BOW TO YOUR
CRAVINGS
STREET FOOD
IS THE GREAT EQUALIZER.
NO GLAMOUR
REQUIRED
Yusho is about the simplicity of Japanese street food. The essential flavors of seasonal meats, fish and vegetables are intensified over a fiery grill. Craft cocktails, wine, sake and spirits are chosen for customized meal pairings and complement the fresh-grilled foods. The door is open. The grill is hot!
Located on The Strip at
For menu or reservations, visit yusholv.com
LAS VEGAS’ WEEKLY CITY MAGAZINE
|
FOUNDED FEBRUARY 2010
PUBLISHER Michael Skenandore
EDITORIAL
Greg Blake Miller Matt Jacob (news and sports), Xania Woodman (nightlife, beverage and dining) A&E EDITOR Cindi Reed SENIOR WRITERS Steve Bornfeld, Geoff Carter, Stacy J. Willis COPY CHIEF Paul Szydelko ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sean DeFrank ASSOCIATE STYLE EDITOR Jessica Acuña CALENDAR COORDINATOR Camille Cannon EDITOR
SENIOR EDITORS
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Melinda Sheckells (style), Michael Green (politics), Jarret Keene (music), David G. Schwartz (gaming/hospitality)
ART
Ryan Olbrysh Jon Estrada, Cierra Pedro STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Anthony Mair CREATIVE DIRECTOR
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
VEGASSEVEN.COM
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EVENT
COACHES VS. CANCER
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UPCOMING EVENTS • June 7 Tuff-N-Uff to benefit Three Square at the Thomas & Mack Center (UNLVTickets.com) • June 14
ARTrageous Vegas at the Gay & Lesbian Community Center (TheCenterLV.com)
PHOTOS BY BOBBY JAMEIDAR AND TEDDY FUJIMOTO
May 29–June 4, 2014
Golf, comedy, country music and college basketball collided May 18-20 during the seventh annual Coaches vs. Cancer Las Vegas Golf Classic. The fundraiser for the American Cancer Society raised nearly $500,000 this year. Event founder and former UNLV basketball coach Lon Kruger (below) was joined by more than a dozen contemporaries, including current UNLV coach Dave Rice (bottom right), North Carolina’s Roy Williams and Kansas State’s Bruce Weber. More than 200 golfers and 800 partygoers also enjoyed soirees at MGM Grand’s Producer’s Pool (including performances by country star Toby Keith, top left, and comedian Larry the Cable Guy, right), and tournaments at the Shadow Creek and Southern Highlands golf courses.
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May 29–June 4, 2014
May 29–June 4, 2014 VEGAS SEVEN
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A Headquarters for Mount Charleston A striking new visitors center and gateway would give hikers a place to start their adventures—or to spend the whole day BY T.R. WITCHER
compared with the obvious splendor of red rock Canyon, Mount Charleston winds up playing something of a second banana. You think about going there once or twice a summer to escape the heat. It’s a little slice of Colorado, sure, lovely and all, but for the casual visitor—uninitiated to the charms of Cathedral Rock or Mary Jane Falls—there’s an element of placelessness about the place. A new visitors center and gateway under construction may change that perception. “There’s an amazing number of people who just drive up and drive back and never get out of the car,” says Deborah Bergin, project manager for Lucchesi Galati Architects, the frm behind the design. Offcially, the area you and I call Mount Charleston is the 316,000-acre Spring Mountain National Recreation Area, managed by the U.S. Forest Service. In other words, it’s a lot to explore, and could beneft from a spot that’s at once an interpretive center and a starting point for the day’s adventures. The 90-acre visitors gateway project—which is on the site of a former golf course just before the turnoff to Lee Canyon— aims to be this and more. The center, which is slated to open early in 2015, is perched at the edge of a slope that descends to a wash and then rises up on the other side to a steep escarpment. It’s a dramatic location that drivers fy right by; Bergin
NIGHTLIFE
How Las Vegas became Tiësto’s personal oasis By Tiffany Bosman
May 29–June 4, 2014
A DJ’s Paradise Found
ELECTRONIC POWERHOUSE DJ/PRODUCER TIËSTO is gearing up to release his frst artist album since 2009, titled A Town Called Paradise. Vegas Seven spoke with Tiësto before a recent Hakkasan performance to see what inspired him to put down some roots here and pen his new album about this desert gem of a city.
29 VEGAS SEVEN
PHOTO BY POWERS IMAGERY
Your city after dark, photos from the week’s hottest parties and play the game of life in Las Vegas
NIGHTLIFE
From left (in tan suits): Chad Hardy, Sarah Johnson and Justin Oswald are your hosts for one wild and crazy ride.
GET ON THE BUS
In the event that you’re interested in a progressive party without the pranks, these drinking tours have you covered. MaxVegas: The newest addition to the party-bus scene, MaxVegas starts at PBR Rock & Grill and Rockhouse before heading to two more hot spots on the Strip. $50 per person, MaxVegas.com. NiteTours: NiteTours has stuck it out since the recession, and is still chugging along with its luxury ride, what they call the Nightclub on Wheels. $59 per person and up, NiteTours.com.
Would You Like to Play a Game? How one party bus crams all Las Vegas experiences into one night
May 29–June 4, 2014
By Grace Bascos
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AH, THE PARTY BUS. Before the economy tanked, it’s how people who didn’t really care too much about clubs got into several high-profle nighttime hot spots, had time to have a drink at each, then continued to drink on the bus until it dropped them off, hopefully at the location where it picked them up. For big groups, it proved to be a way to visit as many locales as possible; for solos or couples, it hooked them up with a batch of single-serving drinking buddies for the evening. And, presumably, shenanigans would ensue, the result of the combination of alcohol, strangers and Las Vegas. It’s this expectation of the Las Vegas experience that Chad Hardy and partner Justin Oswald capitalize on with their new endeavor, Las Vegas: The Game, where the party bus becomes an even wilder ride. The night I played the game, I had piled onto a bus with others in the media. The ideal situation for Las Vegas: The Game (LasVegasTheGame. com) is that only a few people who organize the outing are in on it, while
the rest of the revelers are clueless as to how the night will unfold, or know that all the characters we meet along the way are actors. So when a neonclad transvestite on crutches picks a fght with the tour’s VIP host in front of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign, it’s a surprise. An assortment of Las Vegas archetypes peppered our night: We picked up a showgirl with a full-on headdress from the lounge at Mix, had a bounty hunter board our bus at Champagnes and had shots poured into our mouths by our recovering alcoholic VIP host. Shenanigans ensued. When I frst met Hardy in 2007, I wrote about the corporate scavenger hunts he organized in town. Hardy was ahead of his time, actually, fnding a use for the monorail, which teams would use as transportation for their adventures. The game back then was of the spy variety, having to meet clandestine characters in shadowy spots on the Strip. I also wrote about the 2008 “Men on a Mission” calendar that Hardy produced. It was like a hot frefghters
calendar, but instead of hot frefghters, it was returned Mormon missionaries—sans white shirts and nametags, of course. The publication eventually led to Hardy’s excommunication from the LDS church. That in and of itself seems like an only-in-Vegas story, which is exactly what he’s trying to create for clients with this concept. “The original plan was not even pranks,” Hardy says. “The reason it’s called ‘Las Vegas: The Game’ is because it was going to be a reality show competition that you did down the Strip on the bus. And it just never felt right. Then one day, I was like, ‘It’s not a game, it’s a metaphor.’ Let’s not try to offer something that’s not out there; let’s mimic what already exists here, and let’s prank it. And that’s when it became more of a tour.” Before the concept developed into the two to three-hour adventure it has become, it began as oneoff pranks requested by visitors, who had heard about Hardy’s services by word of mouth. One bride-to-be asked to be arrested
by a bounty hunter in front of her bachelorette party. A stag party from the U.K. asked to be picked up at the airport by strippers. One of the strippers was a plant who was given previous knowledge of the bachelor, which she revealed on the bus, and subsequently “stalked” him throughout the rest of their night. “So we have the bounty hunter, we’ve got the monkey, Elvis—we’ve got all these different personalities,” Hardy says. “And normally it would just have been a one-off prank somewhere along your night, but now we string them together into one hilarious show.” This very Vegas night costs $2,500, no matter how many people are in your group, which may be a deterrent for those traveling in smaller packs. But it will likely be more cost-effective to play the game soon. “We’re not fully set up yet to do individual tickets,” Hardy says. “We’re trying to change that so it can be a nightly show, and you can buy a ticket and be right there along the same pricing as Cirque du Soleil. That’s my goal.” Not a bad goal for a guy who just a few years ago was sending groups of coworkers zooming up and down the Strip in search of secret spies. “I wonder what happened to my life to get to this point. I used to be super corporate and worked for big companies,” Hardy muses. “And now I’m actually having conversations with people about strippers and midgets and being kidnapped.” What’s it like to play Las Vegas: The Game? Read one writer’s experience at VegasSeven.com/LVTheGame.
PHOTO BY JON ESTRADA
Sin City Club Crawl: The sleek, double-decker buses in this fleet not only show you the town on weekend nights, but also can be reserved for transportation to Electric Daisy Carnival. $79 and up, SinCityClubCrawl.com.
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
TRYST Wynn
[ UPCOMING ]
VEGAS SEVEN
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
PHOTOS BY DANNY MAHONEY
May 29–June 4, 2014
May 29 Dave Fogg spins May 30 OB-One spins June 6 Excel spins
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
PALMS POOL The Palms
[ UPCOMING ]
VEGAS SEVEN
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
PHOTOS BY TEDDY FUJIMOTO
May 29–June 4, 2014
May 31 Presto Once and Mark Stylz spin June 6 Ditch Fridays
DINING
SCENE
Making It Grand
Two Strip veterans roll the dice on turning around a Downtown dining disaster By Al Mancini
May 29–June 4, 2014
TALK TO THE DOWNTOWN GRAND’S
VEGAS SEVEN
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executive chef, Charles Wilson, or his assistant executive chef, Todd Harrington, today about the resort’s restaurants, and their pride is obvious. During a recent weekend I spent at the hotel, Harrington excitedly ushered me from one to another, showing off the kitchens, introducing me to staff and bringing me more delicious menu samples than I could handle. But the pair weren’t always so excited about the food offered at the Grand and the attached Downtown 3rd dining corridor. In fact, they were brought in to turn around its troubled restaurant program. And Wilson, who joined the team December 1 after leaving Caesars Entertainment, admits the process has been “a little painful.” “I had lunch with [CEO Seth Schorr],” Wilson recalls of his frst meal at the Downtown Grand, “and I couldn’t even bear to eat the chicken
soup that I was having. And I had a Dr Pepper pot roast—I don’t want to say it was inedible, but it was just not the quality that I was used to eating or producing.” Moreover, he frankly describes the talent pool in the kitchens at that time as “terrible.” Yet his new bosses had some pretty lofty expectations: They wanted to turn the complex into “the best [dining] Downtown.” To aid him in turning around the food program, Wilson turned to Harrington, who was at the time working as executive chef at Central by Michel Richard in Caesars Palace. Harrington was similarly unimpressed with the Downtown Grand’s food after his frst tour. “The one and only restaurant I was very impressed with,” he recalls today, “was [Downtown 3rd’s] Pizza Rock.” Yet Harrington decided to leave the award-winning Richard and take on
the new job. “There was so much to be done, and I wanted to be part of the solution.” To be part of that solution, Harrington moved out of his house and into the hotel, where he lived for nearly a month. Harrington’s frst challenge was assessing the kitchen staffs. While his old restaurant would evaluate a chef for up to a month before hiring him, nearly everyone here, from line cooks to sous chefs, had been hired in a hurry. Many were brought on simply because they had friends at the hotel. The level of culinary skill was alarmingly low. “The thing that scared me the most,” Harrington recalls, “is that the frst week I asked a cook how he would go about making risotto, and he asked me what risotto was.” On the Strip, an answer like that would get most cooks fred. But Wilson and Harrington weren’t looking to completely re-staff the
resort’s fve kitchens. “It was more of a coddling, and trying to understand where they’re coming from,” Harrington says. “It’s not that we had to lower our expectations to deal with the staff, but we had to make what they needed to bring to the table more obvious to them.” To do that, the pair began an intensive series of training courses and culinary quizzes. It was a very “back to basics” approach that taught everything from cutting chives to making stock. Much of the staff, including all of the resort’s sous chefs, chose to leave the resort rather than re-train. But those who stayed embraced the training, and their bosses seem impressed with the progress they’ve made over just a few months. To supplement their re-educated talent pool, the pair also brought in some top chefs from the Strip. From Beijing Noodle No. 9 at Caesars Palace they recruited Li Yu, who hand-pulls noodles and makes fresh dim sum at the Chinese restaurant Red Mansion. And the hotel’s new pastry chef, Vivian Chang, was poached from the Michelin-starred Restaurant Guy Savoy. Despite the progress they’ve made, neither Wilson nor Harrington believes his job is done. “We still have a lot of work to do,” Harrington says. “And that work will continue until the day that I’m not here.”
PHOTOS BY ANTHONY MAIR
Going all-in Downtown: Chefs Todd Harrington and Charles Wilson.
DRINKING
In a Nielsen report dated December 2001, merlot held a 14 percent share of the overall U.S. wine market. Merlot sales even topped cabernet sauvignon, which stood at 12 percent. Pinot noir held a paltry 2 percent share. By December 2004, just prior to the release of Sideways, merlot had attained 15 percent market share. Suddenly, things changed. By December 2006, merlot had dropped 3 percentage points to claim merely 12 percent of U.S. wine sales. Meanwhile, pinot noir had risen from 2 percent to 5 percent. By March 2014, merlot sales stood at 9 percent. Pinot noir, meanwhile, accounted for 4½ percent. The upshot is that today, merlot outsells pinot noir by nearly two to one, and is the fourth-most-sold wine varietal in the country after chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and pinot grigio. Merlot may not have reattained its 2001 dominance, but is far from dead.
Grapes of Wrath Ten years afer Sideways condemned it, merlot is alive and well
ILLUSTRATION BY JON ESTRADA
By Bob Ecker ON JANUARY 21, 2005, a little flm called Sideways, based on a book by Rex Pickett, was released to movie screens across the U.S. The story chronicled a pre-matrimonial last romp by two old friends through Santa Barbara wine country. The flm gained notoriety for its trendy take on California wine, and while it won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, its most lasting impact
wasn’t artistic but commercial. Blame it on a single line: At one point in the movie, the character Miles, played by Paul Giamatti, shouts, “I am not drinking any fucking merlot!” It was a funny line in a very funny movie, but nearly overnight, sales of merlot fell through the foor. Up until that time, merlot had been a huge seller nationally, far surpassing pinot noir. Many wine merchants,
A DROP IN VOLUME, BUT A JUMP IN QUALITY
Merlot has emerged stronger from its period of market readjustment. The many insipid, thin, cheap and just plain bad merlots that previously fooded the market have been replaced by wines with more character. “Sideways was one of the best things to ever happen to merlot,” says Carol Reber, chief marketing and business development offcer at Duckhorn Vineyards, a merlot standard-bearer. “Those who weren’t dedicated to making merlot in its highest form left the category to pursue other varieties. [That leaves] more fruit from top-notch vineyards available to those of us who understand and love merlot.” “[Merlot is] no longer the darling for easy and commodity-driven consumption,” says Jeff McBride, vice president of winemaking at Benziger Family Winery. “[It] has re-established
WELL-LIKED BY SOMMS— AND CUSTOMERS
“People are more willing to try merlot now that time has passed since the movie was frst released,” says Danielle Aita, head sommelier at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in Yountville, Calif., and one of the original sommeliers at NoMad Hotel and Restaurant in New York. One force helping merlot’s resurgence is its reasonable price. Another is favor. “I really cherish the foral perfume on the nose,” says Jon Ruel, president of Trefethen Family Vineyards. Trefethen’s merlot sales have remained strong over the last decade. In fact they planted more merlot in 2010 and 2012 to meet demand. Their merlot is one of my new favorites— hearty and toothsome. Catherine Rabb, a senior instructor in the College of Culinary Arts at Johnson & Wales University and a wine judge at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, likes merlot’s food-friendliness and pairing ability. “A smooth and rich merlot is an obvious choice with big meaty dishes,” Rabb says, “but I am often quite surprised by how well merlot goes with lots of other food—mushroomy risotto, tomato-based dishes like lasagna, roasted red peppers, pâté. The best pairing I’ve had was a bowl of white-bean and kale soup, fresh sourdough bread and butter, and a rich Napa merlot. I still think about how good that was.” WITHER MERLOT?
For his part, Pickett is rueful about his fateful line, which incidentally didn’t appear in his original book. “I cut the line for the published novel, not because I wanted to, but because I was given bad advice by a senior editor to do so. Of course, at the time I had no idea that the line would become this trope or meme in popular culture, even to this day,” Pickett says. “‘No fucking merlot’ is the No. 1 thing I’m requested to inscribe on books.” “Merlot was bastardized by a movie quote,” says Grant Long Jr., the winemaker for Blue Oak Vineyards. He produces one of Napa Valley’s very best merlots—a real standout that’s velvety, strong, aromatic and delicious. But he’s not worried about merlot’s future. “Merlot’s roots in wine history will always overcome moments in public opinion. It is no surprise to me, a decade later, to see it gaining a foothold yet again.”
57
Bob Ecker is a wine writer based in Napa, California, and contributor to Decanter, Grape Collective and other publications. For the complete story visit GrapeCollective.com/Articles/Merlot-Alive-and-Well.
May 29–June 4, 2014
WHAT THE DATA SAYS
itself as one of the true members of grape royalty and distinction.”
VEGAS SEVEN
producers, consumers and wine journalists who were slaves to fashion tossed merlot overboard. Meanwhile, pinot noir, which had gotten the hipster nod from Miles and friends, was hailed as the new “it” grape. It’s a pity. I was a fan of merlot before, during and after the flm’s release. Good merlot expresses wonderful aromatics, rich and silky textures, and comforting yet ample tannins. So, 10 years post-Sideways, I decided to look at the fortunes of American merlot to see how it’s really doing. I reviewed data from Nielsen, which collects, tabulates and distributes information about wine sales from off-premise food and drug outlets— accounting for the majority of U.S. sales—and also supplement my inquiry by talking with producers, sommeliers and other wine experts, too. Here’s what I found out.
3T H E YB E SET AI S RY E T TAO NC O MNE …IMVO NED AY,R SJ U AN E RY 2ND HOSTED BY CLAIRE SINCLAIR STKLasVegas
STAGE
Join McDonalD’s and spreaD the WorD nevaDa for the ®
COOLS AND THE GANG
I’M lovIn’ It
suMMer
Afer 20 years of audience-assisted antics, Anthony Cools is still the prince of hypno-horniness HUMILIATION AS ENTERTAINMENT? Not my
cup of hypnotherapeutic/psychosexual/consciousness-altering tea. Consider that caveat as we check in on Paris Las Vegas headliner Anthony Cools, who recently marked two decades in psychic showbiz and an unbroken reign as the dirtiestminded, let’s-make-people-dry-humpa-chair-and-pretend-they’re-screwing hypnotist in town. (Could that ft on his business card?) Don’t ever doubt that Cools is a master of this domain, and he affects a semi-smarmy, cockedeyebrow persona to sell the “adult” antics he orchestrates, greeting us with: “If you’re horny and you know it, clap your hands.” (Assuming you don’t already get the vibe from pre-show videos including the Justin Timberlake/ Andy Samberg charmer, “Dick in a Box.”) Cools is also fond of using his microphone to approximate onanism, and as his own phallic extension. (He must fancy himself Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights.) Yet it’s obvious Cools is a serious practitioner of the psychic arts when he informs the crowd in a tone bordering on lecturing that volunteers who’ve streamed onstage will not be dozing, but merely amenable to suggestion. Warning the audience about cellphones and silence as he puts his subjects under, you half-believe even a sneeze will earn you the boot. Once he switches into basso profondo, Voice of God mode, it’s up to you to trust that these volunteers are entranced, not plants. (And if you don’t, why are you there?) Scanning his droopy-headed minions, he weeds out those who apparently aren’t susceptible enough—although on this night, he held onto one woman whose obedience seemed selective as she sometimes gazed at her more suggestible peers with a bemused expression. Mockery is a big arrow in Cools’ quiver—he prowls the stage, pantomiming snickering disbelief behind
®
his pliable, unaware subjects. And when he announces to us, post-hypno, “The more noise you make, the dirtier I get,” he means it: It starts with farts—the wetter the better, apparently. He instructs one man to recite, “I suck cock for wooden nickels”—including having him phone a friend’s voicemail with said message. Another is persuaded to pop a woody at the mention of his name (complete with a small penis joke), which releases gales of laughter when he crosses his legs in a panic as the female volunteer beside him stares and giggles. Climaxing with his signature bit, Cools casts his cattle—oops, volunteers—as auditioning porn actors. Commence phantom fucking against defenseless chairs, in positions from missionary to pile-driving. One dude enthusiastically demonstrates tongue dexterity. One woman thinks the audition is for a Deep Throat remake. Bidding them adieu, Cools says when he shakes their hand, they will orgasm. Apparently they do—bodies shuddering, failing and rocking; faces twisted, grimacing and beaming; voices shrill, guttural and squealing. If your thing is a show obsessed with people’s “things,” this is where you fnd it, done the best it can be done. By the way: After you read this sentence, you’ll enjoy multiple knee-buckling, earth-rumbling, youknow-what … Wanna cuddle now? Got an entertainment tip? Email Steve.Bornfeld@VegasSeven.com.
Book DrIve saturDay, June 7
Bring a new or gently used children’s book to any participating Mcdonald’s location to receive a complimentary kid’s cone.
ronald Mcdonald® and local celebrities will host live children’s book readings at Mcdonald’s restaurants throughout the valley. Visit facebook.com/SpreadtheWordnV for a complete schedule of celebrity appearances. all book donations will support Spread the Word nevada’s literacy programs and students in the Clark County School district.
Limit of one free kid’s cone per person. At participating locations. ©2014 McDonald’s.
A&E
MOVIES
Guns on Film
The shooting range trend has a cinematic new gimmick
May 29–June 4, 2014
By Jason Scavone
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MY LEFT HAND felt like it was being stung by an overgrown, prehistoric demon bug, but my right index fnger was already on the trigger and there was a target in my sights. I popped off a round, looked down and realized it was the brass casing from a cartridge, still burning after ejecting from the sniper rife I was cradling like a percussive, sulfer-y baby. Oh, right. Guns are tactile. Kind of forgot. I blame years of Operation Wolf. OK, fne: Revolution X. Shoot Las Vegas isn’t a gun range in any permanent sense. It’s a mobile gun experience, a warren of temporary platforms, tents, tables and RVs set up, for now, at the Boulder Pro Gun Club once a month. The hook is that the overwhelming
majority of the 70-something guns in Shoot’s arsenal are tied, specifcally, to movies, television shows and video games. In theory, this allows you to pretend you’re living in a shaggy Gus Van Sant remake—oddly set-dressed, probably unnecessary and defnitely starring someone less talented than the original actor. In practice, Shoot lets you laugh maniacally while you’re hand cranking an old-timey Gatling gun. OK, fne: not maniacally. All you can really do with the Gatling is sweep it side-to-side. It doesn’t exactly confer that Outlaw Josey Wales je ne sais quoi. Maybe they should’ve thrown in a hat. To the latter point, though, Shoot does remind you that guns, at least in a target-shooting environment,
can be a hell of a lot of fun. That’s not normally an idea you encounter at the intersection of guns and movies—the phenomenally goofy/ deadly serious Lee Van Cleef/Clint Eastwood hat-shooting duel in For a Few Dollars More notwithstanding. But it does point the way to why they’re such an integral part of movies. You get all the dramatic tension that violence can easily lend, with none of the dreariness of your average knife-fght. Guns are violent, but mechanically simple. Shoot founder Eric Brashear wasn’t even a gun guy when he started the enterprise. He was in corporate events and some friends invited him out to shoot in the desert on New Year’s Day. He liked it, became interested in movie weapons, and then started doing this setup a couple of years ago as private, corporate events, before bringing it public in April. When something grabs you, all you can do is shoot it till it stops … metaphorically. Please do not shoot an especially huggy aunt or the neighborhood octopus, no matter how many times you’ve seen The Little Mermaid. As to the former point, though, it puts you in a different headspace
when you consider some of your favorite iconic scenes. Shoot divides its offerings into six stations, one of which is for gangster ficks. The Tommy gun is listed next to a picture of Sonny at the tollbooth in The Godfather. It’s nearly perfect—except they give you a regular magazine and not the super gangstery drum magazine. They also keep it set to semi-automatic, so, again, you have to stife your maniacal laughter. Another missed opportunity for hat-enhancement. Squeezing off those rounds gives you a sense of the weight, the kick the weapon has. How well its sights work. You smell the powder. You burn your hand on the cartridge. You miss, a lot. It takes scenes you’ve watched a thousand times and makes them retroactively immersive. That moment needs the brute force of the Tommy. James Bond needed a Walther PPK—no other weapon was as smooth or sleek. Or had parts that would lubricate with either gun oil or vodka. (Pretty sure that’s a thing.) When Sam Peckinpah released The Wild Bunch in 1969, people lost their minds. Even star William Holden had reservations about the violence in the fick. Watching it 40 years later,
SHOOT L AS VEGAS PHOTO BY JOE DURKIN
Shoot’s arsenal includes a Remington Model 700 as seen in No Country for Old Men, as well as guns from Dirty Harry (top right) and The Wild Bunch.
it doesn’t seem quaint, exactly. It’s still intense, but it doesn’t scan as ultraviolent as the karaoke bar fght in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Or the Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan. Peckinpah was frequently called to carpet for the way he deployed violence in movies. He earned the nickname “Bloody Sam” from critics. (“Bloody Mary Sam” would’ve been gauche.) But he didn’t do it without purpose. “The point is that the violence in us, in all of us, has to be expressed constructively or it will sink us,” he said. (“Pass me that bottle of mezcal,” he said, right after that.) If violence under Peckinpah was purposeful, it was also brutal in a way that let you feel the lead in the gut. Modern movies are too violent. Not in the Helen Lovejoy “Won’t somebody please think of the children” sense—God knows I’m not giving up Goodfellas without, ironically, the threat of violence—but in the “you’re way overselling this” sense. We all want to pile on chef Guy Fieri for being a cartoon character who takes things that are already awesome and piles on because ‘Murica! But we’re still letting Die Hard movies go to No. 1, and that’s after they had to
up the ante from the one where a truck fought a jet. That’s not a revolutionary thought, but it is nice, for a change, to appreciate the simple joys. The way the .38 would have felt in Holly Martins’ hand when he apologetically gunned down Harry Lime in The Third Man. The clattering menace of the rotating chamber on Harry Callahan’s .44 magnum in Dirty Harry. The monster kick of the 12-gauge shotgun in, uh, Hobo With a Shotgun. Any pedantic movie buff can tell you that 1903’s The Great Train Robbery ends with a bandit fring a pistol at the audience. Apocryphally, the scene scared audiences so much they ran out of theaters. It could only play out like that in the last century. But you can still get closer to it if you’re willing to draw.
SHOOT
Noon June 14, Boulder City Pro Gun Club, 12801 Old U.S. 95, Boulder City, $222-$999, 702-634-4867, ShootLasVegas.com.
Saturday, June 21 | 8:30pm Henderson Pavilion Tickets $10 Complimentary Bike Valet Available
HendersonLive.com | 702-267-4TIX Schedule is subject to change or cancellation without prior notice. Management reserves all rights.
Marketplace
SEVEN QUESTIONS
Scott Yancey and his wife, Amie.
The star of A&E’s Flipping Vegas on the benefts of dropping out of college, why renting beats fipping and living life in the fast lane
May 29–June 4, 2014
By Jessi C. Acuña
VEGAS SEVEN
78
How did the idea to star in your own reality show with your wife, Amie, come about? I’m from the Hollywood area originally, and I was talking with some buddies who are in the industry. I was telling them how I had to pull my Glock out on some homeless guys who came at me with needles in one of the houses that was all boarded up. They’re like, “Man, you need your own reality show. We’ll make it like a commercial for your website or something.” So I paid their expenses, and they gave it to another friend of ours, who gave it to a guy who worked at Lionsgate. I was Lionsgate’s frst reality TV show. Part of your narrative is not having a fancy degree or being born with a silver spoon. How does that help infuence viewers or students at the seminars you host to take the leap into fipping?
I’m not a college graduate. I went to probably fve colleges, and I dropped out of them all. I have ADD. I didn’t come from money. But you don’t need money to be a real estate investor, and that’s what I teach people. I did my frst land deal on my own without any of my own money, and I netted $2.3 million. I can relate to most of the people who write to me and say, “I’d love to do what you’re doing. I don’t like my job, but I don’t have any money.” Great, you don’t have to. You’re right where I started. As the market changes, do you recommend people stay in the fipping industry? Flipping is great at frst to generate capital, but as an investor, the goal is to take your capital and invest it in rental properties. The rental properties pay you every month. Flipping, you make one payday; you’ll make $100,000 on a good fip. [Investing] that in a rental
Vegas is notorious for nightmare stories of bad renters. What’s been your worst experience? I renovated this one house right after I started [in this business], and when I fnally kicked [the tenants] out, the neighbors told me what was going on. They told me there were about 11 people living there, and they would steal the neighborhood dogs until there were reward signs put up. They were absolutely flthy. I mean hair in every sink; every wall had holes in it. It made me want to cry because I had just redone the house. I guess I’ve toughened up. Speaking of tough, how much of what is on the show is really indicative of the personalities of you and your wife? It’s reality TV for a reason, but try working with your wife for 12-14 hours a day. That will really bring out reality. They shoot about 120-140 hours per episode, and that gets edited down to 43 minutes. [The producers] know our fans. They love it when I break shit, and that’s my favorite part. If I could take a bulldozer and knock out a shed, that’s great. Take a chainsaw to a wall, that’s great. Demolition is No. 1; drama is No. 2. And then education. Where do you see the real estate market headed? We’ve had a false sense of high-fving
each other for a while. Prices went up on everything I own at least 35 percent— I think the stats say the average appreciation last year was 28 percent. But I don’t see a huge increase in jobs. And about 48 percent of all the purchases last year were from investors; they were cash buyers. So I don’t think we’ve had a true recovery in Vegas, but we had a supply-and-demand issue—there was a lot of demand. The word was out. I think a lot of the fippers are out of the fip market. Folks are doing more buying and holding, which is what the endgame should be as a real estate investor. I don’t see things going up this year like they did last year. You may have a lot of people who [bought] properties last year and need to sell them. So you might see a stable line, or you may even see a little bit of a dip. You’re a big car guy. What’s your most recent purchase? A Ferrari 458. You can tell their craftsmen were so involved, making sure the exhaust sounds a certain way and it’s got a particular feel in the cockpit and on the wheels. I few into Newport Beach on a Friday night, picked it up and drove it home Saturday morning. The worst part was, for almost 70 miles, a cop was right there. He must’ve seen my license plates were brand-new and thought he needed to teach me a lesson. How has Yancey adjusted to life as a celebrity? Find out at VegasSeven.com/Yancey.
PHOTO BY JON ESTRADA
Scott Yancey
property [can] make you $5,000 a month. … It’s a lot less work to collect a rent check than to renovate a house.