RHINESTONE RESURGENCE
LIBERACE!
THE GLITTERING RETURN OF A VEGAS ICON
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
YOU ARE THE FESTIVAL BY MIKE PREVATT
TIME FOR A NEW DESIGN SPIRIT!
NO MORE BLAH HOMES
TERRIFIC TALENTS OUR ANNUAL ONES TO WATCH ARE BUILDING A BETTER CULTURE
BY T.R. WITCHER
MEDIA STUDIES:
WATCHING THE POLICE WITH NISSA TZUN
YOU GET WHAT YOU GET
AND YOU’LL LIKE IT! NEW PRIX FIXE MENUS
U.S. $4.99
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including rapper Chop808
99
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VOLUME 17 ISSUE 9 D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
September FEATURES
57
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER CALENDAR Presenting the 2019 Fall Culture Guide — more art, music, theater, dance, literature and attention-demanding events than your monthly planner can handle
73
ONES TO WATCH
N E VA D A B A L L E T T H E AT E R /J E R R Y M E T E L L U S
A poet, two very different artists, a videomaker, and a rapper: five emerging talents energizing the valley’s cultural life
10 | D E S E R T
C O M PA N I O N
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SEPTEMBER 2019
B R O A D W A Y
GREEN MEANS GO!
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JACKIE EVANCHO: The Debut BROADWAY’S NEW AMERICAN SONGBOOK OCTOBER 13
TAJ EXPRESS THE BOLLYWOOD MUSICAL OCTOBER 8
PAUL ANKA: ANKA SINGS SINATRA HIS SONGS, MY SONGS, MY WAY! NOVEMBER 23
VISIT THESMITHCENTER.COM TO SEE THE FULL LINEUP 702.749.2000 | TTY: 800.326.6868 or dial 711 | Group Inquiries: 702.749.2348 | 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89106
VOLUME 17 ISSUE 9 D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
September 32 VISUAL ART
Glynn Galloway’s leather and junk creations By Summer Thomad
34 What Discovery Museum CEO Melissa Kaiser keeps on her desk By Kailey Lyons
38 TRENDSETTER
A legendary makeup artist on aging with aplomb — and style. By Christie Moeller
40 WRITER IN RESIDENCE
17
29
REPUTATIONS
CULTURE
The glittering revival of a Vegas icon By Paul Syzdelko
The changing nature of festival-going By Mike Prevatt
Calling for a new non-blandness in residential design — help us out, architects! By T.R. Witcher
20 PROFILE
Kim Boschee empowers girls through running By Heidi Kyser
DEPARTMENTS
21
44
SATIRE
SOCIETY
Prospective Area 51 invaders, take note By Andrew Kiraly and Scott Dickensheets
With her Forced Trajectory Project, Nissa Tzun documents the lives of families who’ve lost members to police shootings By Soni Brown
22
52
DISCOMFORT ZONE
A middle-aged lady in a gym full of young weight trainers: some thoughts By Heidi Kyser
FIRST PERSON
Stuff: What it means to have it, to toss it, to move it, to lose it By Don Hall
( EXTRAS ) 14
91
EDITOR’S NOTE
THE GUIDE
Here we are now, entertain us — exhibits, concerts, shows, events, and miscellaneous zippity-zop to fill your calendar
( COVER ) FALL CULTURE GUIDE YOU ARE THE FESTIVAL BY MIKE PREVATT
TIME FOR A NEW DESIGN SPIRIT!
NO MORE BLAH HOMES
WITH NISSA TZUN
NEW PRIX FIXE MENUS
U.S. $4.99
.
SEPTEMBER 2019
TERRIFIC TALENTS OUR ANNUAL ONES TO WATCH ARE BUILDING A BETTER CUTLURE
BY T.R. WITCHER
MEDIA STUDIES:
WATCHING THE POLICE YOU GET WHAT YOU GET
C O M PA N I O N
Christopher Smith
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
AND YOU’LL LIKE IT!
12 | D E S E R T
DESIGN
RHINESTONE RESURGENCE
LIBERACE!
THE GLITTERING RETURN OF A VEGAS ICON
SEPTEMBER 2019
Including rapper Chop808
99
EVENTS TO JAZZ UP YOUR CALENDAR
L I B E R A C E P H OT O I L L U S T R AT I O N : B R E N T H O L M E S ; P R OT E S T O R S : N I S S A T Z U N / F O R C E D T R A J E C T O R Y P R O J E C T ; G A L LO WAY : C H R I S T O P H E R S M I T H
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14
Florence M. Rogers Perez EDITOR Andrew Kiraly ART DIRECTOR Christopher Smith DEPUTY EDITOR Scott Dickensheets SENIOR DESIGNER Scott Lien STAFF WRITER Heidi Kyser GRAPHIC DESIGNER Brent Holmes PUBLISHER
ADVERTISING MANAGER Favian
Editor’s Note
FALL FOR CULTURE P
roductivity was all the molten rage for a minute on the internet: getting things done, lifehacks, deep work, inbox zero, social media blackout apps, monotasking. The current moment seems to be about the opposite of productivity: paeans to the enriching existential benefits of boredom, the fertile possibilities in doing nothing (the Danish fondly enshrine it as something called niksen), idleness as a resistance against the constant capitalist mandate to produce and consume. With my own paradoxical psychological makeup of someone who on the one hand can compete with sloths for heroic, essential laziness but who on the other hand is also constantly simmering in a radioactive stew of puritanical guilt for not Doing Something Right This Moment, I oscillate myself into a plasmic fugue state when I think about it too much. The point? It’s a clumsily overthinky thematic segue to our September issue and our Fall Culture Guide — a to-do list that’s anything but a chore. Culture represents to me a happy midpoint between these two poles, between work and idleness, between doing and being. It’s leisure, to be sure, but selective leisure that requires a level of engagement beyond passive consumption. It requires your brain and your heart to work. And this year’s Fall Culture Guide will engage both, with plenty of art exhibits, dances, plays, concerts, and readings to carry you through the end of the year. The summer may define Las Vegas in many people’s imaginations — the season of heat and abandon — but fall is when the real Las Vegas — our Las Vegas — truly comes alive. Correction: Due to a production error, August’s 2019 Top Doctors list was incomplete. We regret the error. The complete list is on p. 82.
Andrew Kiraly editor
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I M AG E S : L AS V E G AS N E W S B U R E AU A N D W I K I CO M M O N S
R E P U TAT I O N S
Liberace once ruled the Strip, but fell into obscurity after he died of AIDS-related causes. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, signs point to a glittering return BY
Paul Szydelko
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION B rent Holmes
or a man who dominated Strip stages for almost a half-century, who put the fabulous in Fabulous Las Vegas, whose resplendent aesthetic became the Strip’s aesthetic, our famous marquees did not dim when Liberace died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987, and no street is named after him. His relative obscurity in the zeitgeist over three decades may only now be starting to dispel. That nothing was done on a grandly public scale to honor Liberace still drives Jonathan Warren, chairman of the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts. Warren often leads tours of an auspicious collection of costumes, pianos, and other artifacts three or four times a week. His voice dipping after a three-hour tour on a sweltering July morning, Warren says: “It was an ugly time when he died. It was a depressing time. … This was Las Vegas culture, and people were kicking it under the carpet — like it never existed. The whole phobia SEPTEMBER 2019
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R I V I E RA S I G N : L AS V E G AS N E W S B U R E AU
was building up with AIDS hysteria at the time, and it was obvious what was going to happen. … Liberace was the poster child for it. I remember how easy it was to find opportunities to discriminate against someone based on this at the time and how they didn’t even see it as discrimination.” Classically trained pianist Wladziu Valentino Liberace was gay when the economics of his profession and culture of his time demanded he not be. He was 67 when he died, the second celebrity after Rock Hudson to succumb to the disease that was at its most misunderstood and feared at the time. Public celebrations of his life were muted. The gay community was disappointed he publicly denied his sexuality, even through the winks onstage. His audience, often elderly Midwestern women who adored his antics and self-deprecating humor, was shocked, shocked to find homosexuality was a fact of his private life. HBO’s 2013 Behind the Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas as Mr. Showmanship and Matt Damon as lover Scott Thorson, based on Thorson’s dubious tell-all book, perhaps rekindled interest, but it certainly won’t be the last word. Liberace is enjoying something of a comeback in 2019 on the 100th anniversary of his birth. When Cardi B sang “Money” at the Grammys in February, her pianist, Chloe Flower, lit up social media with her performance on Liberace’s crystal piano. At the camp-themed Met Gala in May, CAPITAL TALENT Liberace’s costumes and essence were An August 1963 marquee for Liberace’s show at the Riviera reflects his celebrity stature in a Las Vegas of yesteryear. literally and figuratively represented, writer-producer Ryan Murphy channeling him with a Christian Siriano-designed beaded weekly, Warren says. Each is considered and will be released next year around this cape, suit, and bow. based on the treatment. time; a German production has no license In May, the Liberace Foundation had You can draw lines from Liberace’s garish and no access to the archives or collections. an official birthday party in Monte Carlo. stage presence to such influential stars as Look for a Liberace Steakhouse in the Members of the Maloof and Liberace famElvis Presley, Elton John, and Michael JackLos Angeles area next year, the first of a ilies attended. son through to many of today’s entertainers nationwide effort. A license for His famous typewriter-playing across many genres, especially hip-hop. a Las Vegas production show is sequence with an orchestra from ADDITIONAL The lack of a street name in Las Vegas expected soon, Warren says, in television in the ’50s punctuREADING shocks Darden Asbury Pyron, author of partnership with a major Las Veated a scene in the first season Liberace: An Liberace: An American Boy (The University gas producer who knew Liberace. of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. American Boy of Chicago Press, 2000). The book presents A Broadway show based on Liberace’s image was licensed Darden Asbury Pyron Liberace’s life as a metaphor for modern Behind the Candelabra has been for Blade Runner 2049, Family (University of America’s excessive commercialism and mentioned in press releases a Guy’s “The Quest for Stuff” game, Chicago Press) hunger for celebrity. couple of times, but no rights have Mozart in the Jungle, The Jim “That is astonishing to me … He first played been discussed with the Liberace Gaffigan Show, and most recently, Liberace: The True Story Las Vegas in 1944, and except for a break Foundation, Warren says. Others Rocketman. Bob Thomas between ’59-’61, he’s playing it virtually are working on a licensed BroadAt least two European compa(St. Martin’s Press) on his deathbed. Absolutely no person has way play, which would encompass nies are working on documentacloser associations with Las Vegas, and the Liberace’s life as a cultural pheries: A British one is licensed, has Liberace: An Las Vegas city fathers should be ashamed of nomenon, he says. filmed in Monaco, New York, and Autobiography not naming a street after him,” Pyron says. The Liberace Foundation reHollywood, has been picked up Liberace (Putnam) Liberace held residencies at the Last ceives licensing requests almost by a major distribution channel,
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Frontier, Riviera, and Las Vegas Hilton. He performed at other Vegas venues, including the Sahara and Caesars Palace, on television, and on stages around the world, becoming the world’s highest-paid performer at his peak. Taking some criticism about his gimmicks, flashy but sloppy piano playing, constant promotions, and ostentatious demeanor, he said he “cried all the way to the bank,” the phrase becoming part of the American lexicon. Liberace is too big a personality to be limited to one street, Pyron says. “He is so natural that the idea of isolating him and naming a street after him would freeze him, and he’s so much a part of American life. (You’re) taking him, his impact, and all the rest for granted.” Spurred by an online petition with more than 500 signatures, Clark County belatedly marked the 100th anniversary of Liberace’s birth with a proclamation in June. A street bearing his name is in the works, Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom says. County staff is in the design stages of a realignment of Tompkins Avenue east of Koval Lane that could bear Liberace’s name. It’s budgeted to start in the next couple of years, but right-of-way still must be acquired before construction could begin, a spokesman for Segerblom said. “I suspect maybe when he died, he wasn’t quite the celebrity that he is now, so things are starting to come back as far as his prestige and people starting to recognize it,” Segerblom says. The eponymous museum on Tropicana Avenue and Spencer Street shuttered in 2010 after more than three decades. The Liberace Garage on Dean Martin Drive continues to display Liberace’s glamorous stage cars, which first appeared in his act in 1958. Costumes, pianos, candelabras, and other art is housed at the Thriller Villa, Michael Jackson’s last home, where Warren leads tours. They must be arranged in advance, the $129 price tag attracting only the most curious. A 5,000-square-foot addition to the Liberace Garage is planned for a soft opening later this year, Warren says. It will display pianos, costumes, and long-lost artifacts, including a statue from Liberace’s Las Vegas pool and the 15-foot Fabergé egg from which he emerged for an Easter performance at Radio City Music Hall. Illustrating the public’s rising fascination with Liberace, a free 2013-14 exhibition at The Cosmopolitan included a dozen costumes, shoes, bow ties, candelabras, his Swarovski piano, and his Swarovski car. It was supposed
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coming in, and it was fascinating to see.” With an evocative style ripe for parody but profoundly influencing so many entertainers, including Las Vegas’ latest megastar resident, Lady Gaga, Liberace will continue to have his moments. Whether Las Vegas truly embraces him as its own is still up in the air. ✦ Thriller Villa tour, $129, liberace.org; Liberace Garage, $18, liberacegarage.com
to run 45 days but lasted nine months because it was so well received, Warren says. “We realized the depth and breadth of the market to see him was tremendous. We’d have three and four generations coming in at once,” Warren says. “All genres. A cross-section of society. The gay couple coming in from San Francisco, and the hip-hop couple coming in from Compton, everybody was
Run, Girl PROFILE
Kim Boschee brings the gospel of running to girls in Las Vegas BY
K
Heidi Kyser
im Boschee looks like she just stepped off the cover of Runner’s World: chiseled legs, suntanned shoulders, energetic expression. She drinks frequently from a lightweight bottle, prehydration for an afternoon run. “I’m training for a desert marathon,” she says matter-of-factly, as if vigorous outdoor exercise in mid-July Las Vegas wasn’t reserved for the insanely dedicated. This Kim Boschee, now the director of the nonprofit Girls on the Run, is not one that the Kim Boschee circa 2010 would recognize. Back then she was a “super-happy, super-fat stay-at-home mom,” she says. “I never even thought twice about my weight.” The death of her father in 2011 abruptly ended Boschee’s complacent bliss. When a friend suggested she try boot camp a few months later, she thought, Why not? It was hill day, she recalls, meaning the group went up and down a hill every imaginable way — sprinting, frog-hopping, crab-walking, and so on — for an hour. “I thought I was going to throw up,” she says. “But I got through the 60 minutes. I got in my car, and on the drive home, I realized that, for the first time since my father died, I wasn’t sad, and it was such a relief.” That experience led to running two miles, then four, then a half-marathon, then a full, which she did in four hours, 44 minutes, her coach pacing her the entire way. “That was a life-changing experience,” she says. “First, the fact that he was willing to run with me for nearly five hours and not complain once told me there is good in this world. Runners want to give back, which made me fall in love with the sport. Second, it was something that was completely mine. No one could ever take it away from me.” After that, she got serious, focusing on her nutrition and running 50 miles or more a week. Her weight dropped 100 pounds from its peak. Today, she’s two races shy of running in all six major world marathons. It was on the bus to the Boston Marathon, in fact, that she talked to her coach about joining the Southern Nevada board of directors for Girls on the Run, a national nonprofit that teaches third- through eighth-graders social-emotional skills through running. The group had approached her earlier in the year, and the opportunity intrigued her. In her life before stay-at-home motherhood, she’d gotten a master’s degree in psychology, worked with adolescents through the Juvenile Justice system, and operated a private family therapy practice. And before that, she’d worked at a flower shop, where her favorite thing to do was plan weddings. The Girls on the Run position wove the strands of her work experience — counseling, kids, event-planning — into her passion, running. She became its executive director in 2018. Girls on the Run is an after-school program that meets 20 times for 75-90 minutes each over 10 weeks. Coaches use fun activities to teach girls goal-setting, stress-man-
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S
tarted as a prank event on Facebook, “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” had more than 2 million people signed on to attend the September 20 gathering (now festival) near the secret military base and rumored site of alien technology. Should any of them attempt to invade Area 51, what can they expect? Here’s the latest intel on the mysterious installation.
Future home of Louie Anderson’s brain in a jar
Pro tip: Use this quantum time portal if. you regret your stupid decision to come here
Stop by gift shop for commemorative probing!
Walls of dreary employee break room swivel away to reveal gleaming alien tech lab
Main stage feat. Lil John, Bruno Mars, and Snow Patrol
Places you’re likely to get shot in the face
If you like jump scares open this door lol
Gym with separate locker. rooms for aliens .and predators
Port of Subs (not a decoy for alien research complex; actually just a Port of Subs)
AREA 51: SHUTTERSTOCK
Independence Day: Resurgence refunds available here
Throne room of Xyy’gloth, Supreme Elder of Alpha Centauri (don’t ask)
Free-range sandworm pasture
Neckbeard trimming booth
Lightly enforced HOV lane
Area 52: soon to be Dollar General and payday loan store
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agement, and other life lessons. Running is incorporated gradually, starting with bite-size challenges, such as darting between cones. And there’s always time for processing feelings. The program is open to anyone who identifies as a girl, Boschee says. Funds are set aside to sponsor it at Title X schools, while other sites pay for it upfront. She expects the program to be in 20 sites this fall. There are fall and spring sessions, each culminating in a mass 5K for all participating groups. “For our spring run this year, we had 1,500 people (including runners, their safety buddies, and spectators), 200 volunteers,” Boschee says. “A life-size unicorn led the runners out.” She describes a festival atmosphere, with “sparkle zones” and “star power activation stations.” But amid the fun, something important is happening: Girls are gaining confidence in themselves and each other. “During the December 2018 5K, a girl was sprinting toward the finish line, and she fell with 20 feet to go,” Boschee says. “She couldn’t make it the rest of the way, so three of her teammates came out and carried her over the line.” They’d learned from Girls on the Run what Boschee did in her first marathon: When you help someone reach their goal, you score one for the greater good. ✦
Heavy Lift DISCOMFORT ZONE
OUT OF CONTEXT
H AVING LIVED IN LAS VEGAS ... MY SENSE OF THE POSSIBLE IN HUMAN AFFAIRS HAS BEEN GREATLY EXPANDED. CURRENT EVENTS DON’T FREAK ME OUT NOW … — Author Walter Kirn, on Twitter
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The biggest weight room challenge isn’t getting ripped — it’s blending in BY
Heidi Kyser 1
I
learned how to do side lunges with a resistance band around my thighs recently at UNLV’s gym. Most of the exercises I’ve learned have a considerable awkwardness factor, but this one is especially inelegant. Unless you’re my tall, buff personal trainer Michael, it makes you look like a dog in mid-squat who keeps changing his mind about where to poop. “Hmm. No, this spot isn’t quite right. A little to the side, I think. A couple more steps. Maybe here. Nope, back the other way is better.” PORTRAIT B rent Holmes
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So, I was doing this — five crab steps to the right, five to the left — under Michael’s supervision, when an older guy wearing an AC/DC T-shirt with the sleeves cut off walked by slowly and observed, “That’s impressive.” Or, as my insecurity filter translated it, “That’s impressive… for someone our age.” I was mortified by having attention called to me in such a compromising position, but also trapped by the fear of tearing a hamstring if I stood up mid-move. I glanced at Michael, who was totally ignoring the passerby. “Two more … you got this,” he said, tapping pen to clipboard. Nothing to do but swallow hard and keep going. Why was it okay for someone I didn’t know to comment on my performance that way? Or wasn’t it? Was he patronizing or complimenting me? Or both? What was the appropriate response? I honestly don’t know the answer to these questions, because I don’t speak swolese. Before January, when I took my doctor’s advice to start weight training and hired Michael, I’d never been in UNLV’s — or any gym’s — weight room. I’m a stranger in a land where people throw around terms like “chest press” and “burnout set.” I grew up riding horses and cheerleading, and left the Soloflex and Muscle & Fitness craze to my brothers. This identity carried over to the gym, where I prefer spin or yoga class over jacking steel. But I’m eager to get through the newbie phase and own these ridiculous drills. If I have to do them, then I’m damn sure gonna know their names and how to do them right. A month passed before I worked up the nerve to check out a resistance band and attempted side lunges on my own. I did them right in the main aisle, where Michael had taught me. I was still a bit self-conscious about looking like a constipated dog, but no one even seemed to notice me. Not that impressive after all, I guess.
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this before?” Michael asks, as we approached a metal structure that could plane wood or hoist an engine, for all I know. “No, I’ve never used anything in here,” I tell him, for at least the fifth time. I think the idea that someone who’s as fit as I am has never been in a weight room is as foreign to Michael as the idea that it’s okay to walk by an old lady who’s straining indecently and say, “That’s impressive” is to me. “It’s a Smith machine,” he says. A lesson
“HAVE YOU USED
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of the young men, she toils without show or apparent need of validation. As I start my first set of squats, I make a mental note to get online and find some new workout gear. My crow’s feet may stand out, but at least my clothes won’t. 3 I DREAD THE bench area of the weightlifting
floor more than any other. You can practically see the bacteria growing on the red vinyl pads, and no one ever cleans up after themselves. But Michael insists that bench presses are a necessity, and, indeed, they’re listed in almost every basic workout I look up online. “Have you ever used a bench?” he asks, adjusting its height. “Nope. I’ve never been within 10 feet of a weight bench, Michael, much less picked
BRENT HOLMES
in squats ensues. As he talks, I notice the young woman who puts the top of her shiny black bob into a ponytail that points straight up. I watch with admiration as she confidently glides from the pullup machine to the power rack. She’s probably 30 years my junior — most of the gym’s patrons are, given that it’s in a university — and dresses so unlike the women I’m used to seeing in spin or yoga. There, standard attire is colorful, patterned, pedicured. But ponytail girl obeys the female weight room aesthetic of Converse sneaks, black athletic tights, and gray T-shirt (optional knot at bellybutton). Despite our differences, I feel a kinship with this young woman. She appears strong and independent. Unlike many of the other young women here, she’s never coached by a boyfriend. And, unlike most
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up a dumbbell.” Midway through my first set of bench presses, there’s a terrific scream and crashing sound from the deadlift platform. Anyone without headphones on max volume snaps their gaze toward the source of the ruckus: The elderly man with a limp who wears ballet slippers and a leather weightlifting belt has just triumphantly dropped a barbell the size of a Honda Fit. I look up at Michael, pleading with my eyes for some explanation of this weird behavior, but he only cracks a slight smile before noting that my elbows are out of alignment. He’s told me before to ignore what I see and hear in the weight room and focus on what he’s teaching me. Most people don’t know what they’re doing, he says, and even those who do may have different goals than mine, which are to strengthen and stabilize
There’s a terrific scream and crash: An elderly man with a limp who wears ballet slippers has just triumphantly dropped a barbell the size of a Honda Fit.
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my joints. I want to continue hiking, swimming, and doing the other things I love as long as possible, and overuse injuries have started to interfere. And then there’s my personal boogeyman: the dementia that runs in my family. It has taken a couple relatives, and I secretly obsess about it getting me, too. During my research on weight training, I’ve come across many studies confirming its benefits for people 50+, including some linking it to better cognitive function in old age. That’s all the motivation I need to keep at it, no matter how it may feel sometimes. Remembering this, I think twice about the old guy limping around in his ballet slippers. What’s the Honda-size demon he just slayed, I wonder. 4 THE HYDRAULIC MACHINE area is closer to my
comfort zone. For one thing, there’s a higher ratio of women to men there. For another, each machine is labeled with instructions. And perhaps most importantly, people in this section use the cleaning supplies. “Have you ever done this?” Michael asks, the first time we venture into the area. SEPTEMBER 2019
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“No, Michael. I’ve never used any of these machines. I never lifted a weight of any kind before I met you. Ever.” He launches into a lesson on hamstring curls, noting not to do them as shown in the instructions, but rather, one leg at a time. I like Michael. He gives me motivational lectures about the body being capable of more than the mind admits. He tells me his mom enjoys certain exercises, seeming to believe this will make them more enticing. And he’s astonished by my side planks and pushups, not realizing they’re yoga poses I’ve been doing for 20 years. With his top-level personal trainer certification and physical therapist internship, he’s a steal at student-gym rates. I’m lucky to have him. But the day comes when he turns me loose. In an earnest e-mail exchange, he makes sure I’ve got the basics of creating my own program and encourages me to check back in whenever I need help. Then, I’m on my own. I was nervous walking up to the Smith machine alone the first time, but I could hear Michael’s voice in my head as I loaded 10-pound weights onto each end of the bar, set my feet hip-width apart, and began my first set. I promised myself that if I got through three sets each of squats and bench presses, I could move on to the hydraulic machines. In my black tights and gray T-shirt, I channeled ponytail girl’s energy, heaving the 20 pounds onto my shoulders and lowering my torso toward the floor, careful not to lean forward too much. One. By the second set, I’d settled into contemplating the new and familiar characters nearby. By the third, I was starting to sweat and feel noodle-legged. But I still had lots of energy, so I challenged myself to a burnout set. Before I knew it, I’d done twice as many squats as I had in the first two sets. On the last one, I had to push so hard to stand up that I emitted an involuntary grunt. “That’s impressive,” I thought to myself, “for a woman my age.” ✦
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History in the Making V I S U A L C O M M E N TA R Y
PHOTOGRAPHY B rent Holmes
D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
IT MIGHT BE time to officially retire that groany old maxim about Las Vegas imploding instead of preserving its blah blah blah. In recent years, there seems to have been a shift in our thinking: The idea that Las Vegas’ built history is valuable, meaningful, and worth saving isn’t just the preserve of monomaniacal historians and academics anymore. The Neon Museum deserves a lot of credit for driving this shift. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1996, has not only saved more than 200 neon signs from oblivion. It’s hungrily evolved itself into something much more than the sum of its many parts: museum, event space, education center, pop-up art and design think tank, and social media magnet that beams visual doses of Vegas to eyeballs around the world. More recently, it’s launched a light show, Brilliant!, acquired the historic Reed Whipple Cultural Center building for further expansion, and announced Lost Vegas, an exhibition of director Tim Burton’s fine art that opens October 15. Get an eyeful: Historic preservation never looked this good. Andrew Kiraly
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CULTURE, FOOD, STYLE, AND OTHER WAYS TO USE THIS CITY
A LL OUT Fest Practices
Big music events are no longer just about the music — they’re about you BY
N
Mike Prevatt
othing beats that initial lap at Life is Beautiful. There are the unidentifiable, squid-like characters greeting you post-pat down (Instagram post number 1); the new, vaguely sociopolitical murals on the Downtown buildings (number 2, with multiplier); the selfie wall with the pithy, on-brand messaging in neon (number 3, #wearebeautiful); the four straight dudes in holographic merman leggings (number 4); an alley outfitted with lighting strips circa Radiohead’s 2007 tour (number 5); Diedre, the friend you always see at the Bunkhouse, only less drunk and more sunburnt (number 6); someone with a “Netflix and
ILLUSTRATION C ash
Consent” T-shirt (number 7, #metoo); and a grounds maintenance vehicle you suspect is this year’s Banksy (number 8, #art). Thirty minutes in, and you finally wonder: Wait, aren’t there bands playing? This wouldn’t have been a question 15 years ago during peak Coachella, which didn’t have to contend with a gauntlet of photo ops or social media enabling the hourly humblebrag. When you entered the California festival’s iconic polo fields, you were already clutching your homemade Excel sheet of lineup preferences, speeding past the Burning Man loaner sculptures and toward the Outdoor Stage to catch Belle & Sebastian.
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and BMX/skating demonstrations, and Viva Las Vegas threw in burlesque and car shows with its rockabilly offerings. A precedent, yes, but not a springboard. When the much-larger Vegoose came — and quickly went — it represented a mid-aughts cautionary tale of circumstance (the rock festival bubble burst wide open),
MUSIC
BACKING THE BLUE Fun fact: The Blue Man Group band is a landing pad — and launch pad — for many pro musicians. Here are some who’ve done stints with BMG. (compiled by Josh Bell) Tim Alexander (drummer, Primus) Phil Leavitt (drummer, Dada) Nick Oshiro (drummer, Seether, Static-X) Thaddeus Corea (drummer, Wild Colonials) Jason Mackenroth (drummer, Rollins Band) - died in 2016 Corky Gainsford (drummer, Otherwise; singer, Code Red Riot) Christian Brady (guitarist, Hellyeah) Blas Elias (drummer, Slaughter) Charles Henry (guitarist, Red Means Go, The Cab; solo career) Elvis Lederer (Uberschall, Unique Massive)
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IT WAS THE FEST OF TIMES Clockwise from left: attendees at Life Is Beautiful; a Ferris wheel at Electric Daisy Carnival; an astronaut sculpture at Coachella
fan betrayal (trading improv-rock crunch for indie punch), and shifting generational tastes (less arms-crossed passive consumption, more playtime during downtime). It wasn’t until L.A. exiled Electric Daisy Carnival to these parts in 2011 that local festival culture not only began in earnest but repositioned to become more participatory. EDC promoter Insomniac Events did everything that confounded traditional festival enthusiasts: It downplayed live acts, pricey superstars like Deadmau5, and, well, the lineup in general; discharged enough fireworks to embarrass any Fourth of July display; hired Cirque-like performance troupes to enliven nonperformance areas; flecked the grounds with carnival rides and props for photo backgrounds; and changed the marketing and the entire ethos of the fest by turning the focus on the attendees — now they were the “headliners.” EDC soon became the most attended music festival in North America, even selling most of its tickets before any lineup announcements. Two years later, Life is Beautiful followed, with its balance of music, food, art, and infotainment, though its real masterstroke was transforming Downtown Las Vegas into an urban playground as alluring as Kanye and The Killers. In 2015, Brazil’s Rock in Rio made its debut with a karaoke room, nonmusical entertainment, and ziplining, as did Further Future, a dusty, experimental confab in Moapa that merged Burning Man, TED Talk-like presentations, and glamping. Neither lasted long, but it wasn’t because
B R A DY : A P I M AG E S ; A L E X A N D E R , O S H I R O, B LU E M A N G R O U P : W I K I C O M M O N S ; E L I A S : FAC E B O O K ; L I F E I S B E AU T I F U L C O U R T E S Y ; C O AC H E L L A , E L E C T R I C D A I S Y C A R N I VA L : A P I M AG E S
But Coachella no longer caters to that kind of music fan — nor do the other major music festivals, whose successes have given way to homogenization and sharing the same talent pool. That’s one reason why social media feeds rarely boast the lineup posters — they’re all very samey. Another reason? Few festivalgoers spend $350 a weekend to see their favorite bands anymore. They’re investing in the total experience, one that balances sensory stimulation. Most local fests have picked up on this — of course they have. As Las Vegas itself has had to evolve away from gaming toward other activities, many of its music weekenders have deemphasized music and aspire to become greater than the sum of a festival’s parts. In fact, Life is Beautiful, which returns this month for its seventh edition, isn’t the first Valley festival to offer a multidisciplinary spread. Music festivals in Las Vegas had largely comprised packaged tour stops (Lollapalooza, Warped Tour) and locally produced events (radio-station promotions, Reggae in the Desert) until Extreme Thing, in Desert Breeze Park, bundled high-octane music
D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
of their shift toward audience engagement. Since then, the festival sphere has kept promoters obligated to give its customers more; even Coachella budged to kowtow to its hammy, attention-deficit clientele. Locally, the tourism infrastructure — a major selling point for fests on or near the Strip — has given rise to hotel-takeover events like Psycho Las Vegas, Big Blues Bender, and Wynn Nightlife’s Art of the Wild, which sell one-stop-shop convenience as much as the niche artist curation. Last spring’s Emerge, also contained to one property, produced a half-music/half-lecture bill that projected a distinctly political, call-to-arms charge — in escapist Las Vegas, of all cities. This fall will mark the debut of Metarama Gaming & Music Festival, an arcade writ large with its own electro-hewing soundtrack, where passholders can cheer on both Marshmello, who’ll play a DJ set, and Twitch-famous controller-wielders, who’ll play Fortnite and other e-sports staples — to say nothing of the cosplay, drone-flying, racing simulator, and virtual-reality diversions that will be on offer. It could represent both the present and future of Vegas weekend revelry; much like Burning Man and EDC, the attendee is the chief collaborator, and will ultimately bestow Metarama its energy. Which makes sense — video games are largely a participation sport. And now, so are Vegas music festivals. ✦ Life is Beautiful, September 20-22, Downtown Las Vegas, tickets start at $145/day, $315/three days, lifeisbeautiful.com SEPTEMBER 2019
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Leather Report VISUAL ART
Artist Glynn Galloway combines old items and wet leather into pieces that are ‘a little bit edgy’ BY
Summer Thomad
D
riftwood, doll heads, vintage radio antennas, scrap metal, old burlap sacks — rather than seeing this as useless junk, Las Vegas artist Glynn Galloway sees potential for art. His assemblage pieces combine antique trinkets, in all their rusted, patinaed, imperfect glory, along with new materials, like molded leather. Galloway, who served in the Navy for almost 25 years and has worked in healthcare for much of his life, didn’t anticipate becoming an artist. With no formal training — not even a single art class — he began creating assemblage pieces in 2009. Ten years later, he spends his days in his home studio, where bins of carefully curated materials line the walls, and prosthetic legs hang from the ceiling. “Almost every piece that I do, I try to tell a story,” he says. “Not every piece has to send a message, but every piece has some meaning behind it.” One of his cornerstones is wet-molding leather, a technique that he modified from the ancient process of hardening leather known as cuir bouilli, which translates to “boiled leather.” With Galloway’s method, the leather retains its suppleness, making it easier to sculpt, often into emphatic human faces, organs, and structures that range from whimsical to grotesque. Galloway’s new exhibit is titled Leather or Knot.
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GLYNN GALLOWAY, LEATHER OR KNOT, September 5-November 5, West Las Vegas Library; opening reception, September 5, 5:30p, lvccld.org PHOTOGRAPHY C hristopher Smith
What makes leather a fitting material for your work? I love the way it can be manipulated. By wetting it you can tool it with stamps and indent it to make designs, and you can also mold it like clay. You could dye it, you could pyrograph it, you could use a wood burner on it and make designs into it, you could airbrush paints on it, you could use gold leaf on it. I found it a very versatile medium, and I’m one of the few artists in the country who uses leather on a regular basis. Most of my pieces are based on antique objects, and I like to find pieces that are handmade or hand-forged — it’s like doing a collaboration with someone from the past. I found that I wanted to do more than just assemble objects, and the way I found to do that was to use leather. Even in abstract pieces, your depictions of human faces and organs look strikingly realistic. How does your medical background inform that? There’s certainly a lot of anatomical references to my work, and I think that’s because I’ve worked in the operating room for so many years. I use glass eyes, human bone, prosthetic limbs. I always want things to be a little bit edgy, and sometimes using those references can get the reaction you’re looking
for, whether it’s favorable or unfavorable. I always say my artwork is not for every living room because of that. It can be a little grotesque sometimes. But I try to make it so people can enjoy it even if it is a little morbid. One artist said to me, “You seem to find the perfect mixture of sinister and sweet.” You’ve talked about being interested in the “character of imperfection.” I enjoy trying to find pieces to incorporate into my artwork that other people have absolutely no use for, and a lot of times it’s a piece of metal that’s broken, that you can’t repair or can’t use for any purpose. I just feel like that imperfection adds a real quality to the art that you can’t reproduce. Utilizing unique materials is clearly a vital part of your work. If you watch a chef pick out a tomato, he looks at the color, he’ll pick it up, he’ll feel it, he’ll smell it. I kind of do the same thing with every component I choose for a piece. I love things that have a patina or have a grain that you can not only see but feel. I want people to be able to touch the artwork; I think that’s really an important part of experiencing art. When I do outdoor shows, I put signs out that say “feel free to touch the artwork.” I encourage it. ✦
CHECKING IN
STIL L WORTH WATCHING Before you read about this year’s Ones to Watch (p. 73), catch up with talents from previous years
RAHMAAN PHILLIP, MUSICIAN One to Watch: 2018. Since then: Phillip now performs with Lady Gaga, Bush, Tony Bennett, Kevin Hart, Quincy Jones, and more. He plays regularly on the Strip, and teaches violin, viola, cello, and piano. LUIS VARELA-RICO, METAL SCULPTOR One to Watch: 2011. Since then: Since appearing in DC thanks to his guerrilla installations of metal origami cranes, he’s become a prominent public artist,
with major commissions installed on Main Street and at a municipal sports complex. SARAH O’CONNELL, IMPRESARIO One to Watch: 2014. Since then: From her stewardship of Asylum Theatre — the reason we One to Watched her five years ago — O’Connell went on to create the arts awareness and advocacy website Eat More Art Vegas (eatmoreartvegas.com), a one-of-a-kind clearinghouse of cultural information,
advocacy, and, increasingly rare otherwise, reviews. BISCUIT STREET PREACHER, PAINTER One to Watch: 2012. Since then: After going off the grid in Idaho for a few years — an interesting play for an artist known for “ferocious urban paintings” — Biscuit (aka Robby Martin) has returned to Las Vegas, and is again making his mark, including some sizable pieces (one’s 64 feet long) at The Strat. Kailey Lyons
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2 1 3 Pinto Green Italian at Naked City Pizza 4
MY SPACE
Melissa Kaiser The Discovery Children’s Museum CEO fills her workspace with reminders of the past that inspire the future BY
Kailey Lyons
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ast spring, after a career that included fundraising for the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and nine years as an executive vice president of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (with stints of yoga and Pilates instruction thrown in there, too) Melissa Kaiser moved to Las Vegas to meet up with her husband, Roy Kaiser, artistic director of the Nevada Ballet Theater. She also began her new life as CEO of the Discovery Children’s Museum. The places she’s worked and the people she surrounds herself with have inspired her to get out of her comfort zone and become the boss lady she is. “We think about the things that shape us and grow us,” she says. “So, I surround myself with them.” Hand-drawn quote from staff at PAFA (1) From a letter written by PAFA founder Benjamin West, it was a parting gift when Kaiser left for Vegas. “I was so moved by (the quote) that I started crying,” she says. “It inspires me to grow the cultural community in Las Vegas and provide opportunities for children to flourish in the expression of their imagination and creativity.” Valentine (2) The shadow box holds a precious valentine
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from her niece Ashley, then 8. The note above it reads, “I <3 u. M + A= May I kiss u. I used my art box from you.” Kaiser is Ashley’s “artsy” aunt. They’ve spent countless of hours drawing portraits of her favorite dolls and cartoon characters. “I do believe creativity is like a muscle that if you don’t use, it will atrophy.” Tin cup (3) This pays homage to Jane, her boss at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. When fundraising together, Jane would turn to Kaiser to “shake the tin cup” as a way to break the ice and stage the ask. “It’s kind of a reminder of our purpose as a nonprofit that we always have to ask,” Kaiser says. “We can’t be afraid to pick up the phone and just make that call.” Mini Cooper toy cars (4) “I think they are reflective of my personality in a lot of ways. They’re zippy but also solid and fun.” The red Mini was her stepson’s while the yellow one was gifted by her dad. She hopes to drive her own Mini Cooper along Route 66. Picture of “light and love” rock (5) During a trying time in her life, Kaiser’s best friend gave her this rock, which reads “light and love,” paired with a Sanskrit symbol. By reflecting on it every day, she was able to manifest “light and love” into her life again. She keeps a picture of it at her desk. “It’s kind of always a reminder to keep it light,” Kaiser says. “Remember it’s your choice to be light, to be love, and to attract that around you.” Big scissors (6) Used for the museum’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, they’re engraved with the date of the opening; March 9, 2013. They’re tilted upward for the direction Discovery wants to keep going. Magnifying glass (7) The magnifying glass has become a part of the museum’s logo, and is symbolic — it’s the idea of youth examining, exploring, and paying attention to the things around them. Kaiser has jokingly used the magnifying glass to look at documents. Photos (8) The picture of the Buddha was given to Kaiser by a former coworker. On the left is an image by Jamie Alvarez. It showcases objects found at the Philadelphia dump, showcasing ideas of sustainability, recycling, and the need to find art and beauty in anything. ✦ PHOTOGRAPHY L ucky Wenzel
Dinner Is Fixed DINING
In an age of decision fatigue and too many choices, prix fixe menus are making a comeback BY
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Lissa Townsend Rodgers
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here’s been an uptick in the number of prix fixe and prepriced menus in the valley of late — and I’m grateful for it. Not just because it’s a nice way to get a bit more bang for your buck — and know up front how many of those bucks you’re spending. I’m grateful because it offers an antidote to our exhausting contemporary mania for choices, choices, choices, and because it returns the notion of the leisurely meal to this era of the quick bite. The prix fixe menu comes to us from the French — and Vegas’ old-schooliest of old-school French is Pamplemousse Le Restaurant (400 E. Sahara Ave., pamplemousselerestaurant.com), where they’ve been pouring Pinot and serving soufflés for more than four decades. A sepia-lit bungalow with disco en francais Barbra Streisand on the soundtrack, its atmosphere is so classic Vegas that you half-expect to see Wayne Newton on his way to a gig or Tony Spilotro on his way to a hit. The restaurant offers several prix fixe menus ranging from $40 to $80 and, with a selection or two from their wine list, it’s a fine way to linger the evening away. After opening with a big basket of crudités, you can tuck into appetizers such as escargots de Bourguignonne wallowing in Pernod-touched garlic and butter, or creamy yet light lobster bisque. One highlight is the restaurant’s signature palate-cleanser, grapefruit granita with Champagne poured over it — some kind of pinnacle of refreshing coolness, even in 102-degree heat. The entrées include solid renditions of French standards such as seared salmon in a light Champagne sauce, and tournedos of beef with a Cognac sauce and frites, as well as less typical dishes such as a filet of wild baby boar with cassis sauce. (Yes, cooking with liquor is a motif here, and we are here for it.) End with crème brûlée or rich chocolate mousse for the full retro experience. There’s also a gracious, throwback appeal to Sadelle’s in Bellagio, even if it’s less than a year old. The high-ceilinged room has an Upper East Side Hollywood Regency vibe, with an aqua-and-salmon color scheme PHOTOGRAPHY S abin Orr
EAT WITH THE PROGRAM Opposite page: lamb, sashimi, and vegetables at Estiatorio Milos; above: cannoli at Buddy V’s; left: tuna ceviche at China Poblano
and acres of well-polished mirrors that invite you to preen like a trophy wife. The restaurant’s pre-theater card provides the full appetizer-main-dessert (for under $40) experience while not making you so full you nod off during a crucial moment in O. First-course options include a shrimp cocktail dusted with lemon and chives, and a tuna tartare that’s light but still decadent. Sadelle’s is known for its smoked salmon, but the roasted salmon entrée is also nicely done, with the fish’s caramelization nicely played up by a vinaigrette sauce; garlic chicken is a flavorful comfort food, complete with mashed potatoes. For dessert, the babka a la mode is sinfully sweet, but the sticky bun ice cream sandwich is truly magical,
with vanilla ice cream seeping out between laminated layers of cinnamon-sugar pastry. If all that doesn’t sound quite filling enough, come early for happy hour’s outstanding coffee or grapefruit martinis and pigs in a blanket that are little puffy clouds of pork-filled joy. Feeling like a Chihuahua-toting lady who lunches is one thing, but what if you actually want to have lunch? The Express Lunch at Buddy V’s in the Venetian sounds like a grab-a-sandwich-and-chips casino endeavor, but it’s actually a three-course meal that’s equally accommodating to both the busy-on-a-break and those with time to kill. The spacious room is finished with walls of canned tomatoes and witty touches such as rows of vintage rolling pins as room dividers. You can open with meatballs, soup or salad; the panzanella salad is a bit light on the bread, but crisp polenta croutons add flair to the Caesar. Main courses are Italian standards such as the buttery, cheesy My Dad’s Bucatini Carbonara or a meatball sub with mozzarella and ricotta as well SEPTEMBER 2019
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as a heap of parmesan garlic fries. Dessert choices are gelato, a chocolate-and-pistachio-dotted cannoli, or a pot of fluffy tiramisu. If you’re seeking something a bit more adventurous, the tasting menu at China Poblano in The Cosmopolitan is conceived not just to let you sample the restaurant’s offerings, but embrace its Yangtze-to-Yucatan concept (and there’s even a vegetarian rendition). The Twenty Vegetable Fried Rice is a star on both menus, a rainbow of finely chopped vegetables dotted with cilantro and carrot butterflies. Tuna ceviche spikes jewel-like chunks of fish with finely chopped pecans and a soy-citrus sauce, while coconut ceviche with chunks of coconut, teardrop tomatoes, and red onion is as refreshingly tropical as the seafood version. Siu mai dumplings offer nontraditional flavor combinations such as pork and jicama or chicken and goji berry. The restaurant’s bustling yet relaxed vibe, as well as the array of red lanterns, silver bicycle wheels, and color-saturated photos on the walls match the kaleidoscopic flavors. You can find prix fixe Strip dining in a more serene atmosphere at Estiatorio Milos in The Cosmopolitan, where you can look out on Las Vegas Boulevard’s glitzy razzmatazz from an aerie of polished wood and whitewashed walls. The restaurant offers both lunch and dinner prix fixe options, but you can take it to the next level at its monthly wine-pairing dinner, which matches a glass of wine to each of five courses. The Madagascar shrimp has a fragrant, orange finish, and comes with a lemony endive salad that harmonizes well with a Biblia Chora Plagios Chardonnay, which eschews the usual vanilla-extract whiff for a lighter, citrus flavor; the fat in grilled lamb chops gives a complicated spin to the tannins in the Tselepos Kokkinomylos Merlot. I don’t recall what was paired with the herb-stuffed fried zucchini blossoms, but they were outstanding, with a feta crème fraîche I wanted to smear on everything. It’s not an item I would normally have chosen, but that’s part of the fun of prix fixe: Having the choices made for you means you might discover a new favorite dish — one you might never have chosen otherwise. ✦
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Barbra Jo Batterman TRENDSETTER
With her stylized secondhand flair and first-rate skills, this makeup artist has become a Las Vegas icon BY
Christie Moeller
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nown for her upbeat personality, quirky style, and straighttalk approach to makeup, Barbra Jo Batterman’s brushes have touched the faces of presidents, A-list celebrities, music-industry giants, and corporate leaders. She puts a strong emphasis on helping both men and women age gracefully, working not only on makeup and grooming, but also consulting with them on health and fitness and how to incorporate a healthy lifestyle. And maybe a little of her signature flair. How would you describe your personal style? Colorful, fun, over-60 style, and proud of it. I dress and accessorize age-appropriate with my own quirky flair. Who are your style icons? Iris Apfel, 97 years old, and Jane Fonda 81 years old — both still styling. PHOTOGRAPHY L ucky Wenzel
D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
Do you think it was harder to establish yourself in the industry before social media? I am so lucky to have started 44 years ago. Social media has made the makeup industry seem more glamorous and encouraged lots of people to enter the field. At the same time, YouTube has taught lots of woman how to make themselves up, lowering demand for professionals. Yet, there is still opportunity for the exceptional artist, even today.
A STORY OF AMERICA, ONE SONG AT A TIME.
There has been a shift in the beauty industry over the past few years to more organic and natural products — what are your thoughts? I am in favor of hypoallergenic products and, of course, products that are not tested on animals. But “natural” just for the sake of being “natural” doesn’t really sell me. I think that if a natural or organic product is truly hypoallergenic for you, use it. If not, I see no advantage in the products. Any great DIY beauty hacks you can share? Tip of the day: Olive oil and brown sugar mixed together make an excellent lip exfoliator. If you could only pick one beauty item for a job, what would it be? Eyeliner. It is always about bringing out the eyes, eye contact — the windows of the soul. What is your daily uniform? Stylized clothing from outlet, consignment, and secondhand stores, accessorized with Doc Martens, eyeglass frames by Anne & Valentin, and Coco Parfum from Chanel. Do you have a mantra? Balance your life, stretch, walk, eat clean, and be grateful for being alive. Best beauty advice for guys? Personal grooming is your best friend. Just because you can’t see inside of your ears doesn’t mean you should forget about them. Three things every woman needs for fall 2019? Health, fitness, and sleep.
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What product do you always find yourself “selling” to anyone who will listen? Brows! Having your brows frame your eyes is so important. Senna, Anastasia, Smashbox — they all make great brow products. What would you title your autobiography? Every 10 Years a New Chapter. ✦
#CountryMusicPBS | VegasPBS.org/country-music SEPTEMBER 2019
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A Stand Against Bland BY
T.R. Witcher
Editor’s note: In this rotating column, a writer explores a topic of relevance to Southern Nevada in six installments. Our first Writer in Residence is T.R. Witcher. This is the third of six columns about housing. Read his other essays at desertcompanion. vegas.
T
he Smith Center for the Performing Arts opened in 2012, the crown jewel in a mixed-use development, Symphony Park, that was going to shape Downtown Las Vegas for a new generation. Many plans have been floated on the 61-acre site — hotels, casinos, sports arenas, offices — but housing has always been at the center. The concert hall is cool, but we’re still waiting for the rest. So it was quite a surprise when, earlier this summer, Nashville-based Southern Land Company broke ground on the Auric, a luxury apartment block across the park that fronts The Smith Center. Auric, from the few renderings that have been released, appears to be an utterly competent, utterly generic offering, a giant slab of apartments whose intricate façade tries (and fails) to convince you you’re not looking at a giant slab of apartments. It looks like a bit of South Beach. Or Denver. Or Washington, D.C. Or anywhere. But after more than a decade of the possibility of Symphony Park, it’s something. It’s better than nothing, I guess. And that about sums up the new housing projects we’re seeing in our slowly densifying city. “The history of Las Vegas has been California designers coming here and repeating what they’ve done, and housing developments springing up in this Mediterranean style,” says designer Jaclyn Roth with Downtown’s assemblageSTUDIO. What we’re moving toward now is a lot of bland but pricey contemporary “luxury residences” on high-profile pieces of real estate — Fremont9 (1 bedroom, 1 bath: $1,852 a month); or Constellation near Downtown Summerlin (1 bedroom, 1 bath: $1,775). Expect Auric to be the same. Or more. Nice life if you can afford it. I stopped by the office of assemblageSTUDIO to chat with principal Eric Strain and his band of colleagues, and former UNLV architecture students (Strain also teaches at the university) to get their thoughts on the possibility of creating a richer language of Las Vegas residential design without sacrificing affordability. “It will take a developer with vision, patience, and a lot of heart,” Roth says. “It is completely viable. But right now the property market is so hot they’re building what they can sell for the most amount of money. This is going to be a long-term investment in the city.”
WRITER IN RESIDENCE
Some cool ideas have come along. Developer Chris Gonya renovated old bungalows off Fremont Street to create The Pioneer. Nearby, Tony Hsieh created a village of tiny houses and Airstream trailers at Airstream Park. But it’s time for Las Vegas architects to get more involved. Strain’s students are trying to imagine new ways to build housing in the valley. It’s a chance for them to think about design more holistically — they’re conceiving not just housing, but communities, while learning to forge relationships with developers, community members, and city planners. One studio worked on affordable housing concepts near Downtown at Sahara and Maryland, a stretch of the city likely to be impacted by RTC’s plans to bring Bus Rapid Transit to Maryland Parkway. As a student, Roth explored designing a community center
NEXT MONTH: How do we house the homeless?
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ILLUSTRATION
Delphine Lee
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at the heart of her proposal for 40 units of affordable, two-bedroom housing. This was not “community center” as a simple amenities room (pool and TVs and yoga and weights and grills); this was “community center as a way of bringing in the surrounding neighborhoods.” Her design featured a large and inviting courtyard, a gathering place not only for residents but the larger community. Earlier this year, another studio worked on integrating housing around a redeveloped park on the historic Westside. “Access to green space increases the value of the property,” Strain says. “It decreases medical costs, it increases the vitality of the neighborhood, the desire to want to be part of it.” Although these were conceptual exercises, both parties benefited. Students got to engage with city planners and see how their notions play in the real world — and city planners got a trove of fresh ideas. Maybe some will influence a project that actually gets built. “As a design industry, we’ve been too separated from contractors and homebuilders and developers,” Strain says. “We need to form more alliances with them so that we’re part of the team from the get-go.” Bringing designers and developers together might allow them to tackle the cost of housing. The typical tract home costs about $150 a square foot to build. What if innovative design work could produce a house of equal quality for $100 a square foot? Suddenly, beautiful and sustainable homes could be in reach of many more Las Vegans. Strain’s larger project is to engage students — builders of tomorrow’s Las Vegas — with residential design. After all, modern architecture started with houses. That’s where the ideas come from. In Las Vegas, you can see a more modern design language start to trickle down from high-end custom homes. The design sensibility of one-off, high architectural-pedigree homes in The Ridges — responding more creatively to the unforgiving conditions of Mojave Desert — begets the slightly more affordable contemporary projects of Blue Heron, which begets the more affordable-still “modern” homes that Pardee and a bunch of other homebuilders are starting to churn out. The latter may be mostly a façade — flattening half of a roof doesn’t really change the bones
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WRITER IN RESIDENCE inside — but you gotta start somewhere. Blue Heron — with its brilliant marketing and ubiquitous open houses and occasional parties (let’s face it, their deluxe show homes seem designed mostly as sites for fundraisers) — has given people an idea that there’s more out there than the standard suburban home in Vegas. So local designers have to show us how much more. They have to show us what’s possible. Live/work. Repurposed industrial spaces. Tiny homes. Prefab homes. Adaptable homes that families can add on to as their kids grow or their parents age. Communal living arrangements where residents share a kitchen and parking is kept to a minimum. Affordable and sustainable and beautiful. Spend any time with Strain, and his appreciation for the rich architectural legacy of Phoenix — which largely appears to be the very emblem of soul-destroying, environmentally wasteful development — is clear. Phoenix may sprawl in ways that would make Las Vegas blush, but its urban architecture outclasses ours by a wide margin. Strain notes that prominent
schools of design that emerged in both Phoenix and Los Angeles were centered on either understanding their respective city’s climate (the Sonoran Desert) or its culture (the automobile). Las Vegas is, crudely, a pint-size amalgam of L.A. and Phoenix. If an informal school of design is going to emerge here, it’s going to be built on the backs of young firms that believe this is the singular best place to be an architect in the country, young firms getting together to talk, debate, share ideas, push each other and the city forward. “We do need to work on developing a vernacular that works for this city, for this climate, that reflects what and who we are,” Roth says. “We have so much to pull from here, we have so much deep history.” Can designers work with our history — neon and signs, leisure, Red Rock, various strains of 20th-century California modernism, Mt. Charleston, the Colorado River, spectacle — to fashion new ways of living? The city has a role to play, as well. In Chicago, the city’s Housing Policy Task Force recently named a winner in its competition to design a contemporary version of that
city’s venerable two-flat residences. The winning proposal will be built on two vacant lots in the next few years. Las Vegas can do much the same — host a design competition for sustainable and affordable workforce housing. Invite the public to participate. Bring the martinis and showgirls. Pick a winner. Pick a few winners. Then build it. Really, would you rather live at Fremont9 or that dope solar-decathlon demo house at Springs Preserve? If we can train young architects to experiment with new models of housing and encourage city leaders and developers to support it, we might find the roots of a true Las Vegas design vernacular. Not one rooted in this or that ephemeral style, but one rooted in appreciation for the limited resources of the desert, the promise of homes being part of communities, and a certainty that the men and women best suited to give these ideas form are already here. “We build walls too much,” Strain says, speaking of the Westside studio but, perhaps, more broadly about the city itself. “The idea was how can we start to break those walls down?” ✦
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THE ADVOCATE Nissa Tzun and her Forced Trajectory Project tell the stories of families who’ve lost loved ones to the police BY
Soni Brown
B
efore hashtags circulated after the officer-involved death of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, before vigils for Philando Castile, and the marches of Black Lives Matter, police in Suffolk County, New York, killed Kenny Lazo. Among its other ramifications, his 2008 death eventually resulted in the Forced Trajectory Project, or FTP, a media and advocacy organization, now based in Las Vegas, with a website that documents families and communities impacted by police killings. Lazo’s death followed the now-common narrative. For 24-year-old Lazo, it began as a traffic stop in the seaside hamlet of Bay Shore. The area is known for its opulent wealth and stark poverty. It is a disparity heightened by the tensions between the white police officers and the working-class Hispanic population. Accounts of Lazo’s death are disputed. His family said he complied with the officer’s directions. The police said Lazo tried to grab an officer’s gun. What is not in dispute, according to medical examiner’s minutes, is that five police officers beat Lazo with metal flashlights. He was later rushed to a medical center, where he was pronounced dead. The death was ruled a
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homicide by the medical examiner, but a grand jury did not indict the officers. The city moved on. Months later, 28-year-old Brooklyn special-needs teacher Nissa Tzun was volunteering her photography skills for The Liberation News, a Harlem-based newspaper affiliated with a community group, the ANSWER Coalition. Tzun was asked to photograph Lazo’s family as part of The Liberation News’s commitment to helping minority communities. Documenting the family in an effort to keep his death in the city’s consciousness changed Tzun’s life. “This was my first experience with anybody impacted by police homicide,” Tzun says. “At the time I didn’t know much about police corruption or police homicides. My only experience with
law enforcement was that D.A.R.E. cop who came to my third-grade class to tell us ‘Stay away from drugs.’ I started doing more research, and I was thinking hard about how, as a visual artist, how could I advocate for the family.” And so what began as a small photojournalism project in 2009 eventually expanded into an activist-journalism outfit. “Forced trajectory” refers to the unwanted path a family finds itself on after a loved one is killed by police. Through photographs, videos — of victims’ families, but also of such events as panel discussions — audio recordings, and written accounts, FTP wants to replace what Tzun sees as sensationalized news fodder with the human story of the victim. The media produced by FTP have been exhibited in several cities, including PHOTOGRAPHY
Mikayla Whitmore
D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
H E Y WA R D : N I S S A T Z U N
A PORTRAIT OF GRIEF An example of FTP’s documentary work: Nicholas Heyward Sr. holds a portrait of his son, Nicholas Jr., who was 13 when he was shot and killed by a New York Housing officer in 1994.
Los Angeles, New York City, and Las Vegas. Last month, Forced Trajectory helped organize a community forum on the subject of police use of force. Tzun is now assisted by a main staff of eight and a handful of contributors nationwide. FTP is an official internship option for UNLV’s journalism and media-studies undergraduates. Tzun brainstorms many of FTP’s case studies on campus, where she is a part-time instructor and graduate student studying social work and journalism. FTP has built a portfolio of the rich ordinariness of grieving families. The portraits range from the painful — such as a picture of Lazo’s pubescent son holding a white cross and a black-and-white photograph of his father — to the poignant: protesters gathering to honor the fallen. FTP captures the family members and communities as they find themselves in a rippling crest of pain, a search for answers, and, in some cases, a simple desire to have their loved ones viewed as human beings. For them, FTP is often the only public narrative that allows them to see their family members as they were before the media adopt the official storyline. It’s an emotionally intense and volatile world Tzun has chosen to work in, and she brings to it an obvious passion and empathy. Her buzz cut and no-nonsense demeanor suggest a toughness that belies
her empathetic nature. She has a habit of walking with her head bent upward, as if seeking some sign from the heavens. Conversations, when her cellphone isn’t erupting in a series of urgent calls, are intense. She will veer off topic when teaching or guest lecturing to point out historical examples of oppression in the country. She can be at once aggressive and defensive, protective of the families whose lives have now been whittled down to court dates, memorials, and hashtags. Hers is a style of earnest zeal that can, to some, come off as antagonistic. Committed activists are susceptible to physical and emotional burnout. Tzun counters this through meditation, yoga, and generous imbibing of cannabis. “My initial impression of Nissa was that she is someone who is incredibly impassioned,” says Karintha Fenley, an FTP contributor. “She has almost been trained (in) guerrilla-style social activism in New York City to kind of operate a certain way.” D R AW N T O S E R V E
days, Tzun actually tried to become part of the system. In her early 20s, she applied to become a police officer in Southern California, New York City, and Las Vegas, where she had moved to be closer to her parents, who live in the West. A knee injury and a failed
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SOCIETY polygraph test derailed that dream. “They said that I lied about smoking marijuana or being involved with marijuana, which at that time I was not a smoker or ever had tried marijuana or anything like that. That was heartbreaking for me,” Tzun says. But even before that, Tzun was questioning her desire to join the police. During a ride-along with officers in Southern California, she said the officers mistreated a woman arrested for allegedly disturbing the peace. The woman appeared to be a prostitute and addict. Instead of showing compassion, Tzun says, the officers sexually harassed her, eventually hog-tying the woman and throwing her face-down into the back of a police car. In the past 10 years, Tzun has become determined to stop more police-involved killings and providing a platform for the families to counter negative media attention about their loved ones. It’s taken a financial toll: Tzun does not make an income from grants or donations to FTP. She serves as an independent media consultant for Mass Liberation Project, a nationwide grassroots organization that focuses on mass incarceration issues and
“My initial
impression of the deceased deserved what legislation. She is also a comNissa was that happened. Others call Forced munications fellow for the she is incredibly Trajectory a hate organization, Center for Community Change. impassioned. Tzun says. Still, the relative There’s an emotional toll, She has almost visibility of a police-brutality too: At one point she had to been trained (in) activist in a town the size of cease documenting a family guerrilla-style Las Vegas — compared to the because the brother of the desocial activism relative anonymity possible in ceased became verbally abusive. in New York City New York City — makes her a Tzun understands that even to kind of little nervous. operate a FTP can be seen as an outsider certain way.” Tzun doesn’t think her work to a family trying to process a should be seen as anti-police loved one’s violent death. Tzun, but more about holding the who is of Chinese descent, system accountable. knows that to the mostly black “Not to say they aren’t heroic law-enforceand brown families she works with, she can ment interests,” she says. “I have friends seem like another interloper, there to gawk who are law-enforcement, and they’re at their pain. This makes Tzun and FTP great people. People say, ‘Well, do you think volunteers targets on which families focus it’s a bad apple thing?’ ‘Do you think it’s their anger and frustration. It is perhaps like there are good cops and then there’s a because of this that Tzun gets worked up couple of bad apples, and we have to hold about getting the public to look at police the bad accountable?’ I say it’s not that. I killings differently. She sees firsthand what say it’s the opposite of that. It’s that there families go through. are a few good cops, but the bad apple is the As for negative responses to FTP’s system itself. It’s the (police) departments. work, they happen occasionally, by email It’s the corruption within the department.” or in comments on the website, someBeing based in Las Vegas, FTP has evolved times directed at the family and saying
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Al Farrow (U.S., b. 1943) Mausoleum I, 2007 Bullets, guns, shot and steel 27 3/4 x 30 x 30 in. On loan from Jeffrey N. Dauber & Marc A. Levin
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SOCIETY what Tzun says is “a special focus on policing in the Las Vegas Valley.” Residuum, an ongoing series of short documentary videos on the subject, delves into local police incidents. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice recommended a series of sweeping reforms to Metro’s use of deadly force. The reforms stemmed from several controversial police shootings, as well as a six-part investigative series devoted to the issue by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The DOJ experts cited “poor training, a lack of clear policies, and an unwillingness to discipline problem
officers,” and, after analyzing 20 years’ worth of Las Vegas police shooting data, concluded that most of the deadly force incidents could have been avoided. Seven years later, after implementing 75 reforms recommended by the DOJ — including training related to implicit bias — Metro is widely considered a model for police reform. When asked how the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department views citizen activist groups, like FTP, that take a critical view of police work, a department spokesman emailed a response that did not directly
address the question. Instead, the response stated that the “LVMPD prides itself on being one of the most transparent police departments in the United States.” “Other departments from around the country come to the LVMPD for information on policies and practices regarding the release of information. We are also the first large metropolitan police department to outfit our officers with body worn cameras.” As for her and FTP’s relationship with Metro, Tzun characterizes it as a wary one. She’ll engage with officials in community forums or panels if they show up, and FTP will seek comment or data from the agency. Otherwise, she says, “I keep a safe distance.”
THE STRAINED RELATIONSHIP between minorities, particularly African Americans, and the police is set on the stage of racial and economic oppression against the backdrop of slavery. In the South, police units were used for slave patrols tasked to eliminate revolts and finding runaway slaves. During Reconstruction, local sheriffs enforced segregation and helped with the disenfranchisement of the newly freed slaves. Only two generations ago, the images of law enforcement clad in Ku Klux Klan regalia were prominent. Black-and-white images of peaceful protesters being attacked by police dogs, high-pressure water hoses, and tear gas are as much a part of American history as the moon landing. For much of the 20th century, law enforcement didn’t protect and serve all citizens. The country’s byzantine criminal justice system connecting police violence to an unequal social structure based on race makes it hard for individuals to stand up against the system. There is no local, state, or federal requirement for law-enforcement agencies to aggregate or collect the number, type, and result of incidents of violence between police officers and citizens. Media outlets such as The Guardian and The Washington Post have tried to document how many people lose their lives to the police nationwide. But even those reports are fraught with inconsistencies as the data cannot fully explain the disparities, if any, in police killings. FACES OF PROTEST Clockwise from top: The Forced Trajectory Project photographed Trinita Farmer with a photo of her son, Tashii A 2015 report by the Bureau Brown, along with her two granddaughters. A poster designed by Nissa Tzun for a vigil on the anniversary of of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Brown’s death. Tzun photographed protesters rallying in the case of Keith Childress Jr., who was shot in 2015 by Metro officers who thought he was holding a gun (it was his cellphone). Department of Justice shows
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T R I N I TA FA R M E R , P R OT E S T, P O S T E R : N I S S A T Z U N
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whenever police initiated the contact, “African Americans (5.2 percent) and Hispanics (5.1 percent) were more likely to experience the threat or use of physical force by law enforcement than whites (2.4 percent).” An analysis by the Post of incidents over a few years indicated that black males are shot and killed by the police at alarmingly higher rates than other racial and ethnic groups. Unarmed victims of police shootings are also more likely to be minorities, according to FBI statistics analyzed and reported on by media outlet Vox. Key takeaways from the report found that at least 102 unarmed black people were killed by police in 2015, which is more than 31 percent of the total unarmed people killed by the police. Keep in mind that African Americans make up just 13 percent of the U.S. population. Only nine of the 102 deaths in 2015 resulted in any officer being charged with a crime. Until recently, videos, and audio of police-involved shootings of civilians were rare. In 2017, Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a law that mandated beat officers to wear body cameras. Footage from Nevada police
THE
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body cameras was already public information, but the new law allows it to be erased after 15 days. Bill Sousa, a professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for Crime and Justice Policy at UNLV, said the use of body cameras was intended to “prevent some of the high-profile incidents that we see occurring like Michael Brown’s.” “We have to remember that those types of incidents are extraordinarily rare in the world of policing,” Sousa says. “Most of what police do has very little to do with incidents that might lead to use of force or might lead to misconduct. Most of what police do involve responding to medical emergencies. They are assisting juveniles. They’re assisting people in need and resolving neighborhood disputes.” Sousa says there is a difference between transparency and trust, as trust is rooted in some form of historical relationship. “We often think that body cameras will increase transparency or increase trust,” he says. “What we have to realize is that things like trust and legitimacy are concepts that are somewhat nebulous. It takes a very long
time for communities to distrust police, and then it takes a very long time for them (the community) to begin trusting them (the police) again.” C LO S E TO T H E S U B J E C T LAS VEGAN TRINITA Farmer lost her son, Tashii
Brown, on Mother’s Day 2017. Farmer says knowing that Brown died after soliciting help from Metro officers made the loss even more overwhelming and has contributed to her feeling as if her “life is in limbo.” “I just couldn’t understand why he (the police officer) couldn’t just help him,” Farmer says. Metro’s report of the incident states Brown approached uniformed officers about 1 a.m. inside the Venetian. The report says Brown was “sweating profusely” and told the officers it was because he had run from people who were chasing him. After a brief conversation, one of the officers, Kenneth Lopera, tried to grab him. Brown ran off, and the officers chased him into the parking garage. Lopera stunned Brown with a Taser seven
FALL 2019 Season Ohana Movie Night
U LT I M AT E F L E E TW OO D M A C
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Live Orchestral Screening by HENDERSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Oct 11
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with Elvis Monroe
Oct 26
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HendersonPavilion.com | 702-267- 4TIX Schedule is subject to change or cancellation without prior notice. Management reserves all rights. Close Encounters of the Third Kind © 1977, renewed 2005, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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SOCIETY times. Additionally, Lopera struck Brown in the head 10- 12 times after being stunned. Brown was not showing any aggressive resistance to the officers when he was hit in the head. Afterward, Lopera put Brown in a lateral vascular neck restraint. This is the only neck hold approved under Metro policies. Later in the report, Lopera describes it as a different hold: a rear naked choke hold. “I start punching him. Rear naked his ass. He went out,” Lopera told another officer, according to reports. Brown lost consciousness and was later pronounced dead. After being arrested, Lopera retired from Metro and wasn’t prosecuted for Brown’s death. Although the incident was captured on body cam, that didn’t seem to change the public perception that Brown was somehow responsible for his death. A Go Fund Me fundraiser for Lopera topped $30,000 a few days after going live in June 2017. Even after Lopera retired, people still contributed to the online fundraiser, which reached $44,255 by mid-May of 2019. Two years after Brown’s death, an online fundraiser for his
“The main-
stream media ical policies of the modern family has only raised $1,157. already prints mainstream media, this level Tzun met Farmer through what the police of involvement with subjects documentary filmmakers covsay. We’re going — FTP’s mixture of journalism ering Brown’s death. On Mothto uplift these and outright advocacy — might er’s Day 2018, Tzun and her voices that seem unusual, though there’s associates arranged for a silent aren’t being a long history of it. But Tzun march to mark the one-year heard.” notes that she didn’t enter this anniversary, which included line of work as a journalist, but laying flowers at the Venetian. as an artist. “I was trying to Tzun is still in contact with bring attention visually to the movement.” Farmer. When Farmer wants to publicize The journalism component happened ora development in Brown’s case it is Tzun ganically, she says, as the site became more who does media appearances. Recently, on sophisticated. But it’s still journalism with Farmer’s behalf, Tzun created a website to a decided perspective, and dovetails with an honor Brown. increasing dissatisfaction, encountered on “That touched my heart,” Farmer says. social media, with “both sides” reporting. Tzun understands that losing a family “The mainstream media already prints member to police action often results in what the police say,” she says. “We’re going to being shunned by some elements of the uplift these voices that aren’t being heard.” community, as Farmer says she has. It is possible Brown’s story would not be “They are isolated from their commuas visible as it is without Tzun. The Brown nities because nobody wants to touch it,” case made Tzun the de facto face of FTP. It Tzun says. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re involved is not a position she is comfortable with, with the police. You must’ve done something particularly as FTP’s case studies become wrong or your loved one must have been a more localized. “I prefer to sit behind the criminal.’” camera,” Tzun says, “not in front of it.” ✦ For those mostly familiar with the typ-
On view July 20 – October 20, 2019 The only West Coast venue to offer a new look at this iconic artist through her art, fashion, and style.
L E A D S PO N S O R
GEOR G I A O’KEEFFE LI VI N G M O DE RN 50 | D E S E R T
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Wayne and Rachelle Prim M A J O R S PO N S O R S
Nancy and Harvey Fennell | Dickson Realty The Jacquie Foundation
Donald W. Reynolds Center for the Visual Arts E. L. Wiegand Gallery 160 West Liberty Street in downtown Reno, Nevada Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and curated by Wanda M. Corn, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor Emerita in Art History, Stanford University and made possible by the National Endowment of the Arts. IMAGE CREDIT: Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864–1946). Georgia O’Keeffe, circa 1920–22. Gelatin silver print, 4½ x 3½ in. (11.4 x 9 cm). Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2003.01.006.
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my bachelor’s degree. The pen was a gift from a friend. It was handmade by him and given to me only four months before his untimely death. The lighter was my grandfather’s. Smaller than a standard Zippo and with the praying-hands emblem on one side, this was the lighter he carried in Europe and Africa during World War II. My grandfather is a giant figure in my life, and this lighter was a reminder of that. The instructor had us all pair up. It quickly became clear my partner had not taken the task seriously. Three inconsequential objects. One was an Oscar the Grouch figure he thought was hysterical. We were told to pick one of our objects and give it to our partner. We could not ask for it back. My partner handed over the plastic figurine without a second thought. I sat there, torn. For minutes, I looked at each of my pieces. Finally, I handed over the pen. The point of the lesson, the teacher said, was that when we perform honestly onstage, we are giving away to an audience something essential that we can never get back. It was a good lesson, as it has stayed with me for 25 years.
FIRST PERSON
GRANDPA’S BOX On moving, minimalism, and the importance — or unimportance — of stuff BY
Don Hall
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ears ago, in a theater workshop, we were instructed to bring in three items we owned that were important to us — ones that had a sentimental value and some sort of story. Dutifully (because if you are to get the most out of a theater workshop, taking it
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deadly serious is the only way) I brought in my three items: a Zippo lighter, a wooden pen, and my trumpet. The trumpet was obvious. I had been playing horn since my uncle began to teach me when I was 6. It had provided entry to social groups in school and helped pay for
LAST YEAR, MY wife, Dana, and I hit a wall. There is a substantial psychic difference between a groove and a rut, and our groove had rutted. She had been in Chicago for more than 10 years working as a figure model, a standardized patient, and a bookstore manager. I had been in Chi-town since 1989 and had a résumé that resembled the scribblings of a lunatic. We were getting bored with the same old streets taking us to the same old places so we could do the same old things. We talked about moving to Austin, or maybe Atlanta, or San Jose, or New Orleans — or Las Vegas. Then we heard from a friend who had sold his home in Chicago and who was looking to move out of state. He suffered from some significant disability, so moving out by himself was a bit too daunting. The idea was that the three of us, along with his longtime roommate, Kelli, would move to Vegas; we could help make his life easier, and it would be cheaper together than apart. I mean, how could we refuse?
❉ ❉ ❉ ❉ ❉
opened the double doors of the giant 18-wheel truck, and three boxes tumbled from the top of a chaotic and
AS THE MOVERS
I L LU S T R AT I O N : S H U T T E R S T O C K / V E C T O R P O U C H
❉ ❉ ❉ ❉ ❉
crushing stack, I figured it was good that I was the only new resident present. Three months prior, Dana and I had done our own version of Marie Kondo. We sold furniture, donated boxes of clothing, unloaded used books. Rather than getting rid of things because they no longer sparked joy, this was far more pragmatic: We were moving 2,000 miles. Most of it was easy. I found myself, in that minimalist mindset so popular these days, tossing out items I had carried for decades. Old yearbooks. Photographs that had already been scanned and saved. A bundle of documents relating to my long-defunct theater company. All told, we sold, gave away, or dropped in the alley about a third of our worldly possessions, which made the things we kept more meaningful. Some of it was sentimental, some practical. Everything was intentional. Fun fact: Your stuff will be handled by local movers, workers in the warehouse, and the movers driving it across the country. None of these workers gives a shit about the bobblehead that Joe had made for your birthday with your head on a Superman body. Which brings us back to the cascade of boxes and furniture that had clearly been loaded onto the truck with an almost criminal disregard for anything labeled as “fragile.” Chair legs were snapped, and boxes unceremoniously dropped with a thud on the concrete driveway. I went to the crew chief, a large, smiling Serbian cat with a five o’clock shadow and a potbelly. “Wow,” I said. “Looks like a lot of stuff got damaged in transit.” He got very serious. “A move like this will come with about 10 percent damage,” he said. “Anything damaged should be documented, and the company will compensate you for it.” I smiled. “Just take a picture of it and send it along with a bill? What’re the odds we’ll get any money for it?” He paused, thinking about his answer, but I know the odds: “I mean, shit in one hand, wish in the other, and see which fills up first?” He laughed but didn’t answer. Ten percent. Marie Kondo is a reaction to our need to pare down, prune our excesses, live a less materialistic life. In a time when industries are being disrupted and job security is more myth than reality, eliminating the things one has to carry seems essential. The nameless, faceless movers simply represent that dynamic and remove choice from the equation.
It’s Like That Feeling You Get Just Before the Curtain Opens.
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SEPTEMBER 2019
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FIRST PERSON ❉ ❉ ❉ ❉ ❉ AS WE UNBOXED what was left of our lives in Chicago to fully populate our space in Las Vegas, the gravity of what was once there that is now here accumulates. The tiny black holes of what has been lost or broken pull at parts of me I didn’t anticipate. The broken and now useless cutting board signals the memories of a hundred meals that are long since eaten and the camaraderie of those brief culinary delights; the missing digital scale still imbued with the focused training and weight loss that accompanied a chunk of my forties. Some people take months to sift through their shit, unboxing just enough to get by and procrastinating on that other stack in the corner. But Dana and I are not some people. The task set before us was massive, but we were determined to clear this mess inside of a week. Fun fact: An empty house seems roomier the more distant you are from it. Within a week, we were 80 percent done. The remaining 20 percent became a bit of a sticking point as the stress had sapped
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some of my compadres’ will to finish. I was, however, unrelenting. “Dudes! We have 14 more boxes, and then I’ll get a storage space for the stuff we can’t fit in here!” Part of my push was that right before the move, my mom had given me Grandpa Jay’s dispatch box from after the war. A small wooden box filled with his WWII medals, letters he wrote to my grandma, the straight razor he used in the field, a few of his elementary school reports, letters of commendation from his work on oil rigs in Oklahoma. I hadn’t had time to truly wade in and soak up the essence of this most important man. We still hadn’t found it. As the unopened boxes dwindled, I came to grips with the likelihood that it was gone. The last 20 percent became 10 percent, then 8 percent, then 5 percent, then almost zero. Heaps of discarded cardboard were taken to recycling. Boxes of crap we all brought but realized we didn’t need went to Goodwill. One afternoon, as I was coming back from a donation run, I got out of the Prius and there was Dana, walking down the driveway with my Grandpa’s dispatch box. It had been
wrapped in a towel in the bottom of the last box. I burst into tears. Of all the lessons I learned in moving 2,000 miles across the country, this is the one that sticks with me: If you have something irreplaceable, take it yourself. ❉ ❉ ❉ ❉ ❉ TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER the workshop, I still think about that wooden pen, handcrafted by a friend long since passed. The last time I spoke to my workshop partner, he still had it. He always offers to give it back, and I always refuse. The lesson I learned then, and which continues to resonate with me, is more important than the thing itself. Like our attachments to things, the archeology of our lives holds many lessons that keep coming as the things become increasingly abstract. It seems to me that our clinging to stuff we accumulate has something to do with our need for security, control, and a sense of meaning in the universe. It turns out that it’s almost never about the items themselves — but what the value we place upon them says about us. ✦
NEVADA BALLET THEATRE
NEVADA BALLET THEATRE
NEVADA BALLET THEATRE
plus The Four Temperaments and a World Premiere by Krista Baker
FEBRUARY 22 & 23, 2020 THE SMITH CENTER
Music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Choreography by Ben Stevenson, O.B.E.
OCTOBER 24-27, 2019 THE SMITH CENTER
PHOTO BY JERRY METELLUS
PHOTO BY JERRY METELLUS
TICKETS NOW ON SALE! NEVADA BALLET THEATRE
for Valu Se e P lec ric t D ing a te s
Music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Choreography by James Canfield
DECEMBER 13–24, 2019 THE SMITH CENTER DANCER PHOTO BY BILL HUGHES
(702) 749-2000 • NevadaBallet.org
PLUS
HEY, ARE YOU BUSY FRIDAY? AND THEN SATURDAY? AND THEN TUESDAY? CLEAR YOUR CALENDAR — IT’S THE SEASON FOR ART, LIT, MUSIC, DANCE, AND MORE
ONES TO WATCH IN THE ARTS, P. 73
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symbols, and human representation.” Reception: September 26. Charleston Heights Arts Center, free, artslasvegas.org T H R O U G H N OV E M B E R 7
THE CASE FOR BASKETS Native American artisans connected to Nevada display their basketry traditions in a wide-ranging display. Closing reception: November 7. Las Vegas City Hall, free, artslasvegas.org
Compiled and written by
SCOTT DICKENSHEETS
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FADE, SAG, CRUMBLE
SEPTEMBER 4
CRAZY LIKE THE WOLF If you haven’t encountered Leobardo Bracamontes on Instagram, you should dial him up. He brings an appealing, headlong energy to the paintings and assemblages that he
calls his “Latin American outsider art.” His exhibit Lobo Loco runs through November 2. Core Contemporary, free, corecontemporary.com SEPTEMBER 6
ASPIRING CARTOONISTS, TAKE NOTE Black Mountain Institute fellow Amy Kurzweil, an acclaimed cartoonist and graphic memoirist, presents Pencils to Ink, an exhibit that gets into her process, from idea to finished piece. Through November 30. Historic Fifth Street School, free, artslasvegas.org SEPTEMBER 9
ADAPTIVE REFUSE Lotta cast-off junk in this world, poised against the natural human instinct to believe in permanence. These are the conceptual boundar-
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You Had Me at Gig Few artists have made a splash in Las Vegas comparable to Gig Depio in the decade he’s been here. His vision (and canvases) can be epic, stuffed with character, narrative, history, and humor, rendered with a visual bravado that doesn’t obscure the deep meaning he brushes into his pieces. Ten is a welcome retrospective. Reception: September 14. Through November 3 0. Left of Center Gallery, 2207 W. Gowan Road, free, leftofcenterart.org
ies within which artist Liz Ensz explores disposability, “the scavenger impulse,” and notions of value — of people, the environment, other life forms. Hear more at the opening night talk. Through October 19. CSN Fine Arts Gallery, free, csn.edu S E P T E M B E R 1 3
‘REAL’ ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE Consider a painting like “Lust,” included
in Truth to Tell, this exhibit by Virginia Derryberry: a voluptuously rendered red pepper, surrounded by incongruous imagery — a stitched scene depicting some old-timey outing; a crude doll; an abstract squiggle. Paintings like this “seem to define a ‘real’ space, but in fact, are constructed from multiple viewpoints.” You can dwell in this painting for a long time. Reception:
R E M N A N T : C O U R T E S Y LV C C L D ; D E P I O : C O U R T E S T Y L E F T O F C E N T E R
In Remnant, photographer Jason Tannen trains his lens on the eroded details of urban life. “With this series,” he says, “I’m particularly interested in storefront displays and the topography of signs,
D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
September 19. Through October 26. CSN Artspace Gallery, free, csn.edu S E P T E M B E R 1 3
MAYBE WE CAN WORK TOGETHER?! Following such heroically sized exhibits as this summer’s epic Sorry for the Mess, the Barrick Museum continues to go big. Starting Sept. 13: Connective Tissue, an exhibit of what we’re assured are “HUGE murals” and interactive sculptures created by neuroscientist-turned-artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya to explore the notion of unity through connectivity and networks. You can hear all about it during her talk on October 10. Through February 22. UNLV’s Barrick Museum, free, unlv. edu/calendar SEPTEMBER 2 4
FAMILY PHOTOS Not just any family, though: As chronicled over 30 years by photographer Tomas Gaspar in An American Family — An AIDS Legacy, Miami couple Steven Lofton and Roger Croteau took in five HIV-AIDS children.
In the process, they challenged traditional notions of family and helped dispel myths about the unsuitability of gay couples to adopt children. Through December 3. West Charleston Library, free, lvccld.org OCTOBE R 4
OCTOBE R 11
AT LAST, THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF LOCAL ARTISTS WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR! Look at this lineup for the exhibit Block 17: Harold Bradford, Sylvester Collier, Lolita Develay, Desert
Art Walk with Me UNLV’s campus-wide event introduces strolling viewers to the school’s finearts programs — art, film, dance, music, theater, architecture, and entertainment engineering and design. You’ll see exhibits (including by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, below), performances, interactive thingamajigs, a 90-person choir, and more. UNLV campus, 5-9p, free, unlv.edu
HANS ACROSS THE WATER A multifarious tribute to the brawny, large-spirited abstract sculptures of Hans Van de Bovenkamp, whose work can be found around the globe. Reception: October 10. Through December 7. West Sahara Library, free, lvccld.org OCTOB E R 11 -13
YOU HAD ME AT MURAL FEST! Mural Fest! The wise owner of the New Orleans Square commercial center is throwing a three-day blow-out in which artists will festoon the property with fresh murals. It’s an apt event for a location that’s emerging as a new hub of the valley’s art and culture scenes. In Commercial Center, muralmecca.com
Companion’s own Brent Holmes, Vicki Richardson, Lance Smith, and more. That’s a rich talent pool of local artists celebrating Las Vegas’ African heritage. Through December 7. UNLV’s Donna Beam Gallery, free, unlv. edu/calendar N OV E M B E R 7
M U RA L : R E CYC L E D P R O PAG A N DA
OCTOBE R 11
WELL, THAT’S BEEN IMPLODED, AND THAT’S BEEN IMPLODED, AND THAT … In Vintage Vegas: In Color you’ll see the Las Vegas News Bureau’s chronicle of Vegas in the 1950s and 1960s. Let your nostalgia run free. Through January 26. West Las
Vegas Library, free, lvccld.org
way to comprehend mortality, to imagine the unimaginable, to address our culture’s anxiety about death. Did he also dance like no one was watching? Ask him at the November 3 0 artist talk. Through January 29. CSN Artspace Gallery, free, csn.edu
N OV E M B E R 8
THE GRIM REAPER GIVES THIS EXHIBIT TWO BONY THUMBS UP After an actuary determined his likely life expectancy, artist Christopher McNulty didn’t do what the rest of us might — buy a pillow embroidered with Dance like no one is watching and otherwise change nothing. Instead, he began making work comprising tens of thousands of repetitive marks denoting the days he presumably had left. It was a SEPTEMBER 2019
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BETTER IN WHAT WAY? BETTER FOR WHOM? In the text works included in I Was Happy Then — handwritten phrases laboriously repeated — Krystal Ramirez presents “unfinished thoughts” about the notion, so prevalent .
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DECEMBER 6
GOOD RAT ART Every year the City of Las Vegas invites selected artists to make work examining Chinese heritage, this year gathered in Year of the Rat Exhibition. Look for pieces that recontextualize the rodent and its signifiers in ways that celebrate Chinese tradition. Reception: January 24. Through February 15. Historic Fifth Street School, free, artslasvegas.org
Compiled and written by
SCOTT DICKENSHEETS
DECEMBER 13
ON THE UNITY OF OPPOSITES
C O M PA N I O N
A CARTOONIST, A POET, AND A NOVELIST WALK INTO A MULTIFACETED EXPLORATION OF NARRATIVE, PLACE, AND IDENTITY What better way to kick off this year’s fall literary season than with a multifaceted exploration of narrative, place, and identity by a cartoonist (Amy Kurzweil), a poet/visual artist (Vi Khi Nao), and a novelist/journalist (Ahmed Naji)? Multidimensional! Sponsored by the Black Mountain Institute, where the first two are newly minted Shearing fellows and the third is an Egyptian writer hosted by BMI’s City of Asylum program.
UNLV’s Beverly Rogers Literature and Law Building room 101, 7p, free, RSVP at blackmountaininstitute.org SEPTEMBER 18
YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND Artist Tanja Hollander set out to explore the nature of friendship, virtual and real, in the FaceSnapped tweetscape of the 21st century. Her story of visiting some 600 social-media friends, as well as communities around the globe, is told in the film Are you really my friend? The Movie. Following a screening, there will be a Q&A with the artist, and director Robin Greenspun. UNLV’s Barrick Museum, 5p, free, unlv.edu/calendar
SEPTEMBER 19
IF ONLY THERE WERE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS TO LEND THIS SOME TOPICAL URGENCY The Constitution — just four sheets of paper, but 200 years of argument, idolatry, competing interpretations, and a classic Nic Cage caper. Even now it lies at the heart of nearly every fractious issue in America, from gun rights to land use to immigration. How this and other constitutions came about is the subject of a talk by Michael Zuckert, emeritus poli-sci professor at Notre Dame. UNLV’s Barrick Museum, 7:30p, free, unlv.edu/ calendar SEPTEMBER 21
STRONG WORDS
Let’s skip the blurby razzmatazz and let artist Miya Hannan — now a professor at UNR, previously a medical worker in her native Japan — tell us what her show Buried Relations is about: “I was a scientist in a country with many superstitions, which gave me the ability to perceive the world from two contrasting perspectives. In my artwork, I am interested in creating the unity of opposites that constitutes our world. Scientific and nonscientific, silent and communicative, still and active — these are the dichotomies that inform my work.” Through February 22. CSN Fine Arts Gallery, free, csn.org
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“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the
SEPTEMBER 5
Sarno? Saryes! A man of vast appetites, far-reaching vision, and titanic shortcomings — a gambling problem, for one — Jay Sarno had an outsize impact on Las Vegas, creating first Caesars Palace, then Circus Circus. If there’s anyone you want to hear talk about Sarno in a library theater in early September, it’s David G. Schwartz, director of UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research, who literally wrote the book on the guy. Clark County Library, 7p, free, lvccld. org
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J A Y S A R N O C O U R T E S Y U N LV S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S
LIT ERA TU RE& IDE AS
and often politically charged, that the U.S. “enjoyed better times in its past.” Through February 2. Whitney Library, free, lvccld.org
D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
SEPTEMBER 23
A City in a House Dubbed “forceful, rolling, and many-chambered” by a New York Times reviewer, Sarah M. Broom’s memoir The Yellow House uses her family’s New Orleans shotgun house as a lens through which to view the city in its pre- and post-Katrina incarnations, dwelling on race, class, inequality, and other timeless themes. Staged by The Believer, this evening will feature Broom talking with UNLV oral historian Claytee White. The Writer’s Block, 7p, free, RSVP at blackmountaininstitute.org
S A R A H M . B R O O M A N D M E G A N M E R C H A N T C O U R T E S Y B L AC K M O U N TA I N I N S T I T U T E
Rogers Literature and Law Building room 101, 7p, free, RSVP at blackmountaininstitute.org thought has found words.” So said Robert Frost, in what seems an apt sentiment for this reading, which will be “exploring the strength of our community after October 1.” Featuring Clark County Poet Laureate Heather Lang-Cassera, plus Jennifer Battisti, Elizabeth Quiñones-Zaldaña, and Emilee Wirshing. The Writer’s Block, 5p, free, thewritersblock.org SEPTEMBER 26
IF ONLY THERE WERE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS TO LEND THIS SOME TOPICAL URGENCY Angeline Sangalang, assistant professor of communication at the University of Dayton, will tell us all about “Using Stories to Combat Misinformation.” Thank goodness. Because combatting it with actual information clearly hasn’t worked. UNLV’s Barrick Museum, 7:30p, free, unlv.edu/calendar
OCTOBE R 3
YOU HAD ME AT “ICONOLOGY” “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once,” wrote author Ray Cummings; that’s worth keeping in mind as we contemplate “Present Tense: The Iconology of Time,” this evening’s talk by W. J. T. Mitchell of the University of Chicago. It’s about how we feel about the present while reflecting on the past — are the times really a-changing? — in an attempt to figure out our place in the timestream. UNLV’s Barrick museum, 7p, free, unlv.edu/ calendar
of life. West Charleston Library, 2p, free, lvccld.org OCTOBE R 14
THAT’S THE RETURN TICKET Welcome back, Megan Merchant! The UNLV MFA grad and winner of several awards (the 2017 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, the 20162017 Cog Literary Award, and the Las Vegas Poets Prize) will be reading from her work. UNLV’s Beverly
Writes book launches, there will be cookies afterward. Clark County Library, 7p, free, lvccld.org
OCTOBE R 17
OCTOBE R 19
AREA WRITERS COMPILE BOOK
BOOKSTRAVAGANZA!
Las Vegas Writes — an annual project of the Las Vegas Book Festival that anthologizes great local writers — releases its milestone 10th volume, themed to the idea of reinvention and titled A Change Is Gonna Come, with a reading and signing. (This is the first volume to include poetry.) If this event is anything like previous Las Vegas
Lotta stuff going on at the Las Vegas Book Festival: activities and authors for children; a vigorous poetry program; a raft of nationally known authors, and plenty of panel discussions related to subjects topical, fun, literary, and more. Confirmed authors include keynote speaker Marlon James, best-selling novelist and memoirist A.M. Homes (sponsored by the Black Mountain Institute), and more. Plus, book-signings, workshops, performances, vendors, and hordes of like-minded book-lovers. Historic Fifth Street School, 9a, free, lasvegasbookfestival.com
OCTOBE R 13
STRONG MUSIC “Music and Words” is a multimedia tribute to violinist and Holocaust survivor David Arben, who made it alive through seven Nazi camps. Photos and readings from his biography will be interspersed with violin selections that emphasize tolerance, persistence, and love
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OFF THE PAGE The Believer crew continues to promote new storytelling methods, in this case SEPTEMBER 2019
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UNLV’s Beverly Rogers Literature and Law Building room 101, 7p, free, RSVP at blackmountaininstitute.org N OV E M B E R 1 2
ORDINARY JUNK + CAPSULE + TIME = PREMISE FOR A CHILLING LECTURE Consider the humble time capsule. Filled with pop culture effluvia of the day and buried under the corner of a building, it’s a lighthearted paean to … uh, hmm, well, says here that history prof Nick Yablon, of the University of Iowa, will link the interwar vogue for time capsules to the schemes of the technocratic elite, “their eugenic goal of eliminating the ‘unfit,’” and an other-excluding nationalist vision of America. Not you, too, humble time capsule! UNLV’s Barrick Museum, 7:30p, free, unlv/edu/calendar
OCTOBE R 26
REVEAL MY DARK SIDE? WHAT IS THIS, TWITTER? StorySlam is back, this time with local storytellers rummaging through their lives for material related to the theme “The Dark Side.” Should be endarkening. Charleston Heights Arts Center, 7p, $5 suggested donation, artslasvegas.org N OV E M B E R 5
YOU MEAN, THINK ABOUT MY OPINION BEFORE I POST IT? THE HELL YOU SAY! If you’re curious about the place of thoughtful opinion amid the frantic churn of the Hot Take Industrial Complex, New York Times op-ed specialist Jennifer Senior is here to drop some knowledge. Hers is a vision — almost heretical these days — “of a literary punditry which joins deep thinking with old-fashioned reporting, and ample doses of time and solitude.”
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OCEAN VUONG WOULD WANT YOU TO ATTEND Billy-Ray Belcourt, of the Driftpile Cree Nation, will read from his debut poetry collection This Wound Is a World, which explores indigenous life. Described as “a monument for the future of poetic possibility” by Ocean Vuong. UNLV’s .
SEPTEMBER 2019
Beverly Rogers Literature and Law Building room 101, 7p, free, RSVP at blackmountaininstitute.org
Museum, 7:30p, free, unlv.edu/calendar
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Dubbed a “breakout nonfiction writer,” Lindsay Nixon will read from nîtisânak, a memoir spanning nations, prairie punk scenes, and queer love stories. Nixon has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, an Indigenous Voices Literary Award, and several National Magazine Awards. UNLV’s Beverly Rogers Literature and Law Building room 101, 7p, free, RSVP at blackmountaininstitute.org
IF ONLY THERE WERE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS TO LEND THIS SOME TOPICAL URGENCY The burden placed on black Americans in predominantly white spaces in this country is at least twofold: to prove that they’ve transcended ghetto stereotypes, and to deal with the cognitive dissonance — sometimes manifesting as outrage — of whites unaccustomed to seeing them there. (Every week seems to bring another video of some white person calling the cops on a black person for a variation of this reasoning.) This, and related issues, will be the topic of a talk, “Black in White Space,” by Elijah Anderson, Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies, Yale University. UNLV’s Barrick
DECEMBER 2
A WRITER YOU SHOULD KNOW
DECEMBER 5
NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY THE SAME That there’s a link between the uncertainty of borders and international stability might not seem like the freshest insight. A no-brainer, in fact. Now add the current political context and shake. Thus the up-to-the-minute relevance of “Territorial Peace: What It Is, Why It’s Important, and How to Get It,” a talk by Douglas M. Gibler, who professes political science at the University of Alabama. UNLV’s Barrick Museum, 7:30p, free, unlv.edu/calendar
OCTOBE R 28
Food for Thought The Black Mountain Institute brings together Vietnamese poets, writers, and performance artists Dao Strom (pictured), Stacey Tran, and Vi Khi Nao for an evening exploring language and mythology through Vietnamese cuisine — or, as they put it, “a performance-based, sculptural Vietnamese feast made of words, food, and diaspora.” East Las Vegas Library, 7p, free, RSVP at blackmountaininstitute.org
B E LC O U R T A N D S T R O M C O U R T E S Y B L AC K M O U N TA I N I N S T I T U T E
“a cinematic, interactive comic” detailing artist Matt Huynh’s experiences growing up among Vietnam War refugees in Australia. His style plucks inspiration from sources as disparate as Western comic books and Eastern calligraphic drawing. Presented by The Believer, whose art director, Kristen Radtke, will interview Huynh afterward. Art Square Theatre, 7p, free, RSVP at blackmountaininstitute.org
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Compiled and written by ANDREW K I R A LY
SEPTEMBER 6
A CHOIR FIT FOR ROYALTY The Kingdom Choir performed at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Can you ask for better credentials than that? But in case you’re still inexplicably on the fence, here’s a compellingly definitive blurb: This rare visit by a powerhouse UK gospel institution promises a historic blowout show of both secular and sacred classics. Sammy Davis Jr. Festival Plaza in Lorenzi Park, 720 Twin Lakes Drive, 7p, $25, 702-229-2787 SEPTEMBER 11
COURTESY LAS VEGAS PHILHARMONIC
TITANIC TALENT The genre-bounding classical crossover institution known as Kronos Quartet is in a retrospective mood: In this special (and, whoa, cheap!) multimedia performance, the group tells its own grand story through live music, narration, archival footage, and filmed interviews with the countless luminaries who’ve collaborated with Kronos Quartet — Philip Glass, Wu Man, and Terry Riley, to name a few. It’s
not just a celebration of the band, but a tribute to the spirit of restless innovation that has always been Kronos Quartet’s hallmark. UNLV’s Artemus Ham Hall, 7:30p, $10, unlv.edu/ pac SEPTEMBER 20
CULTURAL TREASURE, IN SOUND In this concert, the Nevada Chamber Orchestra pays tribute to a rich musical legacy: the Jewish composers of classical music. The Nevada Chamber Orchestra will perform acclaimed works by composers both classic and contemporary. Summerlin Library Theater, 1771 Inner Circle Drive, 7:30p, free, lvccld.org
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Culture Overload! Find more of this season’s events at
desertcompanion.vegas
SEPTEMBER 7
The LV Phil’s Big Night The opening night of the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s 2019-2020 season starts with a bang, featuring two seminal Russian orchestral works, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, as well as Anna Clyne’s Masquerade. Special guest, acclaimed violinist Francesca Dego, brings additional gravitas. This ambitious season opener reflects a reinvigorated philharmonic that is truly hitting its stride. Reynolds Hall in The Smith Center, 7:30p, $30-$110, thesmithcenter.com (Other shows in the 2019-2020 season: Very Vegas Showcase, Oct. 12; The Music of Danny Elfman, Nov. 2; Handel’s Messiah, Dec. 6; A Classic Holiday, Dec. 7; Dvorak, Brahms, and Smetana, Jan. 18; Beethoven, Mozart, and Britten, Feb. 15; Vivaldi Four Seasons: March into the Stratosphere, March 7; Kurt Weill’s America, April 4; Season Finale: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, May 9)
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ECLECTIC, ECSTATIC, AND ELECTRIC The ingredients list for the supple, sunny, lilting music of Seffarine is a globetrotting jaunt in itself: Moroccan vocalist Lamiae Naki sings in Arabic, French, Spanish, Persian, and Portuguese; flamenco guitarist Nat Hulskamp, bassist Damian Erskine, and multi-instrumentalist Bobak Salehi meld Spanish flamenco,
TV, it’s all complicated and stormy and push and pull and hook-uppy; it’s angry, entitled, needy, lopsided, perverse. Whatevz! Bolero music — sweet, lithe, bucolic — reminds us of the forgotten pleasures of warm, abiding, serenely domestic, no-contrived-BS-dramafor-ratings-on-theseason-finale-of-The Bachelorette-type love. The Cuban musical genre gets the supergroup treat-
Persian classical, and Arabic and Andalusian sounds, with a touch of jazz. The result? Something exotic, ecstatic, electric, and eclectic. Sept. 21, West Charleston Library, 7:30p; Sept. 22, Clark County Library Jewel Box Theater, 2p, both free, lvccld.org SEPTEMBER 22
ESCUCHA, MI AMOR! Love has an image problem. By the conventions of reality SEPTEMBER 2019
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SEPTEMBER 18
Get Your Goats
ment as the legendary Mexican trio Los Dandys join up with Vegas’ very own singer Napoleon Buenrostro to spread the feels. Windmill Library, 2p, free, 702-507-3532
film that thoroughly wrings out your soul with joy, melancholy, laughter, sadness, gratitude, and delight. The Smith Center, 5p and 8p, $45-$65, thesmithcenter.com OCTOB E R 10 -11
ANYTHING BUT FOOL’S GOLD
SEPTEMBER 28
A SOUNDTRACK FOR LIFE
London-based Acoustic Alchemy’s contemporary guitar jazz is easygoing, sure, but don’t confuse that with easy. Intricate, vigorous, complex, and rich better describe the chain reaction they make onstage. Myron’s Cabaret Jazz in The
The word “fusion” doesn’t do justice to the music of pianist and composer Keiko Matsui. Try this instead: Her artful mélange of jazz/ classical/new age is like the soundtrack to the kind of epically poignant independent
Smith Center, 7p, $39-$59, thesmithcenter.com OCTOBE R 11
YOU WANT THIS DRAMA Drama offers a chill slice of summer in October, with the Chicago-based duo serving up their soulful R&B dancewave tunes; singer Via Rosa’s trademark voice — at once earthy and ethereal — is an intoxicating cocktail in itself. Bunkhouse Saloon, 9p, $15, bunkhousedowntown.com OCTOBE R 12
THE SHOWCASIEST SHOWCASE EVER Keith Thompson, mastermind behind The Composers Showcase — a latenight, martini-soaked, speakeasy-style typhoon of Strip pros belting out original numbers — has teamed up with the Las Vegas Philharmonic for the Very Vegas Showcase. The LV Phil will power up performances by
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Clint Holmes, Philip Fortenberry, Alexandria Le, Travis Cloer, and many more. Reynolds Hall in The Smith Center, 7:30p, $30-$110, thesmithcenter.com OCTOBE R 19
DARE YOU TO TRY NOT DANCING Reggaeton — the happily hyperactive child of hip-hop, Latin music, and Caribbean sounds — is the definition of infectious, and J Balvin is its contemporary ambassador. The crossover Latin superstar is at the vanguard of second-generation reggaeton, known for its electronic influences, fruitful artist collaborations, and, of course, impossibly booty-shaking syncopation. The Pearl at the Palms, 8p, $55$165, palms.com OCTOBE R 25
KEEPER OF THE FLAMENCO FLAME Paco de Lucía was a Flamenco guitar god whose musical legacy is nothing less
than monolithic. His longtime collaborator, Javier Limón, is celebrating that legacy by assembling the original 10-piece band that performed with Lucía in the last decade of his career. But Flamenco Legends by Javier Limón: The Paco de Lucía Project” won’t be a mere greatest-hits retrospective; Limón himself is a Flamenco innovator often praised for infusing new energy into the revered musical form. UNLV’s Artemus Ham Concert Hall, 7:30p, $25-$35, unlv.edu/pac OCTOBE R 26
CEREBRAL SURROUND SOUND Thom Yorke has a solo career that’s often overshadowed by his work with Radiohead, but it’s a serious canon in itself. In Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, Yorke will perform tracks from his extensive solo discography,
M A T S U I C O U R T E S Y U N LV F I N E A R T S ; M O U N T A I N G O A T S C O U R T E S Y M O U N T A I N G O A T S
To be honest, if you stripped away the musical layer of swaying, shoegazy Americana from the sharply felt and humorously grim songs of The Mountain Goats, you’d have a perfectly awesome trove of poetry left over from singer and lyricist John Darnielle — who also happens to be a widely praised novelist (Wolf in White Van, Universal Harvester). The Mountain Goats’ latest album, In League with Dragons, is a concept album partially inspired by Darnielle’s love of tabletop role-playing games like D&D, an opus on which he considers mythic heroes domestic and fantastic, from pro athletes to level 79 battlemages. With Lydia Loveless. Brooklyn Bowl, 8p, $26, brooklynbowl.com
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with visual artist Tarik Barri creating gorgeous eyescapes to complement the music. Don’t expect a mere live music video; rather, an immersive, unified aesthetic experience that seamlessly blends sights and sounds into a complete vision. The Chelsea in The Cosmopolitan, 8p, $49, cosmopolitanlasvegas.com OCTOBE R 30
BEHOLD THE THUDSTAFF! Best known as the bassist for the Minutemen — the ’80s punk band that married spazzy, elastic rock with trenchantly woke geopolitical lyrics — Mike Watts hasn’t been content to rest on yesteryear’s laurels. Still pounding his “thudstaff,” he performs as Mike Watts + The Missingmen in a show that promises plenty of spazzing. The Bunkhouse Saloon, 9p, $20, bunkhousedowntown.com N OV E M B E R 1
A R T C O U R T E S Y YA S M I N A C H AV E Z
FROM AUSTRALIA, WITH STRINGS ATTACHED Dreamy and delicate, the music of the Grigoryan Brothers (Slava and Leonard) spans genres that belie the guitar-bros label: from classical to jazz to contemporary and more. The tagline “Australia’s finest guitar duo” — well, yeah, that. UNLV’s Lee and Thomas Beam Music Center, 7:30p, $45, 702-895-2787
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OCTOBE R 20
FINALLY, A USE FOR YOUR MARGE SIMPSON COSTUME
The Sound and the Blurry Yasmina Chavez is a photographer — well, actually, more like a lightographer. She uses light to directly “paint” photosensitive media, resulting in ghostly images that spark and entice the imagination. Jazz musician and UNLV professor Julian Tanaka is kicking off the reception for her exhibit, The Suchness of Light, with an art project of his own, performing songs to complement and converse with Chavez’s work. If the music is anything like Chavez’s fascinating images, expect an afternoon of bewitching sights and sounds. Summerlin Library, 3:30p (exhibit Oct. 17Dec. 17), free, lvccld.org
You don’t often see “Costumes are encouraged!” as a concert program note — then again, this is the Las Vegas Philharmonic performing the music of Danny Elfman, the composer who brought us the theme music to The Simpsons, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and so many more. Expect a rollicking night of virtuoso movie music, and lots of Edward Scissorhandses. Reynolds Hall in The Smith Center, 7:30p, $30-$110, thesmithcenter.com N OV E M B E R 9
GIN AND JUICE IN A GOBLET Born as a novelty, today the mashup is an established form that’s touched everything from literature to music to movies — think books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, think musical artists like Girltalk. And yet the hip-hop/classical mashups unleashed by Ensemble Mik Nawooj go far beyond catchy novelties. This 10-piece outfit marries the epic sweep of classical music with hip-hop’s penchant for hyperbole and swagger, and the result makes perfect musical — and metaphysical — sense. Historic Fifth Street School, 7p, $25, artslasvegas.org
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FOR THOSE ABOUT TO TAUK For jazzheads and jam junkies seeking their fix, this show is like an extended one-onone with the candyman — or candymen, rather. Prog-jazz giants Tauk join with Jazz Is Phsh (a jazzedout tribute to Phish, natch) for an evening of longplay psychedelic weerwangery. Brooklyn Bowl, 7p, $18-$328.13, brooklynbowl.com N OV E M B E R 1 3
JAZZING IT UP, WITH HONORS Fall means another season of the
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richly pedigreed jazz (DownBeat Magazine Student Music Awards! Monterey Jazz Festival and Village Vanguard shows! Jazz Times raves!) coming out of the UNLV School of Music’s Honors Jazz ensembles. Whether they’re blazing through standards or interpreting modern compositions, the Honors Jazz Quartet promises a rich season of beautiful sounds. Clark County Library Main Theater, 7p; other shows: 7p Sept. 11; 7p Oct. 9; 2p Nov. 3; 7p Nov. 13; and 7p Dec. 11, lvccld.org SEPTEMBER 2019
SMOOOOTH Bring your fedora and velvet loafers to this show. The Midnight Hour is a 10-piece supersmooth, lounge-optimized soul/jazz ensemble whose sultry tunes are like consensual sexymagic touching in a bottle — and, as you can see, those tunes suavely resist attempts at clever blurbification and turn them into ham-handed metaphor. Pro tip: Check out their amazing Tiny Desk concert at npr.org. Bunkhouse Saloon, 8p, $13, bunkhousedowntown.com .
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DECEMBER 6
DECEMBER 7
GOING FOR BAROQUE
HE’S BASICALLY THE SANTA OF SINGING
Fun fact: The grandiose Messiah as we know it was originally a much more modest work, and it was only after Handel’s death that it was supersized at the hands of other composers, including Mozart. But, hey, we’re talking about big ol’ goddy themes and magniloquent biblical sweep — so, yeah, why not go big? Part 1 of Handel’s Messiah is the marquee piece in the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s A Baroque Holiday, but the opening concertos by Manfredini and Corelli will serve as appetizers before the main course that is this joyous, soaring choral work. Reynolds Hall in The Smith Center, 7:30p, $30-$110, thesmithcenter.com
Andrea Bocelli has become synonymous with the holidays, and rightfully so. And not just the capital-letter holidays, either. He’s like the go-to guy for Big Life Events — weddings, anniversaries, benchmark birthdays, private audiences with the Pope. The crossover opera sensation performs another holiday concert that has become a welcome Vegas tradition. MGM Grand Garden Arena, 8p, $133-$418.25, mgmresorts.com
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Chop to the Heart
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YOU’RE HEARING VOICES Voctave, an 11-member a cappella group from Orlando, gives seasonal songs the polyphonic choral treatment with family-favorite holiday tunes and Disney mainstays. If the last-minute shopping-mall gift hunt is driving you crazy, this will soothe your soul better than that lukewarm emotional support Panda Express orange chicken from the food court. UNLV’s Artemus Ham Concert Hall, 7:30p, $20-$50, 702895-2787
THE AT ER & DA NCE Compiled and written by
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BEE GOOD Rebecca Feldman’s Tony Award-winning musical comedy, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, livens up the community theater’s main stage this fall with its engaging infusion of improv and audience interaction. Las Vegas Little Theatre, 3920 Schiff Drive, 8p and 2p, $22-25, lvlt.org SEPTEMBER 7 & 15
EXPOSURE THERAPY Think of Aga-Boom as treatment for clown phobia. With high-energy antics, the European-style theatrical troupe entices the audience to join in on the clowning around. It’s a physical comedy performance meant to delight participants of all ages. Windmill (Sept. 7) and Whitney (Sept. 15) Libraries, 2p, free, 702-507-6068 SEPTEMBER 20
Seriously, A Public Fit Theatre Company wants you to know that its staged reading of Hilary Bettis’ play Ghosts of Lote Bravo is not for everyone. It’s the story of young girls disappearing in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico — often never to be seen again — told through the supernatural visions that one grieving mother receives. The audience is invited to a discussion with the cast and crew following the performance. Clark County .
SEPTEMBER 2019
CO U RT E SY B L AC K E AG L E SCO U T
FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY
Black Belt Eagle Scout — the nom de tunes of singer/ songwriter Katherine Paul — has earned accolades from outlets ranging from Pitchfork to NPR, and it’s no surprise why: Her deceptively spare, simple songs quiver with a beguiling fragility — but beneath that is a beating heart that can rock with dramatic vigor. Bunkhouse Saloon, 8p, $10-$12, bunkhousedowntown.com
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Do I Feel Lucky, Punk? It’s hard to believe a punk album-inspired musical about three disaffected youths from the suburbs was nominated for a Best Musical Tony and won a Best Show Album Grammy, but that is the case with Green Day’s American Idiot. Troy Heard and company’s intimate downtown venue amplifies the big angst in this sung-through rock musical. (Pictured, from left: Blaise Esperancilla, Mike Vargovich, RJ Viray) Majestic Repertory Theatre, 1217 S. Main St., 8p and 5p, $25, majesticrepertory.com
Library Jewel Box Theater, 7:30p, free, 702-507-3459 SE PTE M B E R 27- OCTOB E R 6
F U N H O M E C O U R T E S Y U N LV F I N E A R T S ; A M E R I C A N I D I O T : L O N D O N M A C E
SORCERESS SLAYERS In honor of Halloween, the Rainbow Company Youth Theatre presents David Wood’s stage adaptation of the Roald Dahl book The Witches. Elaborate costumes add extra spookiness to the story of a boy and his grandma who partner up to take on a powerful witch. Charleston Heights Arts Center, 800 S. Brush Street, Las Vegas, 7p and 2p, $5.50, artslasvegas.org SE PTE M B E R 27- OCTOB E R 19
ALL ABOUT THAT FACE So, a guy walks into a bar. In the 19th century. Tells the regulars gathered there this super sad love story, and, to drive it home, sketches his beloved’s face on the floor. It inspires a poem, “The Face on the Barroom Floor.” That inspires
another painting, on another floor, in Denver, in 1936. That inspires an opera (also The Face on the Barroom Floor), in 1978, which you can see here in Las Vegas, this fall, thanks to Vegas City Opera. Artisan Hotel and Amargosa Opera House, 8p and 4p, $10-$30, vegascityopera.com OCTOB E R 2-27
WOKE TURKEY Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse penned The Thanksgiving Play in 2015 to call out the ridiculous assumptions of misguided liberals. Vegas Theatre Company (formerly Cockroach Theatre) presents the one-act satire in which four people try to conceive a politically correct Thanksgiving presentation for Native Heritage Month. Art Square Theatre, 1025 South 1st Street, 7:30p and 2p, $20-35, vegastheatrecompany.com
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FINDING HER ROOTS Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic memoir, Fun Home, follows an adult’s investigation of her father’s past, as she looks for clues about her own identity. Nevada Conservatory Theatre produces the Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori musical adaptation, told through a nonlinear series of vignettes throughout the main character Alison’s life. Starring
Vegas Little Theatre, 3920 Schiff Drive, 8p and 2p, $20, lvlt.org
(pictured, from left) Tatum Rajsky and Glenn Heath. UNLV’s Judy Bayley Theatre, 7:30p and 2p, $25, unlv.edu/nct
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FAIRER THAN DEATH
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In 1912, the French composer Maurice Ravel reimagined the ancient Greek pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe as a ballet, choreographed by Michel Fokine. This fall, UNLV’s dance and orchestra departments team up to reimagine the reimagining, with their updated interpretation blending classical and modern dance. The
HER FAVORITE HAUNTS The Las Vegas Little Theatre brings Stephen Mallatratt’s creepy stage adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel, The Woman in Black, to its black box. The play-withina-play tells a chilling tale of transgression, tragedy, and the inability to let go. Las
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production, titled In Orchestra 4: Daphnis and Chloe, also includes Ravel’s Bolero, choreographed by dance professor Cathy Allen. UNLV’s Judy Bayley Theatre, 7:30p, $18, unlv.edu/nct
on the community theater’s main stage, tells the story of a young black con artist holding a mirror up to the high society he infiltrates with ease. Las Vegas Little Theatre, 3920 Schiff Drive, 8p and 2p, $22-25, lvlt.org
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BETWEEN US AND EVERYBODY ELSE
OCTOBE R 24
HITTING THE HIGH NOTES
What better moment for John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, which challenges audience members to confront their bias, privilege, and connection to others? The 1990 play, produced
Formed in 1999, Opera Las Vegas produced its first full-length performance, Carmen, six years later. Since
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Swan Time
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ABOUT NOTHING Despite its lack of theatricality, Annie Baker’s The Flick won the 2014 Pulitzer Price for best drama. Critics struggle to pin down the threehour play’s narrative, which meanders in and out of three underpaid movie ushers’ mundane routines — sweeping, running projectors, catching the occasional love scene — nevertheless, most agree it’s a deeply moving por-
trayal of three young adults just shy of fulfilling their potential. Nevada Conservatory Theatre presents the work in its intimate Black Box Theatre. UNLV’s Black Box Theatre, 7:30p and 2p, $25, unlv.edu/pac O C T O B E R 2 5 - N OV E M B E R 1 7
PASSIVE REGRESSIVE A former poet, now alcoholic has gone missing. His bitter, prescription drug-addicted wife is distraught. Various family members descend on their small Oklahoma hometown for a missing-person emergency. Arguments ensue. What’s not funny about that? Apparently, nothing, judging from the smash-hit status of Tracy Letts’ 2007 comedy-drama, August: Osage County, about confronting one’s Midwestern past. A Public Fit presents the Pulitzer Prize winner on its main stage.
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IT’S SECONDARY, DEAR Vegas Theatre Company presents Holmes and Watson, which opens with Dr. Watson in a late 19th-century asylum on Scotland’s Starkhaven Island trying to determine whether one of the inmates is his longtime partner in crime-solving. The master sleuth had gone missing following his confrontation with archenemy Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls and is presumed dead. The suspenseful mystery that unfolds is Jeffrey Hatcher’s 2017 contribution to the post-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle continuation of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures. Art Square Theatre, 1025 S. First St., times vary, $20-35,
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If you haven’t seen Swan Lake, why not? What’s wrong with you? It’s, like, the ultimate balletic tale of good and evil, love and obsession. And it’s Tchaikovsky. TCHAIKOVSKY. Seriously, you’re lucky Nevada Ballet Theatre is producing the Ben Stevenson-choreographed classic again this year. But it’s one weekend only, so don’t get complacent or anything. Reynolds Hall in The Smith Center, 2p and 7:30p, $35$150, nevadaballet.org
then, the company has covered classics from La Boheme to Rossini’s Cinderella. This fall’s Encore! Encore! Anniversary Concert celebrates Opera Las Vegas’ two decades of work with a sampler of crowd pleasers from those past performances. Myron’s Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, 7:30p, price TBA, operalasvegas.com
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COURTESY THE SMITH CENTER
MOTION SENSERS UNLV professor Victoria Dale’s piece, prepared for the International Association of Blacks in Dance’s annual conference, is the highlight of Brushstrokes of Motion, a presentation of student and faculty works. Dance lighting, design, and stage management majors also contribute to the production. Dance Studio 111 in the Ham Fine Arts building, 7:30p and 2:30p, $18, unlv.edu/ dance N OV E M B E R 1 6
IF THESE FLUTES COULD TALK Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s late 18th-century piece,
The Magic Flute, makes an ideal introduction to opera for kids, in part because it’s a fairytale, and in part because it’s what was then called a singspiel — an opera with spoken lines, or what we would simply call a “musical” today. Vegas City Opera adapts the original as The Princess and the Magic Flute, making it explicitly family-friendly. Durango Hills Park, 3545 N. Durango Drive, 2p, free, artslasvegas. org N OV E M B E R 2 3
LIGHTEN UP, SANTA On a dark stage, performers wear costumes and manipulate puppets outlined in brightly colored lights; this is Lightwire Theatre’s
signature combination of artistry and technology. The company applies the approach to A Very Electric Christmas, its original holiday tale of a young bird named Max who gets separated from his family as they’re flying south for the winter and finds himself lost and alone at the North Pole. Charleston Heights Arts Center, 2p, $12.50-$25, artslasvegas.org JAN UARY 1 6 - F E B R UARY 9
BEYOND MEAT Majestic Repertory Theatre hails the vegan backlash with its presentation of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. If you like meat pies, you’ll love this gruesome tale of revenge by pastry.
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Mean Fun The Smith Center celebrates the holidays with the crowd-pleasing Broadway musical Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Narrated by Max the Dog, it’s the classic story of theft, penance, and cardiac expansion. Reynolds Hall in The Smith Center, times vary, $30-$128, thesmithcenter.com
$30, majesticrepertory.com
Christopher Bond adapted his 1973 play from a character in Victorian pulp fiction; Stephen Sondheim subsequently interpreted the story as a musical — his most musical musical, actually, since 80 percent of the work is either sung or spoken over accompaniment. The method worked: Sondheim’s version won the Tony Award for best musical. Majestic Repertory Theatre, 1217 S. Main St., 8p and 5p, SEPTEMBER 2019
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WHAT’S WRONG, TOUGH GUY? A Public Fit faces the new year with teeth bared, figuratively speaking, by staging A Steady Rain, the gritty buddy drama by House of Cards and Mad Men writer Keith Huff. Told through two cops’ alternating monologues, it’s a timely story of the hubris, bad judgment, and corruption that privilege breeds. The .
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Usual Place, 100 S. Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, 7:30p and 2p, $25-$30, apublicfit.org F E B R UARY 2 2 -2 3
KINETIC AESTHETIC Choreographer Nicolo Fonte sets bodies in motion to the thrumming crescendo of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero for this intense, modern production, presented by Nevada Ballet Theatre. Also part of the mid-winter program are George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments and an original work by company dancer and choreographer Krista Baker. Reynolds Hall in The Smith Center 7:30p and 2p, $63-$140, nevadaballet.org
Compiled and written by K R I ST Y TOT T E N
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BUT IT’S A HAPPY CRY Cinco de Mayo is an important Mexican holiday, but it isn’t Mexican Independence Day; that’s September 16. That day in 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rang the church bells to let Spain know it was time to go. The call to arms became known as “El Grito,” or “the cry,” and today it’s celebrated a day before Día de la Independencia with an epic party. Take that, Spain! Lorenzi Park, 720 Twin Lakes Drive, 1-8p, free, artslasvegas.org SE PTE M B E R 20 -22
LIFE IS FESTI-FUL Chance the Rapper.
The Black Keys. Post Malone. Billie Eilish. Life Is Beautiful, the bash that turned the streets of Downtown into a festival is back with more festival stuff, including but not limited to: good music, art (some of which you can touch/ ride/crawl into for an Instagram photo), way better food than you’d expect, and an impressive speaker lineup that includes Jonathan Van Ness from Queer Eye and the hosts of Pod Save America. I don’t know how to spell the word Jonathan uses to describe pumping up hair volume, but this festival has done that. Single-day tickets start at $145, lifeisbeautiful.com
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A STAYCATION OF SORTS The food is good, the wine is good, the desserts are good, but, honestly, my favorite part of the Greek Food Festival is strolling the grounds of St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church, pretending I’m on vacation in the Mediterranean. It’s lush and green, with a jaw-dropping cathedral, and somehow having a glass of wine in the courtyard feels like being transported elsewhere. What’s that? Sorry, I was daydreaming. Of course I’d like more baklava. 5300 El Camino Road, hours vary, $8-12, lvgff.com
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You often drink “just ’cause,” so why not drink for a good cause? The 10th annual Grapes & Hops raises money for local charity Par for the Cure, which raises funds for breast cancer research. The drinks are chosen by Southern Wine & Spirits, and food is provided by Stripburger, El Segundo Sol, Mon Ami Gabi, and, for VIPs, Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab. Springs Preserve, 5-9p, tickets start at $50, parforthecure. com/grapesandhops
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COURTESY SPRINGS PRESERVE
Beer and Wine: Why Choose?
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County Library, 9:30a-4:30p, free, 702-507-3459
growing, harvesting, and planning for established gardeners and newbies alike. And black-thumbs, fear not, organic produce will be on sale. Summerlin Library, 11 a.m., free, lvccld. org
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OCTOBE R 4 - 6
R I S E F E S T I VA L : L E O N C O N T R E R A S ; D I A D E LO S M U E R T O S C O U R T E S Y C I T Y O F L A S V E G A S
LET IT GO, LET IT GOOOO Here’s the idea behind the Rise Festival: You drive out to the desert, hang out with your friends, have some snacks, share some laughs, and then write something on a paper lantern and let it float away. The inscription? Up to you. Maybe it’s a wish, or a letter to someone, or a weird, dark part of your psyche you’ve been ready to dump for a while. It’s totally up to you! Jean Dry Lake Bed, tickets start at $79, risefestival.com OCTOBE R 5
SUMMERLIN GETS SEASONAL As if we needed more reason to visit, the Summerlin Library will put on a Fall Festival and Craft Fair with face painting, pumpkin decorating, balloon artists, magic, and, last but not least, books. Between live jazz bands, learn how
to make a garden pot or a fall leaf mason jar. Karma bonus: Bring canned goods or a new toy for the Salvation Army holiday drive. Oh, yeah, and buy a book. Summerlin Library, 10a, free, lvccld.org OCTOBE R 19
BEER ME Some booze math: What do you get when you add 200 craft beers from 65 breweries, great food, and lots of bands, all under the stars? You get the frothy, fun Downtown Brew Festival, now in its eighth year. Cheers! Clark County Amphitheatre, 5p, $35-80, downtownbrewfestival.com
element as essential and nuanced as the words that accompany them, and, in some cases, words aren’t even needed. The Las Vegas Comic Book Festival, a beloved annual event, brings together writers, artists, publishers, and vendors for screenings, panels, and meet-and-greets. Now in its 12th year, it’s pretty much an institution. Go and geek out. Clark
Dia de los Muertos is not just an aesthetic. Sure, the ornate sugar skulls, meticulously arranged altars, and glowing marigolds are beautiful, but they’re beautiful for a reason: to honor loved ones lost. Celebrate their lives among spectacular displays of life, including live music, dance, food, crafts, and children’s activities. And go ahead, get your face painted while you’re at it. Lorenzi Park, 720 Twin Lakes Drive, 4-10p, free, artslasvegas.org
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THE PERFECT PACKAGE One word for you: tamales. Lots of them. Enough to constitute a festival. With music, dancing, tequila, and beer. If you’re not sold, you may never be, but here’s a final attempt: The Las Vegas Tamale & Mariachi Festival creates a reason to celebrate with handmade tamales, Mexican street food, festive folklorico dancing, and adult beverages. Honestly, this should be a holiday. Centennial Plaza, 401 S. Fourth St., 10a-4p, free, artslasvegas.org
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GREEN UP Ever wonder what you can grow in Las Vegas in autumn? It’s time to find out at this fam garden fair. Celebrating the Fruits of Our Labor’s garden lectures will cover
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SHARE THE LIGHT We know. The Fremont Street Experience isn’t exactly where you’d expect to have a religious experience, but you might. Celebrate the first day of Hanukkah with Rabbi Shea Harlig from Chabad of Southern Nevada, where he’ll light the first candle on a 20-foot Grand Menorah to welcome the holiday season. That’s right, a 20-foot Menorah. We hope the lighted canopy doesn’t get a complex. Fremont Street Experience, time TBD, free, vegasexperience.com
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NOTHING WRONG WITH PICTURE BOOKS Look, Time’s list of 100 best novels includes The Watchmen, which goes to show how far graphic novels have come. In these stories, illustrations are an SEPTEMBER 2019
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Chop808 rapper
SOMETIMES HE RAPS ABOUT SWEETS; SOMETIMES HE RAPS ABOUT THE STREETS
When Tyreek Jarman, aka Chop808, released his single “Nobody’s Safe” in May, it came with an unusual label: the word “EXPLICIT.” But something else was different, too. The wholesome and upbeat Jarman, known for hamming it up and dancing with fans at shows, was gone. Here was a menacing beast firing machine-gun bars over a bass-heavy trap beat. You don’t wanna go to war with me, I grew up with apes, he warns on the track. “I got put in this box of the happy-go-lucky, quirky rapper,” says the 25-year-old artist. Which is understandable: He once made a song about an alien falling in love with a chocolate bar. Since high school, Jarman has cultivated a unique brand of groovy, positive hip-hop. Songs such as “Candy Lane” and “Ms. Good Stuff” — lighthearted songs that pair his love of women and confections — showed just how pure he was. That sweet guy is still there, he assures, but it’s time for him to get back to his roots. Born in Memphis and raised on the sounds of the dirty South, Jarman moved to Las Vegas at 14, where he attended Las Vegas Academy. While his Southern drawl never left, his breezy music felt more like palm trees and neon than box Chevys and cough syrup. But just after he nailed his niche on 2018’s Feels Like Yesterday, he switched gears. Part of the lane change was inspired by a cousin from Memphis who called Jarman’s music “trash.” His cousin told him that his music wouldn’t get any play in the South, which favors harder street tales to space-age romance. Jarman took it as a challenge: “I can show you I can do both styles without bringing myself down.” The result is a hungrier, grittier sound inspired by Jarman’s Tennessee influences: Three 6 Mafia, OG Boo Dirty, and Yo Gotti. And it’s coming in a barrage. Four-track EP Drippin’ is slated for this month, followed by his Young N—a Energy EP in October, and LP Boys Don’t Cry shortly after. It turns out “Nobody’s Safe” was a warning shot. “This has always been me,” Jarman says. “I’ve just never showed you this side.” Zoneil Maharaj
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Aundrea Frahm multidisciplinary artist
WITH HER MULTISENSORY WORK, THIS PERFORMANCE ARTIST IS LEANING INTO THE FUTURE
“These are the box heads,” she says, lifting one, “and you can actually put them on,” which she does. Meet Aundrea Frahm, UNLV art instructor and multidisciplinary artist. The mirrored box now on her head was used in Event Horizon, an event she co-created back in April. A second ago, it was on the floor of her studio in a warehouse near I-15. Quick, while she still has it on, let’s examine this moment and its metadata for useful hints about Frahm’s work: a petite human figure topped by a futuristic head-cube — well, that has to mean something, right, but what? Not knowing makes you a little disoriented, which is cool, she can work with that. You’re reflected in the box, meaning you’re a part of whatever this means. And now that she’s removed it, the experience exists only in your mutating memory, so good luck making sense of it in humankind’s typical A + B = C fashion.
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“What,” Frahm asks, “if there is no C?” Okay, yes, that’s true of a lot of art — elusive meaning isn’t exactly unheard of in modern galleries — but what gives Frahm’s stuff its just-ahead-of-the-zeitgeist whoosh is that it’s multifaceted, visceral, insistently collaborative. During a piece like Event Horizon (her first big Vegas project after arriving from teaching at BYU), a dreamscape of billowing fabric, dancers, light and shadow, live music, and audience participation, you absorb its meanings through several limbic inputs at once. Maybe your brain’s logic center tries to DJ it all into a “message,” but you should probably just let it unfurl on a nonverbal level. Either way, Frahm’s giving you something not only to interpret but also to complete. “My work requires the audience to physically participate,” she says, and, among other upsides, this places her amid a growing vanguard of inventive norm-bending as local performance artists and immersive theater directors amp up the interplay between artist and viewer. During a TEDxBYU talk she gave last year, Frahm had the audience beam their phone flashlights into a fog generated above them, filling the chamber with aqueous blue undulations. It was luminous, communal, soothing, and wholly dependent on the crowd. A painting doesn’t change if no one’s in the gallery, but this wouldn’t have worked in an empty auditorium. “I want to give people these experiences where maybe they’re unsure,” Frahm says, “where they’re able to wonder: What was that thing, and how did I feel, and am I changed? Because it’s the questions that change people.” They just have to think outside the mirrored box. Scott Dickensheets
Frahm and co-director Ari Williams will present a new iteration of Event Horizon during UNLV’s Art Walk on October 11 (unlv.edu/calendar)
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Danny Chandia videographer + filmmaker
HIS PLAYFUL MUSIC VIDEOS BELIE SERIOUS FILM CHOPS (ON A SHOESTRING, NO LESS)
Danny Chandia’s music videos are rollicking, jaunty, and kinetic, filled with Technicolor cowboys, gog-eyed sea monsters, and screaming cacti. Chandia, on the other hand, is pensive and deliberate when he talks about his craft. It seems paradoxical — until you realize it’s because it takes major brainpower to tell fantastic visual stories on time crunches, tight budgets, and other real-world limitations. Consider Chandia’s video for musical artist Sonia Barcelona’s “Violent Water,” a vampy, stylized homage to silent films that casts Barcelona as a shiny mermaid who rescues a hapless sailor from the clutches of a writhing sea creature. Its assured whimsy becomes all the more impressive when you learn that Chandia achieved it on a $1,000 budget. “I didn’t even have the budget to build sets, but I knew the visual effects to be able to composite multiple people in the same shot, for instance,” he says. (His wife, Rachel Johnson, created the costumes.) “My ace in the hole has always been editing. It’s always helped give lower-budget projects some nice polish.” Now he’s aiming higher. With a healthy raft of music vids, commercials, and reality shows on his résumé, Chandia is currently at work on a serious feature film. “It’s about sex workers. It was originally supposed to be a short, but the rough draft was 50 pages.” The music video maker decided it was time to level up. “We’re, like, okay, to talk about what we want to talk about and do this topic justice, we can’t cut it down.” Keep an eye out as this master of the short form goes long. Andrew Kiraly
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Zully Mejia painter
HER PORTRAITS HAVE ALREADY SPOKEN VOLUMES — AND SHE’S JUST GETTING STARTED
Looking at Zully Mejia’s richly colored and textured portraits, one senses that they’re the natural vehicle for her feminist message. “I never get tired of painting portraits,” she says, “because there is so much to be said about the way that our culture views and treats women, and the way I want to change that.” But this realization didn’t come overnight. Mejia’s kindergarten teacher noticed her talent and alerted her mother; she won her first art competition soon after. At only 21, Mejia has been an artist longer than some people twice her age. She experienced her first bout of burnout in late middle and early high school, letting other people’s positive feedback bog her down in black-and-white drawings that she didn’t enjoy. But her passion was reawakened in her sophomore year, when she went to Las Vegas Academy and discovered painting. She immersed herself in color theory, intrigued by its ability to express specific emotions, and especially loved painting faces. Her worry that she’d never make a living doing portraits was allayed when UNLV art professor Tim Bavington gave her examples of other people doing it and encouraged her to follow her vision. A provocative example of that vision is Mejia’s painting “America,” a portrait of her mother. The subject wears a bold blue jacket over a white ruffled blouse and red slacks. Her mouth is agape and her head thrown back slightly in a hearty laugh. “I did this when I got back from studying in Italy,” Mejia says. “I hadn’t been immersed in what was happening here politically, with the Trump administration. And my practice had changed, too; I wasn’t painting real people (she’d been experimenting, instead, with tronies, iconic fictional busts). So I wanted to make a statement about what it means to be an immigrant but still be American. My mom was born in Peru, but she has lived here many years and embodies American ideals because of all she’s gone through and overcome. I don’t often paint people laughing. It’s mocking the things being said about immigrants. The U.S. was built on immigration, so to say that’s a negative now doesn’t make sense.” Heidi Kyser
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Mejia’s exhibit Women & Politics opens November 21 in the East Las Vegas Library (lvccld.org)
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HIS DRIVING FORCE: LIFE IN THE CITY WHERE HE GREW UP
Frank Johnson poet
Frank Johnson’s writing desk is his white Mercedes SUV. His creative ritual is to drive around, let his mind wander, and then park and write. “There’s this thing I’ve read several essays about, about how repetitive motion tasks are a way of generating creative thought, because you’re thinking but you’re not thinking,” says the 26-year-old Vegas native. “And one of the beautiful things is that when we’re driving — hopefully we’re being attentive — but if we’re not being super-attentive, our eyes are still open, and all that is data input.” He adds, “Though I will say it’s also because I didn’t have a car for, like, two years.” As we talk on a recent Friday morning, we cruise ever-changing Maryland Parkway, loop UNLV, and bump around east Downtown’s number streets with the nicer houses. “There’s a street in (Downtown neighborhood) Marycrest called Bonita, and I love to park on that street. The people probably think I’m so weird.” Johnson’s poetry mirrors his process: It’s fluid and freeform but purposeful, and keenly attuned to sense of place — in many cases, his stomping grounds of East Las Vegas, where any definition of place has to include its gritty social realities. From his poem “Wednesday Night Interlude”: “like how one time I saw a body/ rotted by a glock/ like fruit left in the sun/ my homie said that could’ve been either of us/ & how i’ve been exfoliating my skin & poking at my bruises ever since/ rubbing all that blood up to the surface/ trying to imagine/ my body become/ a painful myth.” Johnson’s tools, platforms, and inspirations make him a decidedly 21st-century poet. His formal influences come as much from HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and trap music as they do from his MFA studies at UNLV, where he’s the inaugural Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute’s Donald Barlow fellow. He publishes poems on Instagram, and has also teamed up with videographers to create film adaptations of his work. But Johnson’s not so cutting-edge that he’s forgoing some of the young poet’s classic rites of passage: His first print collection of poems, Literal Dope, is forthcoming. As he juggles several promising projects, it’s not hard to imagine Johnson’s drive resulting in a grand arrival — at several places at once. Andrew Kiraly
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Top Doctors 2019 The 269 best physicians in Southern Nevada, as chosen by their peers HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE Medical specialties are listed alphabetically. Doctors are listed alphabetically beneath those specialty areas, with subspecialties below that. Note that some physicians may require referrals.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Due to a production error, the August issue’s Top Doctors list was incomplete. We regret the error. Here is the complete list. ALLERGY & IMMUNOLOGY ARJUN V. GURURAJ, MD Nevada Heart & Vascular Center 3150 N Tenaya Way, #320 702-240-6482 Arrhythmias, Catheter Ablation, Heart Failure, Atrial Fibrillation
JIM CHRISTENSEN, MD OptumCare Lung & Allergy Care 4750 W Oakey Blvd., #1A 702-724-8844 Asthma & Allergy, Urticaria, Pediatric Allergy & Immunology JOEL KATZ, MD Allergy & Asthma Center 2625 Box Canyon Drive 702-360-6100 Food Allergy, Immunotherapy, Insect Allergy, Asthma
NIUTON KOIDE, MD HealthCare Partners Medical Group 3131 La Canada St., #200 702-731-8224 Arrhythmias FOAD MOAZEZ, MD Nevada Cardiology Associates 3150 N Tenaya Way, #460 702-233-1000 Arrhythmias, Pacemakers/ Defibrillators
DAVID H. TOTTORI, MD Tottori Allergy & Asthma Associates 4000 E Charleston Blvd., #100, 702-240-4233 Asthma & Allergy, Food Allergy, Eczema
CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE
CARDIAC ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY
SEAN S. AMELI, MD Ameli-Dadourian Heart Center 400 S Rampart Blvd., #240, 702-906-1100 Cholesterol/Lipid Disorders, EchocardiographyTransesophageal, Preventive Cardiology, Hypertension
ROBERT LEWIS BAKER, MD Nevada Cardiology Associates 3121 S Maryland Pkwy., #512, 702-796-7150 Sudden Death Prevention, Radiofrequency Ablation, Atrial Fibrillation
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RICHARD CHEN, MD Nevada Cardiology Associates 3121 S Maryland Pkwy., #512, 702-796-7150 Coronary Artery Disease, Interventional Cardiology, Angioplasty & Stent Placement, EchocardiographyTransesophageal BERGE J. DADOURIAN, MD Ameli-Dadourian Heart Center 400 S Rampart Blvd., #240, 702-906-1100 Peripheral Vascular Disease, Interventional Cardiology VANESSA GASTWIRTH, MD Nevada Cardiology Associates 3150 N Tenaya Way, #460 702-233-1000 SAMUEL E. GREEN, MD Nevada Cardiology Associates 3150 N Tenaya Way, #460 702-233-1000 Nuclear Cardiology, EchocardiographyTransesophageal THOMAS L. LAMBERT, MD Cardiology Specialists of Nevada 3150 N Tenaya Way, #135 702-598-3999 Interventional Cardiology, Heart Failure CHILD & ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY DEBORA A. BARNEY, MD Center for Emotional Health 6284 S Rainbow Blvd., #110, 702-257-0140 Autism Spectrum Disorders, Depression, Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders
NORTON ROITMAN, MD Sessions 2340 Paseo Del Prado, #D307, 702-222-1812 Psychopharmacology, Psychotherapy, Family Therapy, Behavioral Disorders CHILD NEUROLOGY LINDA M. BROWN, MD Neurology Center of Nevada 653 N Town Center Drive, #217, 702-247-9994 Epilepsy/Seizure Disorders COLON & RECTAL SURGERY OVUNC BARDAKCIOGLU, MD UNLV Medicine Dept of Surgery 1707 W Charleston Blvd., #160, 702-671-5150 Minimally Invasive Surgery, Colon & Rectal Cancer, Robotic Surgery, Hemorrhoids LESLIE K. BROWDER, MD Women’s Cancer Center of Nevada 3131 La Canada St., #241 702-693-6870 Microsurgery, Pelvic Floor Disorders, Diverticulitis, Crohn’s Disease DERMATOLOGY ALAN J. ARNOLD, MD Couture Dermatology & Plastic Surgery 2615 Box Canyon Drive 702-998-9001 Mohs Surgery MIRIAM BETTENCOURT, MD Advanced Dermatology & Cosmetic Surgery 861 Coronado Center Drive, #100, 702-257-7546 Melanoma, Mohs Surgery
MICHAEL G. BRYAN, MD Las Vegas Skin & Cancer Clinics 880 Seven Hills Drive, #260, 702-933-0225 Hair & Nail Disorders, Mohs Surgery, Skin Cancer VICTORIA G. FARLEY, MD Vivida Dermatology 6460 Medical Center St., #350, 702-255-6647 Cosmetic Dermatology, Dermatologic Surgery, Acne & Rosacea, Psoriasis DOUGLAS FIFE, MD Vivida Dermatology 6460 Medical Center St., #350, 702-255-6647 Mohs Surgery LIONEL J. HANDLER, MD Strimling Dermatology, Laser & Vein Inst 10105 Banburry Cross Drive, #350, 702-243-6400 Pediatric Dermatology, Laser Surgery, Cosmetic Surgery ROBERT B. STRIMLING, MD Strimling Dermatology, Laser & Vein Inst 10105 Banburry Cross Drive, #350 702-243-6400 Mohs Surgery, Laser Surgery, Cosmetic Dermatology, Varicose Veins CANDACE THORNTON SPANN, MD Couture Dermatology & Plastic Surgery 2615 Box Canyon Drive 702-998-9001 Hair Loss in Women, Acne, Facial Rejuvenation, Botox Therapy DEVELOPMENTALBEHAVIORAL PEDIATRICS MARIO J. GASPAR DE ALBA, MD UNLV Ackerman Center D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
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630 S Rancho Drive, #A 702-998-9505 Autism Spectrum Disorders DIAGNOSTIC RADIOLOGY RAJNEESH AGRAWAL, MD Desert Radiology 2020 Palomino Ln., #100 702-759-8600 Neuroradiology, Interventional Radiology PAUL BANDT, MD Desert Radiology 2020 Palomino Ln., #100 702-759-8600 Interventional Radiology, Nuclear Radiology ASHOK GUPTA, MD Desert Radiology 2020 Palomino Ln., #100 702-759-8600 Abdominal Imaging DIANNE MAZZU, MD Desert Radiology 2020 Palomino Ln., #100 702-759-8600 Body Imaging, Mammography, Ultrasound, CT Scan RAJASHREE C. VYAS, MD Desert Radiology 2020 Palomino Ln., #100 702-759-8600 Pediatric Radiology, Musculoskeletal Imaging ALAN WEISSMAN, MD Desert Radiology 2020 Palomino Ln., #100 702-759-8600 Cancer Imaging, Musculoskeletal Imaging, Nuclear Medicine LISA K. WONG, MD Desert Radiology 2020 Palamino Ln., #100 702-759-8600 Pediatric Radiology ENDOCRINOLOGY, DIABETES & METABOLISM W. REID LITCHFIELD, MD Desert Endocrinology 2415 W Horizon Ridge Pkwy., #100, 702-434-8400 Diabetes, Thyroid Disorders QUANG T. NGUYEN, DO Las Vegas Endocrinology 229 N Pecos Rd, #100 702-605-5750 Hypertension, Metabolic Syndrome, Nutrition & Obesity
FREDDIE G. TOFFEL, MD 2700 E Sunset Rd, #D34 702-736-2021 Diabetes, Hormonal Disorders FAMILY MEDICINE KIMBERLY ADAMS, MD Total Wellness Family Medicine 5225 S Durango Drive 702-253-9355 AIDS/HIV, Adolescent Medicine, Sports Medicine, Chronic Illness HERVE BEZARD, MD Family Doctors of Boulder City 895 Adams Blvd. 702-293-0406 MICHAEL GUNTER, MD Canyon Trails Family Practice 7455 W Washington Ave, #445, 702-804-5138 Primary Care Sports Medicine SUNGWOOK KIM, MD Brighton Family Medicine 1720 W Horizon Ridge Pkwy., #140, 702-566-5445
SHARI KLEIN, DO 8571 W Lake Mead Blvd., #100, 702-545-0283 Concierge Medicine
WAI LI MA, MD GI Excellence 9260 W Sunset Rd, #203 702-476-2822
DARREN RAHAMAN, MD Nevada Health Centers 1799 Mount Mariah Drive 702-383-1961
FRANK J. NEMEC, MD Gastroenterology Associates 6950 S Cimarron Rd, #200, 702-796-0231 Gastrointestinal Functional Disorders, Digestive Disorders
LARA WENNER, MD HealthCare Partners Nevada 3960 W Craig Rd, #101 702-473-8380 GASTROENTEROLOGY TAREK AMMAR, MD Comprehensive Digestive Institute of Nevada 8530 W Sunset Rd, #230 702-483-4483 Endoscopic Ultrasound, Pancreatic & Biliary Disease, Colon & Rectal Cancer, Digestive Disorders GREGORY M. KWOK, MD Gastroenterology Associates 6950 S Cimarron Rd, #200, 702-796-0231 Gastrointestinal Functional Disorders, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD)
GERIATRIC MEDICINE ESTEBAN HENNINGS, MD Humanitas Primary Care 3201 S Maryland Pkwy., #414 702-685-7700 HAND SURGERY ANDREW J. BRONSTEIN, MD Bronstein Hand Center 10135 W Twain Ave, #100 702-458-4263 Wrist Reconstruction, Elbow Surgery, Pediatric Hand Surgery, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
CHRISTIAN DIAZ STONE, MD Comprehensive Digestive Inst Institute of Nevada 8530 W Sunset Rd, #230 702-483-4483 Inflammatory Bowel Disease/Crohn’s, Colitis, Digestive Disorders, Colon & Rectal Cancer
DAVID FADELL, DO Hand Surgery Specialists of Nevada 9321 W Sunset Rd 702-645-7800 Trauma, Arthritis, Elbow Surgery, Shoulder Surgery
NICHOLAS A. TIBALDI, MD Southwest Medical Associates 4750 W Oakey Blvd. 702-877-8330 Hemorrhoids, Crohn’s Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Ulcerative Colitis
WILLIAM T. STEWART, MD Desert Orthopaedic Center 2800 E Desert Inn Rd, #100, 702-731-1616 Arthroscopic Surgery, Sports Medicine, Joint Reconstruction
HOW THE TOP DOCTORS ARE SELECTED Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. is a healthcare research and information company founded in 1992 by a former medical college board chairman and president to help guide consumers to America’s top doctors and top hospitals. Castle Connolly’s established nomination survey, research, screening and selection process, under the direction of an MD, involves many hundreds of thousands of physicians as well as academic medical centers, specialty hospitals and regional and community hospitals all across the nation. Castle Connolly’s physician-led team of researchers follows a rigorous screening process to select top doctors on both the national and regional levels. Its online nominations process, located at www. castleconnolly.com/nominations, is open to all licensed physicians in America who are able to nominate physicians in any medical specialty and in any part of the country, as well as indicate whether the nominated physicians is, in their opinion, among the best in their region in their medical specialty or among the best in the nation in their medical specialty. Careful screening of doctors’ educational and professional experience is essential before final selection is made among those physicians most highly regarded by their peers. The result: We identify the top doctors in America and provide you, the consumer, with detailed information about their education, training and special expertise in our paperback guides, national and regional magazine “Top Doctors” features and online directories. Doctors do not and cannot pay to be selected and profiled as Castle Connolly Top Doctors. Physicians selected for inclusion in this magazine’s “Top Doctors” feature may also appear online at www.castleconnolly.com, or in in conjunction with other Castle Connolly Top Doctors databases online and/or in print. Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., was acquired by Everyday Health Group (EHG), one of the world’s most prominent digital healthcare companies, in late 2018. Everyday Health Group (EHG), a recognized leader in patient and provider education, attracts an engaged audience of more than 53 million health consumers and more than 780,000 U.S. practicing physicians and clinicians to its premier health and wellness websites. EHG combines social-listening data and analytics expertise to deliver highly personalized healthcare consumer content and effective patient engagement solutions. EHG’s vision is to drive better clinical and health outcomes through decision-making informed by highly relevant data and analytics. Healthcare professionals and consumers are empowered with trusted content and services through the Everyday Health Group’s flagship brands including Everyday Health®, What to Expect®, MedPage Today®, Health eCareers®, PRIME® Education and an exclusive partnership with MayoClinic.org® and The Mayo Clinic Diet.® Everyday Health Group is a division of J2 Global Inc. (NASDAQ: JCOM), and is headquartered in New York City.
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JAMES VAHEY, MD Hand Center of Nevada 8585 S Eastern Ave, #100 702-798-8585 Hand & Upper Extremity Surgery
MOHAMMED NAJMI, MD Medical Group at Sun City 2440 Professional Ct, #110 702-240-8155 Chronic Illness, Eating Disorders, Nutrition
HEMATOLOGY RUSSELL GOLLARD, MD Nevada Cancer Specialists 3175 St. Rose Pkwy., #200 702-724-8787
RUSSELL N. NEIBAUR, MD Concierge Care Physicians 2450 W Horizon Ridge Pkwy., #150, 702-990-0622
CLARK S. JEAN, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 7445 Peak Drive 702-952-2140 Hematologic Malignancies, Leukemia & Lymphoma
THERESA L. STECKLER, MD Touro University Nevada 874 American Pacific Drive, Henderson 702-777-4809 Geriatric Medicine CANDICE H. TUNG, MD Jerry Schwartz & Associates 7395 S Pecos Rd, #102 702-737-8657 Concierge Medicine, Diabetes
INFECTIOUS DISEASE BRIAN J. LIPMAN, MD 10001 S Eastern Ave, #307 702-909-7170 AIDS/HIV, Pneumonia RONALD A. SHOCKLEY, MD Infectious Disease Partners 3121 S Maryland Pkwy., #412, 702-309-2311 AIDS/HIV
JOHN A. VARRAS, MD UNLV Medicine 1707 W Charleston Blvd., #230, 702-671-5060 Weight Management, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Preventive Medicine
INTERNAL MEDICINE
RAJI VENKAT, MD Dignity Health Medical Group 10001 S Eastern Ave, #101 702-616-5801
VALERIA ASIMENIOS, MD Southwest Medical Associates 4835 S Durango Drive 702-877-5199
SANDHYA WAHI GURURAJ, MD UNLV Medicine 1707 W Charleston Blvd., #230, 702-671-5060 Preventive Medicine, Hypertension
LAWRENCE S. COPELAND, MD 653 Town Center Drive, #101, 702-243-7483 Concierge Medicine
INTERVENTIONAL CARDIOLOGY
RAMA HAROUNI, MD Dignity Health Medical Group 400 S Rampart Blvd., #240, 702-304-5900 Preventive Medicine
JOHN B. BEDOTTO, MD HealthCare Partners Sunset Cardiology 9280 W Sunset Rd, #320 702-534-5464
STEPHEN H. MILLER, MD HealthCare Partners Nevada Town Center Clinic 653 N Town Center Drive, #306, 702-228-5477 Arthritis, Diabetes, Hypertension, Concierge Medicine
ASHFAQ A. KHAN, MD HealthCare Partners Medical Group 3131 La Canada St., #200 702-731-8224 Angiography-Coronary JAMES A. LALLY, MD Heart Center of Nevada 700 Shadow Ln., #240 702-384-0022 Arrhythmias
REZA MOJTABAVI, MD Avencia Medical Center 3150 N Tenaya Way, #240 702-445-7770
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SANJAY MALHOTRA, MD Nevada Heart & Vascular Center 4275 Burnham Ave, #100 702-240-6482 CRES P. MIRANDA, MD Nevada Heart & Vascular Center 3150 N Tenaya Way, #320 702-240-6482 Coronary Angioplasty/ Stents, Preventive Cardiology JANMEJAY J. PATEL, MD HealthCare Partners Medical Group 3131 La Canada St., #200 702-731-8224 MATERNAL & FETAL MEDICINE WILSON H. HUANG, MD High Risk Pregnancy Center 2845 Siena Heights Drive, #350, 702-382-3200 Prematurity/Low Birth Weight Infants, Ultrasound BRIAN K. IRIYE, MD High Risk Pregnancy Center 2011 Pinto Ln., #200 702-382-3200 Prenatal Diagnosis, Ultrasound, Diabetes in Pregnancy, Multiple Gestation PATRICIA PIERCE, MD High Risk Pregnancy Center 2011 Pinto Ln., #200 702-382-3200 Pregnancy-High Risk, Ultrasound STEPHEN M. WOLD, MD High Risk Pregnancy Center 2011 Pinto Ln., #200 702-382-3200 Pregnancy-High Risk MEDICAL ONCOLOGY CARLOS ARAUJO, MD HealthCare Partners Medical Group 8285 W Arby Ave, #100B 702-735-7154 Hematology FADI S. BRAITEH, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 3730 S Eastern Ave 702-952-3400 Gastrointestinal Cancer, Lung Cancer, Breast
Cancer, Colon & Rectal Cancer KHOI M. DAO, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 10001 S Eastern Ave, #108 702-952-3444 Hematologic Malignancies, Colon Cancer, Lung Cancer EDGARDO A. FAYLONA, MD Optum Medical Care Cancer Care 2300 W Charleston Blvd. Fl 2, 833-247-5156 OSCAR B. GOODMAN, MD/PHD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 9280 W Sunset Rd, #100 702-952-1251 Genitourinary Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Bladder Cancer REGAN HOLDRIDGE, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 1505 Wigwam Pkwy., #130 702-856-1400 Breast Cancer, Lung Cancer, Colon Cancer H. KESHAVA-PRASAD, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 3730 S Eastern Ave 702-952-3400 Leukemia & Lymphoma, Lung Cancer, Palliative Care EDWIN KINGSLEY, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 3730 S Eastern Ave 702-952-3400 Hematologic Malignancies ANTHONY V. NGUYEN, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 1505 Wigwam Pkwy., #130 702-856-1400 Gastrointestinal Cancer, Lung Cancer, Anemias & Red Blood Cell Disorders RUPESH J. PARIKH, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 10001 S Eastern Ave, #108 702-952-3444 Hematology WOLFRAM E. SAMLOWSKI, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada
9280 W Sunset Rd, #100 702-952-1251 Melanoma, Sarcoma, Kidney Cancer, Merkel Cell Carcinoma HAMIDREZA SANATINIA, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 9280 W Sunset Rd, #100 702-952-1251 Hematology JAMES D. SANCHEZ, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 7445 Peak Drive 702-952-2140 Leukemia & Lymphoma, Lung Cancer NICHOLAS J. VOGELZANG, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 3730 S Eastern Ave 702-952-3400 Prostate Cancer, Mesothelioma, Kidney Cancer, Genitourinary Cancer ANN M. WIERMAN, MD 3150 N Tenaya Way, #200 702-749-3700 Breast Cancer, Lymphoma, Lung Cancer NEONATAL-PERINATAL MEDICINE ELMER S. DAVID, MD A Las Vegas Medical Group 4043 E Sunset Rd 702-733-0744 Neonatal Nutrition NEPHROLOGY ADIN BOLDUR, MD Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada 500 S Rancho Drive, #12 702-877-1887 Hypertension, Kidney Failure JAY K. CHU, MD Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada 500 S Rancho Drive, #12 702-877-1887 RADHIKA R. JANGA, MD Nevada Kidney Disease & Hypertension Ctrs 6970 W Patrick Ln., #140 702-732-1586 BINDU KHANNA, MD Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
500 S Rancho Drive, #12 702-877-1887 Fluid/Electrolyte Balance, Glomerulonephritis LAWRENCE M. LEHRNER, MD Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada 500 S Rancho Drive, #12 702-877-1887 Kidney Disease-Chronic CHIDI C. OKAFOR, MD Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada 500 S Rancho Drive, #12 702-877-1887 Hypertension, Dialysis Care, Dialysis-Peritoneal SYED I. SHAH, MD Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada 500 S Rancho Drive, #12 702-877-1887 Transplant MedicineKidney MARWAN TAKIEDDINE, MD Nevada Kidney Disease & Hypertension Ctrs 2450 Fire Mesa St., #110 702-853-0090 Hypertension, Cholesterol/Lipid Disorders VINCENT YANG, MD Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada 7316 W Cheyenne Ave 702-877-1887 Diabetes, Hypertension, Kidney Disease-Chronic, Kidney Stones NEUROLOGICAL SURGERY
Pain-Back & Neck, Spinal Cord Injury MICHAEL E. SEIFF, MD The Spine & Brain Institute 8530 W Sunset Rd, #250 702-851-0792 Brain & Spinal Surgery, Chiari Malformations, Minimally Invasive Surgery NEUROLOGY SAMIR BANGALORE, MD Nevada Neurosciences Institute 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #765, 702-961-7310 Epilepsy JEFFREY L. CUMMINGS, MD Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health 888 W Bonneville Ave 702-483-6000 Alzheimer’s Disease, Clinical Trials, Neurodegenerative Disorders SHANKER N. DIXIT, MD Neurology Center of Las Vegas 2480 Professional Ct 702-405-7100 Clinical Neurophysiology, Stroke, Epilepsy/Seizure Disorders, Headache ERIC FARBMAN, MD Roseman Medical Group 5380 S Rainbow Blvd., #120, 702-463-4040 Parkinson’s Disease/ Movement Disorders, Huntington’s Disease, Deep Brain Stimulation, Alzheimer’s Disease
Las Vegas Medical Research 8530 W Sunset Rd, #300 702-750-0222 PET Imaging, CT Scan
Retina Consultants of Nevada 653 N Town Center Drive, #518, 702-369-0200 Retina/Vitreous Surgery
OBSTETRICS & GYNECOLOGY
JAY K. MATTHEIS, MD Wellish Vision Institute 2110 E Flamingo Rd, #211 702-733-2020 Dry Eye Syndrome, LASIK-Refractive Surgery, Cataract Surgery, Glaucoma
JOHN V. MARTIN, MD Women’s Health Associates of Southern NV 2050 Mariner Drive, #120 702-255-2022 Pregnancy DONNA M. MILLER, MD Women’s Health Associates of Southern NV 861 Coronado Center Drive, #131, 725-777-0414 Pregnancy-High Risk, Pap Smear Abnormalities, Menopause Problems EDMOND E. PACK, MD Women’s Health Associates of Southern NV 2580 St. Rose Pkwy., #140 702-862-8862 Minimally Invasive Surgery, Endometriosis, Gynecologic Surgery, Robotic Surgery TAMMY REYNOLDS, MD Women’s Health Associates of Southern NV 2050 Mariner Drive, #120 702-255-2022 K. WARREN VOLKER, MD/PHD WellHealth Medical Group 9260 W Sunset Rd, #100 702-255-3547 Gynecology Only, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Pelvic Surgery OPHTHALMOLOGY
DEREK A. DUKE, MD The Spine & Brain Institute 861 Coronado Center Drive, #200, 702-896-0940 Brain & Spinal Surgery, Spinal Surgery JASON E. GARBER, MD Las Vegas Neurosurgical Institute 3012 S Durango Drive 702-835-0088 Spinal Surgery, Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery, Spinal Surgery-Complex, Peripheral Nerve Surgery RANDAL PEOPLES, MD St. Rose-Stanford Clinic, Neurosurgery 2865 Siena Heights Drive, #131, 702-616-6580 Pediatric Neurosurgery,
CHRISTOPHER MILFORD, MD Silver State Neurology 2585 Montessouri St., #100, 702-272-0694 Clinical Neurophysiology, Electromyography (EMG) DYLAN P. WINT, MD Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health 888 W Bonneville Ave 702-483-6000 Neurodegenerative Disorders, NeuroPsychiatry, Cognitive Impairment-Mild, Behavioral Neurology NUCLEAR MEDICINE BHARAT REDDY MOCHERLA, MD
MARK W. DOUBRAVA, MD Eye Care for Nevada The Lakes Business Park 9011 W Sahara Ave, #101 702-794-2020 LASIK-Refractive Surgery, Cataract Surgery, Corneal Disease & Surgery, Cornea Transplant EMILY FANT, MD Shepherd Eye Center 3575 Pecos-McLeod Interconnect 702-731-2088
THACH, MD Retina Consultants of Nevada 653 N Town Center Drive, #518, 702-369-0200 Retina/Vitreous Surgery TIMOTHY H. TWEITO, MD Nevada Retina Center 6980 Smoke Ranch Rd, #110, 702-732-4500 Diabetic Eye Disease/ Retinopathy, Retina/ Vitreous Surgery, Retinal Disorders
WILLIAM N. MAY, MD Wellish Vision Institute 10424 S Eastern Ave, #100, 702-733-2020 Cataract Surgery, Dry Eye Syndrome
KENT L. WELLISH, MD Wellish Vision Institute 2110 E Flamingo Rd, #211 702-733-2020 Corneal Disease & Surgery, LASIK-Refractive Surgery, Cataract Surgery, Dry Eye Syndrome
STEVEN N. MONTGOMERY, MD Shepherd Eye Center 3575 Pecos-McLeod Interconnect 702-731-2088
JASON CRAIG WICKENS, MD Retina Consultants of Nevada 653 N Town Center Drive, #518, 702-369-0200 Retina/Vitreous Surgery, Macular Degeneration, Trauma
TIMOTHY PEROZEK, MD See Right Now 653 N Town Center Drive, #212, 702-982-1360 Glaucoma, Diabetic Eye Disease/Retinopathy, Intraocular Lens Replacement
C. EDWARD YEE, MD Las Vegas Ophthalmology 2980 S Jones Blvd., #A 702-362-3937 Corneal Disease & Surgery, LASIK-Refractive Surgery, Cornea Transplant
HELGA F. PIZIO, MD New Eyes 2020 Wellness Way, #402 702-485-5000 Cataract Surgery, Intraocular Lens Replacement, Eyelid Surgery/Blepharoplasty, LASIK-Refractive Surgery
MEHER YEPREMYAN, MD Retina Consultants of Nevada 653 N Town Center Drive, #518, 702-369-0200 Retinal Disorders, Retina/ Vitreous Surgery
GRACE S. SHIN, MD Ideal EyeCare 6028 S Fort Apache Rd, #101, 702-896-2020 Pediatric Ophthalmology, Cataract Surgery, Glaucoma, Macular Disease/Degeneration
ORTHOPAEDIC SURGERY HUGH BASSEWITZ, MD Desert Orthopaedic Center 2800 E Desert Inn Rd, #100, 702-731-1616 Spinal Surgery, Spinal Disc Replacement, Scoliosis
SURJEET SINGH, MD Nevada Eye Physicians 1505 Wigwam Pkwy. 702-819-6640 Cataract Surgery, LASIKRefractive Surgery, PRKRefractive Surgery
JEFFREY HART, MD Center For Sight 5871 W Craig Rd 702-724-2020
MATTHEW SWANIC, MD Las Vegas Eye Institute 9555 S Eastern Ave, #260 702-816-2525 Cataract Surgery, Corneal Disease, Glaucoma, LASIK-Refractive Surgery
RODNEY HOLLIFIELD, MD
ALLEN BRADFORD SEPTEMBER 2019
GREGORY T. BIGLER, MD Knee & Shoulder Institute 9499 W Charleston Blvd., #200, 702-933-9393 Shoulder & Knee Surgery, Arthroscopic Surgery, Arthritis, Sports Medicine ANDREW CASH, MD Desert Institute of Spine Care
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9339 W Sunset Rd, #100 702-630-3472 Spinal Surgery, Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery
Spina Bifida, Neuromuscular Disorders, Trauma, Foot Deformities ROMAN SIBEL, MD Orthopedic Foot & Ankle Institute 3175 St. Rose Pkwy., #320 702-997-9833 Foot & Ankle Deformities, Charcot Foot, Clubfoot, Diabetic Leg/Foot
ROBERT JEFFREY GRONDEL, MD Orthopaedic Institute of Henderson 10561 Jeffreys St., #230 702-565-6565 Arthroscopic SurgeryShoulder, Sports Medicine, Cartilage Damage & Transplant
DAVID G. STEWART, MD Children’s Bone & Spine Surgery 1525 E Windmill Ln., #201 702-434-6920 Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery, Scoliosis, Fractures-Complex & Non Union
RONALD HILLOCK, MD Nevada Orthopedic & Spine Center 7455 W Washington Ave, #160, 702-258-3773 Musculoskeletal Disorders, Reconstructive Surgery, Musculoskeletal Tumors
MICHAEL D. THOMAS, MD Nevada Orthopedic & Spine Center 7455 W Washington Ave, #160, 702-258-3773 Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery, Scoliosis, Spinal Deformity
STEVEN R. HOER, MD Orthopaedic Institute of Henderson 10561 Jeffreys St., #230 702-565-6565 Joint Replacement ERIK N. KUBIAK, MD OptumCare Orthopaedics and Spine 4750 W Oakey Blvd. 702-724-8877 Reconstructive Surgery
TROY S. WATSON, MD Desert Orthopaedic Center 2800 E Desert Inn Rd, #100, 702-734-4900 Foot & Ankle Surgery, Arthroscopic Surgery, Sports Injuries-Foot & Ankle, Dance/Ballet Injuries
MICHAEL MIAO, MD Desert Orthopaedic Center 2800 E Desert Inn Rd, #100, 702-731-1616 Arthroscopic SurgeryShoulder, Arthroscopic Surgery-Knee, Sports Medicine, Reconstructive Surgery
JOSEPH YU, MD Total Sports Medicine & Orthopedics 10105 Banburry Cross Drive, #445, 702-475-4390 Sports Medicine, Joint Replacement, Shoulder & Knee Surgery, Cartilage Damage
JASON H. NIELSON, MD Children’s Bone & Spine Surgery 1525 E Windmill Ln., #201 702-434-6920 Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery, Pediatric Sports Medicine, Dance Medicine, Arthroscopic Surgery-Hip
OTOLARYNGOLOGY CHRISTINE MIRABAL, MD Ear, Nose & Throat Consultants of Nevada 3195 St. Rose Pkwy., #210 702-792-6700 Ear Disorders, Nasal & Sinus Disorders, Throat Disorders
BERNARD C. ONG, MD 8551 W Lake Mead Blvd., #251 702-796-7979 Joint Replacement, Sports Medicine, Fractures, Knee Reconstruction
MATTHEW NG, MD UNLV Medicine 5380 S Rainbow Blvd., #324, 702-992-6828 Neuro-Otology, Skull Base Surgery, Otology, Acoustic Neuroma
DEIRDRE D. RYAN, MD Children’s Bone & Spine Surgery 9050 W Cheyenne Ave, #110 702-998-5200
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PALACIOS, MD Nevada Ear & Sinus Institute 3692 E Sunset Rd 702-735-7668 Neuro-Otology, Hearing & Balance Disorders, Skull Base Tumors, Sinus Disorders/Surgery WALTER W. SCHROEDER, MD Ear, Nose & Throat Consultants of Nevada 3195 St. Rose Pkwy., #210 702-792-6700 Head & Neck Surgery, Nasal Surgery, Throat Disorders ROBERT C. WANG, MD UNLV Medicine 3150 N Tenaya Way, #112 702-671-6480 Head & Neck Surgery RANDALL T. WEINGARTEN, MD Southern Nevada ENT 10410 S Eastern Ave, #110 702-617-9599 Head & Neck Surgery, Thyroid & Parathyroid Surgery, Sinus Disorders/ Surgery LARRY YU, MD Ear, Nose & Throat Consultants of Nevada 3195 St. Rose Pkwy., #210 702-792-6700 Nasal & Sinus Disorders OTOLARYNGOLOGY/ FACIAL PLASTIC SURGERY SINA NASRICHENIJANI, MD Lubritz & Nasri Physicians 3150 N Tenaya Way, #575 702-804-4729 Head & Neck Surgery, Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Voice Disorders, Thyroid & Parathyroid Surgery ROBERT J. TROELL, MD Beauty By Design 7975 W Sahara Ave, #104 702-242-6488 Facial Plastic Surgery, Eyelid Surgery/ Blepharoplasty, Rhinoplasty, Reconstructive Plastic Surgery
Care Center 9920 W Cheyenne Ave, #110, 702-684-7246 Pain-Chronic, PainInterventional Techniques, Sciatica HO VIET DZUNG, MD Innovative Pain Care Center 9920 W Cheyenne Ave, #110, 702-684-7246 Pain-Back & Neck MICHAEL J. MCKENNA, MD McKenna, Ruggeroli & Helmi 6070 S Fort Apache Rd, #100, 702-307-7700 Pain-Chronic, Pain-Cancer, Pain-Back, Head & Neck ANTHONY RUGGEROLI, MD McKenna, Ruggeroli & Helmi 6070 S Fort Apache Rd, #100, 702-307-7700 Pain-Musculoskeletal, Pain-Interventional Techniques PEDIATRIC CARDIOLOGY RUBEN J. ACHERMAN, MD Children’s Heart Center Nevada 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #690, 702-732-1290 Neonatal Cardiology, Arrhythmias, Fetal Echocardiography WILLIAM J. CASTILLO, MD Children’s Heart Center Nevada 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #690 702-732-1290 Fetal Cardiology, Echocardiography WILLIAM N. EVANS, MD Children’s Heart Center Nevada 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #690, 702-732-1290 ALVARO GALINDO, MD Children’s Heart Center Nevada 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #690, 702-732-1290 Interventional Cardiology, Cardiac Catheterization
#690, 702-732-1290 Fetal Echocardiography ABRAHAM ROTHMAN, MD Children’s Heart Center Nevada 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #690, 702-732-1290 Interventional Cardiology PEDIATRIC GASTROENTEROLOGY HOWARD I. BARON, MD Ped Gastroenterology & Nutrition Assocs 3196 S Maryland Pkwy., #309, 702-791-0477 Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Eosinophilic Esophagitis, Gastrointestinal Motility Disorders ELIZABETH MILETI, DO Ped Gastroenterology & Nutrition Assocs 3196 S Maryland Pkwy., #309, 702-791-0477 REBECCA L. SCHERR, MD UNLV Medicine 1524 Pinto Ln. Fl 3 702-992-6868 Nutrition PEDIATRIC HEMATOLOGYONCOLOGY KANYALAKSHMI AYYANAR, MD Cure 4 The Kids Foundation 1 Breakthrough Way 702-732-1493 Neuro-Oncology, Brain Tumors ALAN IKEDA, MD Cure 4 The Kids Foundation 1 Breakthrough Way 702-732-1493 Bone Marrow Transplant, Sickle Cell Disease, Gene Therapy, Stem Cell Transplant PEDIATRIC INFECTIOUS DISEASE DAVID DI JOHN, MD UNLV Medicine 1524 Pinto Ln. Fl 3 702-992-6868 Vaccines, Travel Medicine PEDIATRIC NEPHROLOGY
PAIN MEDICINE DANIEL L. BURKHEAD, MD Innovative Pain
GARY A. MAYMAN, MD Children’s Heart Center Nevada 3006 S Maryland Pkwy.,
MICHAEL O. AIGBE, MD Children’s Nephrology Clinic 7271 W Sahara Ave, #110 D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
702-639-1700 Kidney Disease, Kidney Failure, Hypertension PEDIATRIC OTOLARYNGOLOGY TSUNG JU O-LEE, MD UNLV Medicine 5380 S Rainbow Blvd., #324, 702-992-6828 Airway Disorders, Ear Infections, Sleep Apnea, Hearing Loss PEDIATRIC PULMONOLOGY CRAIG T. NAKAMURA, MD Children’s Lung Specialists 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #315, 702-598-4411 Asthma, Lung Disease, Sleep Disorders/Apnea, Cystic Fibrosis DAVID P. PARKS, MD UNLV Medicine 1524 Pinto Ln. Fl 3 702-992-6868 Lung Disease, Cystic Fibrosis, Pneumonia PEDIATRIC SURGERY NICHOLAS F. FIORE, MD Pediatric Surgery Associates 653 N Town Center Drive, #412, 702-233-8101 MICHAEL SCHEIDLER, MD UNLV Medicine 3121 S Maryland Pkwy., #400, 702-650-2500 Trauma PEDIATRIC UROLOGY CLARE CLOSE, MD Close Pediatric Urology 2653 W Horizon Ridge Pkwy., #100 702-220-4006 Congenital AnomaliesGenitourinary, Fetal Urology, Hypospadias, Undescended Testis
702-369-4999 Undescended Testis, Incontinence, Congenital Anomalies-Genitourinary
#100, 702-731-4088 Musculoskeletal Injuries, Musculoskeletal Disorders, Pain Management
PEDIATRICS
NIANJUN TANG, MD Centennial Medical Group 4454 N Decatur Blvd. 702-839-1203 Pain Management
JAMES A. BAKERINK, MD Wee Care Pediatrics 4785 S Durango Drive, #101, 702-889-8444 Newborn Care, Preventive Medicine, Adolescent Medicine, ADD/ADHD BLAIR DUDDY, MD Southwest Medical Associates 2704 N Tenaya Way 702-877-5199 Diabetes, Nutrition PAMELA GREENSPON, MD Desert Valley Pediatrics 10105 Banburry Cross, #370, 702-260-4525 Nutrition, Newborn Care KAMI LARSEN, MD Nevada Health Centers 98 E Lake Mead Pkwy., #103, 800-787-2568 BEVERLY NEYLAND, MD UNLV Medicine 1524 Pinto Ln. Fl 3 702-944-2828 RYAN M. NISHIHARA, MD Meadows Pediatrics 9030 W Cheyenne Ave, #120, 702-436-7337 Adolescent Medicine WESLEY ROBERTSON, MD Sunshine Valley Pediatrics 7455 W Washington Ave, #300, 702-363-3000 LAURA H. WEIDENFELD, MD Sunshine Valley Pediatrics 7455 W Washington Ave, #300, 702-363-3000 PHYSICAL MEDICINE & REHABILITATION
ANDREW H. HWANG, MD Las Vegas Pediatric Urology 653 N Town Center Drive, #407, 702-728-5686 Transplant-Kidney, Endourology
BEVINS K. CHUE, MD Rehabilitation Specialists of Henderson 1669 W Horizon Ridge Pkwy., #100, 702-386-1041 Arthritis, Musculoskeletal Disorders, Neuromuscular Disorders
JAMES C. PLAIRE, MD Children’s Urology Associates 6670 S Tenaya Way, #180
ANDREW B. KIM, DO Desert Orthopaedic Center 2800 E Desert Inn Rd,
PLASTIC SURGERY HAYLEY BROWN, MD Desert Hills Plastic Surgery Center 10001 S Eastern Ave, #406, 702-260-7707 Facelift, Blepharoplasty, Breast Augmentation, Breast Reduction ARTHUR M. CAMBEIRO, MD SurgiSpa 2370 W Horizon Ridge Pkwy., #130 702-566-8300 Facelift, Liposuction & Body Contouring, CoolSculpting, Breast Augmentation MICHAEL C. EDWARDS, MD Plastic Surgery Vegas 8530 W Sunset Rd, #130 702-822-2100 Breast Cosmetic & Reconstructive Surgery, Breast Augmentation, Breast Reduction, Breast Reconstruction & Augmentation W. TRACY HANKINS, MD Hankins & Sohn Plastic Surgery Assocs 60 N Pecos Rd 702-948-7595 Cosmetic Surgery-Face & Breast, Liposuction & Body Contouring TERRENCE B. HIGGINS, MD Plastic Surgery Vegas 8530 W Sunset Rd, #130 702-822-2100 Liposuction & Body Contouring, Cosmetic Surgery-Breast, Facial Rejuvenation, Microsurgery CHRISTOPHER KHORSANDI, MD VIP Plastic Surgery 2779 Sunridge Heights Pkwy., #100, 702-608-1318 Cosmetic Surgery, Breast Augmentation, Hand Surgery
JOHN M. MENEZES, MD UNLV Medicine 1707 W Charleston Blvd., #190, 702-671-5110 Craniofacial Surgery, Cosmetic & Reconstructive Surgery
#100, 702-476-4900 Asthma & Emphysema, Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (COPD), Interstitial Lung Disease, Sleep Disorders/Apnea
STEPHEN M. MILLER, MD 8435 S Eastern Ave, #100 702-369-1001 Cosmetic Surgery-Face & Breast, Liposuction & Body Contouring, Hair Restoration/Transplant
JOAQUIM TAVARES, MD United Critical Care 6040 S Fort Apache Rd, #100, 702-476-4900 Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (COPD), Lung Cancer, Critical Care, Asthma
JOHN J. MINOLI, MD Smith Plastic Surgery 8871 W Sahara Ave 702-838-2455 Facial Plastic Surgery, Rhinoplasty, Eyelid Surgery/Blepharoplasty, Botox Therapy
GEORGE S. TU, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 3150 N Tenaya Way, #125 702-869-0855 Sleep Disorders/Apnea, Emphysema, Pulmonary Fibrosis
LANE SMITH, MD Smith Plastic Surgery 8871 W Sahara Ave 702-838-2455 Breast Augmentation, Facelift, Liposuction & Body Contouring, CoolSculpting
RADIATION ONCOLOGY MICHAEL J. ANDERSON, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 10001 S Eastern Ave, #108 702-952-3444 Head & Neck Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Brachytherapy, Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT)
SAMUEL SOHN, MD Hankins & Sohn Plastic Surgery Assocs 60 N Pecos Rd 702-948-7595 Cosmetic Surgery-Breast, Body Contouring after Weight Loss, Cosmetic & Reconstructive Surgery, Botox Therapy
ANDREW M. COHEN, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 7445 Peak Drive 702-952-2140 Breast Cancer, Lung Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT)
PSYCHIATRY ALISON NETSKI, MD 8845 W Flamingo Rd, #210, 702-646-0188 Psychosomatic Disorders, Geriatric Psychiatry, ADD/ ADHD, Psychiatry in Physical Illness
DAN LEE CURTIS, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 655 N Town Center Drive 702-233-2200 Prostate Cancer, Brachytherapy, Head & Neck Cancer, Skin Cancer
DANIEL SUSSMAN, MD 4205 Mont Blanc Way 702-493-5203 Psychoanalysis, Geriatric Psychiatry
GREG A. DEAN, MD Radiation Oncology Centers of Nevada 3980 S Eastern Ave 702-463-9100
PULMONARY DISEASE JOHN B. COLLIER, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 3150 N Tenaya Way, #125 702-869-0855 Critical Care, Lung Disease, Sleep Disorders/Apnea
FARZANEH FARZIN, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 3730 S Eastern Ave 702-952-3366 Breast Cancer, Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT), Stereotactic Radiosurgery
WAEL EID, MD United Critical Care 6040 S Fort Apache Rd, SEPTEMBER 2019
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CARLOS ALBERTO LOPEZ, MD Radiation Oncology Centers of Nevada 624 S Tonopah Drive 702-463-9100 Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT), Stereotactic Radiosurgery
EVA D. LITTMAN, MD Red Rock Fertility Center 9120 W Russell Rd, #200 702-749-4834 Infertility-IVF, Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, Egg & Embryo Freezing BRUCE S. SHAPIRO, MD/PHD Fertility Center of Las Vegas 8851 W Sahara Ave, #100 702-254-1777 Infertility-IVF
RAUL T. MEOZ, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 9280 W Sunset Rd, #100 702-952-1251 Brachytherapy, Stereotactic Radiosurgery
RHEUMATOLOGY SUSAN A. REISINGER, MD 21st Century Oncology 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #100, 702-894-5100 Breast Cancer, Stereotactic Radiosurgery, Brain Tumors, Prostate Cancer
NEIL BRAUNSTEIN, MD Southwest Medical Associates 4750 W Oakey Blvd. 702-251-3670 Autoimmune Disease, Fibromyalgia
MICHAEL T. SINOPOLI, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 7445 Peak Drive 702-952-2140 Prostate Cancer, Lung Cancer, Breast Cancer, Stereotactic Radiosurgery
MICHAEL E. CLIFFORD, MD 7151 Cascade Valley Ct, #103 702-944-5444 Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus/SLE, Osteoporosis EWA OLECH, MD Access Health 8440 W Lake Mead Blvd., #104, 702-489-4838 Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus/SLE, Inflammatory Arthritis, Clinical Trials
RITCHIE STEVENS, MD Radiation Oncology Centers of Nevada 3980 S Eastern Ave 702-463-9100 Brachytherapy, Prostate Cancer, Gynecologic Cancers
SPORTS MEDICINE BEAU JAMES W. TOY, MD Radiation Oncology Centers of Nevada 624 S Tonopah Drive 702-463-9100 Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy, Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT)
TIMOTHY JAMES TRAINOR, MD Advanced Orthopedics & Sports Medicine 7195 Advanced Way 702-740-5327 Arthroscopic Surgery, Shoulder & Knee Surgery, Shoulder Arthroscopic Surgery, Fractures
PAUL TREADWELL, MD 21st Century Oncology 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #100, 702-990-4767 Pediatric Cancers, Breast Cancer, Gynecologic Cancers, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
RANDALL E. YEE, DO Advanced Orthopedics & Sports Medicine 7195 Advanced Way 702-740-5327 Arthroscopic Surgery, Cartilage Damage & Transplant, Knee Surgery
REPRODUCTIVE ENDOCRINOLOGY/ INFERTILITY
Bariatric/Obesity Surgery, Laparoscopic SurgeryAdvanced, Minimally Invasive Surgery ANNABEL BARBER, MD UNLV Medicine 3150 N Tenaya Way, #112 702-671-6480 Robotic Surgery, Colon & Rectal Cancer & Surgery, Gastrointestinal Surgery, Endocrine Surgery
DARREN W. SOONG, MD Surgical Weight Control Center 3802 Meadows Ln. 702-313-8446 Bariatric/Obesity Surgery, Laparoscopic SurgeryAdvanced, Minimally Invasive Surgery
PANKAJ BHATNAGAR, MD Advanced Laparoscopic & General Surgery 6240 N Durango Drive, #120, 702-791-7855 Laparoscopic SurgeryAdvanced
CHARLES R. ST. HILL, MD UNLV Medicine Dept of Surgery 1707 W Charleston Blvd., #160, 702-671-5150 Cancer Surgery, Gallbladder Surgery, Hernia
PETER A. CARAVELLA, MD Las Vegas Surgical Associates 8930 W Sunset Rd, #300 702-258-7788
FRANCIS W. TENG, MD Advanced Surgical Care 3150 N Tenaya Way, #508 702-838-5888 Bariatric/Obesity Surgery, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Laparoscopic Surgery, Robotic Surgery
SOUZAN EL-EID, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 9280 W Sunset Rd, #100 702-255-1133 Breast Cancer & Surgery, Cancer Surgery DANIEL KIRGAN, MD UNLV Medicine Dept of Surgery 1707 W Charleston Blvd., #160, 702-671-5150 Cancer Surgery, Breast Cancer & Surgery, Melanoma, Sarcoma DEBORAH ANN KUHLS, MD UNLV Medicine Dept of Surgery 1707 W Charleston Blvd., #160, 702-671-5150 Trauma, Critical Care ALLAN DAVID MACINTYRE, DO Desert Surgical Associates 3196 S Maryland Pkwy., #101A 702-369-7152 Bariatric/Obesity Surgery, Robotic Surgery, Trauma/ Critical Care, Minimally Invasive Surgery
SURGERY JEFFREY FISCH, MD Green Valley Fertility Partners 2510 Wigwam Pkwy., #201 702-722-2229 Infertility-IVF, Menstrual Disorders
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JAMES DEE ATKINSON, MD Surgical Weight Control Center 3802 Meadows Ln. 702-313-8446
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Vascular Surgery, Vein Disorders, Varicose Veins, Hair Restoration/Transplant
IRWIN B. SIMON, MD Vegas Valley Vein Institute 2450 W Horizon Ridge Pkwy., #100 702-341-7608 Minimally Invasive
MARGARET A. TERHAR, MD Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 3006 S Maryland Pkwy., #270, 702-369-6008 Breast Disease, Breast Surgery THORACIC & CARDIAC SURGERY QUYNH FEIKES, MD Cardiovascular Surgery of Southern Nevada 5320 S Rainbow Blvd., #282, 702-737-3808 Cardiothoracic Surgery, Endovascular Surgery, Esophageal Surgery JUAN ENRIQUE MARTIN, MD Cardiovascular Surgery of Southern Nevada 5320 S Rainbow Blvd., #282, 702-737-3808 Cardiac Surgery, Heart Valve Surgery-Aortic, Minimally Invasive Surgery MICHAEL G. WOOD, MD MountainView Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery Associates 3150 N Tenaya Way, #440 702-962-5920 Cardiac Surgery-Adult, Heart Valve Surgery, Thoracic Aortic Surgery, Heart Valve Surgery-Mitral
UROGYNECOLOGY/ FEMALE PELVIC MEDICINE & RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY VANI DANDOLU, MD Southwest Medical Associates 2704 N Tenaya Way 702-877-5199 Urogynecology, Incontinence-Urinary, Pelvic Organ Prolapse Repair, Pelvic Surgery GEOFFREY C. HSIEH, MD Women’s Cancer Center of Nevada 3131 La Canada St., #241 702-693-6870 Urogynecology, Pelvic Reconstruction, Incontinence-Urinary, Pelvic Organ Prolapse Repair UROLOGY SCOTT BARANOFF, MD Las Vegas Urology 9053 S Pecos Rd, #2900 702-735-8000 Impotence, Incontinence, Urologic Cancer, Kidney Stones JOSEPH V. CANDELA, MD Las Vegas Urology 7500 Smoke Ranch Rd, #200, 702-233-0727 Urology-Female, Urologic Cancer SHELDON J. FREEDMAN, MD 653 N Town Center Drive, #308, 702-732-0282 Erectile Dysfunction, Vasectomy-No Scalpel, Kidney Stones, Prostate Cancer VIJAY GOLI, MD Las Vegas Urology 7500 Smoke Ranch Rd, #200, 702-233-0727 Kidney Stones, Incontinence-Male & Female, Minimally Invasive Surgery, Prostate CancerCryosurgery O. ALEX LESANI, MD Las Vegas Urology 7150 W Sunset Rd, #200 702-233-0727 Reconstructive Surgery, Robotic Surgery, Urinary Reconstruction LAWRENCE H. NEWMAN, MD Las Vegas Urology 7150 W Sunset Rd, #201 D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
702-316-1616 Bladder Surgery, Prostate Benign Disease (BPH), Erectile Dysfunction, Kidney Stones SARAH RYAN, MD Urology Specialists of Nevada 2010 Wellness Way, #200 702-877-0814 Urology-Female, Incontinence MICHAEL P. VERNI, MD Urology Center 653 N Town Center Drive, #302 702-212-3428 Pediatric Urology, Endourology JASON ZOMMICK, MD Urology Specialists of Nevada 58 N Pecos Rd 702-877-0814 Prostate Benign Disease (BPH), Vasectomy & Vasectomy Reversal VASCULAR & INTERVENTIONAL RADIOLOGY STEVEN H. DAVIS, MD Red Rock Radiology 7130 Smoke Ranch Rd, #101 702-304-8135 Angioplasty & Stent Placement, Chemoembolization & Tumor Ablation, Radiofrequency Tumor Ablation AARON PETERSON, MD Red Rock Radiology 7130 Smoke Ranch Rd, #101 702-304-8135 VASCULAR SURGERY EARL COTTRELL, MD General Vascular Specialists 7200 W Cathedral Rock Drive, #130 702-228-8600 Endovascular Surgery, Varicose Veins BRUCE HIRSCHFELD, MD General Vascular Specialists 7200 W Cathedral Rock Drive, #130, 702-228-8600 Endovascular Surgery, Varicose Veins
Hamlet
2019 Season June 27 - October 12 HAMLET MACBETH JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT TWELFTH NIGHT THE BOOK OF WILL EVERY BRILLIANT THING THE PRICE THE CONCLUSION OF HENRY VI: PARTS TWO AND THREE Download our app for show dates, information, and more!
800-PLAYTIX • bard.org • #utahshakes SEPTEMBER 2019
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MARKETPLACE SHOPS • DINING • GOODS Vegas City Opera REAL VEGAS. REAL OPERA. The newly named Vegas City Opera is still your best bet for contemporary opera and classics with a twist in the Las Vegas Valley. Join our local artists this season for exciting productions in new locations. We reinvent, reimagine and recreate Opera experiences that inspire! VegasCityOpera.org
Jaguar Land Rover Las Vegas 2019 RANGE ROVER SPORT: ENDLESS PERFORMANCE. UNRIVALED CAPABILITY. As the flagship of the Range Rover Sport line, the Autobiography incorporates the same 518 hp 5.0-liter engine found in the V8 Supercharged with levels of interior sophistication and exterior styling that let it stand alone as the most exclusive Range Rover Sport. To experience one of these amazing vehicles for yourself, visit Jaguar Land Rover Las Vegas for a test drive today.. 702.579.0400 jlrlv.com
Table 34 Featuring Chef Wes Kendrick’s contemporary American cuisine including fresh fish, wild game, duck and lamb, Certified Angus Beef and comfort food classics. Conveniently located off the 215 and Warm Springs. Serving dinner Tuesday Saturday and Lunch Monday - Friday. 600 E Warm Springs Road 702-263-0034 Advertisement
Viva Las Pop-era Vegas City Opera presents a celebration of treasured standards, cross-over hits, and legit musical theatre pieces, featuring hits from Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Queen, Michael Bublé, Andrea Bocelli, Sarah Brightman, The Phantom of the Opera, and more. All of your favorite popular classics in one exciting concert with the best voices in Las Vegas. Charleston Heights Arts Center, September 14th, 2019 at 7:00pm Tickets: $15 VegasCityOpera.org
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SEPT. 14–21
In Third Place
Geoff Carter's photographs of people in third places — that is, the place outside of our work and job, where we gather to meet, converse, and exchange ideas. Reception Sept. 14, 5P. Free. Our Place in Emergency Arts, 520 Fremont Street
The Guide ▼
ART THROUGH SEPT. 25
Dry Wit
A curation of art that together hint at the contrasts that all of us bring as we create this assemblage city we call home. This is the first time the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art will take its collection out for an exhibition. Free. Nevada Humanities Program Gallery, 1017 S. First St., nevadahumanities.org
THROUGH SEPT. 26 Priscilla Fowler Fine Art Priscilla Fowler Fine Art cordially presents the Grand Opening of Priscilla Fine Art at its new Arts District location on Main Street in Downtown Las Vegas Featuring the work of David Baird: A Survey September 5 - October 26th Opening Reception Preview Thursday September 5 5pm - 11pm Closing Reception Thursday October 24 5pm - 7pm (Informal Artist Talk at 6pm) 1300 S Main Street #110 Las Vegas NV 89104 719-371-5640 @priscillafowlergallery www.priscillafowler.com
A Good Offense: Dino Might
JW Caldwell’s exhibit guesses what dinosaurs might say or do while they are stomping through the Preserve this summer. 9A–5P, free for members or with paid general admission. Big Springs Gallery at Springs Preserve, springs preserve.org
THROUGH SEPT. 28
Remnant
Featuring the photography of Jason Tannen, this exhibition explores his interest in tracing urban erosion and obsolescence as seen in storefront displays and the topography of signs, symbols, and human representation. Artist reception Sept. 26, 5P. Tue–Fri 10A–9:30P; Sat. 8:30A–7P, free. Charleston Heights Arts Center, 800 S. Brush St., arts lasvegas.org
THROUGH OCT. 18
Windows on First: “There Is Nothing I Can Do Without You”
Artist Shan Michael Evans’s living and evolving public art exhibition features themes of dependency, growth, change, and circumstance the world around us experiences. Free. Las Vegas City Hall along First Street, arts lasvegas.org
SEPT. 13–FEB. 22
Connective Tissue
THROUGH NOV. 7
Large-scale murals and interactive installations enriched by artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya’s belief that power and impact are created through connections and networks. Opening reception Sept. 13, 5P. Free. Marjorie Barrick Museum at UNLV, unlv. edu SEPTEMBER 2019
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Native Nevada Basketry Traditions
The focus of this exhibition is to display baskets that have differences and similarities in construction and design; all basket weavers are Native American Nevada residents. Mon–Thu 7A–5:30P, free. City Hall Grand Gallery, 495 D E S E R T C O M PA N I O N
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The Guide S. Main St., first floor, artslas vegas.org
SEPT. 4–NOV. 2
Lobo Loco
Mexican folklore and outsider art by artist Leobardo Bracamontes. Free. Core Contemporary, 900 E. Karen Ave., core contemporary.com ▼
MUSIC SEPT. 7
Las Vegas Philharmonic Opening Night — Pictures at an Exhibition
In addition to Mussorgsky’s classic, the orchestra will be performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major and Anna Clyne’s Masquerade. 7:30P, $31–$110. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter. com
SEPT. 11
Kronos Quartet
Sam Green tells the multi-decade and continent-spanning story of the group as it revisits its extensive body of work, performing music by George Crumb, Laurie Anderson, and John Zorn. 7:30P, $10. Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall at UNLV, unlv.edu
SEPT. 20
Henderson Symphony Orchestra
Led by Alexandra Arrieche, the HSO opens their season with "New Frontiers," featuring Dvorak's
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SEPTEMBER 2019
Symphony No. 9 7P, free. Henderson Pavilion, 200 S. Green Valley Parkway, cityof henderson.com
SEPT. 23
NEXTET New Music
Enjoy an evening of 20th and 21st century music by living composers. 7:30P, free. Lee and Thomas Beam Music Center at UNLV, unlv.edu
SEPT. 25
UNLV Symphony Orchestra
The season opener of the UNLV Symphony Orchestra will feature a wide range of classical music! 7:30P, $10; $8 seniors and military; students get one free ticket with student ID. Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall at UNLV, unlv.edu
SEPT. 30
Magdalena SternBaczewsca
Columbia University piano professor delivers an evening of beautiful piano and harpsichord music. 7:30P, free. Lee and Thomas Beam Music Center at UNLV, unlv.edu
OCT. 4
¡Viva el Mariachi!
Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with an evening of popular mariachi music performed by the talented young musicians from local middle and high schools. 7P, free. Main
The Guide Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org
LasVegas Blvd., petermoruzzi. com
▼
SEPT. 20
THEATER & COMEDY SEPT. 21
The Bitchy Waiter Show
Waiter turned one-man show, this performer brings his stories and songs about the woes of being a waiter to life. For mature audiences. 7P, free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org
SEPT. 29
Looking for Tiger Lily
Anthony Hudson stars in this one-person cabaret show utilizing song, dance, drag, and video to put a queer spin on the ancestral tradition of storytelling. 2P, free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org ▼
DISCUSSIONS & READINGS SEPT. 12
Reading and Signing of Greetings from Las Vegas
Peter Moruzzi will read from and sign his book that visually celebrates Las Vegas’ evolution from a dusty railroad town to the world’s entertainment capital with more than 300 images. 6P, free. Inspire Theater, 107 S.
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Staged Reading of The Ghosts Of Lote Bravo A Public Fit Theatre Company reads the Hilary Bettis play about young girls disappearing in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. Conversation follows performance. Mature audiences only. 7:30P, free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org
SEPT. 20
The Poets' Corner
Founded at the West Las Vegas Arts Center in 1997, The Poets’ Corner premiered as the first established poetry program in Las Vegas. This monthly forum event, hosted by LaBlaque Williams, is for established poets and openmic participants and features the best local talent. Due to potential subject matter, participants should be age 17 or older. 7:30P, free. West Las Vegas Arts Center, 947 W. Lake Mead Blvd., artslasvegas.org
sonal stories. 6P, free. The Center for Science & Wonder, 1651 E. Sunset Road, lasvegasstory slam@gmail. com
OCT. 3
Las Vegas Stories: Woodlawn Cemetery
The Nevada Preservation Foundation will discuss Las Vegas’s oldest cemetery. Learn the stories of those interned there. 7P, free. Jewel Box Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org
OCT. 5
Fishnet & Spotlights: Specialty Acts, Part 1
The popular series focused on the feather and rhinestone-clad history of the Las Vegas Strip continues with another panel, this time featuring some of the amazing specialty acts that performed in the production shows. 2P, free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld. org ▼
DANCE
SEPT. 27
SEPT. 13
September’s theme is “Rivals,” but don’t let the theme get in the way of a good story! Tell or listen to five-minute per-
Travel back in time to the 1950s and get ready to shake, rattle, and roll! Dress in your best '50s neon attire for Valley View’s first glow dance. Snacks
Las Vegas Story SLAM
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SEPTEMBER 2019
Neon Sock Hop
provided. Ages 7–14. 6P, $10. Valley View Recreation Center, 500 Harris St., cityof henderson.com ▼
FAMILY & FESTIVALS SEPT. 6
First Friday
From crafts to food to everything in between, this is the place to celebrate all things artsy. Cockroach Theatre offers 20-minute vignettes, multiple food trucks offer mouth-watering dining, and booths of all sorts offer oneof-a-kind items. 5–11P, free. 1025 First St., ffflv. org
SEPT. 13
Escape Room Series: Star Wars
Kids will enjoy a fun, themed escape-room adventure. Dinner and refreshments provided. Ages 10–15. 5:30P, $15. Downtown Recreation Center, 105 W. Basic Road, cityof henderson.com
SEPT. 13
Kids' Night Out: Ice Cream Social
Kids can experience a fun-filled night that harkens back to the ice cream socials and soda “shoppes” of yesteryear while playing games and doing arts and crafts. Dinner is
included. Ages 5–12. 5:30P, $20. Black Mountain Recreation Center, 599 Greenway Road, cityofhenderson. com
SEPT. 13
Lucha Vavoom with musical guests The Delta Bombers A mind-blowing mix of Mexican masked wrestling, burlesque, and comedy preceded by a popular rockabilly '50s blues band. 18+ only. 8P, $40–$50. Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, brooklynbowl. com
SEPT. 28
Family Pride Day
Celebrate LGBTQ+ families with activities, community resources, speakers, and events for all ages including: Drag Queen Storytime hosted by Carla Rossi, a Teen Drag competition, comedian Guy Branum, and food trucks! 11A–4P, free. Clark County Library, lvccld. org
SEPT. 28
10th Annual Grapes & Hops Festival
Enjoy a wonderful night filled with amazing fine wines, a unique selection of handcrafted brews, food from local favorites, live entertainment, and the company of good friends.
Proceeds benefit Par for the Cure. 5P, $50–$125. Springs Preserve, springs preserve.org
OCT. 6
The Magic of Greg Devereaux
This well-regarded magician has performed at many hotels on the Strip and in venues around the globe. 7P, $20. Sun City Summerlin, sun citysummerlin. com ▼
FUNDRAISERS SEPT. 4
Las Vegas Hospitality Association 33rd Annual Charity Golf Tournament
Your chance to win $10K with a hole-in-one, compete in the longest drive contest, and be entertained by the Maverick Helicopter golf-ball drop. 9A–4P, $225–$900. Bali Hai Golf Club, mylvha.org
SEPT. 9
Mondays Dark benefitting Helping Hands of Las Vegas Valley Mark Shunock gathers an eclectic cast of guests including stars from Hollywood, the Las Vegas Strip, musical acts, athletes, and celebrity chefs for 90 minutes of chat, entertainment, and a lot of laughs
D E S E R T C O M P A N I O N .V E G A S
— all to benefit a local charity. 8P, $20–$50. The Space, 3460 Cavaretta Court, mondays dark.com
SEPT. 12
Sunshine Nevada Annual "Love & Light" Masquerade Party
Enjoy an 18th century evening of fantasy featuring secret guests, costumes, signature cocktails, savory hors d’oeuvres, and live music. Ages 18+ only. 6:30P, $125. Tivoli Village, sunshinenevada. org
SEPT. 21
Walk for Water — One Drop
Join in a fun walking event that raises funds and brings awareness to water issues. 100% of proceeds go to water conservation, technology, and education efforts in Southern Nevada. 7:30A, $15–$20. Springs Preserve, onedrop.org
SEPT. 23
Mondays Dark — benefitting the Majestic Repertory Theatre
Help the American Heart Association by taking a few laps around the lake. This year’s theme is Wizard of Oz, so come in costume for prizes. 8A–11A, free. Sunset Park, www2.heart.org
Mark Shunock gathers an eclectic cast of guests including stars from Hollywood, the Las Vegas Strip, musical acts, athletes, and celebrity chefs for 90 minutes of chat, entertainment, and a lot of laughs — all to benefit a local charity. 8P, $20– $50. The Space, 3460 Cavaretta Court, mondays dark.com
SEPT. 20
OCT. 3
Come enjoy a golf challenge, appetizers, raffles, silent auction, and trophies awarded to best teams all while raising funds to help sexually exploited women. 1P, $60+. Topgolf, rfwlasvegas.org
An opulently delightful masquerade ball featuring a taste of Downtown Las Vegas, open bar, silent auction, and guest of honor Christina Aguilera! 5:30P, $200. Mansion 54, 1044 S. 6th St., theshade tree.org
SEPT. 14
AHA 30th Annual Heart Walk
Refuge for Women LV — 4th Annual Topgolf Challenge Fundraiser
The Shade Tree of Las Vegas — 30th Anniversary Mask Off Gala
September 17–29, 2019
Celebrating Sixteen Years of Art Inspired by Place
Escalante, Utah is located in the heart of Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument between Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef National Parks. escalantecanyonsartfestival.org Sandi Snead, Morning Shadow Dance (detail), 2018 Artistic Excellence Award
SEPTEMBER 2019
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96 SEPTEMBER 1, 1930: 1,576 students enroll in Las Vegas schools, a 30 percent increase from the previous year, as four new teachers are hired to help “with the crowded conditions.” SEPTEMBER 2, 1946: Frank Waters, 38, son of a prominent local family, is shot and killed by his “Irish war bride,” Bridget Waters, 26, in front of their infant son, at 130 Palm Lane. She quickly becomes the international face of countless war brides abandoned by their American husbands. SEPTEMBER 3, 1921: This past week, in a tragedy of unrequited love, pipefitter Esteban Torres, 29, “while visiting his inamorata, one Josephine Young, an inmate (prostitute) at the Arizona Club, placed a revolver in his mouth sending one or two bullets through his head.” SEPTEMBER 4, 1933: After Coroner Frank Ryan rules that Marie Lambertson, 72, recently died in a head-on collision on Boulder Highway because the road lacks a white dividing line, he recommends one be painted down the middle of the road. SEPTEMBER 5, 1924: Will Waterson is sentenced to 10 years in the state prison for incest, and “his wife and little children” move to Carson City to be near him during his time there. SEPTEMBER 6, 1952: Polio cases in Clark County approach 100 during the worst epidemic in U.S. history. SEPTEMBER 7, 1996: At the MGM, Mike Tyson knocks out Bruce Seldon in their WBA title bout. Following the match, rapper Tupac Shakur is shot multiple times on Flamingo Avenue. SEPTEMBER 8, 1996: Playing at area theaters are Bulletproof, with Damon Wayans, and A Time to Kill, with Sandra Bullock. SEPTEMBER 9, 1908: It’s reported that recently, socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, greeted by a big crowd at the train depot, said: “There
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RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY Droll, odd, poignant, and awkward moments from the many Septembers of Las Vegas history BY
Chip Mosher
is no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Republicans have all the big capitalists, and Democrats all the little capitalists. It don’t make any difference to you whether you are eaten by the alligator or by 10,000 mosquitoes.” SEPTEMBER 10, 1975: The Taxicab Authority has okayed installing “robber-proof cameras” in three experimental cabs for 30 days to see if they work as crime deterrents. SEPTEMBER 11, 1993: Cabbie Joe Carara, 43, has become the 12th cabdriver killed on the job in 25 years when he is shot after picking up a fare at The Mirage. SEPTEMBER 12, 1933: The government reports that 63 million pounds of cement were used on the Boulder Dam project in August. SEPTEMBER 13, 1996: Tupac Shakur dies on Friday the 13th at the University Medical Center, six days after being shot near the Strip. SEPTEMBER 14, 1937: Quail shooting has been observed in North Las Vegas at night, but the season doesn’t open until October 20, and “under no circumstances are hunters to operate after sundown.”
SEPTEMBER 2019
SEPTEMBER 15, 1921: Lions Club members are “growling” after their booth at the Community Fair “to raise funds for crippled children” is shut down by police for abusing goldfish, as patrons try tossing ping pong balls into fish bowls to win a fish. SEPTEMBER 16, 2003: After three killings within 24 hours near UNLV’s campus, officials declare that the university “is located in a high crime area.” SEPTEMBER 17, 1969: Psychiatrist Jack Jurasky cites timing, temperature, and temperament as factors in the city’s high murder rate. SEPTEMBER 18, 1996: Running against Bill Clinton, Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole jokingly remarks he has come here to campaign for “Nevada’s four big electoral votes.” SEPTEMBER 19, 1955: The Marx Brothers are appearing at the Riviera Hotel. SEPTEMBER 20, 1949: Stanley Meluski confesses to having staged his own beating and robbery to hide gambling losses “from his attractive brunette wife and small child.” SEPTEMBER 21, 1949: To eliminate the smog problem caused by burning garbage, the Nevada Sanitation Co. proposes putting a dump far away, near Sunrise Mountain, to relieve downtown “of the pungent fumes from the present dump.”
SEPTEMBER 22, 1912: Three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, “the great commoner,” is greeted by “an immense crowd” at the train depot. SEPTEMBER 23, 1996: Wal-Mart bans Sheryl Crow’s latest album for its lyrics: “Watch our children kill each other with a gun bought at Wal-Mart.” SEPTEMBER 24, 1930: The local Chamber of Commerce has blocked “determined efforts to change the name of Las Vegas to Hoover City.” SEPTEMBER 25, 2010: Saying “divorce was profitable for Elaine Wynn,” the Review-Journal reports that she has landed in the 382nd spot on the Forbes list of 400 wealthiest Americans following her latest split from two-time hubby Steve Wynn. SEPTEMBER 26, 1914: A “visitor from up north,” Hattie Garren, suffering from hallucinations that spirits are following her to kill her, is taken into custody by Sheriff Sam Gay, who turns her over to “the lunacy commission” for an examination. SEPTEMBER 27, 1908: The new ice plant, with a $300,000 price tag, built after the previous one was destroyed by fire, will produce 100 tons of ice daily for the trains passing through town. SEPTEMBER 28, 1963: President John F. Kennedy delivers “an ad-lib 10-minute speech on land conservation” to 7,500 people at the Convention Center. SEPTEMBER 29, 1928: Tourist Amelia Earhart says she would like to make Las Vegas her home someday. SEPTEMBER 30, 1963: After a motorcycle officer pulls him over for driving down the wrong side of Boulder Highway, a 94-year-old driver says that he thought maybe something was wrong when he noticed cars veering out of the way. Sources: Las Vegas Age; Las Vegas Morning Tribune; Las Vegas Review-Journal; Las Vegas Sun
I L LU S T R AT I O N : C A S H
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Raise a Glass to the Past Enjoy live jazz three nights a week! Join us every Thursday through Saturday from 7 to 11 pm as local artists play the cool sounds of the Prohibition era.
HAPPY HOUR SUNDAY THROUGH THURSDAY | 5 - 7 PM Discounts on handcrafted cocktails, delectable bites, beer and wine.
DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS • 300 STEWART AVE THEMOBMUSEUM.ORG • 702.229.2734
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