Sports, Leisure & Outdoors Issue 03 MARCH
17
WILD! MEET THE CREATURES WHO LIVE NEXT DOOR (Note: some are terrifying)
MOJAVE MASALA
BY AIR AND BY LAND
So, there’s this wildlife refuge that’s also a bombing range ...
A dive bar gets a dose of Indian spice
SEEDY BUSINESS
Seriously, how local is ‘locally grown’? PLUS:
CAN I GET A HOOP HOOP?
How I learned to love the Rebels (again)
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EDiTOR’S Note
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Lay of the land
E
xploring the outdoors is about getting away from it all — from work, noise, stress, news, politics, the slow-drip psychic venom of social media. But it’s useful to remember that much of Nevada’s protected outdoors areas are the result of a lot of work, noise, stress, politics and, yes, sometimes even social media clamor. Consider one of Southern Nevada’s crown jewels, Red Rock National Conservation Area. Decades before the canyon received federal protection, Howard Hughes owned much of it, and once envisioned developing the area into an industrial megaplex for testing radar systems and guided missiles. (It’s said he even had a suitably bland, institutional-sounding name for it: Husite.) Luckily for us, his executives convinced him to scrap the idea. And in 1988, with an assist by the Nature Conservancy, the Howard Hughes Corporation and the BLM cinched a land-swap deal that saved key parcels from future development, adding momentum to Red Rock’s ultimate designation as a National Conservation Area in 1990. In more recent history is the 704,000-acre Basin and Range National Monument designated by President Obama in 2015 — again, not without clamor and not without controversy — or the newly created national monument of Gold Butte near Mesquite. And, of course, we can’t forget the current fight to protect Red Rock from developer Jim Rhodes’ plan to turn nearby Blue Diamond Hill into a 5,000-home exurb island. They all go to show that preservation and conservation are creative acts. It takes a lot of diplomacy, compromise and conflict to officially leave something alone. Heidi Kyser’s story opens another chapter in this larger story about our Next stewardship of the outdoors. In “By MOnth air and by land” (p. 61), she looks north Style’s in to the 1.6 million-acre Desert National season with our spring Wildlife Refuge which, incredibly, fashion and overlaps an Air Force weapons-testing home design range. The Air Force wants to increase issue
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its footprint for the sake of safety and employing new technology, but conservationists and wildlife biologists have concerns about the impact on the sheep, cougars, foxes, mule deer, Desert Tortoises and other animals who, you know, live there. The solutions to the conflict are anything but clear, but (here’s me, totally brightsiding) it’s heartening to know that Nevada conservationists continue to be strong voice for public lands. But you don’t have to trek outside the valley for an encounter with the wild. In “The animals next door” (p. 53), you’ll meet six Southern Nevada denizens you might be surprised to learn live here, from the beavers busily gnawing away at the Clark County Wetlands Park to the elusive cougars in the Spring Mountains to the terrifying (speaking from experience here re: the first time I saw one, which was perched near my front door beneath the porch light, pooled in lurid, writhing, Bela Lugosi shadow, and I barely had the key in the door when I met the creature at eye level and made a hybrid squeal-yelping sound while simultaneously leaping backwards several feet) palo verde beetle. Sure, Las Vegas is an improbable terraformed oasis, an airconditioned bubble attached to an artificial lake, but if you just open your eyes, you’ll find lots of wonder, beauty and strangeness to inspire you. Or make you Andrew Kiraly editor squeal-yelp.
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nual Photo Contest, and we cover the environment more or less continuously. A love of being outside has been in Desert Companion’s DNA since the s we write this, our story “Fifteen great hikes (practi- magazine evolved from cally) in your own backyard” is number one on the Des- KNPR’s Almanac 10 years ago — our first cover story was “The ert Companion website’s “most viewed” list. That story Really Great Outdoors” — and is consistent with what thenis six years old — it ran in April 2011. president Lamar Marchese described as a publication “still Our readers, it seems, love to hike. faithful to the almanac tradition of providing useful informaThat story is a classic Desert Companion service piece — tion in an easily readable way.” it’s comprehensive, authoritative (well, mostly, as we’ll see), That’s what we do, all right. Almost always. Almost. Since grounded in a desire to share the best of this region, and lots we can laugh at our own foibles, we do cherish the gentleof fun to read, all while telling readers where to go. If you wince-inducing story told by a former KNPR staffer who, carpreferred a not-so-strenuous stroll with a tincture of history, rying her copy of DC into the hills, trying — vainly, it turns out we sent you to the railroad tunnels near Boulder City. If you — to follow our (apparently confusing) directions to a trail, enfancied a night trot, we introduced you to Henderson’s River countered a hiking couple carrying their copy of the magazine, Mountains loop trail. If you sought a bit of a challenge, we enjoying the same predicament. Ha! File that under “Desert dispatched you Frenchman’s Mountain for a steep, eight-mile Companion regrets the error.” round trip. It’s the template we’ve used for more than a few getThankfully, that’s a rarity. Judging from our upbeat reader out-there stories over the years. (That formula was so classic, feedback and the “most viewed” list, we’re fulfilling our misin fact, that we sequeled it in 2015 with “More hikes in your sion to show you that Southern Nevada has a natural beauty own backyard.” If it ain’t broke, etc.) worth enjoying, sharing and protecting. Most years, we devote the March issue to some aspect of As Editor Andrew Kiraly — not the type to indulge in granthe outdoors — hiking, of course, but also suburban walking, diose, hyperventilating, all-caps overstatement — put it in 2015, environmentalism, sports, rock climbing, food and, last year, “If I were the type to indulge in grandiose, hyperventilating, even fashion. Nor do we limit our outdoor enthusiasms to one- all-caps overstatement, I’d say we got a full-on NATURAL twelfth of a year. We typically showcase top hikes in our an- WONDERS RENAISSANCE going on up in here.” nual Best of the City issues, nature photos crop up in our anAnd so we do. Now, get out there — it’s your backyard, after all.
Hike, hike!
A
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YOUR HOME FIELD FOR FOOTBALL SEASON L O C AT E D AT
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Features 53 extremely wild and incredibly close
From big cats to scary bugs, these are the creatures with which you share Southern Nevada. Hey, what’s that noise behind you?!
61 Whose land?
d e s e r t n at i o n a l w i l d l i f e r e f u g e : c h r i s t o p h e r s m i t h
The Air Force wants to take over control of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge — with possible consequences for research and recreation. What’s at stake on both sides? By Heidi Kyser
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32
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departments All Things
26 Business
45 Dining
67 The Guide
15 culture Art in a
A Mesquite resort rolls the dice — make that the baseball — on youth sports By Matt Jacob
46 at first bite Bold
Beware the guides of March! Except this one. You can trust this one. Look, no knife!
time of ugly politics 18 life story The
$30,000 beer 20 zeit bites An ode
to the late Marta Becket
32 Community
22 Profile Animal
Putting the local in locally grown produce By Nadia Eldemerdash
snapper 24 Open topic The pain and joy of a diehard Rebels fan
38 Profile Singer Mark Giovi may not be like everyone else, but he’s not so different, either By John M. Glionna
new steps at the iconic Aureole 49 Eat this now The
nom-worthy Dirty Chips of downtown Henderson 49 cocktail A four-
drink maximum at China Poblano
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03 MARCH
17
WILD! MEET THE CREATURES WHO LIVE NEXT DOOR
72 End note Our least favorite hikes in Southern Nevada By Andrew Kiraly and Scott Dickensheets
(Note: some are terrifying)
MOJAVE MASALA
A dive bar gets a dose of Indian spice
BY AIR AND BY LAND
So, there’s this wildlife refuge that’s also a bombing range ...
SEEDY BUSINESS
Seriously, how local is ‘locally grown’? PLUS:
CAN I GET A HOOP HOOP?
How I learned to love the Rebels (again)
BY AIR AND BY LAND
50 the dish The Spice
So, there’s this wildlife refuge that’s also a bombing range ...
Coast meets Vegas dive bar; deliciousness ensues
WILD! 03
MARCH
17
MEET THE CREATURES WHO LIVE NEXT DOOR
on the cover Illustrations Craig Schaffer
8
Sports, Leisure & Outdoors Issue
(Note: some are terrifying)
PLUS:
MOJAVE MASALA
A dive bar gets a dose of Indian spice
SEEDY BUSINESS Seriously, how local is ‘locally grown’?
CAN I GET A HOOP HOOP?
How I learned to love the Rebels (again)
s h a r o n s c h a f e r : lu c k y w e n z e l ; r i s i n g s ta r : c o u r t e s y c i t y o f m e s q u i t e ; t o d dy s h o p : s a b i n o r r ; l a s v e g a s h e r b s : c h r i s t o p h e r s m i t h
March 2017
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Mission Statement
Desert Companion is the premier city magazine that celebrates the pursuits, passions and aspirations of Southern Nevadans. With awardwinning lifestyle journalism and design, Desert Companion does more than inform and entertain. We spark dialogue, engage people and define the spirit of the Las Vegas Valley. Publisher Flo Rogers corporate support manager Favian Perez Editor Andrew Kiraly Art Director Christopher Smith deputy editor Scott Dickensheets senior designer Scott Lien staff writer Heidi Kyser Graphic Designer Brent Holmes Account executives Sharon Clifton, Susan Henry, Jimmy Hoadrea, Kim Trevino, Markus Van’t Hul sales assistant Ashley Smith NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Couture Marketing 145 E 17th Street, Suite B4 New York, NY 10003 (917) 821-4429 advertising@couturemarketing Marketing manager Donovan Resh print traffic manager Karen Wong Subscription manager Tammy Willis Web administrator Danielle Branton Contributing writers Cybele, Nadia Eldemerdash, Joshua Ellis, Alan Gegax, John M. Glionna, Melanie Hope, Matt Jacob, Greg Blake Miller, Kristen Peterson, Greg Thilmont, Mitchell Wilburn Contributing artists Bill Hughes, Sabin Orr, Craig Schaffer, Hernan Valencia, Lucky Wenzel Editorial: Andrew Kiraly, (702) 259-7856; andrew@desertcompanion.vegas Fax: (702) 258-5646 Advertising: Favian Perez (702) 259-7813; favian@desertcompanion.vegas Subscriptions: (702) 258-9895; subscriptions@desertcompanion.vegas Website: www.desertcompanion.vegas Desert Companion is published 12 times a year by Nevada Public Radio, 1289 S. Torrey Pines Dr., Las Vegas, NV 89146. It is available by subscription at desertcompanion.vegas, or as part of Nevada Public Radio membership. It is also distributed free at select locations in the Las Vegas Valley. All photos, artwork and ad designs printed are the sole property of Desert Companion and may not be duplicated or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. The views of Desert Companion contributing writers are not necessarily the views of Desert Companion or Nevada Public Radio. Contact Tammy Willis for back issues, which are available for purchase for $7.95.
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03
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An artful spark for a new museum page 22
dr amatic time s c all for dr amatic mea su res
culture
‘Art’s the truth’ A timely play about America, Muslim identity and politics highlights the role of art in an era of social tumult By scott dickensheets
A
Dialogue and action: Nevada Conservatory Theatre Artistic Director Christopher Edwards, left, and UNLV acting professor Clarence Gilyard
p h oto g r a p h y B r e n t H o l m e s
rt comes out of chaos,” culture critic David L. Ulin — now a fellow at UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute — said at last year’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. “Culture comes out of chaos.” If so, we’re in for some culture-fat times, as the nation’s new political order appears to be a chaos engine: rewriting social norms, destabilizing old certainties and posing fundamental questions about — some would say challenges to — what it means to be an American. Into this tinderbox Nevada Conservatory Theatre drops its production of Disgraced, a combustible drama by Ayad Akhtar, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. Four upscale New Yorkers have dinner: Amir, a thoroughly Americanized Pakistani immigrant who’s rejected his Muslim upbringing; his white wife, an artist whose work employs (appropriates?) Islamic themes; a Jewish art dealer; and his wife, a black woman who’s competing with Amir for a promotion at their law firm. Though domestic in its setting, the play opens up to the world as conflicts emerge about faith, race, extremism, identity and politics. It might have won its Pulitzer four years and a million Trump tweets ago, but it’s as hotly now as a Muslim travel ban. Raised, too, are more meta questions about the role of art in a time of social upheaval.
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ALL Things
culture
After all, NCT could have offered viewers refuge in a bit of comfort theater, like Arsenic and Old Lace; it opted for contentious relevance instead. “I pursued this play,” says director Clarence Gilyard. In a similar vein, this month Cockroach Theatre produces Rebecca Gilman’s Spinning Into Butter, a 1999 play about campus racism and political correctness that also could be ripped from today’s Google news alerts (cockroachtheatre. com). Meanwhile, local artists have been gathering to talk about “art and activism in the Trump era.” Nationally, the thinkpiece industrial complex has exhaled a constant stream of hot takes on the subject. It’s in the air. So it seemed a good time to lay a few questions on Gilyard, a professor of acting at UNLV, and Christopher Edwards, NCT’s artistic director. (The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited together for flow, length and clarity.)
ON WHAT DREW THEM TO THE PLAY Gilyard: I was stunned by the language, by the text, by the intelligence/wit/immediacy of it. Theater is heightened language. It’s poetry at the same time you arrest your disbelief; you lean into it because you’re like, Oh my god, this is really happening — but it’s heightened, it’s got a beauty to it. So I was stunned by it. I realized it was a piece of import. Plus, it was funny. Edwards: The dialogue sounds like it’s coming from the mouths of people we all know. And obviously the issues it’s dealing with. We picked this play last year when the Black Lives Matter movement was in full swing, the problems with immigration and terrorism — it just felt like the right choice. It is an amazing play, and very current. Gilyard: Having it come up in the first 100 days of President Trump’s four years is one of those providential situations, I think. That’s important, too, because a lot of times the city doesn’t realize what’s going on in the center of education in the city — we have this major institution with this major theater doing a major work — not an important work, a major work.
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ON HOW POLITICAL CONTEXT CHANGES THE PRODUCTION
“It’s written superbly; the dialogue sounds like it’s coming from the mouths of people we all know. ... It’s a play about how we try to change ourselves to get to that American dream.” — Edwards
something. I love it when people come out and say, “I hated that because of this, this and this, and I’m gonna go home and Gilyard: That question talk to my wife about it.” That’s I addressed in probably what I want. I don’t want them the second design meeting: to hate it. But I do want them Are we going to bring the to leave the theater incensed, audience into a play that’s changed, inspired or something. right off the streets, right Please, bring it home with you now — could we just take all for a little while. the bleachers and put them Gilyard: Now you’ll see how outside, in a metaphorical the human being responds to sense? Or are we going to information. Are they open to tell a stylized fable and let embracing what they’ve seen? the audience think, make Are they able to see what they’ve the connections? Which is seen? Or are they just gonna say, better? Which is theater? “Well, this is how I feel about that Which is more important? word or that subject or the fact You (indicating Desert that he did that to her.” Wait Companion) already do — is that what you really saw? the first. That’s not my Is that really what’s going on job. My job is to create between these people? Is that a piece of art that’s why she did what she did? unsettling, that’s funny, Let’s go back and really look that charges you to leave at why she did what she did. that space going, Why That’s the power of theater am I feeling this way? and the talk-back (feedback What was that? What’s sessions conducted after going on with me now? select performances). Edwards: There will Edwards: I think we’re always be people who responsible to create that say, “Oh, you’re only dialogue. doing this play because Gilyard: There’ll be conflict, racial conflict, cultural conflict, this NRA, right-wing person who goes, is trendy right now.” “Well, there you go.” And there’ll be this Gilyard: (Political discussions with African-American cohort that’s, “That’s actors) can be germane to the process. right, sister, that’s how I feel about that!” But there is no place for the massaging There’ll be all of those wonderful things, of particular politics in the creation if it which is, in a sense, what the play’s doesn’t manifest itself on the stage. If you about. It’s saying, all of these things are want to talk about it, it’s got to be in the not converging. All of these people not pursuit of the character, in the pursuit of converging. They’re actually colliding. the relationship under the circumstances Nobody’s listening. Right? Which I think that Mr. Akhtar has written. So it’s part of is the brilliance of the play. Because for my job to teach that to young actors — to us to be vulnerable about these issues charticle/graph/secondary make them understand that if you’re not photo would probably, I posit, bring resolution. going to turn that political position, that But. It takes my breath away for us to be religious position, into something that’s vulnerable. on the stage, what’s it for? Edwards: I’m still trying to get a sense of the Las Vegas community and how ON AUDIENCE RESPONSE they feel about things like this. This comEdwards: I hope we do have a munity is still trying to find itself along strong response. In this world of trigger these lines. This is a community that’s warnings, theater is supposed to trigger used to going to a theater to be enter-
tained. Not everybody, but many people here go to see shows the way they’d go to dinner and order their steak. They only want medium-rare: “I only want to see shows that don’t challenge what I already believe.” I think sometimes that can be problematic. I don’t think that moving forward — going back to the political climate — that we’re ever going to get better as a society unless we challenge ourselves to think outside of our own little boxes.
YOU REALLY LOVE OUR MAGAZINE. NOW YOU CAN LOVE IT VIRTUALLY, TOO. Visit us at desertcompanion.vegas and check out our website. Between editions of our Maggie Award-winning magazine, you’ll get web-exclusive stories, breaking cultural news and fresh perspectives from our writers.
ON WHETHER THE ROLE OF ART CHANGES IN TIMES OF TURMOIL Gilyard: Never has. Art, a mentor taught me, is always political. Always. It always has been, always will be. But if you really do the fine plays, you’re dangerous. Your theater is dangerous — in the right way. In a positive way. Because you’re telling the truth. Edwards: I can dislike black people, Mexican people, Latino people, Middle Eastern people if I don’t know them or don’t have any contextualization of their story. It’s easy to hate when you don’t know the story. I think it’s our job to help shed light on the story and show that things aren’t actually black and white. That there’s complexity, and in that complexity is where our humanity comes out. Sometimes it’s the beautiful hypocrisy of humankind — that we can give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, and admit we’re not perfect, but we can’t give it to our fellow man; it’s an immigrant, a person of a different color, a different religion. So I think that’s what we need to do. Gilyard: Art is a necessary component of a healthy society. ... Art’s the truth. It’s dangerous. You let your son watch a show, and he identifies with that character’s journey, that dramatic journey — you’ve got problems in your house. (Laughter) Because you may not be ready for how the human being in that formative stage takes on that information, begins to dream and wants to manifest that dream. What’re you gonna do? Disgraced, by Ayad Akhtar, March 31-April 9, 7:30p and 2p, Ham Hall, UNLV, $16.50, unlv.edu/calendar
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ALL Things
life story
big money
Who needs a million? My moment of clarity on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Beer was involved. B y A la n G e gax
C
hris Harrison is a dreamboat. And thanks to a little luck, a love of trivia and my amazing wife I recently found myself standing before him on the set of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, waiting for the question that would start my journey toward a million dollars. Don’t blow it on the first question, I told myself. Harrison, the host, looked up from me to a giant screen and asked, “What is the first line uttered by Sir-Mix-Alot in his 1992 ode to derrières, ‘Baby Got Back’?” My mind raced through the lyrics. “36-24-36? Only if she’s five-three!” But I couldn’t sing my way back to the beginning! I began to panic. Then I saw it. Right there on the screen, multiple-choice answer D. I coolly answered, “Chris, I think I speak for both of us when I say D — ‘I like big butts.’ Final answer.” The audience laughed, and I sighed with relief. The game went smoothly after that. If you don’t know Millionaire, following each correct answer, you must decide whether to keep the money you’ve earned or risk it all on the next level. Most answers I knew even before the choices came up. At $10,000, I hit my first stumper, about a movie called Big Eyes. I burned through two of my three lifelines, but got it right. At $20,000, I faced another tough question, but took a measured risk and got that right, too. Question eight was worth $30,000. “According to Statista.com, by a wide margin, what is the best-selling imported beer in the United States?” Immediately I thought of Corona. The answers
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appeared on the screen: A. Heineken. B. Guinness. C. Stella Artois. D. Corona. Oh ... I hadn’t thought about Heineken. I knew it was pretty popular. As the question rolled around my head, I realized that I have a huge regional bias. Of course I think Corona is popular. Look where I live! But in New York, in Philadelphia … how popular is Corona there? I talked out my options. Guinness? All marketing. Stella Artois? Only popular with the hipster crowd. Heineken … I needed to know how popular Heineken was back East. Luckily, I had one lifeline. I had brought a buddy I could bring onstage to help answer one question. And he was from New Jersey. When he came up, I had a fluttering optimism. “I happen to have worked in a liquor store,” he said, and I exploded with hope: “Oh, that’s so helpful!” Then he mulled each option, repeating the musings I had just laid out, nearly word for word — adding nothing! I was on my own. As I faced my decision about whether to risk answering or walk away, I thought
about why I had come on the show. My wife suffers from a condition called gastroparesis, a paralyzed stomach. She has a very hard time getting proper nutrition and is in nearly constant pain. I wanted to earn enough to buy her a new kitchen. With $20,000, we could make it happen. If I took a risk and guessed right, I’d be at $30,000 with a chance to go for more. Forget kitchen-changing — this could be life-changing money! But if I got it wrong, I’d walk away with just $5,000. In the end, I was too unsure about Corona. “It’s my final answer,” I told Harrison. “I’m going to walk away.” Corona was correct, by the way. As I write this, I am looking at a check for $20,000 with my name on it. But really, it has my wife’s name. She’ll get her kitchen upgrades, and we’ll have enough left to travel to the country’s leading neurologists, ever working toward her better health. I have no regrets. Well, except when I threatened to “come across this podium” at Harrison once. I regret that — as a trivia guy, I should’ve known it was a lectern, not a podium.
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ALL Things
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ART
SENSE OF PLACE
The glory of Roma The nonartisanal allure of the last best place
Café Espresso Roma was not an upscale joint. In fact, it was literally underground, on the bottom floor of a submerged shopping center across from UNLV, next to a Kinko’s. The stairs that led down to it were constantly occupied by a repertory cast of teenage hoodlums, gutterpunks, tweakers and junkies and flamboyant lunatics. If you ran this gantlet of panhandling and cigarette-bumming, you would discover that the coffee inside was not artisanal. It was not lovingly crafted. It came out of a coffeepot or an espresso machine, and you bought it and drank it as you sat at the wobbly marble tables and hung out with your friends, which was the real point of Roma, as it has been the point of all great coffee shops since Edward Lloyd opened his in London in 1688. If you’re a bohemian type of a certain age, Roma — and the Newsroom, the café that preceded it in the same space, and Copioh across the street and Enigma Downtown — were ground zero for Las Vegas’ tiny cultural and countercultural scene. The Killers played their first shows there (at the open mic I hosted, as a matter of fact). They were cheap and often grotty places where you might find a junkie passed out in the bathroom — or running the espresso machine, if we’re being perfectly honest — but they were also a home for those of us who wanted more than lounge acts and slot machines. When I moved to Vegas at the end of 1998, I was pulled into the strange attractor of Roma very quickly and stayed there until it closed in 2003, a victim of low revenue that did not reflect the real value of the place to all of us who fell in and out of love there, who started bands and wrote books and just congregated to smoke and drink coffee and talk about music and movies and politics and art and total nonsense. I don’t miss many places, but I still miss Roma, gone now these 14 years. It was my first best place in this city, and nothing has ever really taken its place for me, or for a lot of other people. Sometimes you don’t need a lovingly crafted coffee experience. Sometimes you just need a place to be, to chill and to congregate. Magic is not made in a carafe or a French press; it’s made in the spaces between people. And we made a lot of magic back then. Joshua Ellis A series in which writers find meaning in specific locations around town
THE BOTTOM LINE >> Hometown homer:
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Statewide visions The main goal of the exhibit Tilting the Basin is obvious: to survey the contemporary art — painting, sculpture, photography and more — being made in Nevada. It’s a bold attempt, first in a decade, to see what crosscurrents exist in such a diverse state and to make an outward-facing statement about the quality of work being done here. Only slightly less obvious is its secondary purpose, at least as pertains to its March 17 opening in an ad hoc space Downtown: Imagine seeing this in a freestanding art museum. Indeed, one of the sponsoring organizations (along with Reno’s Nevada Museum of Art) is a nonprofit called Art Museum at Symphony Park — a park where, at present, there is no art museum. An effort to rectify that is underway, and this exhibit aims to help. The show’s 34 artists comprise an idealized friends list for anyone interested in Silver State art: such Southern Nevada stalwarts as Sush Machida Gaikotsu, JK Russ, Chris Bauder (below) and Wendy Kveck. Northern Nevada is represented by Galen Brown (above), Katie Lewis and more. (Full disclosure: Desert Companion designer Brent Holmes is also included.) “Their work is informed by popular culture, the natural environment and landscape, as well as cultural identity, politics and current events,” says JoAnne Northrup, Nevada Museum of Art’s curatorial director. Timed to the exhibit will be several talks and programs. At 6p on March 17, Katie O’Neill of the Art Museum at Symphony Park and Reno museum boss David Walker will talk about what it might mean to the community to have a new art museum here. At 2p on March 18, several of the show’s artists, north and south, will join curators to talk about contemporary art in Nevada. Scott Dickensheets Through May 20, free, 920 S. Commerce St., nevadaart.org
alas, the march 25-26 big league weekend at cashman field — with the champion chicago cubs and their vegas-raised star Kris bryant — is sold out. p h oto I L LU STR AT I O N B RENT H OLMES
ODE
Last dance An appreciation of Marta Becket
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arta Becket was expected to live forever by fans who insisted she must. She was to keep dancing. The world she created at Death Valley Junction was to be eternal because that is the stuff that dreams are made of. The New York City dancer who’d moved to the edge of Death Valley in the late ’60s, to this empty town she famously came across only through happenstance, would perform before an audience that she’d painted onto the walls. She presented shows there for decades, well into her 80s. There would come busloads of tourists, film crews and reporters. She’d tell her life story, threaded together by song and dance, making the costumes herself and designing the sets. This was her world and eventually the world came to see it, arriving sometimes in the black of night for the weekend performances at the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel. She carved out this corner of the world and defined the highway intersection at Death Valley Junction for decades. On the Monday morning following her death on January 30 at age 92, a small shrine of colored balloons, stuffed animals and plastic flowers sits near an engraved stone marker, given in celebration of Becket’s 90th birthday. LED tea light candles flicker in glass jars, and a red Mylar balloon with the words “I love you” clings to the ground. Inside the aging one-story adobe hotel, fliers announce the tribute and memorial performance planned for the coming weekend. A woman vacuums the dark green carpet in the lobby, which features Becket’s old sequined hats and mesh costumes. Portraits of the dark-haired dancer in various stages hang beside the stone fireplace and above the dark wood paneling. Her artwork is replicated in prints for sale in the gift shop, along with videotapes, T-shirts and copies of her 2006 autobiography, To Dance on Sands. But, despite all the reminders, it feels lonely here knowing that the force of Marta Becket is gone. She once said she wasn’t so sure the afterlife could be as beautiful as Death Valley Junction. Standing under a cloudy sky where the open desert continues forever in all directions, you almost agree. But the landscape is different now without its energetic, fiery star. Kristen Peterson
Water time
Inspired by an urgent aphorism — that this is the first generation to feel the impact
of climate change, and the last able to do something about it — writers/directors Nicky and Laetitia Dewhurst have created a show touting planetary health for Cirque du Soleil’s annual One Night for One Drop event, to benefit water sustainability. As you can see, it’s all about time. “We wanted to demonstrate that the clock is ticking with regards to our complacency with climate change,” they say — an ailing Earth can’t sustain clean water. March 3, Zumanity Theatre in New York-New York, $100-$325, onenight.onedrop.org
console yourself by youtubing the video of bryant being pranked by fellow las vegan greg maddux. two great locals having fun. March 2017
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ALL Things
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Sharon K. Schafer Owner, SkyDance Studio
A
s a wildlife biologist and photographer, Sharon K. Schafer fulfilled a dream when she visited the Galapagos Islands in 2004. She hoped that while she was there, she’d see Darwin’s finches, a group of about 15 bird species that vary slightly from island to island, which helped Charles Darwin to develop his theory of natural selection. “As I walked up to the visitors center, I saw one, and I was so excited,” Schafer recalls. “I took out my camera and held it up to take a picture, but I couldn’t find it. I thought it must have flown away.” Lowering the camera, she found she was wrong: The finch was perched on the end of her lens. Such luck — more than patience or determination — has helped Schafer capture the Mojave Desert animals that she focuses on in her current work. “And you have to move quietly through the landscape,” she says. “If anything, I try to be aware, and it seems like no matter where you go, something is happening.”
What’s happening in Schafer’s forthcoming book, Becoming Animal: Standing Witness for the Sentient Wild, isn’t all majesty. There’s a tinge of menace around the edges, too. In one set of images, a pair of desert bighorn sheep nuzzle each other, their curved horns intertwined against a bleak white background. The artist intended to show that humans have the power to erase an animal’s natural habitat. For another photo, “Requiem for the Blues,” Schafer pinned eight Mount Charleston blue butterflies (an endangered species) to a sheet of music: arrested movement. The book stemmed from a show of Schafer’s photography that began in the fall of 2015 at the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas and is currently at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia. Schafer uses the show,
P h oto g r a p h y L u c ky w e n z e l
which travels to Tucson next, as an activism opportunity. “I figured if I could show people the beauty of the wildlife, they’d feel connected to it, and that would lead to a desire to conserve it,” she says. “But I realized, after that first show, that without a distinct call to action, people just walked away thinking, ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ If anything, I gave them the feeling that things were okay in the wild lands.” So the former BLM wildlife biologist took a more direct approach. She added to the show a collection of 5-by-7 images in plastic frames that visitors could take home with them. In exchange for the gift, Schafer asked for a promise: something specific they’d do to be better stewards of the environment.
“We’ve gotten about 600 pledges a month, and the show was up for eight months,” she says. Schafer learned her way of looking at and engaging with the natural world growing up in Southern California. Her mom and dad, an English and biology teacher, respectively, took the family to Death Valley at Thanksgiving, and there was always a pair of binoculars laying around the house so that “if some weird bird came flying through the backyard, we’d have them at hand,” Schafer says. Her education background also permeates her work. Recently, an ashram in Rajastan, India, invited her to spend several weeks taking photos for brochures. The trip blossomed into a cross-continental connection between two groups of children, one in the ashram’s village, Panchla Siddha, and the other in Las Vegas. Each took pictures of their local landscapes, plants and animals and sent them to the other, so they could compare the two deserts. A photomural currently on display at the Nevada State Museum summarizes the project. “It just happened spontaneously,” Schafer says. “I had the opportunity to go, and once I was there, I realized it was too good to not share.” Heidi Kyser
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ALL Things
open topic
sports
The fever that does not pass Or, how one basketball fan learned to stop worrying about the past and love the Rebels — again B y G r e g B l a k e M i l l e r
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ust after lunch on January 21, I took an envelope from my desk drawer, removed three tickets to the UNLV-Air Force men’s basketball game, which was to be played at 3 p.m., and hesitated: Do I really want to go? I was shocked at the question I was asking myself, but not shocked enough to refrain from repeating it to my wife and son. “I don’t know if I’ll keep going to these games,” I said. “I have other things to do.” The surge of reflux that followed my statement needs some explaining: I am a Rebel fan. My parents took me to my first game during the 1976-77 season, when the Rebels were in the midst of a 12-game streak of scoring 100 or more points a game. I was 6 years old; I had never been to a concert or a play or a ballet; I hadn’t even been to many movies. This, now, was my art: defend, run, pass, shoot, score, defend. The Convention Center roared like a spacecraft at lift-off. That year, the Rebels would win 29 games and lose three; they would average 107 points per game; they would make it to their first Final Four. The squad was known as the Hardway Eight, and if you wake me at 3 a.m. with a bullhorn and an ice bucket, I can still name all eight. UNLV basketball lodged itself, splinter-like, in my heart. And through 40 years of tribulations — the Rebels’ and mine — it has never been excised.
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So when I exhibited my disinterest in watching UNLV play Air Force on a perfectly suitable Saturday afternoon, I was rejecting not only my favorite team, but also a fully biologically integrated portion of myself. The problem was — and I even said this, sinful creature, to my family — the Rebels just weren’t very good anymore. This was bound to start an argument. Not with my wife and son, who probably really did have better things to do, but with myself. At issue was not whether the Rebels were very good; myself and I could agree that they were not. The problematic term, the fighting one, was anymore, which implied that some sort of irrevocable tear in the Rebel-time continuum had just occurred. That notion set my mind reeling: At what point, exactly, did the Rebels become “not very good anymore”? • Was it on the night of March 3, 1992, when Jerry Tarkanian bit into his towel for the final time as the Rebels’ coach, led his team to one last victory, and left our most beloved civic institution in the gesticulating hands of Rollie Massimino? • Was it in the years 1993-96, when Las Vegas was transitioning into urban sprawl, and the Rebels were transitioning into sucking, compiling consecutive seasons of 15-13, 12-16 and 10-16 under five coaches and interim coaches? • Was it in mid-December 2000, when the presumably rebuilt program, having gone 23-8 the previous campaign, imploded in true Vegas style — complete with a loss to Reno, fresh sanctions from the NCAA and the firing of coach Bill Bayno? The Rebels finished the season 16-13 under interim coach Max Good. • Was it when the Rebels, having rebounded once again to post back-to-back 20-win seasons under Charlie Spoonhour, lost him to cardiologist-mandated midseason retirement in February 2004, finished 18-13 under the stewardship of Charlie’s son Jay, hired Lon Kruger in March, and went 17-14 in Kruger’s first season? Perhaps you’ll understand the point
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I was making to myself that January afternoon before the Air Force game: Our Rebels had already been rumored dead several times, and each time the rumors were, as the bard of the Comstock would say, greatly exaggerated. Lon Kruger eventually took the Rebels to the Sweet 16 in 2007, winning 30 games along the way. Dave Rice began his tenure with seasons of 26 and 25 wins. At one point, the Kruger-Rice era brought the Rebels eight straight 20-win seasons. Yet when we longtime fans think about making the Rebels great again, we’re thinking of the same thing: April 2, 1990. Denver, Colorado. UNLV 103. Duke 73. We are emotional hostages to that wondrous night, that national championship and its slow-motion nightmare aftermath — the semifinal loss to Duke the following year, the NCAA Sword of Damocles swaying over Tark’s bald head, the Tarkanian-Maxson wars, in which a coach, a university president and their overcaffeinated surrogates battled over the soul of a city. It’s no easy thing to be a prisoner of the past. Glory days, as The Boss said, will pass you by. It hurts, doesn’t it? And the more we contort ourselves trying to look back while walking forward, the worse the pain gets. Worst of all, while you’re digging through the ashes for a lost diadem, you fail to glimpse the Next Good Thing, or even the Next Good Enough Thing. “Good enough for now” is not a winning slogan for Rebel basketball. But it might have been a healthy mantra for UNLV administrators and boosters in early 2016, before they orchestrated the midseason defenestration of Dave Rice, whose team had just lost three straight Mountain West Conference games but was 9-7 overall with impressive wins over Indiana and Oregon. The firing initiated a slow-moving mudslide that included an 18-15 season completed under interim leadership and a cloud of toxic doubt; the failed pursuit of Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin; the hiring and sudden departure of former Arkansas-Little Rock and eventual Texas Tech coach Chris Beard; and the ultimate appointment, on April 16, of former New Mexico State coach Marvin Menzies, who had wanted the
job all along. From firing to hiring took 97 days, giving all but three Rebels, not to mention the entire incoming recruiting class, ample time to leave. Menzies then proceeded to demonstrate what administrative efficiency looks like — a gift to Rebel fans who might have forgotten — by assembling a new team in about a month. This was the roster that was to take the floor against Air Force at 3 p.m. that cold January day: six freshmen, two sophomores, three juniors and three seniors. Two of the seniors were newcomers, and the third, Tyrell Green, was injured all of last season. Of the three players who stayed — each of whom deserve the key to the city — only sophomore Jalen Poyser had played the entire 2015-16 campaign. And Dwayne Morgan, a returning junior who figured to be the team leader, had been sidelined with injuries since mid-December. Nonetheless, a voice — it belonged to neither my son nor my wife — told me that I must go to this game. The voice must have been a vestigial remnant of my original 1977 Rebel-fan programming. In any case, I was not, under any circumstance, to miss the game between 9-10 UNLV and 9-10 Air Force. I packed the family in the car. We arrived to the blast of fireworks and the two accelerating notes of Jaws, taking us in, making us stand, causing us to clap. We watched. I hollered myself hoarse. With 2.6 seconds left, the Rebels were down by three points, and it appeared that all was lost. That was before two Air Force players fought over a rebound, fumbled it out of bounds, and then watched in awe as UNLV junior transfer Jovan Mooring rose and leaned and twisted and hit a three-point bank shot to send the game to overtime. Five minutes later, Mooring would hit another three-pointer, this time a thirtysomething-footer, executed with astronaut calm as the Air Force defense sagged off him in the belief that nobody — nobody at all — would dare take that shot. But they forgot something: Mooring is a Rebel. I could see it — no, I could feel it, in my heart, where the splinter lodged 40 years ago remained, bringing joy, bringing pain.
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Business
As Mesquite remakes itself into a youth-sports mecca, a new resort caters to traveling athletes and their families B y M at t Ja c o b
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’m bo-o-o-o-ored! Anyone who has raised children can name that piercing tune in two notes, mostly because it’s played on a seemingly endless loop from age 3 until they flee the nest, in almost any situation. Even, counterintuitively, if the situation in question is as kid-friendly as a trip to a youth sports tournament. Sure, the young athlete isn’t bored while the games are in progress. But what about all the hours before, between and afterward? What about the siblings who are forced to hang out on the sideline?
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I’m bo-o-o-o-ored! Well, what if we told you there’s now a cure for the traveling youth sports boredom blues — barely an hour’s drive from downtown Las Vegas? Welcome to the new Rising Star Sports Ranch Resort in Mesquite. Yes, Mesquite. Sure, Mesquite is still the home of the $99 room-and-spa package deal and remains the preferred landing spot for many retirees. But at its core, it’s a small family town — one that, since the start of this century, has invested heavily in vast open
spaces and outdoor recreation amenities for residents and visitors alike. In addition to its numerous golf courses, there are no fewer than 15 parks listed on the City of Mesquite website, about half of which offer some kind of athletic field. It’s why the city in recent years has become a popular destination for youth sports tournaments and camps. Whether it’s for soccer, baseball, softball, lacrosse or flag football, coaches and organizers from Utah, Arizona, California and even Colorado are flocking to Mesquite to take advantage of its top-notch sports facilities. “We see youth sports as the future in a lot of these communities,” Mesquite Mayor Allan Litman says. “You can’t live in a community of all senior citizens. You’ve got to supply (amenities) for our youth — both visiting youth and local youth — because that’s the future of a community.” How often are those fields occupied? “Out of the 52 weekends,” says Nicholas Montoya, director of athletics and leisure services for the City of Mesquite, “I’m guessing we’re booking between 38
C o u r t e s y R i s i n g s ta r S p o r t s r a n c h r e s o r t
Catch a Rising Star
Kids’ court: The Backyard at Rising Star Sports Ranch includes basketball, volleyball and even pickleball courts.
and 42 of them. The only weekends we’re not booking big events is in the summertime.” For some prime weekends, the city is scheduling fields two or three years ahead. And the demand is only going to grow, he says. “We need to find funds or bonds — something — to help us build some more facilities.”
Team spirit: In addition to sports amenities, Rising Star also boasts kid-friendly bunk rooms, an arcade, a room-service robot named Champ and the Victory Kitchen.
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While youth sports have brought a welcome infusion of economic life to Mesquite, there’s been one logistical hiccup: During large-scale youth sporting events, there’s often been a dearth of suitable (read: noncasino) accommodations for traveling teams and their families. Enter the Lee family. Ted and Doris Lee — for whom the UNLV business college is named — have had ties to Mesquite since 1997, when they, along with son Greg, opened the Rancho Mesquite Casino, soon after rebranded as Eureka Casino Hotel. (They also own the Eureka in Las Vegas.) A few years ago, when controversy arose over what would become of a long-vacant building that suddenly went on the market, Ted Lee stepped in. The structure that was once home to the Mesquite Star — a casino that shuttered in 1999 after just six months — was
about to be sold to a company that wanted to convert it into a truck stop and travel center. That rankled many who weren’t keen on a truck stop setting up shop in an area that had been built into something of a resort corridor. So the Lee family swooped in and purchased the property, with the initial thought of turning it into ... well, they weren’t exactly sure. “There was not a definitive short-term plan,” says Andre Carrier, president and COO of Eureka Casinos. “Now, there was a bit of excitement generated in the community about what it could be. And there was some hope that the site could be rejuvenated and be a source of energy and hope and new beginnings for the next phase of growth in Mesquite tourism.” After acquiring the building in 2013, Greg Lee, Carrier and their executive team began kicking around ideas. Eventually, a light bulb clicked on: Hey, we have all of these athletic fields that are often rented by out-of-towners for tournaments and camps. Why not build a hotel that caters primarily to that demographic, as well as visiting golf groups? Just like that, the seed was planted for the Rising Star Sports Ranch Resort. “For the better part of five years, Mesquite had these very large soccer tour-
c o u r t s , r o o m , c h a m p a n d v i c t o r y k i t c h e n C o u r t e s y R i s i n g s ta r ; P i o n e e r P a r k c o u r t e s y c i t y o f M e s q u i t e / R y a n K a m m e r e r ; S p o r t s E v e n t C o m p l e x c o u r t e s y c i t y o f m e s q u i t e / N i c o l a s F. M o n t o y a
Business
Field of dreams: Pioneer Park during a recent youth baseball tournament.
naments and very large baseball tournaments that left the city bursting at the seams to accommodate the folks who are in town for these events,” Carrier says. “At times, we’re not really built from a resort standpoint with the ideal set of amenities for those groups, because we had predominantly casino-resorts. And it turns out, there are a lot of laws that prohibit 12-year-olds from playing casino games.
“Consequently, we started to think, ‘Hmm. What if we were to build a resort centered around the unique needs of our core visitor group outside of gaming?’ And those are golfers and people coming for other sports events.” If the initial idea represented outside-the-box thinking, the plan that subsequently unfolded blew that box to smithereens.
In addition to your standard double-queen and -king bedrooms, the 210-room, four-story hotel would feature rooms that could house from four to 12 kids, thanks to unique bunk-bed designs. And because these rooms would obviously be occupied by minors, there would be adjoining quarters for chaperones, coaches and parents. The hotel’s interior would also include spaces for team meetings; a grand ballroom capable of hosting as many as 400 people; an arcade/game room complete with an air-hockey table and two-lane bowling alley; sports memorabilia and inspirational quotes around every turn; a sports-themed restaurant designed to swiftly feed large parties; and even rolling robots that could do everything from deliver room service
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Business to monitor hallways to ensure nobody was breaking team-mandated curfews. Then, perhaps with I’m bo-o-o-oored! ringing in their ears, Carrier and his colleagues set about conceiving an exterior that would have as much spirit as the interior. “I’m a tournament dad, and when we stay in some hotels, after the games are done, the kids all still want to be together, but there’s really nothing to do,” Carrier says. “So you end up gathering in the lobby, or if the weather is right, you end up with every kid trying to find a little bit of space in a swimming pool that’s far too small. “So we said, ‘What should the rest of the space look like?’ That’s when we came up with The Backyard.” But it’s not like your backyard: In addition to a swimming pool, it has basketball, volleyball and pickleball courts; a multilane horseshoe pit; a putting green; a dirt infield and four batting cages for baseball
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and softball practice; and a vast grass space for soccer, lacrosse and football. There’s also a large covered patio with wooden picnic tables and rocking chairs, with grills available for large cookouts. With the vision established, renovations on the old Mesquite Star began in August 2015 and were completed last October, three months ahead of schedule. “There’s no casino, there’s no smoking, there’s no bar,” says Mayor Litman. “It’s a totally different atmosphere, unlike anything we’ve ever had before. In fact, I can’t find anything around the country that resembles it.” Come May, the final piece of Rising Star’s puzzle will fall into place: A 30,000-square-foot, multifaceted field house dubbed The Barn will host camps for field and court sports, all in a climate-controlled environment. As Montoya notes, that will help with summertime bookings.
“The Rising Star Sports Ranch Resort — the amenities we provide, the style of the room offerings — is absolutely a new vision for resort destinations,” Carrier says. “It says, ‘If you’re going to travel for a sports tournament, you do not have to give up your vacation.’” Since opening in October, Carrier says, the Rising Star has hosted dozens of teams and organizations, as well as several golf groups, and he says the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive. “The proof,” he says, “is in the rebooking.” In fact, no less a brand than Nike has agreed to host its popular Southern Nevada athletic camps at Rising Star, with lacrosse (June 17-19), softball (June 25-28) and baseball (July 30-August 2) camps already on the docket. Also, because it’s located within a 10-minute drive to Mesquite’s various athletic complexes — including an existing baseball and softball field right behind The Backyard — Ris-
ing Star is filling up for various traveling spring soccer and baseball tournaments. The odd thing is, though, the majority of Rising Star’s bookings have come from neighboring states — not from Las Vegas. While Carrier isn’t about to complain, he’s genuinely hopeful that Las Vegas-based coaches and parents who might be quick to discount Mesquite as a destination will give it a chance. “This was done in large part to serve the families of Las Vegas. It really does come from a divine place,” he says. “It is two-to-four hours closer than traveling to a tournament in Southern California or Arizona. And the facilities that you’ll find in Mesquite from a field and diamond and now court standpoint are better than you’ll find in almost all of those places. “We also want to use our facilities to bring the best training for the kids of Southern Nevada, so whatever elite training facilities there are nationally and internationally, myself and my colleagues are working day and night to find them and bring them here.” Regardless of where Rising Star’s guests come from, Carrier says the main goal is simple: Create an environment that offers a variety of shared experiences. For families, that means quality fun time together, which isn’t often a priority when venturing to out-of-town youth sports events. And for youngsters traveling without parents, that means providing an ecosystem that fosters the development of important social and life skills. “Look, I was a player, and now as a father and a coach, I like to see the kids off the field meeting the kids they’re playing against who come from other places,” Carrier says. “I want to see them network in a fun way and maybe make some friendships, instead of ‘You go back to your hotel, I go back to my hotel and never the twain shall meet.’ “The Ranch is about giving you this environment to visit with the kids you were just playing (against) and, who knows, maybe trade a jersey or T-shirt with them and talk stories. I think that’s as important a part of youth sports as is working on technical effort — it’s as much about learning to be your best person as it is your best player or competitor. So we’ve tried to create an environment that’s of service to both.”
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Community
Room for growth How local is “locally grown” food? Not very — but these enterprising farmers are changing that B y Na d i a E l d e m e r d a s h
E
very day of the week has a purpose. Fridays are for winding down. Sundays are for crosswords and football. Mondays are for getting back to work. And Saturdays are fast becoming synonymous with the farmers market. The modern farmers market — that is, food producers gathering to sell directly to urbanites — started in the 1990s, and it’s since become a highlight of suburban and city life. According to the Farmers Market Coalition, in 1994, there were 2,000 farmers markets in the U.S.; today, there are more than 8,600. They’ve even taken root in dry Las Vegas. Here in the valley, you can buy locally grown fruits and vegetables at six farmers market events every week, from Fresh 52 in Tivoli Village to the Las Vegas Farmers Market at Floyd Lamb Park in Tule Springs.
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But how local is “locally grown”? A glance at the websites of both the Downtown Summerlin Farmers Market and the Las Vegas Farmers Market reveals that most of the actual produce being sold comes not from Nevada, but from neighboring states such as California and Utah. Businesses actually based in Nevada instead specialize in things like candles and honey. In fact, according to the Nevada Department of Agriculture, only two percent of the food consumed in our state is actually grown here. That’s no surprise — we live in a desert, after all. But some Nevada farmers are changing that statistic with an entrepreneurial mindset and technology that makes farming in the desert a realistic proposition. Rodney Mehring took on Blue Lizard Farm seven years ago in Lincoln County,
A new leaf: Las Vegas Herbs uses hydroponics to grow large volumes of fresh herbs fast.
150 miles north of Las Vegas. At just one-anda-half acres, Blue Lizard is a microfarm. On that small portion of land, Mehring has established a profitable business, growing vegetables and leafy greens, and selling them almost exclusively to Harvest by Roy Ellamar, a farm-to-table restaurant in Bellagio. Mehring’s secret is hoop houses. A hoop house is “essentially an unheated greenhouse,” Mehring explains. Instead of being heated internally the way greenhouses are, hoop houses use a combination of solar energy and shade cloth to regulate the internal temperature. In this way, hoop houses stay cool during the 110-degree summer highs, but also warm when temperatures drop by more than 50 degrees at night. Hoop houses also retain moisture and keep the air inside humid — an important factor in the desert — and protect plants from strong winds. “Our type of growing, we try to maximize space in the hoop houses, (and maximize) crops per square foot,” Mehring says. He does just that: In a year, one of his hoop houses can produce up to 400 pounds of spinach, one of his most popular crops. He produces 15 tons of greens annually, including mixed lettuce, baby
P h oto g r a p h y c h r i sto p h e r s m i t h
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red Russian kale, and purple mustard. Mehring started out with one small hoop house, but today he has five large ones and is in the process of buying five more. “There’s a lot of support for these microfarms,” Mehring says, referring to federal grants for hoop houses. (There are 82 hoop houses in Nevada that have received grants.) Mehring has become something of a hoop house spokesperson in the local farming community, and he’s not alone in his enthusiasm. “There are some studies that show hoop houses increase the time-to-market and yield for some fruits and vegetables,” says Jennifer Ott, project manager at the University of Nevada, Reno’s Desert Farming Initiative, which promotes sustainable desert agriculture. “With California as our neighbor, Nevada farms have big competition when it comes to quantity and timing. The average California farm is significantly larger than the average Nevada farm. California farms can also be first to market or can extend much longer than Nevada farms,” Ott explains. Using hoop houses, Nevada farmers can help even the playing field. Another technology gaining ground in Nevada is aquaponics. In an aquaponics system, fish and plants are raised together, allowing the plants to feed on the waste the fish produce. This waste includes ammonia, a crucial ingredient for plant growth that’s lacking in Nevada soils. In turn, the plants help keep the fish’s environment clean. That ability to raise two products for the price (and in the space) of one is what has made the system so popular. Aquaponics also uses a fraction of the water traditional agriculture requires: just 10 percent, according to the Aquaponics Association. Aquaponics is more popular commercially at farms up north, such as Chippewa Creek Farm and Hungry Mother Organics, both based in Reno. Here in Southern Nevada, farmers are using a sister technology: hydroponics. Hydroponics eliminates the need for soil, replacing the nutrients provided by the fish in an aquaponics system with nutrients and ammonia added directly into the water. The nutrients are then absorbed into a substrate of ground coconut shell that forms the base of the media where the greens are grown.
Choreography by Jorden Morris
May 13 & 14, 2017 (702) 749-2000 • NevadaBallet.org Dancer photos by Virginia Trudeau
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Community NEVADA PUBLIC RADIO
RECYCLING DAY April 29 8 a.m. to noon.
• Shred old paperwork • Recycle glass, aluminum, plastic, cardboard • Bring your old computers, cell phones, appliances and more • Donate clothes, jewelry, housewares, home decor, etc. PILL TAKE BACK. Turn in your unused or expired medications for safe confidential disposal and destruction. We will even take the prescription bottle.
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Las Vegas Herbs is a hydroponic microgreens farm started two years ago by John McCarthy, Svetlan Valdes, Julian Rizov and Vesselka Rizova. Using hydroponics, McCarthy and his partners can rely on the seed itself to provide most of the nutrients for the microgreens, which are sold at seven to 14 days old, still alive and in their containers, to restaurants and casinos. This enables them to grow a large crop very quickly; each 10-inchsquare tray contains up to 2,000 seeds, and they harvest two or three times a month. Right now, they’re selling 3,000 trays per month. They now have 50 clients; they expect to triple that number by the end of 2017. “We’re growing miniforests that are two inches tall,” McCarthy says. In the 5,000-square-foot greenhouse not far from the M Resort, the greens are inundated with light for up to 18 hours a day, which makes for faster root growth and a faster harvest time.
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Crop top: Above, a worker uses ceramic scissors to harvest greens; left, John McCarthy, co-owner of Las Vegas Herbs.
Like hoop houses, hydroponics requires a small amount of space and uses a fraction of the water traditional agriculture uses. This makes it ideal for a desert environment like Nevada’s but, as McCarthy notes, it’s a sustainable alternative to agriculture everywhere. “We have diminishing farmland and increasing population, and hydroponics is the only answer,” he says. “It is the future, there’s no way around it.” Indeed, the indoor agriculture industry, including hydroponics, is growing quickly. According to white papers published by Indoor Ag-Con, an industry conference held annually in Las Vegas, there’s a $9 billion potential market for indoor agriculture products, hinting at the growth potential of hydroponics. But some farmers in the region have been slow to embrace these new technologies. The price of investing in them can be prohibitive: the cost of artificial lighting for a hydroponics greenhouse can rival the cost of the actual greenhouse itself. “The demand is there, but there are not a lot of people who are willing to take the risk,” Mehring of Blue Lizard explains. “Farming is a risky business. … There are a lot of people with binoculars seeing how we’re doing.”
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Community But if the growth in farmers market culture has proved anything, it is that investing in local production is the way of the future. “I believe that the demand for local food will continue to grow, and farmers will find ways to adapt to their desert environment as they have for thousands of years,” says Ann Louhela, president of NevadaGrown, a nonprofit that works with farms in the state to foster sustainable agriculture. “Communities and regions as a whole adapt their agricultural practices to the climate they live in.” Mehring and McCarthy are leading that trend. McCarthy of Las Vegas Herbs plans to invest in a new hydroponics greenhouse to begin growing strawberries, a fruit in high demand at upscale restaurants on the Strip. Berries pose a challenge to the Nevada environment: High winds and sudden drops in temperature often kill berries before
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they can be harvested. A hydroponics greenhouse, however, can take on these challenges. Mehring, too, is looking to start growing fruits in Blue Lizard’s hoop houses soon, and is optimistic that the enterprise will be as profitable as his greens business has been. “Local is as import-
Growth industry: Newly germinated plants are stored in racks at Las Vegas Herbs.
ant as being organic,” he says, “maybe even more important.” So the next time you’re at the farmers market, take a good look at the fruits and vegetables in your basket. Chances are that most of them come from California — but perhaps not for long.
Profile
Normal in his own way Singer Mark Giovi isn’t letting his medical condition keep him from hitting the high notes B y J o h n M . G l i o n na
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inger Mark Giovi pulls his equipment cart onto the patio of the Italian restaurant in Summerlin. On this evening, the outdoor setting will serve as more than a stage. For Giovi, it’s a proving ground, where he will once again show a roomful of strangers that an artist should be judged by his spirit, character and talent, not his looks. At 47, Giovi seems ready for a hipster casino-floor cruise: His facial hair is a fashionable stubble, the tail of his red dress shirt is worn out, sleeves rolled up above his elbows. Yet there’s an awkwardness to his movements, a bit of a stagger. His left leg is stiff, his arm and hand cocked at a crooked angle. Giovi has cerebral palsy. But that’s not what he wants people to notice. Here at Trattoria Ruggiano, Giovi wants his audience to hear him sing. He wants them to savor that smooth tenor voice that recalls a Rat Pack studio session, with a kaleidoscopic range featuring blues, jazz, rock, Broadway standards, even opera.
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Giovi unloads an amp and microphone from his cart as patrons begin filling nearby tables. When his wristwatch comes loose, the one he wears on his good hand, he quickly uses his teeth to refasten the strap. “See that?” he says, smiling. “Huh?” The scene is vintage Giovi. Since he began playing baseball, basketball and tennis as a never-say-never kid, he’s proven that he’s not limited by his condition. These days, his challenge is to convince people to look beyond the obvious and see the family man and singer who has gained a local reputation for the sheer command of his voice. Giovi isn’t someone with cerebral palsy who can sing. He’s a singer, period. He calls it a different kind of normal.
My way: Mark Giovi might have physical limitations due to cerebral palsy, but his voice has a broad range.
In fact, he recently wrote a new song by that title. Giovi and his wife, Illiana, were drinking wine one night after the two kids had gone to bed. He talked about his next career move, how he wanted to stretch beyond the restaurant circuit and onto a concert stage, offering inspirational performances for people overcoming their own physical hurdles. “You could talk about how we’re different, but that it’s our normal,” Illiana said. “What’s different to other people is normal to us.” It’s the kind of normal where Giovi learned to change diapers with one hand, where a harried Illiana urges, “Here, grab this,” and her husband says, “Really?” It’s the kind of normal where friends
P h oto g r a p h y B i l l H u g h e s
of the couple’s 12-year-old daughter ask, “So, what’s wrong with your Dad?” and she’ll blithely respond, without a shred of preteen angst, “Oh, he’s been like that his whole life.” A day later, Giovi sat on his backyard patio dictating lyrics into his smartphone. If you look past the obvious/I’m sure that you will find Reflections of yourself/a heart, a soul, a mind “I was blown away,” Illiana says of his aspirations. “I never dreamed he would take it to that level.” It’s the latest step for a singer used to pressing his performance limits. Giovi began singing at age 8 with his father’s band in New Jersey and later fronted both jazz and heavy metal groups in Los Angeles. He’s toured with pop singer Aaron Carter and still performs at numerous fundraisers. At 19, he was the first person with cerebral palsy to perform on a CP telethon. Now Giovi has joined a group of physically disadvantaged musicians for a series of concerts for the disabled. The tour is sponsored by the Little Green Apples Project, founded by Robert Smith, the blind son of the singer O.C. Smith, who turned the song “Little Green Apples” into a hit single in 1968. The group plans an upcoming event near Portland to benefit a boy with autism and diabetes, hoping to help raise the $15,000 needed to buy him a service dog. “Just imagine, two blind guys and one with cerebral palsy reaching out to this kid,” Smith says. “Mark is all in. I just love his gentle heart and his gentle spirit.” Giovi, who years ago wore a black glove to distract audiences from his CP, with their scoffs and crude imitations, says his faith helped him finally accept himself. But it wasn’t easy. “I’ve always tried to fit in instead of stick out,” he says. “That might have been the wrong thing to do.” It’s time for the Summerlin show to begin. Standing beside keyboardist Ned Mills, Giovi faces an audience of two dozen. His movements might be awkward, but the style is self-assured. He eases into “The Way You Look Tonight,” made famous by Ginger Rogers
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Profile
You love Nevada. We do, too.
and Fred Astaire. Some diners watch Giovi as if seeing something for the first time. One leans at the bar. “His voice is unbelievable,” the guy says. “God taketh and God giveth. But boy, did God give him something.”
W
Together let’s keep Nevada a place where both nature and people can thrive. Learn more at nature.org/nevada 40
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* * * * *
hen Giovi was a toddler, he cried a lot and couldn’t push himself up with his left hand. The pediatrician told his parents he’d grow out of it. Then an orthopedic doctor broke the news: The boy had CP. His mother cried. His father, a singer around Trenton, New Jersey, didn’t work for a month. “Even to talk about it now takes my heart right out,” Lou Giovi says. The boy wore a brace. There were operations, but there wasn’t much the family could do. One thing they didn’t do was even suggest their son was disabled. But growing up with CP meant facing down bullies. Once, the sixth-grader came home from Catholic school. “I said ‘Mark, why are your pants ripped?’” his mother, Isabel McCawley, recalls. “He said ‘Mom, the kids are throwing me around at school.’” Then Giovi found two remarkable mentors: His sister Cynthia once chased a kid three blocks after she caught him taunting her little brother. His older brother Louis was a standout athlete who encouraged Mark to take up baseball, tennis and basketball. On the diamond, coaches stuck him at first base, where he only needed one good arm to catch the ball. But he wanted to play shortstop. So Louis taught him to catch the ball, throw up the glove, snag the ball in midair and toss it to first. He got good enough at it to play in Little League, his high school team and the Babe Ruth youth league, the only disabled player to do so. Giovi also started singing in the school choir. He won the lead in the musical Oklahoma!, using his good hand to brandish a shotgun onstage. Making his debut with his dad’s band, which often played at his grandparents’ Italian restaurant, he sang “You Light Up My Life,” by Debby Boone. Giovi was nervous. The crowd loved him. The kid dove into music, his revenge against the
bullies. I’ll show those jerks, he thought. They’re going to come to my concerts and buy my records. In junior high, he sang in a heavy metal band that did Iron Maiden and Metallica covers. He dressed in the requisite animal-print Spandex, but added another affectation: Worried his condition would upstage his voice, he wore a black glove as a sort of shield. His trepidation was understandable. In the 1980s, not everyone was willing to accept a performer with CP — not even fundraisers for the disease. In 1987, organizers were reluctant to allow the 19-year-old to perform at a CP telethon at Radio City Music Hall, but relented when they finally heard him sing — “My Way,” of course. Then they invited him back for a second night after he was mobbed by other CP sufferers who had finally found a role model. Years later, Giovi moved to Los Angeles to perform in a heavy metal band while moonlighting as a jazz singer. To help pay the bills, he worked as a restaurant maître d’ because no one would hire a waiter with one good arm. One day, as Giovi dressed for a rock gig, a musician friend asked, “Why do you wear that glove? Are you trying to hide who you are?” The words stung. “I didn’t realize I was doing that — I really didn’t,” Giovi says. He ditched the glove. People soon took notice of Giovi’s voice. One night, during an open-mic session at a place called Frankie’s on Melrose, Giovi asked co-owner Terry Competelli if he could sing a song. She hesitated to throw a newcomer into a lineup that on some nights included recording artists such as Frankie Valli. But she did. Later, when he was done singing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” he recalls, he received a standing ovation. Giovi got his biggest break in 1998, touring with Aaron Carter. The idea of wearing a black glove was by then a memory, replaced by a wry self-deprecating humor. When the two first met, Carter was in the middle of moving. Giovi walked up and said, “Can I lend a hand? Because it’s all I got.” Carter laughed. Giovi got the job. A few years later, he was back in a New Jersey karaoke bar singing Bon Jovi’s “Bed of Roses.” Illiana was in the
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Profile crowd. She didn’t even notice the CP: “I saw a good-looking guy.” The couple soon moved to Las Vegas to escape the New Jersey winters. Giovi got a job laying concrete while he looked for music gigs. The going was tough, but he slowly won a following. Eventually, he sang with a local group called the Three Tenors. For six years, he performed in the musical Bite at the Stratosphere. He now performs regularly at the Bootlegger, the Italian-American Club and sometimes at The Smith Center. Audience smirks and stares no longer bother him. “The first time I’d play a new venue, I’d sense people were looking at me, thinking ‘Like, really? This guy’s gonna do a song?’ When I start singing, I can see the faces change.” One Giovi fan is comedian Rich Little. “He too good for Vegas,” Little says. “All he needs is a break.”
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Little often briefly performs at Giovi’s gigs as a gesture of solidarity. And he pulls no punches. “Let’s hear it for Mark Giovi — what a voice,” he’ll say. “Of course, the guy’s not much good rowing a boat. It just goes around in circles.”
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ito DePalo recalls the time he considered hiring a singer with CP at his restaurant. The general manager at Trattoria Ruggiano looked the guy up on YouTube. “When you hear him sing,” he says, “you look past all that.” DePalo has seen passersby at the Summerlin shopping mall reach in to put money in Giovi’s tip jar. Fellow musician Ned Mills no longer even notices Giovi’s CP. “I can’t grow wings. I can’t fly. But I accept it,” he says. “Mark’s like that: He accepts who he is.” On this night, Giovi moves seamlessly through three sets that demonstrate
his range. He performs Van Morrison’s “Moon Dance,” Tony’s Bennett’s anthem, “San Francisco,” and “Save the Last Dance for Me” by the Drifters. Then he shifts into a different gear. He begins “Nessun Dorma,” an aria from the Puccini opera Turandot. The crowd hushes. Dinner conversation comes to a halt. People even stop looking at the NFL game playing on the big screen TVs. The song is a favorite of one regular, a man who speaks through a voice box. He sits beaming at the bar, holding his wife’s hand. Giovi then introduces “A Different Kind of Normal,” his words capturing a long road to success. “I’m going to do a song I wrote about my life — about being looked at as being a little different,” he says. “But let me tell you, I’m normal — normal in my own way.” Then he starts to sing. And they really pay attention.
EVERY THURSDAY, 4PM–8PM MARCH 2 – MAY 25 in the courtyard, off main street ShoptheDistrictGVR.com 44
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At first bite 46
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Our c i ty's be st spots to eat & drink
Ground game: Aureole's roasted spaghetti squash with candy-stripe beets, walnuts and truffle "cheese."
P hoto g rap h y By sabin orr
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Dining out
Haute sweet: Aureole's seared foie gras and churros with huckleberries; right, Chef Johnny Church in the kitchen; next page, beef and octopus carpaccio
At First Bite
Halo effect Strip icon Aureole takes a chance on a new direction. Here are tasting notes from a journey that’s just begun By Mitchell Wilburn
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L
ast year, the Charlie Palmer Group revamped its restaurants with new chefs, new menus and new concepts, and Las Vegas was no exception. In a city that celebrates change, this shouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But Charlie Palmer’s Vegas flagship Aureole was just that — an iconic standard-bearer that always seemed to abide amid a restlessly simmering Strip dining scene. That’s changed. In its new incarnation, the only things left of the old Aureole are the name and its celebrated wine tower framed in giant brutalist concrete. The biggest change: The new executive chef, Johnny Church, a man whose fingerprints are all over the new menu. But he’s only new to Aureole; Church’s career is rooted in Vegas. Anyone familiar with Church’s work at RM Seafood, MTO Cafe, or the late, great Artisanal Foods Cafe will see some familiar favorites peppering the menu here and there. Church’s new, casual menu includes more shareable items, by-the-glass wine pairings, and even dishes that aim to be on the healthier side (with plenty on the indulgent side, of course). But to dismiss the new menu as a mere transplant would overlook the promise of what seems to be a work in playful progress. The main dining room’s menu might be considered the face of the
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restaurant. This is where you’ll find tive coastal waters. The Veta la Palma is dressed simply with chimichurri to highmany of Church’s greatest hits. Of the light the tender, delicate flesh of the sea three sections — Root, Ranch and Surf — the vegetable category boasts some of bass. The lionfish ceviche is prepared in the most novel tastes. The standout is a a lively Peru-meets-Thailand style, with roasted spaghetti squash dish, dressed ginger, coconut milk, aji amarillo pepper with small roasted beets, a house-made paste and lime, served with tempura shitruffle “cheese,” grated black truffle, so leaves. This was a dish too well loved walnuts and pumpkin seeds. The dish is to let die with Artisanal Foods Cafe and entirely vegan, but nothing feels substifits well in Aureole’s new menu. Artituted — not even the cheese. It’s simply a sanal’s other signature dish, a burger with truffle gouda, foie gras, and a fried satisfying, delicious dish. The fried chicken “oysters” are also egg, finds its second act in the bar-bites satisfying, but also thrillmenu, along with a few other Aureole ingly modern. (Chicken Church classics. Mon-Sat, Naturally, there are a few oysters a re the tender 5:30-10:30p steak dishes, but they’re hardrounds of dark meat near Mandalay Bay the thighs.) These are fried ly standard. The 16-ounce rib 702-632-7401 until crispy and served eye is seared four times, employing a technique of searwith lemon butter, covered in a little veil of lardo ing and cooling pioneered and a cloud of spinach foam — to call it by modernist Japanese chefs. There is a three-star chef’s version of a chicken also a 48-ounce Creekstone Farms pornugget comes close to doing it justice. terhouse swimming in Bordelaise — the On the Surf menu, the Veta la Palma sea size, of course, intended for an entire tabass and lionfish ceviche stand out for ble to share. Another worthy inclusion: their eco-cred as much as their culinary roast lamb loin wrapped in spicy Mervirtues. The sea bass comes from a susguez Spanish sausage — strong, meaty, tainable, cutting-edge aquaculture farm screaming for a glass of big Spanish red in Spain; the lionfish is a fast-breeding — served with a root vegetable gratin. invasive species whose place on the But the most promising part of the menu is a part of an attempt to curb its new Aureole is the easiest to miss: The seemingly unstoppable takeover of sensitasting menu available in the Fountain
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Table 34 Featuring Chef Wes Kendricks’ contemporary American cuisine including fresh fish, wild game, duck, lamb, Certified Angus Beef, and comfort food classics. Conveniently located off the 215 and Warm Springs. Dinner Tuesday - Saturday 5pm until closing (around 10pm) 600 E. Warm Springs Road Las Vegas, NV (702) 263-0034 March 2017
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Dining out Terrace Room in the back main dining room. (You have to ask for it, and sometimes you have to insist.) Some dishes on the six-course menu are smaller versions of the regular dinner menu, but they’re no less meticulous and thought-provoking. Take the sheep ricotta tortellini with duck confit and black truffle cream, which manages to be both superbly rich but also complex, or the sense-dazzling seared Sonoma foie gras and churros with huckleberries. For dessert, there’s intrigue: They combined the af ter-dinner cheese course with the dessert menu in offering savory cheesecake slices, which mix either blue cheese, brie, or aged cheddar into the batter, with a topping of a fruit compote or ice cream on each. Local dining critics are split on Aureole’s new direction. Some call it a misfired attempt at a something-for-every-
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one restaurant, and others laud it as a modern take with honest, farm-to-table ingredients, bringing dishes with more soul to the previously imposing room. I’d say it’s neither of those. Rather, it’s on a different axis altogether. Based on my several visits, the menu strikes me as the first eager steps of something perhaps not quite yet sure of itself — but something destined to be strong and bold. It was the same impression I had of the first menu from Wilfried Bergerhausen of Le Cirque. Granted, Aureole isn’t Le Cirque, nor is it trying to be. But, far from trying to merely strike a balance between crowd-pleasing and culinary refinement, Church is trying to set a new course of Aureole, a journey whose destination Church himself might not even know. I’ll be watching closely as what might just be a new Strip icon finds its footing.
eat this when?
Eat this now! Dirty Chips
at Pho King Phonomenal Noodle Lab and Grill 35 E. Basic Road, Henderson, 702-567-0777
D i r t y C h i p s : B r e n t H o l m e s ; C h i n a p o b l a n o c o c k ta i l s : C h r i s t o p h e r S m i t h
The main draws at this newish joint are the pho and the hefty bahn mi known as the Big Wang (I’ll pause to let the tittering subside ...) (... still tittering? ... c’mon, people), but I’m here today to praise the messy, delightful Dirty Chips. The ingredients list — fried wonton chips, bacon jelly drizzle, “secret” peanut sauce, fried garlic, crispy chicken skin — hints at the mad science going on. The wonton makes for lighter bites than regular chips, there’s a pleasurable volley of sweet and savory, the chicken skins add crunch, and be ready for a kick of spice — it’s not Bikini-Atoll-in-your-mouth hot, but you'll eventually feel the burn. Afterward, reflect on how nice it is to see a new culinary wrinkle in this drowsy old part of drowsy old Henderson. Scott Dickensheets
Cocktail of the month
China Poblano Cocktail Experience China Poblano in the Cosmopolitan is all about freewheeling culinary hookups, Mexican and Chinese cuisine getting together and being down for whatever. (Also, that thing about east-west trade going back to the 16th century.) The schtick extends to its cocktail menu, too, but you’ll sample some serious mixologist technique behind the motif with its China Poblano Cocktail Experience ($32), a generous four-drink flight of mash-ups. The Salt Air Margarita’s calling card is its soft bang and playful citrus/ salt foam; the rye-based Ma is spiked with a bright tang of fresh yuzu and star anise ginger syrup for some bass. The Jade Garden blooms subtly with spice (Szechuan peppercorns), fruit (makrut lime) and herb (cilantro-infused tequila). My favorite, though is the Mezcal Negroni. Served in a small snifter, it’s a compact bowl of rich liquid smoke and golden fruit. Andrew Kiraly China Poblano, The Cosmopolitan 702-698-7900
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Dining out
job came to a sudden end, Kishore found himself thrust into entrepreneurial waters, and he launched a prepared-meal home-delivery service. The spice must flow: Left, biriyani, rice with Then, late last year, his desire to run his a stew of chicken maown restaurant became a sudden but sala; top, Hawt Wings welcome reality. The Inn Zone needed a The dish with fennel; right, vendor to take over its food operation, and lotus-root chips he needed a kitchen. A match was made. Toddy Shop, which takes its name from Keralese slang for casual drinking spots, has a diverse menu divided into themes. The “Exotic” column is the most representative of Kishore’s original stomping grounds, including a pot of biriyani. It’s Hemant Kishore brings fragrant Southern Indian a clay vessel stuffed with fluffy, longdishes to an unlikely Las Vegas spot B y G r e g T h i l m o n t grained basmati rice topped with a rich stew of chicken masala and garnishes of t first glance, the venerable Inn anywhere else in the metropolitan area. cashews, raisins and crisp onion shreds. Zone on Rainbow Boulevard is “We use a lot of mustard seeds, red It’s a shorthand introduction to a comyour ordinary old-school bar of chilies, curry leaves, turmeric, coriander, plicated, multistage creation usually precumin, fennel, garam masala, cardamom, pared for feasts in the old country. “It’s a the dive variety. There are nonstop sports on the TV screens, clove and cinnamon,” Kishore says. Keradish we make for celebrations — holidays, illuminated beer signs on the walls, claslese recipes often include coconut oil, meat festivals, weddings,” Kishore says. sic rock on the sound system and plenty and milk, lending them a distinct tropical Kappa and konji is a deluxe update of a of poker-keno-o-rama machines — all the nuance. They also feature more fauna than workingman’s repast: turmeric-infused familiars. It’s also home to perhaps the is found in the Northern Indian restaurants mashed tapioca (cassava root) is topped most unlikely menu and venue mash-up around town — including beef, mutton, with shrimp, mustard seeds, curry leaves, in the valley. In the back, chef Hemant duck and even pork. shreds of dried coconut and dried red Kishore cooks up the fragrant specialties Kishore, who’s lived in Las Vegas for chili peppers. It’s a South Asian cousof Southern India, such as pot of biriyani in to South Carolina-style three years, first became shrimp and grits. The crown and kappa and konji, out of a small kitchfamiliar to local foodies Toddy Shop jewel on this menu is Queen en-window eatery called Toddy Shop. as the talented guy who at The Inn Zone In the dining nook, Kishore is recreating Karimeen — a whole spicehandcrafted fine breads 238 S. Rainbow the food traditions of his home state of Kerrubbed pompano fish that’s and pastries for PublicUs, Blvd. ala, which is located on the subcontinent’s flash-fried, then steamed in a in Downtown, his skills Las Vegas, NV verdant southwestern coast. Abounding in banana leaf with onion-tomaperfected by a degree in 89115 aromatic and delicious flora, the region has baking from the prestigious to masala sauce. (702) 363-2424 been known as the “Spice Coast” for milCulinary Institute of AmerIn the “Inspired” category, facebook.com/ lennia. It’s a cuisine that’s not being served ica at Hyde Park. When that Kishore opens the epicurean
Mojave masala
A
toddyshopUSA/
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P h oto g r ap h y s a b i n o r r
atlas while keeping a thumb on the Kerala page. This is especially true with Indian Chopsuey, which has a great wordplay and world-mixing back story. “It’s called ‘American chop suey’ in India,” he says. “It’s one of my favorite childhood dishes.” It’s a bowl of fried egg noodles topped with a robust mélange of chili-garlic gravy, stir-fried veggies, char-grilled baby bok choy and the bullseye of a sunny-side-up egg on top. It’s quintessential and colorful comfort food. The Asian Persuasion One is Kishore’s tribute to Las Vegas’ burgeoning Chinatown. It’s Mongolian stir-fried beef and grilled shrimp, with Korean-inflected gochujang aioli in a sesame brioche bun. Call it a pan-Asian surf-and-turf sandwich. The Market Salad shifts ingredients seasonally, including house-pickled vegetables procured at local farmers markets like the lauded Intuitive Forager. His Rasta Wings are a take on the traditional bar snack with a terrific spicy-sweet sauce. “Classics” is the briefest section of the Toddy Shop trifold paper menu. American faves are the focus, especially the musthave-one-in-a-sports-bar hamburger. Except here, Kishore ups the game with a patty that blends beef and pork, adds in his own secret-spice sauce, and is served on Texas toast inspired by Louis’ Lunch, the purported and beloved Connecticut birthplace of the American bread-andmeat mainstay. Even his emphatically titled Hawt Wings takes Buffalo, New York’s, hot sauce and gives it Kishorean hints of fennel. They come sided with crispy, ornate lotus-root chips. It’s like snacking on a tasty mandala. There’s also a fourth menu of full-on American bar food, from French fries to meatball sliders. Realistically speaking, not all the Inn Zone’s longtime clientele is looking for a Keralese excursion — gotta have hot dogs in the fridge. There’s still a bit of a divide between those folks and the new epicurean excursionistas parking in the lot. But it’s a friendly divergence, a bit of slight bemusement on both sides. Interestingly, Kishore is also gaining traction in the Southern Nevada expat Indian community, so his clientele has an additional contingent looking to dig into some of the most exciting dishes in town.
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JUNE 8-10, 2017
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JUNE 18-21, 2017
JUNE 25 -28, 2017
JULY 30 - AUG 2, 2017 1-800-NIKE-Camp Register @ USSportsCamps.com
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ON FEBRUARY 9, Desert Companion readers and honored guests enjoyed an evening of live music, food, and fun as we celebrated our 2016 Best of the City Winners! You can find the full list of winners at desertcompanion.vegas Congratulations to all!
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FIELD NOTES
Want to go where the wild things are? You don’t have to venture far. Meet the critters who make a home near you. (Note: Some are terrifying.)
By Andrew Kiraly
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BURROWING OWL Nests are for the birds. Why build a nest when there are so many spacious, comfortable holes in the ground to make use of? That’s what the elfin, vaguely angrylooking burrowing owl does. In the Las Vegas Valley, you can find them in hilly desert areas, often in undeveloped lots on the suburban outskirts, where they’ll either use holes previously dug out by other animals or dig their own. Adult owls hang out around the burrow during the day, taking trips to hunt for small rodents, reptiles and insects to feed their equally vaguely angrylooking owl family.
Likes: Holes, solitude, staring hatefully at you, insects, lizards, small rodents Dislikes: Rapacious developers
peep my crib
A single burrowing owl’s nest can be part of a colony spanning hundreds of yards. And best of all, there’s no HOA!
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es yik
!
PALO VERDE BEETLE Its Frankensteinian appearance aside — check out that spiked thoracic collar straight outta Hot Topic! — the palo verde beetle is harmless. (Just don’t wave a finger in front of those mandibles.) After spending most of its three-year life span underground as a fat yellow-white grub feasting on the roots of trees, the palo verde beetle only lives above ground for a month, which it spends in true bucket-list fashion, battling rival suitors and having as much frantic, violent beetle sex as possible. And yes, it can fly, which means yes, it can fly into your mouth.
gross
true story
The root-gnawing grub of the palo verde beetle is up to five inches long and ugh just yuck.
“I’ve seen them while out delivering the mail, and my reaction always follows the same pattern: First, terror. Second, rationalization. Clearly this is a toy, cooked up by some overimaginative sadist intent on scaring children (and mailmen). Finally, unavoidable acceptance and a return to terror when the diabolical creature actually flies! I give them a wide berth.” — Alan Gegax, mail carrier and avid hiker
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RED RACER A subspecies of the coachwhip — so named for its tail scales that look like braided leather — the red racer is a nonvenomous snake that’s fairly common in Southern Nevada, Southern California and eastern Arizona. But nonvenomous doesn’t mean wimpy. These swift snakes are canny, aggressive and alert hunters that kill mice, birds and other reptiles by pinning them and crushing them with their powerful jaws. Adults can get up to six terror-inducing feet long.
secret attack As part of its hunting strategy, the red racer will poke its head over a rock and bob it, fooling its prey into thinking it’s a harmless lizard. psyyyych!
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oh,an d also ... The myth of the hoop snake is thought to be inspired by the coachwhip. See, even reptiles have a fake news problem.
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chomp!
Beaver Beavers aren’t native to Southern Nevada — but hey, are you? Actually, that’s the point: As Las Vegas grew — and, specifically, the Las Vegas Wash evolved from a storm channel to an urban river — beavers followed, making a home in the wash. Today there are between 20 and 40 beavers living in the Clark County Wetlands Park. And yes, they’re busy, obsessively building dams out of mud, reeds and branches every night to the point where park employees have to tear them down several times a week to keep the water flowing. (If you notice metal mesh around cottonwoods and willows at the park, that’s beaver-proofing.)
A beaver’s teeth never stop growing, and only get sharper with use. Let’s hope they don’t develop a taste for human flesh!
fun fact Most beavers build lodges out of sticks, but the presumably less ambitious ones at the wetlands park prefer instead to live in holes on the banks.
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w arning sign
Cougar Cougars, aka mountain lions, are so rarely seen in Southern Nevada, many people think they’re a myth. But the elusive nocturnal hunters that could grow as large as eight feet long do make a home in the Spring Mountains, subsisting mainly on deer. While sightings are rare, it pays to be prepared if you do encounter one: Don’t run. Instead, try to make yourself appear as large as possible and back away slowly. You can scream all you want later.
s ha v e ev o lv ed Th e co ug ar ’s cl aw er pr ey st ru g g le s, so th at th e ha rd p. Ha pp y hi k in g ! ri g ey th er ht g ti th e
scary
true story “I was camping up on Mt. Charleston in the Lovell Canyon area near a spring, and a big cat screamed from the nearby shadows. In the fading light of early evening, I jumped into the back of my pickup, grabbed my rifle for self-defense, hunkered down and shuddered for the rest of the night. I never saw the creature — and I never camped there again.” — Jim Boone, birdandhike.com
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WHITE VELVET ANT It’s actually the white thistledown velvet ant if you want to get fancy — and actually a wasp if you want to get technical. Lacking wings to escape predators, the still-nimble female white velvet ant mimics Phyllis Diller a fluffy creosote seed on the desert floor. She might be done up like a burlesque dancer, but be warned — like any good wasp, the white velvet ant packs a nasty sting.
tr ue story “We thought the piece of white fluff skittering across the dust at Corn Creek was a seed ball blown by the wind. But it was walking: fast, confident and determined — an impossible being. Turns out the white velvet ant isn’t even an ant, but a wingless wasp, which explains its swagger.” — Patrick Gaffey, amateur nature photographer
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stledown i h t e l a but The m s wings, . a h t n a ing velvet ol-look o c s a t ’ he isn
Ad half ult size: an or so inch
By
Air and
By
© i S t o c k p h o t o . c o m / FJ P h o t o g r a p h y
Land
A “rare treasure,” the Desert National Wildlife Refuge is home to diverse wildlife, and is a hub of research and recreation — but the Air Force has it in its sights. We take a deeper look into this conflicted landscape and what’s at stake in the dispute. By Heidi Kyser March 2017
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Choate has a map of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge spread on the dash of his U.S. Geological Service pickup to show the range of cougars and, more importantly, their prey, desert bighorn sheep. The 1.6 million-acre refuge was created in 1966 to protect all the plant and animal life in the wild lands a half-hour north of Las Vegas, but bighorn sheep get special attention, due to hunters’ love of pursuing the agile, curved-horn ungulates across the rugged terrain. (The sport’s best-known fan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, first established the Desert Game Range here in 1936, when it also encompassed part of the Spring Mountains to the south.) Second, the chances of actually seeing a cougar are slim to none, even with Choate, who knows the elusive animals as well as anyone in Southern Nevada. He spent three years on the refuge, camping in the hills for weeks at a time, trapping cougars to put tracking collars on them, returning to town only occasionally for provisions. That exercise in patience was part of an intense, multi-institution study of the area’s plant and animal life designed to determine, among other things, what had caused the bighorn sheep population’s decline, from as many as 1,200 individuals in the late ’80s to
as few as 400 today. Choate’s job was to figure out if cougars, the sheep’s only predators, were killing them off. In three years, he and cougar biologist Brian Jansen caught only five cats out of an estimated total population of six to 10. Clearly, they’re not the problem. More likely culprits, the scientists involved in the study believe, are disease and drought. Bumping along the lower half of rocky, rutted Alamo Road, the refuge’s main north-south thoroughfare that Choate says chews up a set of street tires every 2,000 miles, it’s not hard to believe this desert could grind down even the hardiest of wayfarers. Yet it’s ideal terrain for bighorn sheep, which can handle extreme temperatures and run up and down 20-degree slopes covered in rocks — and they might be
Cat eyes: David Choate, a visiting assistant professor of life science at UNLV, scans the Sheep Mountains for wildlife. Above and right, denizens of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge stop for a drink.
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thriving were it not for a persistent pneumonia strain that appears to be killing them. Even the handful of cougars that roam the daunting mountain peaks and parched valley floors seem to be attached to the land. Using radio telemetry, Choate tracked one young male, M3, as he wandered from the Sheep Range that elongates the refuge’s eastern half, south through Gold Butte and all the way down to the Grand Canyon. There, evidence would suggest, M3 got in a fight, probably over food or a mate. Mortally wounded, he headed back toward the Sheep Range. Choate’s team found M3’s body at the south end of the range. He’d come home to die. Okay, maybe that’s anthropomorphizing a little. Some local humans are as drawn to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge as the bighorn sheep, and they can’t help but romanticize its wild nature. “This is the largest protected area this close to an urban environment anywhere in the country outside Alaska,” says Jose Witt, who directs Friends of Nevada Wilderness’ local operations. “There’s really been no mining out there. Very few roads. Very pristine habitat. To have that so close to a population of 2.2 million is a rare treasure.” Such passion comes in handy when defend-
A n i m a l P h ot o s C o u r t e s y U n i t e d S tat e s G e o lo g i c a l S u r v e y/ U n i t e d S tat e s F i s h a n d W i l d l i f e S e r v i c e ; d av i d C h o at e : P e t e r f r i g e r i
First of all, a mountain lion isn’t really a mountain lion; it’s a cougar. “They don’t live in the mountains,” explains ecologist David Choate, who’s been studying the big cats of Southern Nevada for the past seven years, “and they’re in no way lions.”
ing an area under siege, which is how Witt’s group and other conservationists perceive the refuge to be at present. The Department of Defense recently floated a proposal to expand the control over the area by the U.S. Air Force, which currently shares jurisdiction in parts of the refuge with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The proposal would potentially put some now-public areas off-limits to humans. “I want to make it clear that no decisions have been made,” says James Sample, a Colorado State University employee who directs range-planning programs for the Secretary of the Air Force. “We are going to look at every option, analyze all the potential impacts, formulate our recommendations, and then it goes to Congress, which has the final say.” Sample stresses that the lengthy process leading up to those recommendations includes considering the 1,300-plus public comments received so far. Nevertheless, he adds, “We need more capacity on the Nevada Test and Training Range. … We need to increase capacity so we can train more like we fight.” It has prompted a smattering of local and national nonprofits to coalesce behind Nevada Wilderness’ campaign, cleverly hashtagged #DontBombTheBighorns. What’s behind the rhetoric? Is there anything worth saving on those hundreds of thousands of acres? And if so, at what cost?
Mapping it out
T
ake out a pencil and blank sheet of paper. On it, draw a big rectangle and lop off the bottom left corner. Now, draw a vertical line a little right of center. Finally, in the bottom half of the left-hand side, draw four narrow vertical boxes. You’ve just sketched a rough map of the 1.6 million-acre Desert National Wildlife Refuge. Here’s how it breaks down. The part on the left, encompassing 826,000 acres, overlaps the Nevada Test and Training Range, or NTTR, co-managed by the Air Force and Fish and Wildlife Service. Fish and Wildlife has primary jurisdiction over all of it except the boxes, which comprise 112,000 acres controlled by the Air Force, because it blows up stuff there. The part on the right is the publicly accessible part of the refuge, some 700,000 acres where Fish and Wildlife has sole juris-
diction. If you’ve toured the visitors center at Corn Creek, bagged Gass Peak, driven your Jeep along Mormon Well Road, hiked up to Hidden Forest cabin or camped in cougar country with David Choate, this is the part of the refuge that you’ve been on. The illustration helps to explain the defense department’s proposal to change the refuge. Inside the four boxes, which in reality are dry lakebeds and desert valley floors, are targets (on Google Earth, you can actually see bullseye formations scraped into the land). During training exercises, Sample says, pilots fly toward them from the northwest, entering your map at the upper right-hand corner and moving diagonally down and to the left. In actual combat, according to Sample, anti-aircraft weapons are deployed as planes approach their targets. Corporations such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman make so-called threat emitters that simulate ground-to-air defense systems for training exercises. In order to create a realistic scenario, the threat emitters would need to be installed on the approach to the target — that is, to the northeast. There’s the rub. Although the Air Force al-
ready has access to all the airspace over the refuge (along with the additional 2.1 million acres of the NTTR that are outside the refuge), it can’t use the land northeast of the targets on the refuge for training exercises under the current arrangement. For that, it would need primary jurisdiction over parts of the NTTR and public area that Fish and Wildlife now manages. “The problem is, as soon as we start attacking those boxes from farther away, we’re increasing the weapons safety perimeter,” Sample says. “As part of the requirements for safety, we have to keep people out of anywhere where there’s a 1-in-100,000 chance of something happening. … In every proposal we’re looking at, we’re keeping the impact area the same.” Choosing from the various possible combinations of options for transferring jurisdiction and redrawing boundaries, the Air Force has come up with five proposals, from the most modest, leaving things as they are, to the most extreme, turning over control of the NTTR to the Air Force and expanding it to include a million acres of the refuge. The five proposals are included in a Legislative
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Desert in danger: Dramatic valleys, petroglyphs, sand dunes and snow-capped mountains show the range of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge.
nagging issue remains: the sheep, cougars, foxes, mule deer, desert tortoises and other animals living there. What will become of the plants they eat and springs they drink from? The Department of Defense is in the business of defending the country; wildlife biology isn’t its core competency. In response to this concern Ackerman says, “A majority of what the Air Force needs to do is not high-disturbance activity. With the new weapons systems, what aircraft do is drop munitions from higher altitudes at greater speeds, so the greater area gives them the possibility to do that. The disturbance to the ground would be limited.” Even if nothing were exploded on the Air Force’s expanded territory, installing and maintaining threat emitters would require infrastructure — concrete pads and roads at least, which would disturb habitat. Further complicating things, woven into to the arcane jurisdictional tapestry of the refuge are 1.3 million acres that Fish and Wildlife proposed for wilderness designation in the early 1970s, some of them in the NTTR. To be able to use the threat emitters in those areas, that designation would likely have to be dropped. It doesn’t exactly scream stewardship. “The exact details would be worked out,” Ackerman says, noting that the Air Force would probably partner with the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife and other agencies for land management. “As a federal agency, it’s incumbent on us to ensure
and protect those species even though that’s not our primary mission.” Perhaps the biggest question in all this is: Whose idea was it? Opponents have no idea. When asked if the Air Force requested the change, Sample simply said, “It’s one solution to meet our needs.” Some conservationists see the hidden hand of politics at play. Proposals for transferring jurisdiction over the NTTR from Interior to Defense have twice been appended as riders to the National Defense Authorization Act. Those riders, scrapped during reconciliation, were added in the House by Representative Rob Bishop of Utah. (A well-known opponent of federal lands, Bishop has also attacked the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, proposing to have the sale of all federal lands here directed to the national general fund rather than going to their current use: conserving sensitive areas and creating public recreation opportunities.) In February of last year, Sample testified before a Natural Resources subcommittee in support of a similar rider proposing to close some public lands in the Utah Test and Train-
D e s e r t n at i o n a l w i l d l i f e r e f u g e , l e f t p a g e : D av i d C h o at e ; r i g h t p a g e : C h r i s t o p h e r S m i t h
Environmental Impact Statement, or LEIS, a formal document that will eventually go before Congress for a final decision on the matter. Between here and there lie the usual environmental studies, draft proposals, public comment periods and so on. Those speaking on behalf of the Air Force stress that their goal is not to damage sensitive habitat or deny people access to recreational areas. “We know that we don’t understand all access and use issues,” says Michael Ackerman, who works in the Air Force Civil Engineer Center’s environmental impact assessment group. As the project manager for this LEIS, Ackerman led a series of open houses last October to gather public input. “We got feedback on access to different areas — hiking areas, such as Hidden Forest, which wouldn’t be impacted by any of the current proposals; about 18,000 acres of the North Range (near Beatty) where there are plans for mountain biking — and generally on the wilderness feel of the area. About half of the feedback was related to wildlife biology and public access.” Ackerman says that his team will take this feedback into account as it develops its draft LEIS over the coming year. That will be published late 2017, followed by public hearings and another comment period. The final LEIS should be ready by September 2018, when it will be turned over to the Department of the Interior, which will review it and send it to Congress. All this is timed to have the Air Force’s 20-year lease on the land renewed before it expires in November 2021. According to Sample, even if the largest jurisdictional transfer proposed were enacted, it wouldn’t necessarily mean permanently kicking people off the parts of the refuge that the Air Force would take over. “We put emitters in public areas elsewhere and put fences up to keep people out,” he says, adding that the Air Force and Fish and Wildlife are considering ways to expand nondefense access to the NTTR as part of the LEIS process. That said, civilians are now only allowed on the part of the NTTR that overlaps the refuge for limited scientific research, tribal activities and a two-week hunting season, when hunters are allotted half a dozen highly prized permits for bighorn sheep. And that’s with Fish and Wildlife having primary jurisdiction. Regardless of which proposal is adopted, and how much human access it results in, one
ing Range. His reasoning: the area was needed as a weapons safety buffer for Air Force training similar to what’s envisioned for the NTTR. President Barack Obama signed the act with the temporary land closure in December.
Taking it in
M
ost people access the Desert National Wildlife Refuge from the south, off Interstate 95, but there’s another way in: from the north, off Highway 93, through the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge. Alamo Road, which begins just past the Pahranagat Refuge visitors center, runs 72 miles to the south, connecting it with the Desert Refuge visitors center at Corn Creek.
Alamo Road was graded last fall, and in February, despite heavy rains that tend to cause flooding, the northern half of the road was smoother than the southern half. Leaving Pahranagat, anyone with a high-clearance vehicle could drive south through the freshly watered high desert — rolling plains filled with Joshua trees, flat-top pink and red hills girded with bands of chiseled rock, giant slabs of stone rising diagonally from the blanket of scrub like shark heads breaking the water, jumbles of boulders on the side of the road vandalized with delinquents’ initials and the snow-capped Sheep Mountains looming to the southeast like a patron saint. Some distance in — a policy of respect prevents giving the exact location — is Eagle Head, where one can find a concentration of the Native American petroglyphs and lithics (rock chips for tool-making) that are scattered throughout the refuge, cultural artifacts attesting to the Southern Paiutes’ primary claim to the land. From Alamo Road, it’s a short walk down a wash dotted with coyote tracks and tinajas, natural pools that form in hollowed-out spots on the surfaces of flat rocks. A stone’s throw from one large petroglyph panel are the remains of a long-defunct cattle pen. Mingled among the lithics, an occasional rusted can. Continue south down Alamo Road, and soon you’ll be at Desert Dry Lake, which refuge manager Amy Sprunger jokes is a gold mine for Las Vegas towing companies. (It seems visitors frequently overestimate their vehicles’ off-road capacity and get mired in the soft dirt.) Just before the dry lakebed, on the east side of Alamo Road, is an expanse of powdery dunes, formed by sand blowing up from the lakebed and accumulating at the
foot of the mountains. A 15-minute moderate uphill walk puts visitors in the middle of the dunes, an ideal place for picnicking during cool weather and maybe even spying an Apache helicopter, one of which flew by during Sprunger’s February tour. Eagle Head, the dunes and the dry lake bed are all at risk of being taken over by the Air Force under a couple of the proposals included in the defense department’s LEIS. The area is beautiful, to be sure, but is it worth preserving at the expense of giving pilots the best training possible? Yes, Sprunger says, because of three things: its diversity, size and pristine nature. “There’s nothing else like this in the lower 48,” she says, explaining that the Refuge Administration Act creates an important distinction between Fish and Wildlife lands and BLM lands: Refuges have an explicit conservation mission. Only activities compatible with it are allowed. As a result, refuges are enjoyed by those who care about keeping them intact, such as the Fraternity of Desert Bighorn, which, along with the federal government, has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into maintaining sheep habitat and improving springs access. Sprunger is unapologetic about the relatively small number of visitors that the refuge attracts, some 70,000 per year, according to Fish and Wildlife’s latest estimates. (By comparison, the BLM says Red Rock National Conservation Area attracts more than 80,000 people a month.) Since the Corn Creek facility was built three years ago, refuge visitation has been rising steadily — and will continue to, Sprunger believes — but its best-kept-secret aspect is also part of its importance. “There are so few places left where you can find true solitude, see dark skies at night, study nature at its wildest,” she says. “We have to hang onto those that are left. Once they’re gone, there’s no getting them back.”
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your Arts+Entertainment calendar for march
Ongoing
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Fifth Writers Imagine Las Vegas Anniversary Concert Lied Library, UNLV
To the fiction writer, Las Vegas has always offered a fecund excess of things worth writing about: spectacle, risk, easy money, over-the-top characters, the resonant dichotomy of illusion and reality (remember when they were different things?) and a gonzo permissiveness. Now the UNLV library has assembled an exhibit of books that showcase the wide range of Vegas’ portrayals in fiction, a veritable syllabus for the well-read Las Vegan. Through June, unlv.edu/calendar
9-26 Spinning Into Butter Cockroach Theatre
As with Disgraced at Nevada Conservatory Theatre (see page 15), this play by Rebecca Gilman — about racism, political correctness, identity and hypocrisy — seems perfectly pitched to resonate with each day’s crop of Google news alerts. Cockroach has a history of such pointed programming, thankfully. 2p and 8p, $16-$20, Art Square Theatre, cockroachtheatre.com
The Smith Center
Five years — that’s practically an eternity in Las Vegas culture years. But that’s how long The Smith Center has been open, quickly establishing itself as a major cultural gravity center. From concerts to Broadway productions to intimate jazz evenings to big-ticket lectures, The Smith has hosted it all. This concert, leaning heavily on its Broadway DNA, will feature Adam Kantor (Rent, Fiddler on the Roof), Betsy Wolfe (Bullets Over Broadway, Falsettos), composer Frank Wildhorn and a host of others — including some surprise guests. 7:30p, $29-$129, thesmithcenter.com
25 Panic! at the Disco Mandalay Bay Events Center
Maybe it’s the Grumpy Grammarian in our soul, but something about that misplaced exclamation point makes us want to be in the audience, waving a lighter and shouting, “Play ‘Mr. Brightside’!” Still, there’s no denying the earworm-worthy catchiness of songs like “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage” and “I Write Sins not Tragedies.” 7p, $39.50-$59.50, mandalaybay.com
3-5 Tango Passion! Winchester Cultural Center
Oscar Carrescia leads a merry ensemble of Argentine and local musicians in a tangotastic explosion of full-blooded music. 2p and 7p, $15, clarkcountynv.gov
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THE GUIDE ART
CHINESE NEW YEAR — YEAR OF THE ROOSTER THROUGH MARCH 4
Artists explore the cultural heritage of Chinese New Year for 2017. In the artwork, each artist is asked to include and highlight the animal associated with the year, as well as investigate more information about Chinese heritage. Free. Historic Fifth Street School, 401 S. Fourth St.
RECLAIM
THROUGH MARCH 9 Working within the constraints of feminism and formalism, artist Shelbi Schroeder challenges the viewer to look beyond the façade of repetition and decoration into a deeper understanding of female desire. Free. Las Vegas City Hall Grand Gallery, 495 S. Main St., first floor, artslasvegas.org
2017
THROUGH APRIL 23 The top 13 artworks based on the theme “Where I Live.” The art was selected by Nevada Housing Division Partners from more than 1,600 entries submitted by Clark County students, grades K–5. Free. Spring Valley Library lvccld.org
A LAS VEGAS SYMPHONY OF ART THROUGH APRIL 25
THROUGH MAY 13
An exhibition of two complete editions of artist books illustrated by Salvador Dali: The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri (1960) and The Decameron, written by Giovanni Boccaccio (1972). These books contain 110 prints authorized by the artist. Free. Marjorie Barrick Museum at UNLV, unlv.edu
PROCESS
THROUGH MAY 13 A showcase of 10 contemporary American artists who are reshaping the process-art tradition into a profound expression of 21st century studio practice. The exhibition will include painting, photography, mixed media and sculpture. Free. Marjorie Barrick Museum at UNLV, unlv.edu MUSIC
AN EVENING WITH MARILYN MAYE DEDICATED TO THE AMERICAN SONGBOOK MARCH 3–4, 7P
Veteran performer Maye, known for her hit recordings of “Cabaret” and “Step to the Rear,” revives many of the classic songs from her career for an evening of sharp wit and show-stopping melodies. $39–$59. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
Cheng Yajie’s drawings and paintings reflect the early influence of Social Realism from his studies in China during the 1980s, and the dreamlike qualities and symbolism of Fantastic Realism learned while in graduate school in Austria. Free. Summerlin Library, lvccld.org
NIRVANA MANIA
MASKING
U.K. ROCK & ROLL LEGEND PAUL GURVITZ AND THE NEW ARMY
THROUGH APRIL 28 This exhibition combines traditional Mexican masks with contemporary artwork to blur the lines between art and artifice, self and other, being and nonbeing. Far from static artifacts, masks point to shifting meanings and challenge us to question notions of identity. Free. Marjorie Barrick Museum at UNLV, unlv.edu
NATARKI
THROUGH APRIL 30 Artist Jamie Cornelio M. Jimena II’s stylized portraits of women and girls feature piercing eyes that offer hope, beauty and mystery. Free. Windmill Library, lvccld.org
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ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE
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MARCH 3, 8:30P
A tribute to Nirvana — a live concert re-enactment of the coolest band from the Northwest. The legacy lives on. Free. Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, brooklynbowl.com
MARCH 4, 7P
Gurvitz is a living wealth of rock and roll history; his classic rock history show features stories and songs from some of the many famous rock stars who have been part of his career such as Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, The Who, his work with legendry Cream drummer Ginger Baker and more. $20. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com
best and most-loved of Williams’ work including music from Jaws, the Star Wars series, Schindler’s List, Superman and many others. $30–$109 Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
THE SMITH CENTER’S 5TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT MARCH 7, 7:30P
The celebration will feature Broadway performers, local favorites and surprise guests. Hosted by Broadway stars Adam Kanto (Rent) and Betsy Wolfe (Bullets over Broadway). $29– $129. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
THIS IS DEDICATED: MUSIC’S GREATEST MARRIAGES MARCH 10–11, 7P
Newly married Broadway veterans Jarrod Spector and Kelli Barrett celebrate marriage by bringing to life the greatest songs birthed from the greatest marriages. Includes songs tied to musical couples including Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Sonny and Cher, and Beyoncé and Jay-Z. $39–$59. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
YOUNG ARTIST CONCERT MARCH 11, 2P
This annual event, brought to you by the Henderson Symphony Orchestra, will definitely impress you. Free. Henderson Pavilion, 200 S. Green Valley Parkway, cityofhenderson.com
THE ROCK & WORSHIP ROADSHOW 2017 MARCH 11, 6:30P
Christian music favorites Steven Curtis Chapman; Francesca Battistelli and Rend Collective, along with Passion; Family Force 5; and Jordan Feliz will perform. $10. Henderson Pavilion, 200 S. Green Valley Parkway, cityofhenderson.com
SONS OF SERENDIP MARCH 11, 8P
Serendipity brought them together at Boston University and brought them back together to audition for Season 9 of America’s Got Talent. What matters now is we get to share their beautiful sound, created by four artists with harp, piano, cello and voice. $20–$55. Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall at UNLV, sonsofserendip.com
CABRERA CONDUCTS THE MUSIC OF JOHN WILLIAMS: STAR WARS AND BEYOND
SPIRAAL: THE MUSIC OF AARON RAMSEY
The Las Vegas Philharmonic presents the
The music of composer and DJ Ramsey
MARCH 4, 7:30P; MARCH 5, 2P
MARCH 12, 2P
Channel 10
is masterfully displayed in a concert featuring dance and electronic music backed by a full symphony orchestra. A unique encounter, this performance bridges the gap between classical and electronic music. $22. Windmill Library Auditorium, aaronramseymusic.com
TRIBAL SEEDS; RAGING FYAH
MARCH 12, 7:30P From San Diego, California, this award-winning reggae group has become known for their spiritually driven, refreshing rock vibe that they have infused with the roots style of reggae music. $25–$35. Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, brooklynbowl.com
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
MARCH 16–18, 7:30P An appealing opera, in part because of how flexible it is. On the simplest level, it is an evening of sheer enchantment, a traditional fairytale with plenty of comedy. On another level, it is a psychological treasure trove: purity, madness and cruelty crashing against each other to riveting effect. And for the music buff, it is filled with musical homage and satire. $25. Judy Bayley Theatre at UNLV, unlv.edu
DIANNE REEVES WITH PETER MARTIN, PETER SPRAGUE, REGINALD VEAL, & TERREON GULLY MARCH 18, 6P & 8:30P
Jazz diva Reeves’s extensive career includes recording and performing with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, as well as her music being featured in George Clooney’s film, Good Night, and Good Luck. $45–$79. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
Hamilton’s America -
Friday, March 3 at 9 p.m.
Ken Burns: America’s Storyteller Tuesday, March 7 at 8 p.m.
Downton Abbey Marathon Friday, March 10 - Sunday, March 12
TONY ARIAS
MARCH 19, 2P Standing six feet, four inches — with a personality twice as big — it’s no wonder Arias is still gracing stages with his boyish charm and commanding voice. He will sing from the songbooks of Elvis, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones and more. $20. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, tonyarias.com
THE REAL LA LA LAND WITH TWO JERSEY BOYS & THE NO VACANCY ORCHESTRA
Nature: Super Hummingbirds Wednesday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m.
The Great Rift Series Premiere Thursday, March 23 at 8 p.m.
MARCH 23, 7P
Graham Fenton (star of Jersey Boys)
VegasPBS.org | 3050 E Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, NV 89121 | 702.799.1010 march 2017
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THE GUIDE and Dave Damiani (Sinatra 100, CBS Vegas) star in this musical revue based on their meeting, more than 10 years ago at the famed Miceli’s Restaurant in Hollywood, as singing waiters pursuing their dreams. $25–$45. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
YAO SHOWCASE 2
DISNEY’S THE LITTLE MERMAID
DANIEL EMMET AND PHILIP FORTENBERRY
MARCH 24–25; MARCH 31– APRIL 2, 7:30 PM The pavilion transforms into a magical kingdom beneath the sea, where the beautiful young mermaid Ariel longs to leave her ocean home to live in the world above. $20. Henderson Pavilion, 200 S. Green Valley Parkway, cityofhenderson.com
JOHN PIZZARELLI QUARTET MARCH 24, 7P; MARCH 25, 6P & 9P
Guitarist and singer Pizzarelli has received widespread acclaim for his contemporary interpretations of The Great American Songbook and many popular standards. $39–$59. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, johnpizzarelli.com
OSCARS … OUR FAVORITE OSCAR-NOMINATED SONGS MARCH 25, 7P
With a cast of the best Las Vegas musicians, Bill Fayne, singers, and Mistinguett dancers will delight you with the songs that deserve their own show! $20. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com
KODO: DADAN 2017 MARCH 25, 7:30P
Featuring only male performers playing powerful and rhythmic pieces on taiko drums of all shapes and sizes, as well as other forms of percussion. $29–$99. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
PIANO BATTLE — ANDREAS KERN VS. PAUL CIBIS MARCH 25, 8P
Two pianists, internationally acclaimed Paul Cibis (dressed in black) and Andreas Kern (dressed in white), battle it out. Each artist, with distinctly different performance styles, takes turns to perform pieces by composers such as Chopin, Liszt and Debussy. Ultimately, the audience decides who wins! $20–$55. Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall at UNLV, pianobattle.de
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MARCH 26, 2P
Talented young musicians from the Young Artists Orchestra and Academy come together in an intimate recital featuring solo works and chamber music. $17. Jewel Box Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org
MARCH 27, 7P
In this encore presentation, renowned critically-acclaimed pianist Fortenberry and emerging star vocalist Emmet perform across genres from classical to Broadway and pop. $25–$45. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
ROBERT RANDOLPH AND THE FAMILY BAND MARCH 28, 6P
This renowned pedal steel guitarist, vocalist and songwriter grew up in the church and had such a cloistered childhood and adolescence that he heard no secular music while growing up — which makes it all the more remarkable that Randolph is today an inspiration to the likes of Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana and Derek Trucks, all of whom have played with him and studied his technique. $20 advance, $22.50 day of show, $37.50 VIP lounge. Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, brooklynbowl.com
RAIATEA HELM
MARCH 31–APRIL 1, 7P Helm is recognized as one of Hawaii’s premier female vocalists and a keeper of the Hawaiian falsetto tradition of the early to mid-20th century. Accompanying herself on ukulele, Helm interprets traditional Hawaiian songs with the mastery and control of a jazz vocalist. $35–$55. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, raiateahelm.com
CABRERA CONDUCTS BRAHMS APRIL 1, 7:30P
The Las Vegas Philharmonic presents a program featuring the premiere of local resident Jennifer Bellor’s 898 Hildegard, a piece for orchestra and chorus that intertwines excerpts from the medieval composer Hildegard von Bingen’s chants “O Vis Eternitatis” and “O Gloriosissimi Lux Vivens Angeli.” Also featured are Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale, Opus 52 and Brahms’ A German Requiem, Opus 45. $30–$109. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
THEATER AND COMEDY
IT’S ONLY A PLAY
MARCH 3–19, THU–SAT 8P, SUN 2P It’s the opening night of The Golden Egg on Broadway and the wealthy producer, Julia Budder, is throwing a party in her lavish Manhattan townhouse. Downstairs, the celebrities are pouring in, but the real action is upstairs in the bedroom where a group of insiders have staked themselves out to await the reviews. But don’t worry, this play is sure to be the hit they have all been hoping for. $21–$24. Las Vegas Little Theatre, lvlt.org
ALL SHOOK UP MARCH 4, 1P
Elvis Presley’s songs come to life on stage in this high-energy comedy. Chad, a rovin’ roustabout, comes to a town where everything is just a little dreary and in need of a little shaking up. Natalie, a mechanic, sees Chad and falls in love at first sight. Chad, however, has his eyes set on the new bombshell, Sandra, who works at the local museum. Will Natalie eventually get her man? $15. Theatre at Summerlin Library, broadwayboundlv.com
MATILDA THE MUSICAL MARCH 14–19, 7:30P; MARCH 18–19, 2P
Based on the beloved novel by Roald Dahl, this is the story of an extraordinary girl, who, armed with a vivid imagination and a sharp mind, dares to take a stand and change her own destiny. $29–$127. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
4,000 MILES
MARCH 24–APRIL 9, THU-SAT 8P, SUN 2P After suffering a major loss while he was on a cross-country bike trip, 21-year-old Leo seeks solace from his feisty 91-year-old grandmother Vera in her West Village apartment over the course of a single month. $10–$15. The Black Box at Las Vegas Little Theatre, lvlt.org
PETER PAN
MARCH 31 AND APRIL 1, 2P Peter and his mischievous fairy sidekick, Tinkerbell, visit the nursery of the Darling children late one night, and with a sprinkle of pixie dust, begin a magical journey across the stars. In the adventure of a lifetime, the travelers come face to face with
a ticking crocodile, a fierce Indian tribe, a band of bungling pirates and, of course, the villainous Captain Hook. $10–$15. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
APRIL 4–29, TUE–SAT 7:30P The beloved story of the small, tradition-steeped town of Anatevka, Russia, where Jews and Russians live in delicate balance. During the course of the show, the time-honored traditions of Anatevka are both embraced and challenged by Tevye, a poor dairyman, as he tries to instill in his five daughters the traditions of his tight-knit Jewish community in the face of changing social mores and the growing anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia. $25–$30. Theatre at Summerlin Library, lvccld.org
R U O Y S U E V I G ! T O H S T S BE
DANCE
SHEN YUN 2017 MARCH 10–11, 7:30P; MARCH 11, 2P; MARCH 12, 1P A dance and music celebration of lost Chinese folklore. $70–$200. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com
THE LEPRECOHEN’S *NOT* ST. PATRICK’S DAY SHOW MARCH 17, 7:30P
Follow our unlikely comic heroes, Morris and Minnie Leprecohen, as they search for a pot of gold and the end of the musical rainbow. Enjoy a song and dance spring celebration for the whole family. Featuring original music by Michael Kessler and Keith Thompson with Broadway show tunes, pop and country classics, original choreography, dances, and backstage stories. $22-$50. Summerlin Library Theater, lvccld.org FUNDRAISERS
RUN AWAY WITH CIRQUE DU SOLEIL
00 0 , 4 $ S E OV E R Z I R P MERA L A T O &C CA IN T by B d e d i v pro
MARCH 11, 7A–12P
Join dozens of artists from Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas shows and more than 1,000 community members for a 5K run or 1-mile fun walk. This annual event includes music from cast and crew, photo opportunities with your favorite performers, and amenities for participants such as free refreshments, a massage station, face painting, circus play area and photo booth. $20–$40. Springs Preserve, springspreserve.org
Submissi ons dead line A P R IL
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END NOTE satire
Our least-favorite hikes The Southwest’s lesser-known, less enjoyable outdoor destinations By Scott Dickensheets and Andrew Kiraly
The Rascal Flatts C reamed Corn Falls
The Just-Okay Basin Minimalist Point
Nietzsche’s Abyss
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Clown Crawlspace Canyon
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