and Nike shoes, was talking to an older gentleman. While I waited to meet him, I chatted with Judy Orr, SNMTC’s membership co-chair. I asked if I could take pictures

These Model Ts aren’t just for show — they’re for driving, too.

Exactly as Henry Ford would have wanted

of the car, and she said: “I’ll take a picture of you inside it.” It defied the “look, but don’t touch” I usually encounter at car shows.

Judy snapped photos of me as I climbed into the 108-year-old piece of history. I sat in the driver’s seat, imagining what it would feel like to gun the motor and take it for a spin. Only the passenger side of the car could open, and it was a tight fit inside. I lightly grasped the steering wheel, overcome with awe.

Collins gave me a 360-degree tour of the car. He noted that 1915 was the last year of brass accents and the first year of the electric headlight, following the switch from headlamps lit by dangerous acetylene gas. This Model T operates on three foot pedals: the brake, high and low gear clutch, and reverse. It looks complex but, Collins says, you get used to it before too long.

Initially, cars in general weren’t popular in the Western U.S., says Donald LaCombe, automotive historian and exhibits chairman at Detroit’s Ford Piquette Avenue Plant, a nonprofit museum dedicated to preserving the Model T. Attitudes shifted following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, LaCombe explains. While thousands of people were trapped, unable to be rescued by horse, many more were saved by autos. Understanding the advantages, people started to buy more cars.

Ford introduced the Model T on October 1, 1908, and it succeeded for several reasons, LaCombe says: “They were economical to operate, good on gas (mileage), reliable, and could climb hills and mountains.” And perhaps most importantly, “People discovered they could go any place they wanted.”

Ford mass-produced more than 15 million Model Ts from 1909 to 1927. Known also as the Tin Lizzie or Flivver, it comes in various body styles, such as the Roadster, Coupe, Touring, and Sedan. It boasts a 2.9-liter, four-cylinder, 20-horsepower engine that can travel at a top speed of 40-45 miles per hour, getting 25-30 miles per gallon of gas.

“They were really America’s practical car,” LaCombe says.

This practicality was put to the test during the Dust Bowl of the ’30s, when

many families escaped the manmade climate disaster in their Model Ts and spent weeks traveling west in them — even sleeping in tents attached to the sides of the cars. Given the relatively great distances between cities in the West, the Model T’s reliability and economy were crucial advantages.

I feel a connection to this history almost 100 years later, when Collins offers to take me for a ride. “These cars are in museums, and most people don’t drive them,” he said. “But the club is all about using them.” As we tool around the strip mall, passersby honk. I see what he means about the sound; after a while, my body syncs up with its soothing rhythm.

Harold Mann founded the Model T Ford Club of America’s Southern Nevada chapter in 1992. Mann is 94 and an active club member who still drives his Model T. Collins has been president of the club for three years. In June, he plans to tow his Model T to Manhattan, Kansas, where the MTFCA’s national tour is being held this year. Enthusiasts from all over the country will spend four days driving scenic routes and visiting landmarks in their Model Ts.

The local club also has its own annual tradition, a drive down the Las Vegas Strip on New Year’s Day. This year’s took place in a cold, wet rain, sending the group to Vickie’s Diner to warm up with coffee and hot cocoa afterward. Last year’s festivities included a journey back in time with a display at the Clark County Museum and a 35-mile trek to Nelson Ghost Town near Searchlight. This year, the club is planning a picnic at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park and other activities throughout the year.

After my ride around the parking lot ends, I thank Collins, and get into my car to leave. I look in the rearview mirror, and Collins is trailing me in his Model T. Soon, I outpace the antique as it plods along in the right lane. I merge to the left and head home. ✦

FORD MAN (right) Tom Collins in his 1915 Model T, (below) a row of Ts at Gateway Classic Cars

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Table 34

Table 34

BETTER CALL PAUL

By Michael Hanson

Paul Carter wakes early and looks out the rear window at the southern mouth of the Amargosa Valley. The sun rises over Tecopa, California, a town of about 200 people, depending on the season. The view is dramatic and sweeping. The Nopah Range rises to the east, Death Valley to the north and west. Carter likes to eat heavy in the mornings, so he starts a pot of coffee and fries some bacon and eggs on an electric stove. The inside of his trailer is a chaotic mess, clothes piled here and there, stacks of dirty dishes beginning to lean. Yet Carter doesn’t have time to tidy up right now. He’s got a big day of work ahead of him, but first he will soak in his own personal spa fed by the area’s hot springs.

“People talk about Sedona, Arizona, having this energy,” Carter says. “I’ve been there, and I think it’s fake. But the energy here is real, because we’ve actually got hot mineral water coming up out of the ground.”

At 59 years old, Carter has bright blue eyes and an athlete’s build, a remnant from his days in the Marine Corps. He lives with his dog, Nylah, in a fifth wheel trailer next to a tall wooden shed filled with tools and machine gear. Since moving here in 2014, he has become the de facto town mechanic, which, in a place like Tecopa, is a position of utmost necessity. “Better call Paul” is a catchphrase around town, a reference to the Breaking Bad spinoff, Better Call Saul. People call Carter for all sorts of things,

When things need fixing in Tecopa, there’s one guy in town who can get it done

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whether to fix their car or to help patch their water well. “I’ll move trailers and motor homes for people,” he says. “I’ve been called twice to remove snakes from people’s houses. I’ll tow people who get stuck out in the desert. I fit in well here because I’m part of the safety net.”

According to the National Rural Health Association, rural Americans typically have less income, older populations, worse access to information via the internet, and longer travel distances to healthcare facilites than their urban counterparts. In Tecopa, basic municipal services are sparce, sometimes absent. Well water runs through plumbing fixtures; sewage flows into septic tanks. The power goes out so often that most people supplement with solar. The sheriff’s office is 15 minutes away in Shoshone, as is the nearest gas station. The closest hospital, in Pahrump, is a 40-minute drive, and the Tecopa Fire Department is run by volunteers. All this poses challenges for the people who live there, making residents such as Carter key figures in their communuties.

After his morning soak, Carter warms up his truck to head over to the 57-foot motor home he keeps in the storage lot above the county pools. He’s planning on doing machine work today, and as the sun creeps higher on the horizon, it radiates some much-appreciated warmth. Carter calls his neighborhood the Hot Springs, which is just off Tecopa Hot Springs Road on the northwest side of town. The compound he lives in might look like a junkyard to an untrained eye, but for Carter, it’s the ultimate playground.

He’s got two Dodge Rams, two Toyota 4Runners in various states of repair, a sand rail, which is a souped-up type of dune-buggy, and his baby, a Frankenstein of a four-wheel drive he calls his “Toyota Tacombover.” This truck has been rolled twice by two separate owners, and since Carter acquired it, he’s removed most of the outer paneling, including the doors and bed, and replaced them with a combination of steel pipe and plywood. When he’s not fixing things in town, he can usually be found running this rig through the desert on one of the hundreds of dirt trails in the area.

Carter hops in the Tacombover and exits his neighborhood by turning right on Tecopa Hot Springs Road, glancing for a moment at the open desert. The vibe in Tecopa is a product of its geography. The town pops up at the southern curve of the Amargosa River before it winds back north and empties into Death Valley. The land is speckled

white with salt, and every now and then, an emerald-colored palm grove juts into one of the bluest skies on earth. There are no hardware stores, no grocery marts or gas stations, so people make do with what they have. Most local dwellings are trailer homes, RVs, and campers, and they are inhabited by people enacting their version of rugged American individualism beneath a wide Mojave sky.

It’s a place a tourist might pass through and wonder why anyone would choose to live there voluntarily. For the day tripper, it’s a stop along the highway, but for those who live here, it’s a destination in itself, a place where the hippie vibe of the ’60s lives on, where “the weird turn pro,” as Hunter Thompson says.

A MAN LOCALS call Wandering Bill hobbles up the road with a walking stick in hand, using it to hail Carter as he passes on his way to his motor home. There’s no cell service out

here, so flagging someone down or knocking on their door is still the primary means of getting hold of someone.

Wandering Bill is a weathered-looking man who wears a wide brimmed hat. Between breaths, he asks if Carter can help him replace a starter. Carter can’t help but chuckle. Whenever Wandering Bill appears, it’s an emergency, no matter how small the job. Carter asks if he can come over in an hour, claiming that it probably won’t take him long. Wandering Bill relents, hobbling back over the road toward home.

Tecopa is filled with such characters: “Russ the Miner” and “Sarah Jane the Wonderhussy.” They come from all walks of life and, for various reasons, call Tecopa home. Snowbirds come to soak their aching bodies in the natural 105-degree mineral water bubbling up from the earth. Others are warrant-dodgers on the run from the law. All of them, no matter where they come from or why, are searching for ways

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to live differently.

“People come here to get away from people,” says Paul Barnes, the concessionaire at the Tecopa Hot Springs Campground and Pools. “But at the same time, we are so dependent on each other. We have to learn how much to get into each other’s business and not get into each other’s business.” Barnes has been operating the campground for the past six years with his wife, Nancy, and in that time, he has seen Carter’s role grow from town mechanic to first responder. Tecopa is nestled in the southeast corner of Inyo County, which has a county seat in Independence, California, about a three-hour drive to the other side of Death Valley. “We’re a long way from any governmental agencies,” Barnes says. “Not that they don’t do what they can for us down here, but we are kind of the bastard stepchild of Inyo County.”

Last April, Barnes had just arrived home from playing music on the local stage at Tecopa Station when he saw an orange glow over China Ranch Date Farm, a local tourist attraction a few miles outside town on the southeast side of the area. “I knew right away there was a fire,” Barnes says. “Someone had lit fireworks off down there, and the whole place went up. Paul came down with the town fire truck and, between him and one other gentleman, worked for 16 hours to stop this fire. The way the wind was blowing, it could have easily blown across the whole town and burned it to the ground. So, Paul is a hero in my mind. He basically saved the whole town.”

“There is no form of government here whatsoever,” Carter admits. “The closest thing we have to any government would be the fire department board of directors, of which I am a past member.”

The Tecopa Community Center, a ramshackle little building on the south side of the county campground, is the sole municipal building in town and the lifeline to Inyo County. This space is used to host board meetings and potlucks, and as a community health center, where residents can get vaccinations and flu shots. There’s even a few few books for rent, but like any small, rural community, public services are easily overstretched. Certain people will come to Tecopa for that very reason.

According to Carter, the town can be divided into three distinct parts. There’s the Hot Springs, where the resorts and campgrounds provide access to the thermal pools. There’s Old Tecopa, which is a remnant of the mining camp that flourished in the

mid- to late-19th century. This part of town is being revitalized with new businesses, from Death Valley Brewing to the Kit Fox Café. Then there is the Heights, a place on the southeast side of town that no tourist will ever see. “Unfortunately, there’s drugs,” Carter says. “There are some really scruffy people out there. That’s a place where people sort of land.”

NOT EVEN FIVE minutes after Carter has started working on his motor home, a man drives up to notify him that a Ford F-150 is stuck by the mud pools. It was trying to turn around and got mired, and they need help getting out. Carter instinctively stops what he is doing, hops in his Tacombover and drives down to check it out.

Rescuing people is one of Carter’s specialties. Through the years, he’s seen tons of weird stuff, almost as if the desert brings out the wild side in people. One guy came from Pahrump with his girlfriend and a bag of drugs and proceeded to tear up half the desert doing doughnuts before finally breaking down. Another couple was driving to Baker, California, to buy lottery tickets when they ran out of gas on U.S. Route 127, and when they pulled off, they went nose first into a hidden drainage ditch. They were out walking through the desert when Carter finally picked them up.

When he gets to the mud pools, Carter sees the truck and travel trailer blocking the southbound lane, the right front tire completely submerged in mud. He meets the driver, a baby-faced kid in his early 20s down from Pahrump. Carter explains how tricky it can be turning around there. The

ground can look dry on top, but underneath is seriously nasty stuff.

Carter hooks a rescue strap to the back of his Tacombover and puts the rig in fourwheel drive with the rear end locked. With the Ford sunk so deep, Carter has to get a running start to get the thing to budge, and on the fourth big pull, the suspension winds up and sends his rig jumping into the air. WHAM! — it plops back down, a grinding sound coming from his gearbox. Right away, Carter knows he’s got a big problem, so he unhooks his truck and limps it up to get his “Big Hoss” a red Dodge Ram 4500 that he uses to tow trailers across country. When he returns, a cruiser from the sheriff’s office has arrived. By now, Carter knows most of the deputies on a first-name basis.

“Policing that area comes with its own unique difficulties,” says Corporal Matt Graeff, of the Inyo County Sherriff’s Office. “We have about 5,000 square miles to cover out there, so we have to get creative with how we do things.” Graeff admits that people have a huge misconception of danger when traveling in places such as the Amargosa Valley. They break down out there and get heat stroke trying to walk for help, and in most situations, the $600-$900 towing fees are too much for the types of people who get stuck there.

“Paul will often tow people out or help them get their cars running, oftentimes for free, just so they can get to safety,” Graeff says. “He really cares about people and is willing to help, even if it’s somewhat of an inconvenience. He always takes the time to drop what he is doing to take a moment to look at a situation and help all he can.”

Eventually Carter hooks the Ford up to his Big Hoss, and after four or five good pulls, the F-150 rolls up onto the road again. It turns out that the driver has $87 on him, and Carter can’t help but smirk. He’s probably done $900 worth of damage to his gear box, but by now, he’s used to situations like these. No one comes out to the desert planning on getting stuck, after all.

“I’ve earned a lot of free beer,” Carter says. “Sometimes people will ask how they can pay me, and if the job is small enough, I just tell them to leave me a tab at the brewery. Most of the time it’s worth a beer or two, but sometimes they’ll leave a weeks’ worth.”

Indeed, Carter remembers he has a tab open from fixing a flat tire last week, and right when he’s about to head up to the bar to collect, Wandering Bill comes walking down the street again asking about his starter. Looks like happy hour will have to wait. ✦

“I’ve been called twice to remove snakes from people’s houses. I’ll tow people who get stuck in the desert. I fit in well here because I’m part of the safety net.”

— Paul Carter

CHASING GIANTS

The Colorado River was once home to a six-foot-long pikeminnow. Where did it go?

By Stefan Lovgren

In 2006,

I traveled to Cambodia to write a story for National Geographic about Zeb Hogan, an American fish biologist who was doing conservation work on the Mekong River. Zeb had just launched what he called “The Megafishes Project,” aimed at finding, studying, and protecting the world’s largest freshwater fish, the 30 or so species that can grow at least six feet long or reach weights of more than 200 pounds, several of which are found in the Mekong. Our work together has continued since then, culminating in a book called Chasing Giants: In Search of the World’s Largest Freshwater Fish, which University of Nevada Press is publishing this month.

Giant freshwater fish, from gargantuan gars to sumo-sized stingrays, are among the most threatened animals on the planet, with many species facing possible extinction. What I learned is that they are also good indicators of river health, and so the book became as much a tale about the poor state of our world’s rivers as the increasingly rare and endangered fish that we find in them.

Some of these giant fish species live in American rivers. As it turns out, one of them once swam in the Colorado River. As most people are aware, the Colorado — on which 40 million people, including Las Vegas residents such as me, today depend — is drying up because of a combination of chronic overuse and a historic drought driven by climate change. In our book, we explore the history and evolution of the river that built the American West. An adapted excerpt follows.

THE NILE OF NORTH AMERICA

FEW RIVERS ON Earth have both changed the world through which they flow and had change brought upon them as much as the Colorado River. Following the creation of the Rocky Mountains, beginning 75 million years ago, the Colorado formed as a river flowing straight west. It was not until the rising Colorado Plateau reached its peak six million years ago that the river established its present course, running southwest from the Rockies, through what is now the Grand Canyon, forming a vast marshy delta as it flowed into the Gulf of California.

Of course, the Grand Canyon did not exist then. It was the powerful waters of the Colorado and its tributaries that cut through layers upon layers of rock to forge what is today one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. For millions of years, the Colorado kept flowing, its power unchallenged, until eventually humans set foot in the river, and nothing would ever be the same again.

It was long thought that the first humans settling on the Colorado Plateau — the desert area that today centers on the Four Corners region, where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona meet — were Paleo-Indians of the Clovis and Folsom cultures, who arrived there around 12,000 years ago. But recent discoveries of human settlements at the Eagle Rock excavation site, near the small town of Delta, Colorado, push that time line back at least 1,000 years.

Over the following millennia, human use of the Colorado River basin revolved primarily around hunting and fishing. But with time, various tribal societies began to garden, and they eventually developed large farms. Indigenous groups are known to have farmed large swaths of land along tributaries in present-day Arizona more than 1,000 years ago. Archaeologists have uncovered giant storage reservoirs and hundreds of miles of ancient canals around Phoenix, evidence of what may have been the largest irrigation system built by prehistoric peoples in North America, a remarkable feat considering canals would have been dug by hand using wood, bone, and stone tools.

But the construction of irrigation canals on some of the Colorado’s tributaries is also believed to have changed the morphology of those waterways, complicating agriculture. When a megadrought hit the region in the 14th century, entire societies soon collapsed. As some tribes moved out of the area, the Navajo, who had migrated from the north, established themselves as the dominant People in the river basin, continuing to farm the land.

The first European to discover the river, in 1539, is said to have been the Spanish explorer Francisco de Ulloa, though it is not clear if he entered the river from its mouth or even recognized that there was a major river running north. Instead, it may have been Hernando de Alarcón, another Spanish explorer, who became the first European to ascend the river, which

was described at the time as running “with so great a rage into the land that it was a thing to be marvelled at.”

After the United States purchased the territory of the Colorado River basin from Mexico in 1848, the discovery of gold in California triggered a western migration in search of riches. The importance of the Colorado to the future settlement of the southwestern United States became increasingly clear. With water, anything was possible in the desert, and as agriculture intensified throughout the basin, scholars referred to the river as “the Nile of North America.” Like the Nile, the Colorado originated in the mountains, flowed through a hot desert, and carried with it substantial amounts of silt down to the sea.

But the expansion of agriculture required more than small-scale gravity irrigation systems. It demanded big dams. By the turn of the century, most dams that existed in the western United States were small private ventures, mostly constructed from earth

and rock, diverting water for mining businesses or irrigation of personal properties. But technology emerged to build bigger concrete dams for larger-scale irrigation, water supply, and flood control, and a new federal program created by the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 paved the way for such dams to be built in the Colorado River basin. Within a few years the first one, the Laguna Diversion Dam, was completed. Located on the main stem of the Colorado, near the Mexican border, the dam diverted water to the farm fields of Arizona’s Yuma Valley. It also ended boat travel to the north. Meanwhile, a much bigger dam was being constructed northeast of Phoenix, on the Salt River, a Colorado tributary. The Theodore Roosevelt Dam would store water and provide flood control at a huge scale. When it opened, in 1911, it was the largest masonry dam in the world — 280 feet high — and for a while Roosevelt Lake, created by the dam, was the world’s largest artificial reservoir. The project cost a staggering $10

million, but was considered a huge economic and engineering success. Irrigating vast land areas, the Roosevelt Dam would contribute, more than any other dam, to the settlement of central Arizona.

California’s farmers also coveted the precious waters of the Colorado, which marks the state line between Arizona and California but never enters the state proper. From early on, California sought to bend the Colorado to its own benefits, sometimes causing great ecological upheaval. One example is California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea. It formed in 1905 when massive flooding caused the Colorado River to break through an irrigation canal headwork that had been built as part of a project to provide water to California’s Imperial Valley. For 18 months, water flowed freely into the Salton basin, before the levee break was filled and the Colorado River forced back into its channel.

The newly formed Salton Sea created a rich oasis for birds, and the later introduction of various game fish built up a lucrative

sport fishery around the lake. But without a natural outlet, water trapped more than 200 feet below sea level evaporated over the years, leaving increasing levels of salt behind. The result has been an environmental disaster for birds, fish, and humans alike, as the shrinking Salton Sea has transformed into a salty dust bowl.

But it wasn’t just farms in California that needed water to grow in the early 1900s; cities did too, especially fast-expanding Los Angeles. With water supply from its eponymous river woefully inadequate to sustain L.A.’s unprecedented growth, planners in Southern California sought to harness water from

greater Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and San Diego areas. To this day, it is one of the primary sources of drinking water for Southern California.

By this time, a dam construction boom was well under way in the United States, with new federally funded projects designed not only for human consumption and irrigation purposes but also for generating electricity. The biggest, of course, was the Boulder Dam, later renamed Hoover Dam, built on the border between Nevada and Arizona, upstream from Lake Havasu. Completed in 1936, Hoover Dam became both the highest and largest dam in the world, and once online it earned the title of the world’s largest hydroelectric facility.

For decades, building dams represented progress. Few, if any, considerations were given to things like fish. But by the 1950s, a chorus of voices had begun warning about the environmental consequences of the dam boom.

One project that came under particularly heavy criticism was the building of a huge dam at Glen Canyon near the town of Page in northern Arizona. Initial plans to build the dam in the 1920s had been scrapped, only to be resurrected some 30 years later. Critics questioned the dam’s economic justifications, as well as the environmental damage caused by building a dam across a gorge lined with sandstone, which would flood the scenic Glen Canyon and threaten the integrity of the Grand Canyon just downstream.

Supports

far-flung places for their ever-growing desert cityscapes. In 1922, California was one of seven states to enter the Colorado River Compact, an agreement to provide for the “equitable division and apportionment” of the use of waters from the Colorado River system, allowing California to stake a greater claim to the Colorado.

Eventually, Southern California secured its supply of Colorado River water with the construction of Parker Dam on the California-Arizona border. Completed in 1938, the dam created Lake Havasu, from which water would be pumped through the new Colorado River Aqueduct running west across the Mojave Desert to the east side of the Santa Ana Mountains, supplying almost all cities in the

Still, the project went ahead, and in 1963 Glen Canyon Dam stood 583 feet above the Colorado River, the second largest dam in the U.S. after Hoover, and with a newly plugged Lake Powell next to it. By then, all resemblance to the historic Colorado River had long since faded, with every drop of water litigated and allocated. In time, the mighty river that had once carved out America’s most iconic landscape would no longer reach the sea.

THE BEST FISH

OF ALL THE major rivers in North America, the Colorado has always had the lowest diversity of native fish, particularly in the lower part of the basin (below the Glen Canyon Dam). Still, few others have seen their native fish fauna so severely decimated. Only eight fish species have evolved in the lower basin, and those belong to only two families: minnows and suckers, both of the Cypriniformes order. (In comparison, there are almost 300 native fish species in the Mississippi River.)

National Parks & Wildlife Refuges

90%

Of water originates in the upper basin

18 SPANS STATES7

40 MILLION PEOPLE SUPPLIES WATER TO : 1,450 MILES

With every drop of water litigated and allocated, in time, the mighty river that had once carved out America’s most iconic landscape would no longer reach the sea.

At the same time, the Colorado River has the highest level of fish endemism of any river system in North America, with six of the lower basin’s eight native species found in no other river in the world.

Why is that? A lot of it likely has to do with the geographic isolation of the Colorado system, and also the harsh environmental conditions that existed before the river was transformed by humans. For sunfish, catfish, and other fish that evolved outside the basin, the Colorado’s turbid and unpredictable waters, running through muscular mountains and scorching deserts, were too much to handle.

Drought no doubt played a key role in the evolutionary adaptations of fish in the Colorado. The late Wendell L. Minckley, an ichthyologist at Arizona State University who had five fish species named after him, speculated that

seasonal low flows, amplified by drought, caused fish to retreat from broader river channels into deeper and more secure canyon reaches. Stuck in those spaces, some species would be eaten by others, and generally only a few larger fish would survive.

One such survivor is the Colorado pikeminnow, which is believed to have evolved more than three million years ago. It is the only large fish found in the Colorado River system that, historically, reached lengths of up to six feet, and thus qualifies as a “megafish,” though this beautiful fish, with its long, streamlined body of olivegreen hue, no longer grows this big, nor can it be found anymore in the Lower Colorado River basin.

With its big fins, small eyes, and a large mouth that, despite it being a voracious carnivore, lacks what we normally call teeth, the Colorado pikeminnow is the largest of four pikeminnow species and is known for long-distance spawning migrations of more than 200 miles in late spring and early summer.

Like some other native Colorado fishes, such as the razorback sucker and bonytail, Colorado pikeminnows can live almost 50 years and produce tens of thousands of eggs each spawning season. This has allowed the pikeminnows to survive through prolonged periods of drought when spawning may have been impossible. Once favorable conditions return, they can repopulate the river in a single season, in contrast to many other freshwater fish that live fewer than 10 years and can produce only a few hundred offspring each year.

But the story of the Colorado pikeminnow is, like that of many other giant fish, ultimately one of decline. Naturally, this has occurred at the hands of humans, and we’ve managed to cause this in a trifecta of progressive harm.

From the time humans first arrived at the Colorado River, they likely targeted the pikeminnow for food. Native American fishing practices throughout time have been well documented. One nomadic people, the Chemehuevie, who populated Southern Nevada and western Arizona, called the Colorado pikeminnow Ah´chee Ah´had, or simply “the best fish.”

The Colorado pikeminnow was also a valued food source among early white settlers, who alternatively called it “squawfish” — a name commonly used until very recently, despite its blatantly derogatory basis — and “Colorado white salmon,” a reference to the pikeminnow’s migratory behavior. There are plenty of stories of pikeminnows weighing up to 100 pounds, with settler journals describing catches producing “quite a few meals for the family.”

Historical accounts from the turn of the 20th century tell of farmers diverting the river’s water into their orchards and, after the water dried up, hundreds of pikeminnow being scattered across the fields, from where they were pitchforked out and used as fertilizer. Still, the pikeminnow remained the Colorado River’s top predator in the early 1900s, and they were a popular target fish for anglers, known to take bait in the form of mice, birds, and even small rabbits, despite their “teeth” being found only on a bony circular structure located deep within their throats.

But people also wanted to fish other species, for both food and recreation, and this brings us to the second way we have caused the decline of the pikeminnow: by introducing nonnative fish species into the Colorado River.

Non-native species that take root in new ecosystems and, in many cases, cause trouble are known as invasive organisms. Worldwide, and throughout history, there is said to have been more than 8,000 introductions of fish species into river basins outside their native range, making freshwater fish among the most introduced animals in the world.

Stocking of nonnative fish in the Colorado probably began as early as1881, while the countryside was still being settled. By 1910, common carp, bullhead, and channel catfish were prevalent throughout the lower river. The new arrivals increased the competition for food among all aquatic inhabitants. But even

as food themselves, the catfishes caused great harm to the pikeminnows that preyed on them. The pikeminnows would get their prey’s barbels stuck in their throat when they tried to swallow the catfish, causing them to suffocate and die.

Even so, the pikeminnow might have survived these first two threats had it not been for the third and most destructive way we have caused the decline of the species: by building dams. In the Colorado River system, the dams proved disastrous for the migratory pikeminnow; neither the reservoirs behind the dams nor the cold, clear water flowing from them provided suitable habitat for a species that had evolved in wildly different and more extreme environments.

The last Colorado pikeminnow below Glen Canyon Dam was recorded in 1975. The following year, the species became federally protected and listed as endangered. Efforts to reintroduce the

pikeminnow to the lower basin, using brood stock from the former Dexter National Fish Hatchery and Technology Center in New Mexico, failed because the fish would not reproduce, and eventually the efforts were abandoned. It left the Lower Colorado with the dubious distinction of being among the few major rivers in the world with an almost entirely introduced fish fauna.

THE DAM’S END

BECAUSE IT’S HARD to find a river as exploited by humans as the Colorado, it may come as a surprise to some that it is also considered the birthplace of modern U.S. environmentalism. Water in the American West played an important role in the early goings-on of the country’s 20th-century conservation movement.

Take The High Road

For a long weekend or cool summer vacation, these five mountain towns are easy to get to and easier to love

Boulder, Utah

Fine dining at the top step of a natural wonder

BY HEIDI KYSER

The other Boulder (Utah, not Colorado) isn’t the easiest of our five destinations to get to — it’s a five-and-a-half hour drive with a few twists and turns — but the payoff is massive, as you land in a bonanza of natural wonders. Even the drive itself, on Scenic Byway 12 passing through Bryce Canyon, is so spectacular that the Federal Highway Administration designated it one of the country’s 184 All American Roads. My husband and I find the high-desert mix of mountain forests and sandstone cliffs so enchanting that we eloped there. And every time we go back, we leave wishing we had more time to stay.

STAY

If you plan to eat multiple meals at Hell’s Backbone Grill and Farm (more below), then you’ll want to book a room at Boulder Mountain Lodge. Besides being comfy and well-appointed, it’s just steps from the celebrated restaurant on Highway 12 ($130 and up, boulder-utah.com). For something more off the beaten path, check out Boulder Mountain Guest Ranch, which has everything from tent camping and yurts to cabins and a classic lodge ($130 and up, bouldermountainguestranch.com).

EAT

No offense to Mother Nature, but the food in Boulder is the main draw for many visitors. Hell’s Backbone

Grill Owners Jen Castle and Blake Spalding have created something so special

matter which one you choose (nps.gov/care). For something closer to town and more family-oriented, check out the Anasazi State Park Museum. The site holds Pueblo ruins and artifacts from as far back as 1050 CE, along with short interpretive trails, picnic areas, and interactive exhibits (stateparks.utah.gov).

SEE

with their farm-totable restaurant that they’ve earned a top Zagat rating and been James Beard Award semifinalists twice. Don’t leave without a package of Castle’s Blue Ribbon BlackPowder biscuit mix (hellsbackbonegrill. com). For breakfast or lunch, make time to visit Kiva Koffeehouse on the 12 between Boulder and Escalante. The java’s fine, but the view? Breathtaking (kivakoffeehouse.com).

PLAY

There are gazillions of hikes within a stone’s throw of Boulder, but if you only have time for one, go to Capitol Reef. There are treks of every difficulty level there — from wheelchair-accessible walks to backcountry backpacking — and the geologically diverse scenery is awe-inspiring, no

Hell’s Backbone Grill gets its name from a 35-mile scenic drive that includes a hairraising one-lane bridge over a deep gorge in the Box-Death Hollow Wilderness. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the road in 1933 as the first connector between Boulder and nearby Escalante, Utah (now also on Highway 12). Meandering through aspen and ponderosa pine forest, the gravel road takes around two hours to complete (utah.com). If you’re afraid of heights, then try the 67-mile Burr Trail, another historic — and highly scenic — drive, this one connecting Boulder to Bullfrog Marina at Lake Powell. It’s a rough backcountry road, but those with highclearance/four-wheeldrive vehicles have access to a smorgasbord of sweeping vistas along the way: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Capitol Reef National Park, and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (nps.gov).

For more on Boulder, go to visitutah.com.

Flagstaff, Arizona

Quirky history and ample entertainment options abound in this college town

BY ANNE DAVIS

Though Arizona may be better known for its deserts, Gila monsters, and vortexes, the state also boasts an impressive mountain town, complete with snow, lodges, and towering pines: Flagstaff. Born in 1881 as a stop to serve the nascent railroad, the town’s unique name came from an incident five years earlier, when a band of lumberjacks celebrating Independence Day attached an American flag to the top of a pine tree (staff) — creative! Since those early days, the town has grown into the home of thriving lumber, livestock, and (now) tourism industries. While the area has an official population of around 77,000, it still feels small-town enough to be unintimidating for first-time visitors and families looking for a low-hassle vacation.

STAY

An eccentric spot that’s also among the town’s oldest lodging options is the Hotel Monte Vista. Opened in 1927, the hotel has a fascinating history. It’s rumored to have been the site of bootleg operations, sits atop secret tunnels, and was the former home of Arizona’s first female-run radio station (a fact our Nevada Public Radio listeners will appreciate!). The hotel’s amenities include both an on-site bar and Japanese restaurant, a basement speakeasy (the first in Flagstaff) with live music performances, free wi-fi and morning

coffee, and (allegedly) complementary ghost sightings — if you’re lucky enough. Pro tip: Plan your trip around Northern Arizona University events, which bring throngs of fans, who make hotel rooms harder to come by ($85 and up, hotelmontevista.com).

EAT

For big families/ appetites, the Northern Pines Restaurant serves classic diner food 6 a.m.-10 p.m. daily (thenorthernpines. com). More refined palates will appreciate Josephine’s Modern American Bistro, located inside a cozy bungalow that’s been placed on the National Historic Register (josephinesrestaurant. com). Though these two restaurants stand out for their own reasons, there are plenty of other delicious eats and drinks on both sides of the railroad tracks.

PLAY

Because Flagstaff is a college town (go, Lumberjacks!), there are always plenty of concerts and shows to attend, especially at the historic Orpheum Theater (orpheumflagstaff.com). For daytime activities, we suggest the

Lowell Observatory (lowell.edu), or rent some ski gear and hit the slopes at Mount Humphreys. At 11,500 feet of elevation, its 777 skiable acres should be open till late April, at least (snowbowl.ski).

SEE

If you’re in the mood for both a scenic drive and a bit of Americana, hop on historic Route 66, which cuts right through southern Flagstaff. If 20thcentury nostalgia isn’t your thing, try the 35-mile path between the Sunset Crater Volcano and Wupatki National Monuments, where you can see 900-year-old Pueblo ruins and Painted Desert vistas (nps.gov/ sucr/planyourvisit/ directions.htm). For a more vertical day, book a ride on the Snowbowl’s scenic or sunset gondola. The ascent offers breathtaking views of the San Francisco Peaks and even, on clear days, the Grand Canyon (snowbowl.ski).

To learn more about Flagstaff, go to flagstaffarizona.org.

Mammoth Lakes, California

Lay low — or raise the adrenaline level — in the High Sierras

BY ANNE DAVIS

Mammoth Lakes, a quaint locale nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, is a central California go-to for outdoorsy Las Vegans, perhaps because it’s only a six-hour drive away. The return on that road-trip investment is a picturesque ski town with mountain views and towering pines. Originally a mining community, the mountain got its first official ski area in 1955 due to the efforts of entrepreneur and skier Dave McCoy. Today, Mammoth (as it’s known to familiars) is replete with both indoor and outdoor leisure opportunities, making it a good compromise for a family made up of people with different vacation priorities. Take mine, for instance, who spent our last summer getaway before the pandemic there. There was so much diversified fun that we were all (mostly) still talking on that six-hour drive home.

which offers tent sites, RV hookups, and Cabins with outdoor amenities ($39 and up, mammothmountain com).

EAT

For fine dining and live entertainment, make a reservation at the exclusive Lakefront Restaurant (mammothmountain.com). If you’re feeling healthy, head to Elixir

Superfood and Juice, a vegan- and paleofriendly restaurant serving gluten-free and locally sourced eats in a fast-casual environment (enjoyelixir.com).

STAY

Among the town’s famed resorts, a Davis family favorite is The Village Lodge, a self-contained wonderland where you could spend an entire Mammoth vacation without ever leaving — or running out of things to do. The downtown hotel features direct gondola access for skiers, fitness and game rooms, cozy fire pits placed around the lodge, full kitchens in each room, and outdoor balconies. The lodge is also connected to a walkable shopping area, which is a cool intro to the town for newcomers and a reliably fun evening for repeat visitors ($215 and up, villageatmammoth.com) .

For something a little less civilized, book a spot at the historic Camp High Sierra basecamp,

For more of a novelty, visit Eleven53 Café, propped atop Mammoth peak, and nosh on Asian-inspired lunches at 11,053 ft (mammothmountain.com).

PLAY

Those taking it slow can catch live entertainment and see photos and artifacts from Mammoth’s previous eras at the Mammoth Museum at the historic Hayden Cabin (mammothmuseum.org). For those on the faster track, a ride on the scenic gondola to the peak of Mammoth Mountain

is one of the town’s highlights. At over 11,000 feet, it’s the highest ski resort in the state. The truly adventurous can indulge in Black Diamond skiing and snowboarding from there; the rest of us disembark at the Eleven53 Interpretive Center for spectacular views of the Sierra Nevadas and the still-snowy ground in the middle of summer (visitmammoth. com). For families, Mammoth’s Adventure Center has ziplines, access to junior biking trails, rock climbing walls, and plenty of other ways to run the afternoon zoomies out of little ones ( mammothmountain.com ).

SEE

I’m a romantic introvert, so my idea of a perfect day starts with renting a canoe at June Lake Marina and taking it out on the sparkling body of water surrounded by mountains. Once on the water, I’d sit back and enjoy the sights and sounds of summer in the Sierras (junelakemarina.net ).

For more information about Mammoth Lakes, go to visitmammoth.com

Tehachapi, California

Off-beat fun in an undiscovered playland

BY NICOLE MINTON

Tucked between the San Joaquin Valley and Mojave Desert lies the unassuming mountain town of Tehachapi, California. Before calling Las Vegas home, I was raised under the shade of Tehachapi’s oak trees. Years separated from my hometown, I now fondly remember lakeside bonfires and stargazing in the mountains. Driving back there from Vegas, I’m welcomed by rolling, wind farm-lined hills, a reminder to slow down. Call me biased, but I find this low-key destination ideal for both outdoor adventurers and main street loungers looking for a place to unwind in the cool mountain air.

STAY

Eight miles southwest of town, Tehachapi Mountain Park offers clean, first-come, first-served campsites for tents and RVs. Campers can spend hours wandering among the massive fir trees, but be mindful of the occasional bear sighting. Make sure to pack bug spray for relaxing around the site fire pits as the sun sets behind mountain peaks. This is a great option for basecamp adventurers and the budgetconscious ($18 per day, kerncounty.com).

For comfort and amenities near the town’s center, book Fairfield Inn & Suites on the west end of Tehachapi Blvd. — a short walk to countless restaurants, museums, and local shops. In summer, the hotel has the advantage of being near the weekly farmers market and annual Mountain Festival ($160 and up, marriott.com).

EAT

Kohnen’s Country Bakery, a tried and true Tehachapi staple, is a German-style bake-

shop with fresh bread for create-your-own sandwiches and pastries made fresh daily. Kohnen’s offers quick service, a large seating area, and a view of Tehachapi Blvd. Becauase it sits beside the famous railroad, diners can expect the occasional rumble of trains (kohnenscountrybakery.com). For a date night, make a reservation at Veritas Tapas & Wine Bar, where diners can share small bites and wine tastings. On busy nights, when the familiar kitchen din saturates the small space, the restaurant’s soft lighting and knowledgeable staff create a warm atmosphere (veritas-tapasand-wine-bar. mailchimpsites.com).

PLAY

Hiking is a must-do on any Tehachapi trip. Tehachapi Mountain Trail is a moderately

challenging out-andback with a quick elevation gain to scenic views. In spring, a 40-minute venture leads to the vibrant poppy fields of the Antelope North Loop Trail, a 45-minute drive south, outside Lancaster (tehachapitrails.com). Just north of Tehachapi proper is the César E. Chávez National Monument, commemorating the highly influential labor and civil rights activist. The site offers a lush memorial garden, the Chávez gravesite, and a visitor center for opportunities to learn about the establishment of farming labor unions. The monument is open daily and free to the public ( nps.gov/cech).

A unique site in Tehachapi is the Mountain Spirit Center, a Buddhist

retreat in the Sand Canyon neighborhood. Visitors are met with ornate temples and a large bell of peace that guests are invited to sound. It’s uncommon to see crowds at the center, making this spiritual excursion incredibly peaceful. Admission is free, though donations are encouraged (taegosah.org). History buffs will enjoy the Tehachapi Loop, a helix shaped railroad considered an engineering feat. Still an active railway, the loop in action thrills train enthusiasts. If train-watching isn’t on your bucket list, the Scenic Overlook offers remarkable views of Tehachapi’s nature and wildlife (atlasobscura. com/places/tehachapi-loop-2).

For more information about Tehachapi, go to visittehachapi.com.

Virginia City, Nevada

The Silver State’s origin story is full of character and characters

BY SCOTT LIEN

Like the 1960s TV series “Bonanza,” Virginia City, Nevada, is built on a storyline of colorful characters and settler lore that few mile-high cities can compete with. The lore is best enjoyed during lively saloon banter, while the characters were the throngs of hard-scrabble miners, speculators, and developers who flocked to the region beginning in 1859 to stake claim in the now infamous Comstock Lode. The sparkle of precious metals caught the eyes of folks in Washington, D.C., as well; within a few short years, the fledgling territory was on its way to becoming the Silver State. Virginia City’s present-day charm is built on its rough and rugged past, made famous by Henry T. Comstock, Mark Twain, George Hearst (father of media mogul William Randolph Hearst), and countless other treasure hunters. Travelers of all ages and interests will enjoy this high desert destination.

STAY

For an immersive Virginia City experience, stay at the Tahoe House Hotel and Bar which, according to legend, was home to Mark Twain. A former boarding house, this Victorian-style 16-room boutique inn features wellappointed guest rooms, period antique furnishings, and locally sourced guest amenities. Proprietor Paul Hoyle and his team offer a friendly and personalized experience, giving recommendations for local activities. The Tahoe House also offers the only public balcony on the main street — perfect for enjoying a sunrise coffee, or one of the bar’s specialty cocktails in the glow of a western sunset ($139 and up, tahoehousehotel.com).

EAT

The Virginia City Mexican Kitchen serves up rustic taqueriastyled dishes for a quick and satisfying meal. The diminutive café also proudly boasts the best churros on the planet (775-583-6039). For more of a linger, enjoy live music on the patio and local artists’ work on the

walls at The Canvas Café (thecanvascafenv. com). For a craft beer or a late afternoon cocktail — as well as a million-dollar view — head to the legendary Bucket of Blood Saloon (bucketofbloodsaloon. com). And for dinner, make a reservation at Café del Rio, where inventive southwestern cuisine mixes with American comfort food like Gospel Fried Chicken or house-made chili relleno. Don’t pass on the seriously decadent apricotancho chili cheesecake (cafedelriovc.com).

PLAY

The town’s population swells on weekends with plenty of familyfriendly activities drawing lively crowds. A robust year-round events calendar attracts more than a million visitors a year to take in one of many festive parades, car shows, motorcycle gatherings, and legendary races (who knew racing camels and outhouses were such popular sports?). A high ratio of saloons to people makes bar crawls another popular attraction. Families and history buffs can enjoy riding the rails of the

Virginia & Truckee Railroad or ghost hunting in one of the town’s popular haunts (virginiatruckee.com).

SEE

For a small town, Virginia City has a lot to see. Poke around the hilly streets and admire the Victorian-styled mansions and historic sites, or take in the sights and sounds of the once bawdy and bustling main street boardwalk, where saloons seem to outnumber residents. What isn’t visible are the hundreds of miles of tunnels under the street. The Ponderosa Saloon and Mine Tour delivers on the promise of “underground mining exhibits,” which, as the dry-witted guide notes, generate more revenue than the mine ever did (775-8477210). The Chollar Mine, by contrast, yielded an estimated $17 million in silver and gold during its 80 years of operation, and its tour offers an authentic historic experience (chollar-minetour. com). Attracted to paranormal activity?

The Washoe Club Saloon has guided ghost tours and overnight investigations (thewashoeclubmuseum. com/saloon), while docents at the Mackay Mansion will introduce the current “residents” of Nevada mining legend John William Mackay’s former home (therealmackaymansion.com).

For more on Virginia City, go to visitvirginiacitynv.com.

Continued from Pg. 61

When the seven basin states signed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 to codify the division of water rights for agriculture and economic development, the agreement included no environmental protections. It also excluded from negotiations the many Indigenous People living along the Colorado including the Mojave, known as the “river keepers” who, in addition to practicing floodplain and irrigation agriculture, had been environmental stewards of the river for some 4,000 years. Even during the dam-building boom on the Colorado and elsewhere, very little attention was given to the potential impact that dams would have on the river’s ecology and on fish.

But after World War II, things began to change. In a booming postwar economy, people could afford cars, which they drove to visit natural places. More people began to recognize the costs of environmental negligence, including air and water pollution. In A Sand County Almanac , published in 1949, Aldo Leopold, whom some would call the father of wildlife conservation in the United States, wrote that maintaining the “beauty, integrity, and health of natural systems” is a moral and ethical imperative.

Many people who described themselves as conservationists began to move toward political action, and increasingly their energies became focused on river protection. A particular target of their ire emerged in the 1950s: the Colorado River Storage Project, a proposal by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to build a series of new dams in the Colorado River basin. A central feature of this project was going to be a 529-foot-high gravity dam on the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado, to be built in an area known as Echo Park located inside Dinosaur National Monument, which spans the border between Utah and Colorado.

The Echo Park Dam would have flooded a scenic canyon flanked by enormous sandstone cliffs, as well as much of the Green and Yampa River valleys inside the national monument. Conservationists warned of devastating ecological consequences. But the Dinosaur National Monument was a remote part of the national park system that few people had visited, and some wondered why the area was deemed so valuable, especially since the dinosaur fossils that had been excavated there were not in danger of being flooded.

So conservationists set out to build public support for their case, and did so by enlisting the help of influential people

such as Bernard DeVoto, a conservation writer who wrote an essay in the Saturday Evening Post called “Shall We Let Them Ruin Our National Parks?” Soon, coverage of the controversy popped up in major newspapers across the country.

Meanwhile, David Brower, executive director of the Sierra Club, made two films about Dinosaur National Monument and arranged for one of them to be screened frequently in the halls of the U.S. Congress. At a congressional hearing in early 1954, Brower also boosted the conservationists’ case when he showed how the dam engineers had made serious errors in their projections.

Following years of debate, the plans for Echo Park Dam were scrapped, with legislation signed by President Dwight Eisenhower paving the way for a campaign to establish a national wilderness preservation system. The conservation victory proved to be an important milestone in American environmental history, and many experts date the origins and emergence of a coherent “environmental movement” to the battle against the Echo Park Dam.

As dam building peaked in the 1960s, rivers and fish became a cornerstone of the environmental movement that emerged as a cultural and political force at the time. Of the 75 species listed under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966, 22 were fish, including the Colorado pikeminnow. Coincidentally, in 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed Native Americans’ rights to Colorado River water and specified the allotments of tribes living adjacent to the

river in southern basin states (although much of their allocation has gone unused because of insufficient funding and infrastructure). Then, in 1968, Congress established the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act to protect sections of free-flowing rivers that “possess outstandingly remarkable scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, cultural, or other similar values.”

In the intervening 55 years, 209 rivers in the United States have been afforded this designation. But not the Colorado. Instead, a tug-of-war over water rights has continued along America’s most iconic river. Since 2000, annual flows in the Colorado River have averaged 20 percent below what they were in the century before, because of drought and climate change. Water in Lake Mead and the basin’s other artificial lakes dropped to such precipitously low levels last year that the federal government declared a first-ever official water shortage. There is reason to believe this will be the new norm.

MILK AND HONEY WILDERNESS

TODAY, WE LOOK at the dams on the Colorado River as permanent, almost natural features of the landscape. It is difficult to envision the river without them. The way the Colorado, and any river, behaves with the dams on it is, in a way, more real to us than what it would have been without them. We cannot envision the river in its natural state. No living person has seen the Colorado River fully wild.

It is easy to imagine that people who were there when the dams on the Colorado and other American rivers were built also viewed them as permanent features of the landscape. The dams were seen as engineering marvels, indestructible, and meant to last in perpetuity. We know that little thought was given to the impact of dams on fish and the ecological functions of the river; the public was instead transfixed on the economic and technological progress that dams represented.

By 1940, hydropower provided 40 percent of America’s electricity supply, and over the next couple of decades dams continued to be built at a rapid pace in the United States. But things changed as oil and natural gas production became cheaper, surpassing coal as the leading energy source, while new forms of energy also emerged, including nuclear power. By the 1960s the hydropower boom was ebbing, in part because many of the rivers suitable for exploitation had been dammed by then.

It had also become obvious that hydropower plants were, in fact, not indestruc-

Since 2000, annual flows in the Colorado River have averaged 20 percent below what they were in the century before, because of drought and climate change.

tible, but would eventually run into problems requiring costly rehabilitation. Reservoirs silt up, resulting in diminished energy outputs, and infrastructure needs to be repaired to avoid potential catastrophes. The environmental damage that dams inevitably caused was often greater than initially acknowledged. The cost of upgrading their safety systems or keeping outdated hydroelectric equipment running decades after a dam had been installed was, in some cases, not worth it. And so, by the 1980s, an idea began to spread that perhaps some dams should be removed.

Since then, the U.S. has led the world in dam removal. No new large hydropower dams have been constructed in this country for decades, and many dams considered obsolete have been taken out, including two large ones that were removed on the Elwha River in Washington State beginning in 2011.

Observers have learned that, once dams are taken out, the rivers often bounce back to their natural state more quickly than expected. Ecological rewards can be almost instantaneous, with migrating fish populations

returning to their native habitats in very little time. Assisted by the same human hand that once altered it, nature is capable of rapidly and naturally regenerating what was once believed to have been permanently lost.

Recently, amid the Colorado water crisis, a longstanding campaign to drain Lake Powell by removing Glen Canyon Dam has gained some momentum. The idea is to store that water in Lake Mead instead. Taking out a structure that is a key component of one of the most complex river resource developments in the world may seem unrealistic to most people. But there is no harm done in imagining how the river would respond to such an undertaking. Perhaps it could be brought back to some semblance of its former majesty?

After all, people have shown it is possible, if only temporarily. We did it on March 23, 2014. On that day, the gates of Morelos Dam, on the U.S.-Mexico border, were opened to release a “pulse flow” of water into the final, parched stretches of the Colorado River, an engineered discharge that culminated from years of negotiations between the United States and Mexico.

By taking 105,000 acre-feet of water from

NEVADA BACK COUNTRY WATERING HOLES

No doubt Nevada’s urban cities dish up some lavish sips and eats. But, if you’re craving something a little less refined and less confined, here’s a list of some back country establishments that are sure to deliver that “REAL NEVADA” worth making a weekend trip for!

Dirty Dick’s Belmont Saloon ♦ Belmont, NV

This uniquely named saloon is completely off-grid! Try their Famous Bloody Mary or sample the wide selection of beer, whiskey & tequila.

Santa Fe Saloon ♦ Goldfield, NV

The oldest continuously operating business in Goldfield, this saloon offers up some tasty pizza, plus favorites in the beer and liquor categories.

Happy Burro Chili & Beer ♦ Beatty, NV

Set in the heart of Beatty, this saloon has a true Old West Saloon front. Happy Burro offers award-winning chili and plenty of outdoor patio seating.

Overland hotel & Saloon ♦ Pioche, NV

Known for its spirits (and we’re not just talking about the booze) it’s the perfect place to find a local storyteller while having a cold drink.

Lake Mead and sending it south, we mimicked, on a small scale, the spring floods that historically inundated the Colorado River delta, in the hopes of restoring some of the natural bounty once found there. As the water made its way across the salt-crusted sand plains, the place that Aldo Leopold, after a canoe trip in 1922, called a “milk and honey wilderness” once again sprang to life. Children who had never seen the river bathed in it, as the skies above filled with hawks, egrets, and ospreys.

Then, nearly eight weeks after the release, the river finally, and briefly, reunited with the sea, and in that fleeting moment, the Colorado River was once again complete. If you closed your eyes, you could envision the fish returning — the humpback chub, the bonytail, and the largest pikeminnows that anyone has ever seen. ✦

Learn

ATV / Off-Roading

Mountain Biking

Bird / Wildlife Viewing

Boating / Fishing

Camping / RV Hook-up

Climbing / Bouldering

Ghost Town Exploring

Golfing

Hiking

UFO Spotting

History & Petroglyphs

HEAR MORE: Mountain West News Bureau’s latest reporting on the Colorado River

WHITE HILLS LOOP TRAIL

By Heidi Kyser

There’s a short window in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area at the end of high tourist season and before the weather is too hot to enjoy most hikes. That time is April and May! And this hike is perfect for spring because, done counterclockwise, you get sun in the cool morning, and shade on the north side of White Rock Hills as the day heats up.

WHITE ROCK LOOP TRAIL

Be prepared to get there early. For one thing, no reservations are required to enter the Red Rock Canyon Scenic Loop 6-8 a.m. (you do still have to pay the entrance fee unless you have a National Parks Pass). Also, as hiker extraordinaire Alan Gegax wrote in Desert Companion ’s 2016 story, “This hike, it’s personal,” the White Rock Hills Loop is extremely popular with hikers and runners. That’s because “it will reward you with a wooded green canyon, stark red desert, and wildlife ranging from mountain bluebirds to bighorn sheep.”

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the Red Rock Scenic Loop for about seven miles. Exit at the Willow Springs turnoff and park at the trailhead on the side of the road.

DISTANCE: 6.1 miles

ELEVATION GAIN: 1,135 feet

ANCESTRAL TERRITORY OF: Nüwüwü (Chemehuevi), Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute), Newe Sogobia (Western Shoshone)

STEWARDSHIP 101: Because it’s so popular, this trail offers a great opportunity to set good examples. If you’re going with other people, carpool to minimize carbon emissions and parking spaces used. If you see trash, pick it up. As always, practice Leave No Trace ethics on the trail. And if you do see damage being done, report it at the visitor’s center.

LEARN MORE: Visit redrockcanyonlv.org

Sources: AllTrails.com, lnt.org, Native Land app

PHOTO: KRISTEN DESILVA

BIG IDEAS APPLY! (literally)

For the second year, we’re searching for the next BIG IDEA to positively impact education in Nevada. Cash prizes up for grabs to bring the winning BIG IDEAS to life.

Applications accepted April 17 through June 9, 2023. Contest details, application and official rules at www.bigideachallenge.org.

THE BIG IDEA CHALLENGE: AN EDUCATION INNOVATION CONTEST™ IS SPEARHEADED BY