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16 | THE LATEST
“Green Road Map,” by Nora Burba Trulsson. Can a UNLV professor’s proposed “sustainability atlas” show Las Vegas a pathway to the future? Plus, extra digits to dial, a fashion show for Three Square, Comrade Grumpy on his disdain for LinkedIn and Tweets of the Week.
18 | Next Exit
“Cat Fights,” by Stacy J. Willis. Can cat cafes raise awareness of pet overpopulation?
22 | Sports
“And Away They Go … ,” by Jason Scavone. Hoppertunity for a big payday looms in this year’s Kentucky Derby.
24 | Politics
“Getting the Government We Pay For,” by Michael Green. From Cliven Bundy to bungled websites, we’ve created a monster by starving it.
26 | COVER
“Without Compromise,” by David G. Schwartz. How Steve Wynn and his team of upstarts created The Mirage and jump-started Las Vegas.
33 | NIGHTLIFE
“Fabled Tables,” by Camille Cannon. Snag a seat at a nightclub alongside your favorite celebrity. Plus, Seven Nights, a Q&A with Joey Mazzola, a roundup of Cinco de Mayo events and photos from the week’s hottest parties.
57 | DINING
“Bowl’d Over,” by Al Mancini. Brooklyn Bowl’s cuisine lives up to its cool culture. Plus, learning the kitchen hierarchy, Cocktail Culture and Dishing With Grace.
63 | A&E
“Alec Monopoly Passes Go,” by Una LaMarche. The graffiti artist brings his spray cans to Vegas’ hottest nightspots. Plus, a Q&A with karaoke jockey Danny G, CD Reviews, Tour Buzz, The Hit List and a review of the Ghost B.C. concert.
70 | Movies The Other Woman and our weekly movie capsules.
86 | Seven Questions
Andrew Dice Clay on the appeal of performing in a small venue, the two sides of his persona and the one clean comedian he respects.
ON THE COVER Illustration by Ryan Olbrysh
| | | |
Dialogue Seven Days Gossip Showstopper
May 1–7, 2014
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DEPARTMENTS
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@Marmel Oh my God, the #BundyRanch Facebook page. It’s like the Onion, without irony.
@ElizaBayne While promoting his new tequila in Vegas, George Clooney got in a fight with Steve Wynn about Obama. Yep. That sounds like tequila.
@TheOnion Top Story: Casinos getting people to play longer by telling them rest of civilization destroyed.
@AmyJoMartin
May 1–7, 2014
SPRING IS USUALLY KIND OF LOUSY when
VEGAS SEVEN
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it comes to celebrations. You’re about as far away as you can get from the start of the HalloweenThanksgiving-Christmas HolidayIndustrial Complex, and you still have to bide your time before the Holy Trinity of Summer ThreeDay Weekends. Sure, there’s Easter, but, secularly speaking, unless you’re the kind of person who gets excited to collect the black jelly beans that everyone else passes on, there’s not a lot to it. Still, this past week offered a fairly strong selection of celebrations, starting with Hakkasan’s one-year anniversary April 26 as celebrated by Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale. The No Doubt and Bush singers, respectively, started out with dinner at the restaurant, joined by Stefani’s brother, Todd. Stefani and Rossdale were already in a celebratory mood following the birth of their son Apollo Bowie Flynn in February. Which is a marginally less goofy name than their middle child, Zuma Nesta Rock. So good on them for trending in the right direction. After dinner, they relocated to the club in time to see Hakkasan CEO Neil Mofftt bring out a cake to Tiësto to mark the evening. Semi-regular Ling Ling Room DJ
Questlove was manning his post— without sporting his Afro. Which is disturbing and wrong somehow, and we’re going to pretend like it never happened. The 18th annual Power of Love gala on April 26 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena feted Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s involvement in the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. Gloria did a duet of “Natural Woman” with Carole King, as Estefan’s daughter, Emily, played guitar for a crowd that included Quincy Jones, Andy Garcia, Dermot Mulroney, Christopher Meloni, Queen Latifah and Ricky Martin (with the latter two also among the performers). On the one hand, that’s huge pressure to suddenly jump on guitar while playing for one of the greatest record producers of all time. On the other, you’re also playing guitar in front of the guy who did “Livin’ la Vida Loca.” Seems like a push. Also on April 26, Seattle
Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch was celebrating his birthday at Chateau, and instead of letting nature take its course, he unleashed Beast Mode on the Strip. Lynch was out there with Chateau’s street team handing out fliers to try to get people to come to the party. For his trouble, he was rewarded with a cake decorated with Skittles. At this point, Wrigley needs to straight-up give him a stake in the company. Or else he’s secretly so sick of everyone giving him Skittles-related stuff, he reflexively kicks down a door every time someone uses “taste” and “rainbow” in the same sentence. The Great Vegas Festival of Beer was a celebration of hops, barley and the magical antidote to the tragedy of sobriety Downtown on April 26. But it either didn’t turn out great, or else turned out extra great for Puddle of Mudd singer Wes Scantlin. The band did a surprise show at Triple B the night before. The next day, Scantlin was wandering the site, asking festival workers if they’d seen his tour bus anywhere. Which is a thing that’s easy to lose. Can he still call Fred Durst to give him a ride?
@billyeichner Just heard that George Clooney got engaged to a superstar lawyer. I hope it’s Alan Dershowitz.
@EddyAlmaguer The hard part about replacing Bryce Harper in my keeper league is finding someone who can get me 1 RBI, 1 run and .300 OBP a week.
@YahooNoise Bryce Harper, now out two months due to thumb surgery, quickly becoming the Darren McFadden of baseball—talented yet flower-delicate.
@Birbigs This week a replica of my apartment is being built for my show in Las Vegas. It’s called “Birbigs Birbigs.”
@MeltzVegas The only reason I want to see Godzilla is to find out how a sea monster gets to Vegas.
@VegasDegenerate Panicked because he thought it was an intervention so he flew to Vegas. When he landed he had a text invitation from his neighbor for a bbq.
Share your Tweet! Add #V7.
ILLUSTRATION BY CIERRA PEDRO
Celebrating the Power of Love, Skittles and Tour Buses That Go MIA
There should be a reality show based on inbound flights to Vegas. Passengers assume an interesting behavior (& wardrobe).
From Cliven Bundy to bungled websites, we’ve created a monster by starving it
May 1–7, 2014
ACCORDING TO A PROCLAMATION FROM
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Governor Brian Sandoval’s offce, May 4-10 will be Nevada State Employee Recognition Week, to praise their good work, including how they “conserve and preserve our natural and clitoral resources.” It presumably should have been “cultural resources,” unless it was a bow to the state allowing legal prostitution. Actually, though, it says a lot about both Obamacare and Cliven Bundy—not what’s wrong with them, but what’s wrong with us. How did you react to the obvious typographical error? You may have laughed, or thought it referred to how state employees are treated. More likely, you saw it as typical of our incompetent government—whatever level it is—to make such a silly mistake. Government makes bigger mistakes. Set aside what the Bureau of Land Management has done right or wrong lately, not to mention Bundy’s grasp of race relations. He quit paying his grazing fees 20 years ago. Where has the BLM been? Some ranchers have acted similarly, but it’s worth pondering that Bundy’s freeloading offcially commenced as the Clinton presidency began. Perhaps paying grazing fees to a Republican-led government was more acceptable to him. At that point, Republicans had controlled the White House for 12 years, starting with Ronald Reagan’s claim that government was the problem, not the solution. A lot of factors had contributed to the poor reputation of government that Reagan capitalized on, from Vietnam and Watergate nationally to the dishonesty associated with atomic testing in Nevada. Reagan supporters such as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform advocated “starving the beast”—cutting taxes to force the government to cut spending. The problem was, and remains, their related goal: to render government incapable of functioning. Reagan’s popularity led Democrats away from arguing that government needs to be able to do what it needs to do. Consider that the IRS has found it can’t collect about $300 billion in unpaid taxes because it lacks the staff and the ability to keep up with scams that allow funds to be hidden offshore. Meanwhile, some commentators call any recent government failure “Obama’s Katrina.” Does anybody remember that the head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration during Katrina had trained for the job by judging horse shows? This problem of contempt for government didn’t develop overnight or only during Republican administrations. Good luck fnding a robust defense of government from Bill Clinton when he was president. Still,
Clinton did try to pass health care reform. Obama succeeded where Clinton had failed, but the subsequent rollout of HealthCare.gov was a disaster—as was Nevada’s version. The websites had something in common besides health care: Both were outsourced to government contractors, and not just because the size of the federal workforce has shrunk under Obama. The Defense Department essentially invented the Internet, but in this case federal and state governments lacked either the means or the desire to run these sites themselves. That right-wingers showed up to support Bundy is no surprise. Nor should it be surprising that a number of people who criticized Bundy’s actions said they saw his point about the intrusive federal government, especially the BLM. If the government should be criticized, it should be mainly for letting him disobey the law for two decades. But that’s unfair. This is the government that we pay for—or, more accurately, that we don’t pay for. When we demonize and downsize it enough to make it impossible for it to do its job, government isn’t going to attract as many good people to work for it as we need, and it will fail to address our necessities, from collecting taxes to maintaining our clitoral resources … and our cultural resources. Michael Green is a professor of history at the College of Southern Nevada.
FOOD AND DRINK AT THE LINQ One of the big questions regarding the viability of the Linq was whether or not locals would go. We all know how it is: As a rule, locals don’t do the Strip. But could the Linq be different? Are there deals to be had? Yes, there are. For starters, it’s kind of a cool place to hang out, given what they’ve done with a former alleyway between two casinos. The walk from the Strip to the High Roller is a quick one if you go straight through, but if you windowshop just a little, it will take the better part of an hour to go up and back. Unlike some of the off-Strip shopping districts that are hit and miss for traffic, every time I’ve been to the Linq it’s been heaving, which makes for a fun vibe. Check out the free photo kiosk near the front, where you can snap a picture, then email it out to friends or post it to Facebook. Some of the shops are interesting, such as the Polaroid Fotobar and Museum or the Goorin Bros. Hat Shop, but the main attractions are the bars and restaurants. One thing the Linq definitely did right is keep drink prices in check, with most set about $2-$3 below going rates for the center-Strip area. At the Yard House, a draft Peroni is $7.84, a Blue Moon is $7.53 and a PBR is $5.41. The Brooklyn Bowl works the tax into the price, and drafts (it’s draft beer only here) are $6, $7 and $8. At BLVD Cocktail a Coors Light is $7. Or hit any of the three bars at O’Sheas for $3 draft Miller Lite, Coors Light, Blue Moon and Redd’s Apple Cider, or $6 Jager and Fireball shots. You can fashion a decent pub crawl now, and it will only get better with the additions of Tilted Kilt and F.A.M.E. Finding a food bargain is a little more challenging. Most dining options are sitdown, with the Blue Ribbon restaurant at Brooklyn Bowl (see review, Page 57), Chayo’s Mexican and the Yard House leading the way. You may have heard about the vaunted Blue Ribbon fried chicken. It’s pretty good, but it’s $18 to $22 for a plate. More economical is a bite on the run at Haute Doggery or the Flour & Barley pizzeria. Haute is a chain that tries to reproduce hot dog classics from different cities (Chicago, New York, Detroit, etc.). It’s a good idea that doesn’t quite hit the mark yet—plus $5.50 to $8.50 for a hot dog of any kind is still a bit steep. The better option is the pizza, where for $4 you can get a huge slice of cheese from a take-out window that’s open till midnight. What about the wheel? I’ll cover that next week, along with some of the other entertainment plays that set the Linq apart. Anthony Curtis is the publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor and LasVegasAdvisor.com, a newsletter and website dedicated to finding the city’s best deals.
ILLUSTRATION BY RYAN OLBRYSH
THE LATEST
Getting the Government We Pay For
less than excellence. Bergman is today philosophical about working so closely with the notoriously hard-driving Wynn on a project with such high stakes. “Some days I was Michelangelo,” he says with a shrug. “Some days I was the worst excuse for a draftsman that ever lived.” Wynn had them systematically work out each idea. That meant a lot of false starts, but allowed plenty of room for discovery. “Designing The Mirage took one year of R & D and three years of further development,” Wynn says. “Nothing was conceived in one brilliant stroke. It was done an inch at a time, step by step. If every idea we explored was reduced to paper, it would fll a warehouse.” In the meantime, Bergman was balancing Wynn’s ideas with feedback from Baldwin, who let the team know what customers would demand when operations began: essential details such as how many four-seat and two-seat tables a 400-seat restaurant needed to run optimally; how many double-double rooms and king rooms the hotel needed—all the little details that can frustrate a guest and require costly renovations after the fact. “The architect needs me to tell him these things,” Baldwin says. “Because
he’s not operating the hotel, I am. So we all had to make sure that what they were doing ft the needs of the customer.” “Everybody contributed,” Wynn says. “As the quarterback, you call the plays, but you have wide receivers and running backs. I’d come up with the concept and do a basic drawing with Joel and DeRuyter, put the idea in front of the posse, and think about it, manipulate it and understand it better. Discussion is about ideas frst, never material. If you’ve got an idea, you’ve got your feet on the ground. With a good idea, you’re already 70 percent successful.” In early 1987, Wynn sold the Golden Nugget Atlantic City to Bally Manufacturing, plowing the proceeds of the sale into buying land on the Strip for his developing idea and a stock repurchase. Although he still had 14 acres of Atlantic City land mothballed for potential development, he was making the bet of his life on Las Vegas Boulevard.
***** on may 27, 1987, wynn formally announced that he was going to build the world’s largest private hotel. He al-
ready had a theme (South Seas) and entertainment (Siegfried & Roy, who had been inked to a fve-year, $57 million contract). But he didn’t have a name. At the time, it was simply the “Golden Nugget Strip Hotel,” and the color scheme jibed with the company’s established white-and-gold palette. “We cannot make up our mind about the damn name,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and this was true. There were plenty of names kicked around, some of them good, but none of them distinctive. Even “Wynn” was foated as the name, but as Bergman recalls, “Steve wasn’t ready for that yet.” So it remained, for the time being, a half-billion-dollar development without a name. Construction started that November. The Castaways, which occupied part of the 86-acre plot that Golden Nugget had bought from Summa Corp., had closed in the summer. It wasn’t the best time to borrow money for an expensive project. On Black Monday, October 19, stock exchanges around the world had crashed; the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than one-ffth of its value. Some economists predicted the start of an-
“Nothing was conceived in one brilliant stroke. It was done an inch at a time, step by step.”
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE L AS VEGAS NEWS BUREAU
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“I built a lot of rooms just like the Flamingo’s—a three-star room, with a tub/ shower combination in a 60-squarefoot bathroom. But I built fve foors of suites on the top. If you look at The Mirage you can see the break in the building. The top is gold and the bottom is striped. And then I built some lanais and villas in the back. And what I did was I combined the Hilton, Caesars and Flamingo programs, with lots of convention space.” A few other elements—such as the soaring atrium—evolved from earlier designs for a project in Atlantic City’s marina district that the company abandoned in February 1985. But the basic design had already been seen in Las Vegas: a low-rise component, housing the casino, dining, entertainment and retail; and a high-rise tower with hotel rooms. The tri-form hotel tower had been frst demonstrated in Las Vegas by Martin Stern Jr.—with assistance from Joel Bergman—at Kirk Kerkorian’s International, which had since become the Hilton. The scale of The Mirage, though—at more than 3,000 rooms—was unprecedented, as was the focus on nongaming amenities. How could you expect a return on your investment in an indoor tropical rain forest? This ambition verging on hubris, the Strip establishment believed, would be Wynn’s downfall. “Risk and being new was not on anybody’s radar,” recalls Bobby Baldwin, whom Wynn transferred from his role as president of the Golden Nugget to helm development and ultimately operations on the Strip. “The Mirage was as foreign to that environment in the mid1980s as was Jay Sarno in the early 1960s with his concept for Caesars Palace. Everybody was fat and happy on the Las Vegas Strip. There was no invitation for anyone else to join the game. And certainly, they didn’t think that anyone like Steve Wynn was up to the challenge.” Wynn had one advantage over his detractors: While many of them disdained the nuts and bolts of casino design, Wynn lived and breathed it. He was intimately involved with the design process—not to micromanage the team, but to provoke and inspire them. “He created creativity,” Bergman recalls. “I can’t put it any other way. He has an insatiable work ethic. We had a ton of talent, and he brought it out in everyone. It was a fun project. There were moments, of course, where we struggled with the look of the building. The tower, for instance—we weren’t sure what we were going to have there. We built 50 different study models, then it fell into place.” All along, Wynn was there, asking questions and sometimes offering answers. His own forte was space planning: What did the guest see when he arrived? How long could it take to get him where he wanted to go? Most important, how could he get there without getting frustrated? The creative process was casual, with few set rules, but everyone knew that their boss wouldn’t tolerate anything
***** by that time, the hotel finally had a name. They all agreed that they needed something that evoked an exotic locale, but wasn’t too specifc or too hard to pronounce. As a South Seas oasis in the middle of a desert, “Mirage” seemed just about perfect. There was one problem: the La Mirage motel, on the south end of Las Vegas Boulevard. After some haggling, Wynn came to terms with the owners: The Rosoff family renamed its property the Glass Pool Inn, and Golden Nugget got the rights to The Mirage, free and clear. Many of the elements that are considered essential to The Mirage—the things that we believe made it so different— came relatively late in the process. Under a less fexible chief designer, they might never have seen the light of day. But Wynn kept the questions fowing— and was ready to hear fresh answers. The lobby aquarium, for example, was the inspiration of Henry Conversano, who thought a 60-foot tank behind the reception desk would both soothe and distract guests while they waited in line to check in, addressing an abiding problem on the Strip. “After 32 years in the business, I still
can’t eliminate that front-desk line,” Baldwin says. “I can make the line go quicker, make it a softer experience, but I can’t eliminate it.” Wynn tasked Baldwin with learning how to actually build the tank. At the time, polymer in the required seven-inch thickness couldn’t be produced in sections longer than 20 feet. Baldwin bought two 20foot pieces and joined them with a seam, then tacked two 10-footers with walls on each side. That tank tells a little bit of the story of The Mirage’s charmed life. “They would warranty that seam for eight years,” Baldwin says. “That tank’s been there for 25 years now, and it’s never going to fall apart.” Chris Hemmeter, a developer with extensive work in Hawaii, introduced Wynn to the possibility of dolphins as an attraction; thus was born the dolphin habitat. Containing 1.5 million gallons of water and six bottlenose dolphins, the habitat was intended to both entertain and educate. By opening day, a complete marinebiology curriculum had been created and distributed to Clark County schools.
***** a resort with aspirations to be like no other has to have a spectacular
May 1–7, 2014
place on the Strip,” Baldwin says, “because we were getting a lot of heat from the rest of the world. I forecast our daily expenses as $1.1 million, and no one was close to that. We had to be effcient to keep the confdence of the bond holders.” So the team designed one large central kitchen so that dishwashing and other functions could be shared. And it made sure that everything clicked. Uniform control and the staff dining room were positioned so that employees could get to and from their jobs as quickly as possible. The drive for effciency dovetailed with Wynn’s obsession with designing an easy-tonavigate casino foor: A guest who can quickly get to his dining reservation or the blackjack table is more lucrative than one who is lost in a labyrinthine resort. Meanwhile, there was a degree of improvisation during the construction process. Wynn and his team responded to the design as it evolved, making changes that felt necessary— or that simply felt right. The casino floor, for example, was originally 80,000 square feet. In the fall of 1988, Wynn and Baldwin decided to enlarge it to 100,000 square feet. With so much on the line, “less” was no longer an option.
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other depression and, with investor confdence shaken, many companies, including Golden Nugget, saw their stock prices wiped out. With its unprecedented scale, The Mirage suddenly seemed dangerously risky. “This was the frst time 3,000 rooms had been done at once. The bill, right out of the chute, was $600 million,” Wynn says. “This was a $200 million town. So we’re talking orders of magnitude more than had ever been invested. The biggest challenge was to get credibility on this issue.” “When we started building,” Baldwin recalls, “we got up to the eighth foor and we were out of money. We brought two touring buses full of investors. Steve took one bus, and I took the other.” With the construction site as the backdrop, Wynn and Baldwin walked the investors through every detail of the resort’s design and operation. “If we hadn’t gotten that money, construction would have stopped,” Baldwin says fatly. “But Drexel Burnham Lambert and Mike Milken and Steve pulled it off. We got $515 million in fve different bond structures, with different terms and maturity dates.” The fnancial challenges, though, had a healthy effect on the resort’s design. “We wanted to be the most effcient
May 1–7, 2014 VEGAS SEVEN
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street presence, an invitation that says, “If you think this is amazing, wait until you’re inside.” Jay Sarno had understood this in the mid-1960s, when he adorned the driveway to Caesars Palace with fountains that rivaled those at Versailles. The Mirage’s initial invitation on the Strip was 4 acres of lagoons and lush landscaping surrounding a 40-foot waterfall. It seemed like enough: Driving by, travelers would see the green-andblue hues of a tropical oasis; walking by, they would hear the falling water and be transported to a cool paradise. There were no complications with the waterfall’s concept or the execution. Wynn was happy with it, the hotel was less than a year away from opening, and there were plenty of other essential design and construction issues to worry about, with the budget always looming large. Most CEOs under that kind of pressure, when asked to tinker with something so non-problematic would reply with something unprintable. But David Hersey, the Tony Award-winning lighting designer whom Wynn had hired to light his hotel’s exterior, had an idea. And Wynn listened. Hersey: What about a volcano? Erupting on cue, right there on the Strip? Wouldn’t that turn heads? That Hersey, who had not previously lit a hotel, was even working on The Mirage was an indication of Wynn’s eye for talent. “He’d done Andrew Lloyd Webber’s shows,” Wynn says, “and I knew I wanted it to be theatrical.” So Wynn ordered Hersey to build a quarter-scale replica—which was still more than 10 feet high—on the extreme south end of the property at a cost of no more than $100,000. Hersey ultimately spent $1 million, but the volcano was amazing; this, Wynn knew, would be an
invitation that no one could ignore. The full-size version went into immediate construction in the center of the lagoon. Wynn kept the scale model where it was, placed a few dolphin statues in front and built a people mover next to it. Next time you are coming in from the sidewalk next to Caesars Palace, look to your left; the waterfall that tourists are posing for the camera in front of is that scale model, 25 years on.
***** even as the mirage inched toward completion in the summer of 1989, the rest of the Strip remained skeptical about the property’s chances. Even if they open, the conventional thinking went, they’ll be bankrupt in weeks. No one could cover a daily overhead of $1 million. The skepticism, in turn, bred a certain amount of complacency, which Wynn and his upstarts swiftly exploited. “In one 10-week period, I stole from Caesars the head of Latin marketing, the head of Asian marketing, the head of convention sales, the baccarat boss, the chief fnancial offcer—who knew how to collect in Asia—the head of all special events, and the head of domestic marketing,” Wynn says. “One of them told me that when our building was topped out, his boss looked out a window toward The Mirage and said, ‘They’ll never open.’” As everyone knew from the start, building the resort wasn’t the hardest part: staffng was. Wynn reached out to Arte Nathan, who’d been in charge of personnel in Atlantic City since 1982, to handle this crucial task. Nathan, along with Baldwin and Doug Pool, vice president of fnance, was one of the frst
three operations staff for the new project. Together, they had to actually open the massive resort Wynn had proposed. Baldwin, Pool and Nathan spent nearly a year visiting 250 companies in hospitality, dining, manufacturing and other felds who’d recently opened something—anything. “We asked them three things,” Nathan remembers. “Tell us what you did that was such a good idea you’d do it again. Tell us what you did that was such a terrible idea you’d never do it again. Tell us what you didn’t do that in hindsight you wish you had.” They ended up with more than 3,000 pages of notes, which they distilled into a presentation for the board that passed muster and informed all of their subsequent work. Nathan, Baldwin and Pool then put together a timeline, with more than 800 essential tasks running down the left-hand column and 365 days across the top. The timeline took up an entire hallway at the Golden Nugget, but it gave them a plan. Baldwin was responsible for all aspects of the project: construction, human resources, fnancing and operations all reported to him. Pool was charged with monitoring their progress, making sure that everything was reduced to numbers and checked against the plan, as well as making sure that all the right questions were being asked. Nathan had the small job of hiring and training the 5,000 employees The Mirage would need. “We had 134 departments and 650 job titles,” Nathan says. “And we needed consistency across all of them: Front desk, bellman, housekeeper, food service, books, valet parkers. They all are choreographed. They have to not just do their own jobs, but intersect with
other departments. Try standing in the middle of the casino for a few minutes watching the employees, and you’ll get a sense of how complicated it is.” Nathan’s new headquarters, a renovated building on Industrial Road, was confgured to accommodate 500 job-seekers at a time. When Nathan arrived the frst morning, he saw 5,000 applicants waiting in line. Ultimately, he would accept 55,000 applications, raising yet another challenge—how to screen them all. “There’s one immutable skill that no one can ever teach you: Everyone in the hospitality business is interrupted innumerable times during the day. You need the people,” Nathan says, “who are happy with the interruption. You can’t teach that.” So Nathan devised the handshake test. Walking through the room, he’d offer a hand. Those who stopped what they were doing to respond, quickly, passed. “You can’t fake it—you do it even before you think about it. Those are the people we wanted,” Nathan says. The hotel was getting close to opening, good workers were coming on board, and everything was falling into place—almost. “For some reason,” Baldwin says, “I missed the fact that Caesars had some good high-limit areas, so at the 11th hour we tore out some offces and made a high-limit room.” Located behind the casino’s central cage, this was one of the project’s few misfres. “The baccarat room,” Baldwin continues, “was beautiful. It had the most beautiful giant orchids in a blue carpet you’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, when we put the baccarat tables in they covered the orchids. And we discovered that these gamblers don’t like to be spectacles. We had circulation on both sides of that room. They really need to be in a place all by themselves, where they are enclosed on at least three sides. So we had to fx that right away.” Now all Wynn had to do was fnd the right way to tell the public about his soon-to-be-unveiled masterpiece. But that required another late fx. Wynn and his wife, Elaine, had hired a well-known Los Angeles-based frm to manage public relations, but by late September they’d realized that it wasn’t working out—the group just didn’t “get” the Wynns’ vision. So they invited a team from the Los Angeles offce of communications giant Hill & Knowlton to the Golden Nugget for an interview. That team included Alan Feldman, a Southern California native who had no affection for Las Vegas. Flying up that morning, Feldman planned to return early that afternoon. “I don’t know what I expected,” Feldman recalls, “but here was this guy in an impeccably tailored blue suit, next to Elaine, who was that day and still is incredibly beautiful and elegant. And we ended up spending six hours together as Steve described, in very specifc ways, a Las Vegas that I didn’t know existed, and which in fact didn’t exist yet.” When they returned to Los Angeles
***** now came crunch time. nathan put into practice what he describes as “an educator’s dream—probably the largest company-training program at that time.” He was committed to thoroughly training all employees to not just do their specifc tasks—dealing cards or washing dishes—but train them to do it to precise Mirage standards. The number of employees they’d need ballooned to 6,200, as it became clear just how hard they would have to work to maintain the promised level of service. Three weeks out, the longest-lead employees—those working with computers—started training. About a week later, the bulk of the nongaming employees started. Nathan and his team had to teach them how to do their jobs, as well as how to navigate the massive property. About three days before play
That brought the slot department to a screeching halt. Steve wasn’t very happy with me about that, but we got them reloaded pretty quickly, even though we had to make a special run to the bank because the volume was so much bigger than we’d expected.” For Baldwin and the operations crew, November 22 was just the start. But the design team kept busy, too. The Mirage was proftable from Day One, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be improved. Because the casino was so successful, in fact, Wynn and Baldwin had no trouble borrowing an additional $100 million a few months after opening. An additional dolphin pond ($8 million), a parking garage ($20 million) and eight additional villas ($32 million) soaked up some of that capital; other assorted improvements (such as a new baccarat room) quickly exhausted the rest. But that wasn’t all. Wynn had already given Bergman and his team another challenge. “The day after The Mirage opened,” Bergman says, “we started working on what became Treasure Island. We never stopped.”
“How many people get the chance to do their dream at the perfect time, in the perfect place, and without compromise?” walked into The Mirage, I could see it was different,” he says. “And you have to remember, I didn’t like Las Vegas, so I was a proxy for all the haters out there. Even incomplete, it was something special. I knew he had something there.” It was hard to communicate just what Wynn had, because he insisted—above the vociferous objections of seasoned public relations hands at Hill & Knowlton—that no media tours or images be released until the opening. His reasoning was that impressions of an unfnished property would defate the expectations. With the media clamoring for proof that the resort really would deliver, it was a gamble. At The Mirage’s October licensing hearing before the Gaming Commission, the commissioners didn’t ask many questions; they simply let Wynn talk. His 15-minute monologue ranged from the current state of Las Vegas (“more high-rollers than ever before”) to the unprecedented size and scale of The Mirage’s construction. This was more than a business development for Wynn—it was the work of his lifetime. “How many people,” he asked his audience, “get the chance to do their dream at the perfect time, in the perfect place, and without compromise?” A few minutes later, the Commission
dates, the dealers, who already knew their jobs, reported. Then came opening day, November 22: No time now for nerves or secondguessing. “By that point, everything is set, everybody is trained, has their uniforms, knows where to park, and we know how to feed them in the dining room,” says Baldwin, who subsequently opened Treasure Island, Bellagio and CityCenter. “You’re not frightened because you’ve done all the work. It’s just the anticipation of opening the door.” Still, that morning, Wynn was expressing some doubts: What if no one showed up? Two hours after the doors opened, more than 50,000 visitors had passed through, putting those doubts to rest. Still, they weren’t out of the woods. “We had $17 million in the bank on opening day,” Baldwin recalls. “And it cost us $1.3 million a day to stay open, so we could run it for about two weeks if no one beat us. We were a little nervous about that.” Within hours of the frst cards being dealt, though, Baldwin was facing an unexpected issue. “We ran out of change,” he recalls. “We had all the change booths we needed, but everybody was so excited they forgot to fll the carousels.
***** indeed, no one rested after the Mirage. Wynn went on to build Treasure Island and Bellagio on the Strip before selling Mirage Resorts to Kirk Kerkorian. He now helms Wynn Resorts and is currently designing a new Macau resort, among other projects. Bergman is chairman, CEO and design principal of Bergman Walls & Associates, where he continues to design casinos, including several expansions to Caesars Palace and ground-up projects across the country. Baldwin is chief design and construction offcer for MGM Resorts International and president of CityCenter. Feldman is executive vice president of global government and industry affairs for MGM Resorts. And Arte Nathan, after a long career with Wynn, started teaching at UNLV last year, passing on his invaluable expertise to the next generation of hospitality leaders. But they all acknowledge The Mirage was special. “We did everything right,” Bergman says. “It was that simple. Everything came together, and it was a perfect moment in time. And if we made a mistake, we fxed it.” For Baldwin, there was a measure of
vindication in the property’s success. “Our competitors never even came to look at us until two years after it was open,” he says. “People who we hired from other properties said that the subject of The Mirage came up in meetings: ‘Don’t worry about The Mirage. Bobby’s a poker player. Steve’s a whatever, and neither of them have any money.’ They never considered us a threat until they read their proft-and-loss statement at the end of the year. We had taken most of their business.” “The legacy of The Mirage,” says Feldman, who moved to the Valley and raised his family here, “was opening the public’s mind to a different defnition of Las Vegas. Steve said that if the concept is right, others will follow—and they did.” That concept—that you could build something in Las Vegas that went beyond gaming—was far beyond anything even Jay Sarno had conceived. It wasn’t just big, and it wasn’t just luxurious. “Everyone will recognize The Mirage as a special place: a resort-hotel which includes a casino, not a casino which includes a hotel,” Wynn said then. Today, after 16 new resorts ranging from Excalibur to the Cosmopolitan, that concept is the rule rather than the exception. Might Las Vegas have grown in the 1990s without Steve Wynn? It’s likely it would have, but it would probably have been along the lines of tower additions to the Dunes and Sands rather than new properties on the scale of Bellagio and the Venetian. The Mirage was responsible for shifting the boundaries of what was possible in Las Vegas; that opened the foodgates of capital that made possible the next decade of unprecedented growth throughout the Valley. It was important to Steve Wynn that gamblers and vacationers like his new joint; it was vital to Las Vegas that investment bankers like it. “The revelation was,” Wynn says, “that you could spend a half-billion in Vegas and get return on your investment. No one had ever thought of the town in that scale. That was the importance of The Mirage.” And yet for all of the casino’s public importance, the opening remains an undeniably personal moment for those who brought it to life. “There are things that happen in any of our lives that remain current in our thinking,” says Nathan, slipping into the role of teacher. “The opening of The Mirage 25 years ago seems like it was just yesterday. It was such a big thing—and it made us.” Wynn has changed the casino world’s direction more than once since, but he isn’t content. Just after a long interview about his frst Strip triumph, he’s immediately back at it with his chief architect, DeRuyter Butler. With felt-tip pens, tracing paper and Wite-Out, they resume sketching a new resort in Macau, one they hope will distill all the lessons learned over the last three decades of trial and error into the perfect experience. “I always want to do one more,” Wynn says, eyeing a blank sheet of paper. “Maybe this is the time I get it right.”
May 1–7, 2014
unanimously voted to license The Mirage. In less than four weeks, the resort would be open.
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that night, the Hill & Knowlton team, under the direction of Los Angeles general manager Ron Hartwig, started writing up the plan for an opening that would take place in less than eight weeks. That Friday, September 29, Feldman joined Wynn’s daughter Kevyn for his frst tour of the property and learned that his new client had big news to share with the world: The Mirage had fnally received approval to keep dolphins in the planned habitat—the result of months of administrative and regulatory wrangling. Wynn wanted a press conference. Now. Working without a press list, Feldman assembled representatives of the three local television stations, two daily newspapers and two wire services. “This was when I learned about Steve’s ability to talk to the public,” Feldman recalls. “He walked in with no notes and spoke for 15 minutes about the historical context of the decision, why it mattered, and thanked those responsible by name before taking questions.” Feldman was wowed by his new client from the start. “The moment I
NIGHTLIFE Your city after dark, photos from the week’s hottest parties and Pure’s longest-running resident DJ moves on
Fabled Tables Snag a seat alongside your favorite celebrity By Camille Cannon
“LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.” You’re probably familiar with the three most important tenets of real estate. Las Vegas nightclubs are no exception. While every inch of these clubs possess that magical combination of liquor and luxury, some seats reign supreme over others. Here’s where the rich and famous like to sit and sip. 1 OAK
The infamous 50s are top-notch real estate within the walls of 1 Oak. A seat within this run of eight large tables could place you in the company of Jay-Z, Robin Thicke, Kanye or other A-list luminaries. Plus it grants you close proximity to the evening’s DJ talent and the most extravagant bottle-service presentations that the club has to offer—customized for each big spender’s personality and truly, as the club’s name implies, one of a kind. In The Mirage, 702693-8300, 1OakLasVegas.com.
HYDE Picture yourself in the catbird seats at 1 Oak.
While Hyde’s Bellagio fountain-side table is famous for its location, perks (including control of the water show at the touch of a button and a 30-liter
May 1–7, 2014
Enter Hakkasan’s fourth-level main room, fnd the DJ booth and look to the left—that’s where you’ll see the famous faces gracing this mega club. One weekend in February, actors Chace Crawford and Theo James were spotted celebrating friend Miles Teller’s birthday, one table over from Pitch Perfect co-stars Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow. That’s a whole lot of young, twinkling star power in one spot. In MGM Grand, 702-891-3838, HakkasanLV.com.
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PHOTO BY MARTIN TESSLER
HAKKASAN
NIGHTLIFE bottle of Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” Champagne) and its price tag ($250,000), celebrities prefer the DJ booth-adjacent table 53. Hilary Duff, Joanna Krupa and Marilyn Manson have all been spotted here. In Bellagio, 702-693-8700, HydeBellagio.com.
May 1–7, 2014
LIGHT
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At Light, the most coveted tables are those closest to the action—both on the dance foor and above it. As Cirque du Soleil acrobats scale the walls behind the DJ booth, you can take in their performance from a frst-tier table, where celebrities such as Adam Levine, Nick Cannon and Dancing With the Stars’ Cheryl Burke have done the same. Booths are 14 feet by 8 feet and are 3 feet above the foor, so you can observe all without being disturbed. Situated on the dance foor, tables 63 and 64 offer closer access to the action as well as additional seating for large groups. In Mandalay Bay, 702-693-8300, TheLightVegas.com. MARQUEE
In the main room, Marquee’s table 50
is most popular. It’s where the confetti showers rain most heavy and the view of the club’s go-go dancers and DJ booth are uncompromised—just ask Bruno Mars, Seattle Seahawks’ Richard Sherman or the L.A. Lakers’ Kobe Bryant. In the quieter Library room, guests such as Dave Chappelle and Beyoncé have chosen to kick back at table 200, where billiards, a freplace and a balcony are just feet away. Breaking Bad actor Aaron Paul selected the cozy venue for his joint bachelor/bachelorette party with then fancée Lauren Parsekian in 2013. In the Cosmopolitan, 702-333-9000, MarqueeLasVegas.com. SURRENDER
The top spot at Surrender is known simply as “the DJ table.” That’s because it’s actually behind the booth. As other clubgoers rub elbows with their eyes on you, you get to eye the equipment and get a sneak peek of what songs the DJ will drop next. It’s where Paris Hilton hung around while dating Afrojack, and where swimmer Michael Phelps celebrated his Olympic retirement in 2012. In Encore, 702-7707300, SurrenderNightclub.com.
TAO
You’ve seen the bottle fairy fying above the dance foor at Tao. And if you watched her long enough, you know that she was en route to the elite (perhaps past visitors Kim Kardashian, Kanye West or Jay-Z) seated at tables 50 and 55. If you can take your eyes off the fairy, you can also appreciate a prime view of the recently installed LED screens on the ceiling. In the Venetian, 702-388-8588, TaoLasVegas.com. TRYST
The crème de la crème at Tryst is table 540, better known as “the owner’s table.” The privilege to park it there is
limited to a few—Justin Timberlake, Holly Madison and Ryan Seacrest among them. In Wynn, 702-770-3375, TrystLasVegas.com. XS
XS celebrated a milestone ffth birthday earlier this year and in that time, a parade of “It” girls and boys have passed through the doors. Here, table 30 is reserved for DJs, including well-known residents such as Avicii, Diplo and Skrillex. Nearby, celebrities such as Mario Lopez, Julianne Hough and the Jonas brothers saddle up at stage tables 10, 20 (the most popular), 30, 40 or 50. In Encore, 702-770-0097, XSLasVegas.com.
HAKK ASAN BY ERIK K ABIK; HYDE BY RYAN FORBES/AVABLU
Hakkasan’s main room before the madness, and Hyde’s fountain-adjacent patio setup.
NIGHTLIFE
Veteran Pure Terrace DJ Joey Mazzola moves on with Monkeybars By Deanna Rilling
May 1–7, 2014
JOEY IS GETTING BACK TO BEING JOEY.
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That is, DJ/producer Joey Mazzola is stepping out from the booth and returning to his roots in the studio: making music. With his new “fun” house label Monkeybars launching, and his time spinning on the terrace at Pure drawing to a close (along with the club itself, which is all but offcially confrmed to close after May 25), we learn about the next chapter in Mazzola’s career. What will the Monkeybars record label be all about? What [partner Doug Ansell and I are] trying to do is make music fun again and remind people that it’s dance music. I’m talking to all the West Coast producers whom I came
into the business with, all the people whom I was putting records out with in the ’90s and in the 2000s. When I say “fun” I just mean I don’t want a label where I corner myself into one sound. Our first release is going to be a Monkeybars music sampler. We’re going to have Ron Reeser, David Garcia, Scotty Boy and myself with Jay Walker. What specifcally comprises “fun” house music? Not so serious, not like back in the day when you had to be nerdy and geeky to like techno and house music. It’s a whole different world right now, and that’s what I’m trying to get out there. I’ve made up my mind, and that’s how I’m going to
What type of house music though? Tech, deep, progressive, festival? When I say “house music,” I don’t believe in subgenre-ing. I don’t even use those terms, because they automatically turn people off, sadly. Or the term “EDM”? That’s pop music. Everybody knows when they use the word “EDM” they’re defning pop music. That automatically turns off the house heads. How would you sum up your time playing house for the past fve years on Pure’s terrace? Being at Pure for so many years, they helped me in tremendous ways to make a life for my son, and I was
grateful to have run Pure’s terrace for fve years—that’s a big deal to me. What people don’t realize is we get so many people from all over the world who love house, they only understand house and I’ve been giving it to them for fve years, three days a week. That’s a lot, and I’ll be grateful for that the rest of my life. Are you gonna have a celebration for your last night? I can tell you my last big locals Tuesday night at Pure is May 20, the fnal Tuesday night for locals to catch me on the terrace. We fgured it out: I’ve played at Pure more than 800 times! It’s gonna be pretty emotional. I’m the longest-running DJ that Pure ever had. Now I feel like it’s time to release Joey Mazzola again, and do what my longtime friends and fans expect of me. For those not familiar with your background—which includes playing legendary Las Vegas spots such as Empire Ballroom, Ice, Drai’s and more—when can they hear what’s always been in your heart? If anyone wants to check out Joey being Joey, Memorial Day Weekend I’ll be doing a fve-hour set at the Artisan on May 24, which will be big, and I’ll be demoing our new music. Free for locals! Everyone’s welcome.
PHOTO BY BOBBY JAMEIDAR
A House Music Playground
evolve and that’s how I’m going to stay afoat and that’s how I’m going to reach the next level. I am not going to be focusing on the Las Vegas DJ market; I’m going to be focusing on what this next brand of music is going to be and what these kids are going to be playing in these clubs, because for all you and I know it’s going to be so drastically different fve years from now. I want to be ahead of that game. I think the only place for dance music to go is just back to being fun again. … I want to be the West Coast Subliminal, if you will. I want to do what Eric Morillo did with his whole Subliminal crew.
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
TAO BEACH The Venetian [ UPCOMING ]
May 1–7, 2014
May 1 Kay and Kelley spin May 2 Javier Alba spins May 3 Eric D-Lux spins
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46 See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
The Fifth of May: When we honor Mexico’s victory over France in the Battle of Puebla … by attacking our liver with flowing alcohol. Read on and rage on! (Festivities occur May 5 unless otherwise noted.) Wanna hear mariachi mixed with house? Head to Hyde where DJ Skratchy is on deck. TV personality Mario Lopez (and by default, his abs) host a fiesta May 3. (In Bellagio, 10 p.m., HydeBellagio.com.) May 1-5, Diablo’s Cantina has a cast of rotating DJs and bands, plus $25 all-you-can-drink draft beer. May 5 is extra-special, offering a performance from everyone’s favorite metal-mariachi fusion act, Metalachi. (In Monte Carlo, 9 p.m., DiablosLasVegas.com.) Tivoli Village’s Cantina Laredo presents two parties on the patio, both promising piñatas. May 4 (11 a.m.6 p.m.) is more family-friendly while May 3 (6 p.m.-midnight) is focused on the boozin’. (430 S. Rampart Blvd., CantinaLaredo. com.) Beauty Bar’s Sonidero bash boasts no cover, $3 Coronas, $4 shots of Jose Cuervo and tunes by DJs Bad Beat, St. JP and Dolores Flores. (517 Fremont St., 9 p.m., TheBeautyBar.com/HomeLas-Vegas.) Dive into the holiday beer-first with $18 buckets of Coors Light at Rhumbar. Additional specials include $5 rum punch cocktails and $8 cigar selections from 4-6 p.m.; $5 Dos Equis and $7 Jose Cuervo margaritas are served all-day. (In The Mirage, RhumbarLV. com.) Cabo Wabo Cantina doles out drink deals May 2-5 during their “Tres, Cuatro, Cinco: Let’s Drinko!” party. Slam $5 shots of Fireball, $21 buckets of Dos Equis or the 24-ounce daiquiri, La Bandera, for $19, which looks festive in red, white and green like the Mexican flag. (In the Miracle Mile Shops in Planet Hollywood, CaboWaboCantina. com/Vegas.) If you love the taste of tequila, stop by the Salted Lime at Aliante for tastings and giveaways from Sauza Hornitos on May 3, and Tequila Cazadores on May 4. (7300 Aliante Pkwy., AlianteGaming.com.) —Camille Cannon
PHOTOS BY AL POWERS/POWERS IMAGERY
CHEAT SHEET: CINCO DE DRINK-O 2014
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
XS
Encore [ UPCOMING ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
PHOTOS BY DANNY MAHONEY
May 1–7, 2014
May 2 Avicii spins May 3 David Guetta spins May 5 Lil Jon spins
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
WET REPUBLIC MGM Grand
[ UPCOMING ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
PHOTOS BY JOSH METZ AND JOE TORRANCE
May 1–7, 2014
May 2 Hot 100 May 3 Afrojack spins May 4 Hardwell spins
DINING
Brooklyn Bowl serves the Brombergs’ original-recipe fried chicken.
UNCORK’D UNWRAPP’D: PRO TIPS FOR NAVIGATING THE GRAND TASTING
Al’s
Menu Picks
May 1–7, 2014
Potato and onion knish ($9), Beach Pizza (pulled pork and pickled peppers, $15), Fried chicken ($18 and up) Mashed potatoes ($6).
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At Brooklyn Bowl, the Brombergs’ menu leans toward gourmet comfort food—admittedly not an original concept. There are a few nods to Brooklyn, but southern cuisine is far more prevalent. Appetizers include adobo corn, Cajun shrimp cocktail and pork rinds. There’s a line of perfectly prepared French bread pizzas that come off like Stouffer’s on steroids. Sandwiches include catfsh, chicken muffaletta, barbecue pork sliders and an oyster po’ boy. And the entrée section features mac and cheese, blackened salmon and pulled pork. There’s also a brunch menu on weekends from noon-4 p.m. Then, of course, there’s the fried chicken. It’s a staple of Blue Ribbon restaurants, and will undoubtedly emerge as Brooklyn Bowl’s signature dish. But those who
know it from the Cosmopolitan should be forewarned: This is not the same recipe. Given the Sushi Bar & Grill’s Asian component, the brothers Bromberg tweaked the recipe for Las Vegas, adding the Japanese spice mix togarashi to the batter and serving it with wasabi honey. What you get at Brooklyn Bowl is the original recipe. Which you prefer is a matter of taste, because they’re both among the best fried chicken in town. But it’s worth sampling both to appreciate the subtleties of each. Another standout item here is the pulled pork, which I enjoyed with pickled peppers on one of those tremendous pizzas. The barbecue is smoked in-house and infused with a rich favor. And the knish appetizer is brilliant! It’s a deconstructed tribute to the Brooklyn classic: two miniature knishes served “open face” so the dough isn’t overpowering, topped with a delicious mixture of potatoes and caramelized onions, and accompanied by sour cream and spicy deli mustard. Speaking of potatoes, don’t miss the mashed potato side dish, topped with one of the best gravies in the city. Hell, even the humble chicken
burger is good here, thanks to the chef’s decision to use only dark meat to give it more fat and more favor. There is still room for improvement, however. The smoked fsh spread is too mild for my taste, and a little too thick to spread easily. The catfsh, which I had on a sandwich, is perfectly cooked but incredibly bland (making it a great candidate for the excellent house-made hot sauce you’ll fnd on every table). Finally, while I’m told the smoked barbecue wings are a house favorite, they play into a pet peeve of mine: drowning out a barbecue dish’s smoky favor by slathering it in sauce. Those minor complaints aside, Brooklyn Bowl’s food is head and shoulders above what you’ll fnd at any restaurant or bar that’s even half this cool. Did I mention I love this place?
BROOKLYN BOWL
In the Linq, 862-2695. Open for lunch and dinner 11 a.m.–2 a.m. Sun–Thu; 11 a.m.–4 a.m. Fri-Sat. Dinner for two, $30-$75.
Get the latest on local restaurant openings and closings, interviews with top chefs, cocktail recipes, menu previews and more in our weekly “Sips and Bites” newsletter. Subscribe at VegasSeven.com/SipsandBites.
Set your priorities. Determine whose food and drinks you need to try, whose you’d like to try, and whose you are OK with skipping. There are more than 70 chefs represented here, and while at the beginning you are positive you can eat your way through all 70 restaurants, 35 bars and 30 wine stations, well, I don’t mean to doubt your abilities, but it’s not going to happen. Seek out new chefs and restaurants. That is, those that are both new to the Grand Tasting and new to you. Exciting additions this year include the effervescent Giada de Laurentiis and Cake Boss Buddy Valastro. When they’re at their booths, expect even longer wait times. Get there super early. If you really want to meet your favorite chefs, be one of the first through the gate at 7:30 p.m., or buck up the extra $75 that gives you a 30-minute head start on the general-admission crowd. For the first hour or so of the festival, if they’re not doing interviews, chefs are most likely at their booths and happy to meet you. After that, they tend to Houdini. And remember: Play it cool. It might be really exciting to meet chefs you’ve watched on TV, but don’t get grabby with Mario Batali, and don’t offer Gordon Ramsay an absurd amount of money for him to call you a donkey (he won’t). Eat a little later than everyone else. My plan of attack for 2014 is to wait until around 8:30 or possibly 9 to make my rounds (I may or may not just be hanging out drinking until then). I may miss the chefs at their booths, but by this time, everyone else has made at least one lap, and the lines die down considerably. I’ve also now had a chance to poll others as to their favorite bites. This is when I swoop in, grab a plate and eat at my leisure. Don’t fall in the pool. I’ve never seen it myself, but I’m sure it’s happened. Grace Bascos eats, sleeps, raves and repeats. Read more from Grace at VegasSeven.com/ DishingWithGrace, as well as on her diningand-music blog, FoodPlusTechno.com
PHOTO BY ANTHONY MAIR
Although Vegas Uncork’d takes place May 8-11, the Grand Tasting ($225-$300, VegasUncorked.com)—which I affectionately refer to as the Food Nerd Prom—is the biggest party of the weekend, and where you’ll find everyone who’s anyone in the Las Vegas culinary scene. But trying to battle more than 2,500 other hungry food lovers around the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis at Caesars Palace can be trying, especially as you’re attempting to juggle a plastic wine glass and small plate, and still look suave while eating a molten-hot morsel in 90-degree heat. So here are a few tips to help you eat and drink your way through the eighth annual Grand Tasting on May 9:
DINING
SCENE
The Guy Behind the Guy Behind the Guy Examining the hierarchy of a restaurant kitchen
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”WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE between a cook and a chef?” That’s a question those in the culinary world hear frequently. Most people understand that not all cooks deserve the title of chef. (The term technically means “chief.”) But you may not realize that most highlevel chefs actually do very little cooking. While top chefs have to know how to cook, they spend most of their time managing (something aspiring chefs may want to keep in mind). The designations and responsibilities within a kitchen aren’t exact, and can vary from place to place. But in any restaurant, the person in absolute charge of the kitchen is the executive chef. In many cases, this is the man or woman who oversees the kitchen from day to day. But in the case of most celebrity chefs, that’s not true. When chefs have numerous restaurants and responsibilities, it’s simply impossible. Rick Moonen is executive chef of two Las Vegas restaurants in Mandalay Bay, but frequently travels to educate on sustainable seafood, and collaborate with other chefs and seafood experts. He sees the role of an executive chef as “hiring, maintaining, embracing and creating
a culture that coincides with your style of cuisine and running a business.” And Moonen says you’d be hard-pressed to fnd him cooking in his restaurants, because he’s experimenting with favors and ingredients elsewhere. “I don’t cook as often in my restaurants as I do at home,” he explains. Some globetrotting chefs, such as Michael Mina, opt to designate the day-to-day head chef in each of their restaurants as the executive chef. Says Mina’s corporate executive chef Gary LaMorte, “We choose to call our [local] executive chefs ‘executive chefs’ because, in reality, they are.” Other chefs, including Moonen and Thomas Keller, follow a more traditional French system and designate those chefs as chef de cuisine. “My job is: food cost, quality and labor,” says Moonen’s chef de cuisine, John Church, somewhat oversimplifying his many daily tasks. Josh Crain, chef de cuisine at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in the Venetian, describes his job similarly: “Looking at costs and numbers, scheduling, the direction of the kitchen and staffng.” All of these managerial responsibilities
don’t leave a lot of time for cooking. While Church says he makes sure to touch a stove daily (“I’ll lose my mind if I’m not cooking something every day”), Crain says he rarely cooks in his kitchen. “The times [that I cook] are very few and far between,” Crain admits. “This defnitely is more of an orchestrating position.” The next step down the chef hierarchy is the sous chef. Most restaurants have several, including an executive sous chef. But guess what? These guys aren’t doing a lot of cooking either. Matt Alba, executive sous chef at Bouchon, says his duties include “the majority of produce ordering, fsh ordering, meat ordering. [Chef Crain and I] write the schedule together. Occasionally I expedite at dinner. And then I expedite in the morning.” The sous chefs below him are charged with inspecting the pre-meal prep, creating daily or weekly specials, orchestrating the preparation of meals and mentoring up-and-coming chefs. So who’s actually cooking? That task falls to one of the lower levels of the chef hierarchy: the chef de partie. Otherwise known as line cooks, these
are the guys and gals responsible for making most of your meal, assisted by entry-level cooks known as commises. Each chef de partie is assigned to a particular station to handle a specifc task, with a sous chef coordinating their efforts to make sure all of the parts come together to create the perfect meal.
WHO COOKS WHAT
Here are a few of the line cooks actually preparing your food and what each does. (Many restaurants will combine certain positions.) Saucier – Sauces and sautéed items. Poissonnier – Fish and seafood. Friturier – Fried foods. Rotisseur – Roasted/braised meats. Grillardin – Grilled foods. Garde Manger – Cold food, including salads and charcuterie. Entremetier – Vegetables and soups. Patissier – Pastries and desserts.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JON ESTRADA
May 1–7, 2014
By Al Mancini
365 TOKYO —a members-only Japanese-inspired bar Downtown on the second foor of Inspire—soft-opened April 26 to Inspire members and lucky invited individuals. “It doesn’t exist; it’s like Area 51,” says Future Restaurant Group owner Michael Cornthwaite, only somewhat kidding. His new bar does exist, but it seats just eight members in a tiny room walled in on three sides by limo-tinted glass that hangs over Fremont Street. Lead barman Seong Ha Lee hales from Seoul, South Korea, but he spent much of his career in Japan, so guests are greeted with a bow from Lee and his assistant, then offered a warm, scented towel and a glass of cucumber water before being presented with the cocktail menu in English, Japanese or Korean. In fact, much
of the 365 Tokyo experience is up to the guest: your choice of ice (handchipped sphere, block or Kold-Draft), base spirit and even mixing technique (layered by density; frozen into a quick sorbet with liquid nitrogen; smoked a la minute with your choice of wood; or siphon-infused with your choice of botanicals. Or trust Lee—again, your choice. Like its skilled mixologist, much of 365 Tokyo’s barware—from the one-of-a-kind shakers to the mismatched mixing beakers—was imported from Japan. Cornthwaite says he and his wife, Jennifer, were inspired by the intense degree of “precision, attention to detail, humility and professionalism” they observed in Japanese bars. But when Cornthwaite couldn’t fnd in Las Vegas what he experienced overseas, he built it for himself. Don’t worry if you weren’t tapped for the opening days; memberships are still available, affording preferential access to Inspire Theater performances, newsstand discounts and, of course, your ticket to 365 Tokyo. FRGLV.com/365-Tokyo.
61 VEGAS SEVEN
PHOTOS BY JON ESTRADA
On Tokyo Time
May 1–7, 2014
DRINKING
A&E May 1–7, 2014 VEGAS SEVEN
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To that end, in January, Monopoly entered into a yearlong residency at Wynn Las Vegas, in which he’ll appear at Encore Beach Club, Surrender, Tryst and XS on select dates to create pieces live amid the revelers. Unlike traditional DJ residencies, Alec’s ongoing collaboration with the nightlife properties is much more artistic and freewheeling. He works with the Wynn team to choose meaningful dates for him to attend and participate on the fy, to keep an open-ended feeling of creativity. And while it might not seem like painting in a nightclub packed to capacity and thumping with high-decibel beats would be anything like silently tagging an abandoned building in the middle of the night, Monopoly sees the experiences as strikingly similar. “On the streets, I’m stressed,” he explains. “I’m really on edge: I’m worried about the police; I know I have to be fast. In a club, I’m nervous because I’m worried that I’ll mess up, or that I’ll trip and fall.” (Monopoly works on a platform next to the DJ booth.) He draws off that panic to feed his creative energy—and the vibe doesn’t hurt, either. “I’ve been going to XS for years,” he adds. “It’s my favorite club in the world.” All works Monopoly does live are either pre-sold, destroyed or put at auction for charity. “The audience is in total awe while watching him work,” says Wynn nightlife impresario Jesse Waits, who frst met Monopoly at Sundance when they collaborated on a pop-up event, and was immediately blown away by his talent. “We were lucky to develop a relationship with him at such an early point in his career. He is a true component of pop culture, and I’m
convinced this is just the beginning of a hugely successful career and overall infuence in the scene itself.” A decade ago, Monopoly could never have foreseen being up on these kinds of literal and fgurative pedestals. Back then he was just another teen in New York City, trying to emulate idols such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, tagging walls and dodging cops. But when the 2008 economic crisis hit, he found inspiration in the Wall Street bigwigs falling from grace in the public eye. “I started painting Bernie Madoff, surrounded by Monopoly money,” he says. “And then I realized that Madoff was just like the Monopoly Man. So I started painting him instead, putting him everywhere around the city.” The combination of Monopoly’s studied skill (he learned photorealistic painting techniques under the tutelage of his artist mother), ubiquitous tagging of “Uncle Pennybags” and smart social commentary made him stand out from New York’s hordes of street artists. Since then, he’s had a meteoric rise, with two acclaimed gallery shows, an exhibition at Art Basel Miami Beach and high-profle collaborations with Paramount Pictures, Madonna, Diplo and Avicii. Monopoly could easily afford to spend the rest of his life painting canvasses in sunny studios, but that wouldn’t make him happy. “My true passion,” he says, more than once, “is graffti.” By which he means real graffti: the illegal kind. Monopoly still hits the streets whenever he can, and is often given walls to paint by cities eager to be marked by his unique, geometric signature (the “E” in Alec is made up of three stacked lines, a nod to Basquiat; the “C” is topped with Haring-esque
Art-upy Wall Street: Monopoly became famous by critiquing economic inequality.
movement marks), but the thrill of unsanctioned street art that hooked him as a kid is what he seeks out most. Monopoly only does illegal work in what he calls “positive places”—abandoned structures or sites that have already been tagged by other artists—and rarely in “clean” cities such as Las Vegas that tend to scrub public graffti before it dries. But he still worries constantly about the police, which is just one of the reasons he’s always photographed with a bandana tied just below his eyes like a dapper Old West bandit. He was arrested a lot when he was young, and doesn’t think he’ll get special treatment just because he’s famous now. “If anything,” he says, “they probably want to make an example out of me.” Although Uncle Pennybags has somewhat ironically made him very wealthy, Monopoly imagines that there will come a day when he lays his namesake character to rest. Many other pop icons, from Twiggy to Robert De Niro to Jack Nicholson, show up repeatedly in his work, and since his fount of inspiration is American culture itself, the possibilities seem endless. “Honestly, I started Mr. Monopoly in response to what was going on [in the economy],” he says. “I never thought it would still be relevant six years later.” His own snowballing relevance, too, is a subject that continues to surprise him. “In my mind,” he laughs, “I’m a nobody just doing my thing.”
ART FOR A CAUSE In addition to rubbing elbows with A-list celebrities and commandeering five-deck yachts for Art Basel blowouts, Alec Monopoly lives up to the “sensitive artist” cliché by partnering with charities —remember that Fabergé egg?— every chance his schedule allows. On May 2, Monopoly will create a live piece at Hi: Healthy Indulgence, a collaborative event between Wynn’s Jesse Waits and Sean Christie, and Larry Ruvo of Keep Memory Alive and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. – U.L.
STAGE
STAND-UP WITH ME The comic king of awkward will play The Mirage ... and he’s worried you won’t show
IN 2008, MIKE BIRBIGLIA did something “It’s the ultimate feeling of being that few modern comics try misunderstood,” Birbiglia says. anymore: He went long. His off“I was at this restaurant, and this Broadway show Sleepwalk With hostess said, ‘I wanted to come to Me saw him tease out his usual your show, but I’m in college and awkwardness-based stand-up into broke.’ I felt bad for her and said, a one-man performance that would ‘This conversation is funnier than eventually be developed into a 2012 anything you’ll see onstage tonight.’ movie of the same name. She said, ‘I have a boyfriend.’” Birbiglia followed that up with If you don’t die a little bit inside 2013’s My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, reading that, then you were probably another long-form piece, which one of the popular kids in high school. amped up his baseline awkward to Which is an elusive quality, showing-up-naked-for-class-on-testpopularity. Birbiglia has built his day-while-your-crush-points-andslowly over the years, but he’s poised laughs levels. to play in a couple of upcoming Now, he’s taking a step back with movies—aside from the planned Thank God for Jokes at The Mirage’s adaptation of Girlfriend—that will Aces of Comedy on May 3. It’s a goose his screen exposure. He has more traditional standa small part in the up set whose name Jamie Foxx version of harkens back to when Annie, and he’s in The MIKE BIRBIGLIA he wanted to be a priest Fault in Our Stars, the 8 p.m. May 3, “for ridiculous reasons.” forthcoming June movie Terry Fator Theatre Nothing about the call adaptation of the youngat The Mirage, $44, of religion, or spreading adult bestseller. 702-792-7777. the word: It’s just that old The Mirage stop is Father Patterson used to Birbiglia’s frst time get cheap laughs from a in town. He might be captive audience. Like being a cruisea little nervous. “Concerned that I ship act, but with a terrible buffet. don’t have Vegas-y fans,” he tweeted. Sleepwalk evolved from Birbiglia’s “But join me. It’ll be weird. Together.” background as a playwright. A friend “I’m apprehensive no one shows convinced him it was the best way up. It’s a place that has so many to get onstage both as an actor and entertainment options. If they don’t a writer. It helped usher along his show up, it means they were open penchant for fnding theme and to being entertained, but just not by arc in stand-up, which set the stage me,” he says. “Last week I played New for Girlfriend. Now those genreOrleans; this week I play Las Vegas. stretching efforts are second nature. It’s the quintessential non-Mike The new material in Thank God Birbiglia town. It’s all about partying evolved a loose theme about the way and celebration and excitement. I’m jokes can both bind and alienate— very excited about Vegas. The more I painfully familiar territory to anyone learn about the various replica cities, who’s had everyday banter take a the more excited I am. Plus, I like turn into a deadly social minefeld. playing blackjack.”
PHOTO BY BRIAN FRIEDMAN
By Jason Scavone
A&E
MOVIES
REVENGE À TROIS
Three blondes (Mann, Diaz and Upton), one comedy.
Diaz, Mann and Upton unite against a cheater By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services
HOLLYWOOD YEARS ARE LIKE DOG YEARS,
which means 17 years is a long time. Seventeen years ago Cameron Diaz played the chipper second banana, the other woman, in the Julia Roberts vehicle My Best Friend’s Wedding. While that movie really belonged to Rupert Everett, the sunny goodwill fying out of every single one of Diaz’s pores cast a nice warm glow over the Chicagoflmed diversion. Diaz has long since proven she can tackle various leading roles, and in the unsteady revenge comedy The Other Woman Diaz fnds herself running the show in a Sarah Jessica Parker Sex and the City sort of way. It lies at the midpoint between the black-comic nastiness of a Bad Teacher (which she was in) and the raunchy but sweet realm of a good, blessedly female-driven ensemble project such as Bridesmaids (which she was not). Written by newcomer Melissa K. Stack, The Other Woman offers roughly equal parts wit and witlessness, casual smarts and jokes, lingering and detailed, regarding explosive bowel movements. Based on that ratio, I’d say the screenwriter’s future in Hollywood looks pretty good.
Re-rated PG-13, down from an R on appeal, the flm stars Diaz (the blonde one) along with Leslie Mann (the blonde one) and Kate Upton (the blonde one). Carly Whitten, the Diaz character, is a high-fying Manhattan attorney two months into a romance with a new man (Nikolaj CosterWaldau, a Game of Thrones regular and graduate of the Ewan McGregor School of Charismatic Smarm). His money, suspicious in its origins, comes from something to do with startup companies and websites. Visiting Mark’s Connecticut home one night dressed as a stripper-plumber, Carly learns her beau is married, though Mark remains unaware that the women in his life are getting hep to his hectic step. Mark’s wife, Kate (Mann), and Carly form an alliance once they realize the weasel is weaseling with a
third, younger, va-voomier specimen (Upton), whom they also recruit. Where does it go from there? All over the place. As these three become one and hatch their revenge schemes, half-heartedly, the movie—directed by Nick Cassavetes in an ever-shifting variety of tones and styles—attempts to deliver a little something for everyone. Pathos: Mann in wrenching close-up, in bed, as she realizes her marriage is shot. Fashion: Sex and the City costume designer Patricia Field throws every thread she can at her photogenic triad, breaking just short of drag-queen territory. Alcohol: There is a lot of drinking in this movie, in the neighborhood of Leaving Las Vegas intake levels, though without the fatal side effects. A 20th Century Fox promotional Twitter account recently encouraged the flm’s target audience: “grab the
SHORT REVIEWS
May 1–7, 2014
Brick Mansions (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
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For this remake of the French parkour thriller District 13, editor-turned-director Camille Delamarre (Taken 2, Transporter 3) drops frames and jump-cuts his way through the fights, chases and parkour stunts of this picture, giving the action a jagged, nervy edge. Paul Walker’s best moments have him doing a deadpan double take at some impossible stunt David Belle’s Lino has just pulled off. And moments like that, even in a dumb movie, add a little sting to the loss of Walker’s amiable, sincere screen presence—a nice guy who always made a convincingly righteous dude.
The Railway Man (R) ★★★✩✩
Eric Lomax’s memoir gave this half-good, half-fraudulent film adaptation its title. It’s more of a homefront war story, focusing on the strain Lomax’s marriage underwent because of everything in his wartime past. The Railway Man is about the rehabilitation of a broken man (played by Colin Firth), largely through the persistence and the efforts of his wife, intent on unlocking the anguished riddle before her. As Lomax, Firth is marvelous throughout. And in the wartime sequences, Lomax in his 20s is played well and truly by a shrewdly matched Jeremy Irvine.
Transcendence (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
Transcendence—a.k.a. The Computer Wore Johnny Depp’s Tennis Shoes—offers the same excitement as listening to hold music on a call to tech support. Like much speculative fiction, Transcendence is in thrall to technology even as it warns of unleashed AI. Depp, who Skypes in his performance, plays Dr. Will Caster. He and his researcher wife (Rebecca Hall) have pioneered AI experiments, bringing the human race to “transcendence,” the ability to imbue a computer with the personality of a human.
girls, book ur tickets & let us know what you think!” Many flms come to mind watching this one, among them Working Girl (Nicki Minaj, the rapper/singer, glides through the role of Carly’s assistant) and The First Wives Club. The repartee ranges from leisurely discussions of personal landscaping to faintly hypocritical soul-searching regarding love and fulfllment. Primarily the movie is selling teeth and clothing. Still, line to line, it’s fresher than any number of guy-centric Hangover-spawned affairs, despite director Cassavetes’ lack of fair for slapstick. Diaz remains a game physical comic even when her two-headed flm’s asking no more of her than to dance, or stumble into some bushes. The Other Woman (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
By Tribune Media Services
Oculus (R) ★★★✩✩
Longer on chills than entrails, this crafty horror film is about a haunted mirror. Certainly writer-director Mike Flanagan has learned the virtues of a simple idea, fruitfully elaborated. The script takes the time to make us care about a brother and a sister we meet in flashback, then 11 years later. In the prologue, young Kaylie (Annalise Basso) and Tim (Garrett Ryan) are beset in their home by ... we’re not sure, exactly. The mirror did it! Referencing The Shining and The Stepfather, Oculus lacks a big finish. It does not, however, lack for sequel possibilities.
Rio 2 (G) ★★✩✩✩
Draft Day (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
Dom Hemingway (R) ★★ ✩✩
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
The 2011 hit Rio was a baby sitter. And so is Rio 2, a routine sequel following the perilous adventures of the blue macaws Blu (clever character name), Jewel and their offspring as they leave urban Rio life for a chaotic trip to Amazon rain-forest country. The movie is heavy machinery of a different kind. Directed by Carlos Saldanha, Rio 2 offers the same approach to story and to story clutter as did the first movie. Sergio Mendes returns to oversee the music, which is pretty tasty. The movie’s an acceptable, if tiring, baby sitter.
In this facile, Guy Ritchie-esque crime jape, Jude Law plays a London safecracker of insatiable appetites and Olympian selfregard. Writer-director Richard Shepard (The Matador) introduces Dom in prison, near the end of a 12-year sentence. Once out of prison—he took the fall for his underworld employer, a Russian assassin played by Demian Bichir—Dom is hellbent on settling old scores. Visually, the film is as loud as Law’s performance. The material: limited payoff; the performer at the center: never less than arresting.
Frankie & Alice (R) ★★✩✩✩
True cases of people suffering from multiple-personality disorders are harrowing. So it’s a shame that the movies have rendered such rarities humdrum and routine. But actors just love the idea of slinging several accents during the course of a film. Halle Berry certainly did. That goes a long way in explaining Frankie & Alice, a long-shelved 2010 melodrama “based on true events.” And Berry, winner of an Oscar for Monster’s Ball, treats this showcase for what it is—an acting exercise, and a fairly broad one.
Draft Day feels like a play, in the same way J.C. Chandor’s 2011 Margin Call felt that way. Set mostly in a series of offices across 13 hours in a pressure-cooked day, the film lives and dies on the low-key, take-it-easy spectacle of Kevin Costner maneuvering through an administrative obstacle course, crises intermingling with draft-pick opportunities. Costner plays the (fictional) general manager of the Cleveland Browns. Costner’s range as an actor remains an open question, but he carries the movie easily and well.
This is a better-than-average Marvel superhero bash, intriguingly plotted and clever in its speculations about 21stcentury life for Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, as he contends with contemporary geopolitics. There is no “just enough” in today’s computer-generated Marvel marvels; there is only “too much.” And there’s an element of hypocrisy in this film, which bemoans America’s bloodthirsty, weaponsmad impulses even as it offers an obscene body count for fun and profit.
Noah (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
Darren Aronofsky’s strange and often rich Noah deserves better handling than a plainly nervous Paramount Pictures has given it. This Noah, played with steely purpose by Russell Crowe, is a flawed, angry and murderously conflicted man just trying to do his job: listen to the Creator; prepare for the cleansing, annihilating flood; fulfill his mission and then live with the emotional consequences. The movie is unpredictable, which is saying something, and it argues rather sweetly that if we had just listened to Noah, we’d all be more careful stewards of the only planet we’ve got.
Your book, titled The Filthy Truth, is due out later this year. Why was now the right time to write a memoir? When my career took off, I was offered every kind of deal, including book deals. And back then, I was like, “What am I going to write a book about? I just made it six months ago.” You know, Hollywood’s a crazy place, I gotta tell ya. So the management would say, “Do the book. Put out the book.” And I was never moneyhungry like that. Obviously, anybody likes having a lot of money—to say I don’t like having money is stupid. But it was never the goal. The goal was accomplishment, and at that time, I had just made it and I felt, “Well, there is no story yet.” So now, 35 years into a career, there’s something to write about.
Andrew Dice Clay The foulmouthed comic on the appeal of performing in a small venue, the two sides of his persona and the one clean comedian he respects
May 1–7, 2014
By Matt Jacob
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You’re in the midst of your second year with a periodic residency in Vinyl at the Hard Rock Hotel. Why was this a good career move for you? After you do 12 million people as a live performer, there’s really nothing to prove as far as big rooms. And today my career is a lot different. I made what they say is a great comeback, all the way from [appearing regularly on] Entourage through my Showtime special, Indestructible, through [appearing in] Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, which is basically
Woody’s biggest movie ever. So I’m very comfortable with the new career. It’s sort of the kind of career I always wanted, because I always loved the acting stuff. But I love the live performing, too, because I have millions of fans, and playing a place like Vinyl is great. It’s a smaller room, it’s an intimate room, but it’s very rock ’n’ roll. The way I feel, I put out the same energy wherever I am. But to do it in front of 300 or 400 people gives me more satisfaction. I get to really play with the crowds.
What will your fans learn in the book that they don’t already know? A lot of things—a lot of personal things. A lot of what I went through emotionally on- and off-stage. It’s been an emotional roller coaster. But what I’m happy about is how I’ve kept it all together. I never gave up on romance just because a couple of marriages didn’t work out. A lot of people get married one time, and if it doesn’t work out, they’re like, “Fuck this. I’m never getting married again.” You know, there are two sides to me: You’ve got a very moralistic guy who loves family, wife, children— grounded, from Brooklyn. But then there’s the leatherjacket-wearing, cigarettesmoking, foulmouthed, womanizing animal, which is the other side of me. I even do jokes onstage—I say [to the audience], “My wife can’t trust me; why would she trust me? I’m not trustable. I walk through the casino, I see five girls, I
ANDREW DICE CLAY
performs in Vinyl at the Hard Rock Hotel at 9 p.m. May 1, 2 and 4. For tickets and additional show dates, visit HardRockHotel.com/Vinyl.
want to stick out my dick like shish kabob.” It’s just who I am as a human. Now, I don’t go and do it—that is a side of me that I try not to unleash. But I have in the past. I know me that well. What’s your best piece of advice for an aspiring comedian? Be original. Don’t worry what other comics are doing. Because it’s a very tough business, and most of them fail. Like my son, Max, he does stand-up … but he doesn’t walk in my shadow at all. He has his own persona. It’s nothing like what I do. But the one thing I always talk to him about is, “You owe it to yourself to do the kind of material you want to do, but be original in how you do it. Because if you fail, at least you know you did it the way you wanted to.” … You don’t want to fail and go, “Fuck, maybe if I was myself rather than sort of impersonating another performer, I would’ve got there.” You’re obviously known for your blue humor. Are there any clean comics you admire? Jerry Seinfeld. He’s the one clean comic I can sit and watch, because he’s meticulous—every word is perfect. He’s a genius with that. And he knows it; I’ve told him. There’s nobody who can touch him. He really is phenomenal. I’ve actually heard him slip a few four-letter words into his act recently. You know what? He should. He’s got to loosen up. I love Jerry. See, that would be interesting to me, to have the cleanest guy in the world and the dirtiest, and we do a little tour called something like, “Clean vs. Dirty.” Who opens that show? We’d have an opener. But I guarantee you Seinfeld would not—there’s not a comic on earth who could follow what I do. But he could certainly come out and do an hour before me and kill a crowd.
PHOTO BY MATT HOYLE
SEVEN QUESTIONS
You reached the pinnacle in the stand-up business more than two decades ago. What motivates you to continue to go onstage? I love what I do. A long time ago, Spike Lee said, “The greatest thing is to fnd what you love and do it every day.” And I found what I love, whether it’s onstage at Vinyl or in concert in [bigger] theaters or doing a movie like Blue Jasmine. It’s what I do—it’s what I was meant to do as a human being.