David Mckee's Stiffs & Georges - George Maloof

Signs of the Times

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:08:00 -0700

In less than an hour, Steve Wynn is going to make an extra-special, triple-secret, top-hush "entertainment announcement" via a Wynn Resorts Web-cast. Don't tell anyone but ... he's going to reveal that Garth Brooks will be playing Encore.

Which we know partly because it's been the worst-kept secret on the Strip and even more so because it was announced today in Nashville at 7 a.m. Vegas time. But we're all s'posed to pretend that we didn't hear anything and it's all going to be a big-ass surprise and whatnot. Yeah, that's the ticket.

This underscores how ill-tuned the casino industry is to the news business -- and furthermore, how it still hasn't made the adjustment to the global village of online media. People like Wynn (or Jenn Michaels over at MGM Mirage) continue to operate as though the daily newspaper were the only game in town and people's primary source of information.

Sorry, but what happens in Nashville no longer stays in Nashville until the next news cycle. It makes it to Vegas in the blink of a Tweet.

Vintage Vegas/Matt Goss. Both are reviewed by Richard Abowitz, who makes a number of thoughtful observations re lounge acts in general. He's a bit lenient on both Zowie Bowie and the Gossmeister, IMO. Vintage Vegas is so bad you'll want to see it so you can talk about it at parties. Goss is just bad and in a very uninteresting way. If a yawn could wear a white suit, it'd be Matt Goss.

More Mariah @ The Palms

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:45:00 -0700

Since the last S&G upload of Mariah Carey performance footage from The Palms drew an above-average number of page views, here's a sequel. Carey presides with great charm over an onstage marriage proposal during last Saturday's show. There's also a nice bit of va-va-voom 92 seconds into the clip.

Mariah Carey @ The Palms

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:31:00 -0700

'Cause it's brand-spanking new and somebody just sent it to S&G. Enjoy.

The casualties mount

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:54:00 -0700

Just yesterday I was lamenting the dearth of possible fallback positions for entertainers bounced from this or that casino. Heck, even the formerly volatile V Theater is enjoying its first stable lineup of shows since forever.

Sadly, we can add Scarlett and her Seductive Ladies of Magic (aka Abraca-Sexy) to the casualty list. With Charo literally and figuratively ailing, the Riviera's formerly robust lineup of shows is getting Slim-Fasted in a hurry.

Hopefully, somebody else can find a spot for Scarlett and her red bikini. Or she might take a cue from Bobby Slayton, who's literally getting out of town. So might Barry Manilow. However, we ran this down for a Question of the Day last week and the smart money has him taking up residence at the long-empty Paris-Las Vegas showroom. If Manilow can't break the jinx on that theater, nobody can.

I hope WizardOfVegas.com gets my Vintage Vegas review up before the show becomes history, because this Zowie Bowie extravaganza is an act of the so-bad-it's-good variety. It has the potential to go into posterity as one of the great Strip trainwrecks of all time.

Despite not having seen Vintage Vegas, Steve Friess channels the experience uncannily well: "I missed, for instance, what must have been a pretty disastrous opening night at the Monte Carlo for Zowie Bowie and its Vintage Vegas act ... even our most obsequious of entertainment scribes trashed them ... the idea here is that a major theater on the Strip is now given over to the alleged romance of Old Vegas. When it fails, I wonder, will anyone (else) suggest that maybe it wasn’t the execution that flopped, but the fact that people are bored with the effort to relive a bygone era?"

Having witnessed the completely pointless Rat Pack covers of spicy-as-mayonnaise Matt Goss, I'm inclined to agree. The 'retro' shows that work best -- like Rick Faugno's once-a-month showcase at South Point -- are ones in which the artist takes familiar material and makes his/her own. For Faugno, the songs associated with Frank Sinatra or Fred Astaire are as fresh and vital today as 50 years ago, and it comes through in his performance.

Much the same could be said for the Motown covers of Human Nature, a fantastic act that's literally crimped by management's determination to pack the absolute maximum number of tables into the Imperial Palace showroom. Memo to Rick Mazer: If you take 8-12 tables out, people will actually get up and dance, instead of merely wishing they could.

Speaking of showrooms, is there a smaller, crappier one than that at O'Shea's? You have to feel sorry for the performers who are relegated to this broom closet. Given the general disrepair evident at the Irish-themed casino, my best guess is that Harrah's Entertainment has decided to just let the place to go to hell until such time as they're ready to gut it and make it an anchor of their proposed off-Strip retail/restaurant mall.

Trop, Sands purges continue

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:36:00 -0700

It's official: "Pit Bull of Comedy" Bobby Slayton has snarled his last at the Tropicana Las Vegas. Thus endeth a brief, inauspicious reign by Anthony Cools over the Trop's upstairs showroom. A well-placed source advises LVA that Beatles tribute show Penny Lane was pulled after EMI hit it with a cease-and-desist letter. In any event, it left as invisibly as it arrived.

Trop CEO Alex Yemenidjian still has three shows he inherited from predecessor Scott Butera but it's pretty clear that he's going to put his own stamp on the property. As for Cools, well, he'll always have O'Shea's.

Movement at Cosmo. Buried in the Review-Journal (six items deep) is the news that the Cosmopolitan has wooed ~~John~~ Marshall Andrew away from Las Vegas Sands to be its CFO and hired Station Casinos refugee Marshall Andrew as chief information officer. Deutsche Bank looks serious about making that September '10 opening date.

Will the economy have improved sufficiently to have absorbed most of the CityCenter rooms and the Planet Hollywood Westgate ones by then (and maybe, but not very likely, Fontainebleau)? Boyd Gaming is betting otherwise. The Echelon cranes have been seen coming down, marking an additional hiatus in the project, which reportedly will not be resumed until 2012.

Las Vegas Sands: Execs overboard!

Andrew is just the latest exec lured -- or chased -- away from Sheldon Adelson's employ. Former Venetian veep Paul Pusateri (who helped launch Paris-Las Vegas back in the day) was just nominated as president at The Palms and ever-helpful Sands spokeswoman Mindy Eras has gone to Preferred Public Relations. Whether these moves are part of Adelson's promised cost reductions or are a winnowing out of perceived William Weidner loyalists, it must be getting lonely at the top.

There's quite a debate going on at the Las Vegas Sun on the rise and fall of themed resorts on the Strip. Surf over, check it out, maybe weigh in, if the spirit moves you.

Postscript

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:08:00 -0700

In detailing our blogging woes, I forgot to mention that we can't send e-mail today either. So if I owe you a response, I apologize and will get back to you as soon as we're able.

In the meantime, I'm still trying to recover from the ordeal of trying to hear Matt Goss, in his new Palms show. But if you find Justin Timberlake too edgy, Goss is your man. The ladies love him; the air was rife with cougar-esqe pheromones Saturday night. I'm only surprised no panties were flung onstage. As for his singing, I'm not convinced that ex-CIA director Porter Goss wouldn't be an improvement.

Pod People

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:55:00 -0700

Now that our linking capability is back, here is the Strip Podcast episode in which I pinch-hit for an absent co-host. The father of new sensation Elijah Johnson had trouble finding Steve Friess' studio and the show was already on a tight schedule, so we kind of ran through everything else at bullet-train speed. Still, it was fun and I hope you enjoy it.

As a visual aid, here's some raw (very raw) B-roll of Elijah Johnson in performance at the Las Vegas Celebrates the Music of Michael Jackson benefit on Aug. 29 at The Palms. Here's hoping that Master Johnson is able to fulfill his early promise and doesn't evolve into another Earl Turner.

"Viva Elvis"

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:38:00 -0700

Obssessed? Moi?

Yes, Viva Elvis will be the long-awaited, enshrouded-in-secrecy title of the Cirque du Soleil show scheduled to debut this December at CityCenter.* Wow, they must have had to really burn the midnight oil in Montreal to come up with that one ... Speaking of name changes, Scarlett and her Seductive Ladies of Magic (at the Riviera) is now Abra-Ca-Sexy. Well, it's catchier ... The wheels continue to fall off the Riviera train: An Evening with Dean and Friends has closed, as has the dinner buffet (again) ... Lost in the bankruptcy tumult at the Greek Isles was the opening of a new show. Its cumbersome title is Chinaman: A Rock & Roll Comedy Experience. Moving right along ... By the time you read this, Rockstar: The Tribute should have reopened at the Harmon Theater after a disastrously short stint at the Wyrick Entertainment Complex (aka, "the Venue of Death") in Planet Hollywood. However, the Harmon has given it as much advance publicity as an IRS raid on a Vegas nightclub, so that's not a promising start ... In like manner, Beatles tribute Penny Lane tiptoed into the Tropicana without so much as a 'by your leave' ... Back at Planet Ho, Tony 'n Tina's Wedding evidently isn't performing up to expectations. Ticket prices have been reduced 13%-30%, although they're still steep ($63-$143) ... It looks like Deutsche Bank is going to wait a spell and open the Cosmopolitan in Sept.-Oct. 2010. Which, given that the Strip's been strangling on a glut of high-end rooms, is probably the wisest course of action. Wall Street's former Holy Grail, "another wave of megaresort openings," has become a phrase to be dreaded.

Ready for some good news? The most remarkable dancer of the late, lamented Sin City Kitties, Koree Kurkowski, is now part of the ensemble of Bite. The show is kitsch to the nth degree but it's entertaining in its own so-bad-it's-good fashion. The Stratosphere casino floor was pretty dead for a Friday night last weekend, but Bite was definitely packing them in. It's not as good as Sin City Bad Girls (at the Las Vegas Hilton) but way better than forgettable X Burlesque (at the Flamingo).

* -- the Viva Elvis revelation was let slip during last weekend's Michael Jackson festival at The Palms. I learned of it after being invited -- on 75 minutes' notice -- to co-host an episode of Steve Friess' The Strip Podcast, in which I am teased for being "obsessed" with Carmen Electra. I'll link to the edited version once it's available, so you can hear me date myself with a Barbi Benton shout-out.

This isn't Photoshop but an ad clipped from a Michigan newspaper, I kid you not:

The things you can find at the grocery store these days ...

Rumble in Macao

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:34:00 -0700

Although an oft-promised loosening of visa restrictions by Peking stubborny refuses to materialize, an air of cautious hopefulness has crept back into Macao now that City of Dreams has opened on schedule -- and it looks dazzling. Aggressive revenue projections have literally reversed the fortunes of co-owner James Packer, whose disastrous venture into the U.S. casino industry is now seen by some as a blessing in disguise.

At $2.4 billion, City of Dreams rivals the cost of Venetian Macao and is hoped to equal or surpass the latter's 20% return on investment. One projection has it leapfrogging Wynn Macau into third place, with 20% of the Macanese market.

It also represents a double-edged sword for Sheldon Adelson's mammoth casino-resort. If it draws more punters to the Cotai Strip™, good. If it dilutes Adelson's customer base, not so good, obviously. In comments to the Wall Street Journal, Adelson seemed at pains to temper some headstrong pronouncements he'd offered to Steve Friess. As expected, an Adelson without the restraining influences of William Weidner and Brad Stone, is a pedal-to-the-metal Sheldon, saying Las Vegas Sands should have gone faster, faster, faster with its Cotai Strip™ projects, not slower. (The mind reels.)

"I just came back from Macau and we have five or six different options that we can pursue, each one of which would solve our liquidity problems," the Venetian's doge proclaimed ... which doesn't sound a lot different from what he's been saying for months. That is, until he contradicted himself by buying up a truckload of LVS stock -- something he wouldn't have done were a major deal in the offing.

Adelson predicts all his suspended Macao projects will be back in gear by year's end. He's on the curve in one respect, suggesting that his aborted St. Regis condo-hotel on the Strip could be revived by Sands' acting as lender to prospective unit buyers. Palms Place just started doing that very thing.

Sheldon's Commissariat for Optimism never closes, so one tends to grow skeptical of each new variant of "Victory is mine!" Anyway, Adelson was just off the plane from China, so perhaps jet-lag accounts for this reality-challenged assertion: "Our numbers have been going up and the [Macau peninsula] have been going down."

'Fraid not. Scarcely had that Adelsonian utterance made print than Lusa reported May's revenue numbers. If April had seen Wynn Macau falling back toward the pack, with 13% of market share, it returned with a vengeance in May. Steve Wynn's 18% market share -- with far less capacity than Adelson -- put him only three points behind LV Sands and came at the latter's expense. Stanley Ho still leads everybody with 30% -- as much as Galaxy Entertainment, Melco Crown Entertainment and MGM Grand Macau combined.

A few days earlier came news that visitation from Mainland China to Macao had been -43% in April ... hardly propitious conditions for flooring the Cotai Strip™ gas pedal. Ditto a 10% drop in May gambling revenues. Until that much-mooted visa liberalization actually happens, going apeshit with casino-hotel construction makes no sense whatsoever.

Nor did Adelson do his public image any favors with a gratuitous slam against jilted sidekick Weidner. (The latter, given the opportunity to respond, took the high road.) This 'hit 'em when they're down' move will accrue exactly zero sympathy for Adelson -- and it might have some nasty repercussions should it hamper Weidner's attempts to find another job. Then again, he's as rich as Croesus, so he can probably spend the next few decades on the golf course, should he so desire.

There's been no additional movement on the rumored Genting Berhad offer for MGM Grand Macau. However, even in a $13.8 billion/year casino market, the numbers don't look great for MGM. After it splits its 8% market share with partner Pansy Ho, it would have $55 million from which to pay an onerous tax bill, plus operating expenses. (The ROI must be dismal.)

Borgata, in Atlantic City, does $55 million a month -- in a bad month -- and MGM basically cashes a check from Boyd Gaming. So if MGM elects to stay in Macao and vacate Atlantic City, it won't be because the Chinese enclave is contributing more to the bottom line. Who ever thought MGM Grand Macau would function as a glorified "loss leader"?

Steve Wynn has a dragon ... and now Lawrence Ho does, too.

Back home, MGM is going downmarket at The Mirage. And they didn't even have to sell the place to Penn National in order to get there.

Strangely enough ... Penn's recent expression of interest in both Planet Hollywood and Station Casinos passed with scarcely a murmur of comment locally. You'd think that a well-capitalized company like Penn's hanging of a target on Robert Earl's or Frank Fertitta III's back would make headlines -- or maybe Vegas journos have tired of Penn's endless feints and tuned the company out. Well, almost all of them, anyway.

Planet Hollywood, at least, is acting far more aggressively than one would expect from a property that is contemplating a sale. So perhaps Earl is more pursued than pursuer. However, his conversion of Desert(ed) Passage into Miracle Mile appears to have run out of steam -- or money -- at the halfway point. Try as he might, Earl is never going to completely de-Aladdin-ize that place. A magic lantern and three wishes would come in real handy down there.

Also flying under the radar was former Planet Ho boss Michael Mecca's enlistment with Galaxy. Mecca jumped -- or, more likely, was pushed -- from the Planet right when the Omar Siddiqui scandal was at its height. Informed speculation had it that Mecca was thisclose to being tapped to head up James Packer's projected North American gambling empire. Crown Ltd. CEO Rowen Craigie was noncomittal, though, and Crown's big Cannery Casino Resorts acquisition fell through soon thereafter, leaving Mecca hanging.

Success being the best revenge, Mecca not only landed a prestigious new gig -- it's with one of Packer's direct rivals in Macao. Mecca shoots, he scores!

Which brings us full circle to Macao. That worked out tidily, didn't it?

Super-screwed at Santana

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:54:00 -0700

Morgans' gradual obliteration of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino continues apace, in this February photo. Actually, this was one of the few flattering angles to be found.

Ever since Morgans Hotel Group plunged into the Las Vegas market, first with Echelon and then the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, it's been in over its head. Latest case in point: trying to run an ostensibly major concert venue like it's the Suncoast showroom.

Based on what we encountered during Saturday night's attempt to see Supernatural Santana, if you're planning to catch a show at The Joint (sorry, "The Rogue Joint"), better get there super-early and pack a picnic lunch, too. At 15 minutes to curtain time, lines both for ticket purchase and for "Will Call" stretched waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back into the new convention area. An understaffed box office of (by our count) two ticket sellers was clearly inadequate to cope with the turnout. Knowing defeat when we saw it, we took our business over to The Palms.

Is anybody else fed up with Morgans' make-it-up-as-you-go-along style? Or what about its conversion of the once-elegant HRH into a scrum of buildings that strongly resembles an office park with some light-industrial facilities out front on Paradise? No? Just me? OK.

Speaking of The Palms, the place was crawling with customers, as always -- including a septet of German lager louts (but that's another story). So who does Station Casinos CEO Frank Fertitta III think he's kidding when he writes off the value of Station's minority stake in George Maloof's place?

Maloof takes offense at this diss of his property and rightly so. Fertitta grossly overvalued Station when he took it private and now looks like he's "stashing" some of that excess valuation via this Palms writedown. As feats of ledger-demain go, this one wouldn't even make it as an afternoon magic act at the Greek Isles.

Irony is Dead Dept. III

Tue, 05 May 2009 18:05:00 -0700

On Monday, Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) proclaimed this to be "State Employee Week," complete with flowery script and many a preambulatory clause. That'd be the same Jim Gibbons who, the week before, vowed to cut those same employees salaries even further than the -6% he'd already proposed. No word yet on whether aforesaid employees think having a whole, entire week designated in their honor makes up for a decrease in their take-home pay. (Nevada has the fewest state employees per capita in the U.S., so it's not like they're underworked ... just pay a visit to the DMV sometime.)

Sic transit gloria Gans: Singer/actress Beyoncé Knowles (above) will be playing a short run at Wynn Encore this summer. Reports a source who keeps tabs on casino Web pages, "she was selling tix on what was formerly Danny Gans' 'page' before he was even cold." Lest we need reminding, this is not a sentimental town.

The 'CityCenter effect.' Although MGM Mirage estimates it's had 110,000 applications for a maximum of 12K jobs at CityCenter, it transpires that 17K of those came from within MGM Mirage. While that may give you a 70/30 shot at a CityCenter job if you're already with the company, the rest of us might as well forget it and scan the job listings for vacancies at other MGM Strip casinos. If a Bellagio slot attendant gets a job at Aria, that promotion should manifest itself all the way down to food chain. On other words, this is your big chance to work at Slots A Fun, the casino of which MGM is so ashamed it doesn't list it as a discrete property on its Web site.

Rising above the fray. Confronted with a classless gesture in front of his casino -- and I say that as somebody who saw the protest-like promotion with his own eyes -- Palms owner George Maloof responded with class. By the way, those weren't just 40 guys with signs, they were wearing illuminated, sandwich board-sized placards on their backs. It made quite a startling sight late on a Friday evening, one of the tackiest things I've seen in Vegas (and we write the book on "tacky" here). The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, meanwhile, continues its downward mobility.

Looking for good news in Vegas

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:08:00 -0700

If I wanted to drive myself to strong drink, I could write about depressing, atrocious numbers coming out of Nevada casinos in December. But as that great philosopher, Linus in Peanuts, would remind me, it's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. (Next panel: Lucy hollering, "You stupid darkness!") Let's just say that December revenues hew to my saw that when Wendover sneezes, Nevada catches pneumonia and move on.

Two Sundays ago, the Review-Journal ran a pair of stories that warranted mention here at the time but got lost in the shuffle. Time to give credit where it's due, especially as these articles highlight some of silver linings inside the present-day storm front.

Boyd Gaming's is the least-sexy brand among the major casino operators ... but sexiness can be overrated. (See: Station Casinos) Unlike a certain crosstown rival which put all its eggs in the Vegas basket, Boyd has always rejoiced in a diversified portfolio. With Wall Street falling in love with the regional casino market, Boyd is likely to experience newfound appreciation on the Street.

Echelon: Stopped in the nick of time.

No wonder CFO Josh Hirsberg strikes such a sanguine tone. He also fesses up to a number of uncertainties, which is a refreshing change of pace. True, the company has halved its 401(k) matches but it hasn't deep-sixed them altogether, unlike several competitors. Also, it stopped Echelon while it still had the ability to alter the scale of the project, whereas Caesar Palace's Octavius Tower had crossed that Rubicon. It certainly doesn't rank anywhere near as high on the Mortification Meter as MGM Mirage's forced truncation of The Harmon (now to be an ungainly stump) or Las Vegas Sands' abrupt cessation of its St. Regis tower. Boyd's ongoing infatuation with fickle Morgans Hotel Group remains a major puzzlement but let's not belabor that now.

Boyd's chances of coming out the economic tsunami intact look good. Besides, the company has surprised people before. Who would have picked it to be the one that would shake up the Atlantic City market and force everyone else to keep pace?

A project that has the makings of a comparable success story in Las Vegas is M Resort, brainchild of the Marnell family. (You know, the folks who gave The Rio its cachet -- before Harrah's Entertainment took over and "geriatrified" the place.) Admittedly, $1 billion for a 390-room hotel/casino doesn't sound anything like optimal bang for the buck, but M Resort has three things going for it that Station's Red Rock Resort and Aliante Station don't: location, location, location.

Strategically, M's site is killer. It sits just north of the pass through which I-15 flows into the Vegas Valley, as you head in from California. In fact, you see the M tower even before you reach the pass, stunningly framed between the canyon walls. The vista from the north side of M ought to give it must-visit cachet when it opens in two weeks (March 1). The relative paucity of hotel rooms may bespeak caution over whether the stay-off-Strip/commute-to-Strip business model has worked yet. As they say on Wall Street, "visibility is limited" because like-minded Green Valley Ranch and South Point have gone private.

Also, by limiting their exposure on the hotel side -- where so much of the rest of the market is overexposed -- the Marnells should have supply/demand dynamics in their favor. A place like Morgans' Hard Rock Hotel, which only drew a third of its cash flow from gambling before Morgans went on a frenzied expansion binge, is super-exposed in the area that's most sensitive to price fluctuations -- hotel rooms -- and soon to become even more so. (The HRH puts a brave spin on it but it's no secret why the project is fully funded: It's 85% owned by the bank which, like the pig in the ham-and-egg-breakfast analogy, is committed while Morgans [i.e., the chicken] has but an interest.)

One also has to laud CEO Anthony Marnell III's incremental preparation for the Vegas market: a stint managing a tribal casino (giving him experience in the drive-in market), followed by acquisition of the Saddle West in Pahrump (ditto the locals market), then Laughlin. So his $1 billion dice-throw was approached via a circumspect route. George Maloof has already shown that a steady locals/hipsters mix can work as a business model. M Resort is the first project since The Palms to wholeheartedly go that route.

With nearby Olympia Gaming and Station (Inspirada) casino developments on indefinite hiatus, Marnell should be firmly entrenched before anyone else in the area gets a shovel in the ground. It's a serendipitous combination of preparation and circumstance. Of course, M could be either a succes d'estime or an outright bust, but the buzz I've been hearing is strong.

Tamares Group giveth (booking a new magic show into the Las Vegas Club) and Tamares taketh away, pulling back on a planned art museum (above). So if this is no time to invest $12 million in an art museum, maybe Tamares might want to invest it in its casinos. Comic relief is supplied by Mayor Oscar Goodman, who's been exceptionally obtuse this week. (See: President Obama, Silly Feud with)

Casinos in Texas are one of the longest of long shots but Galveston's name keeps coming up. The whole thing screams "Tilman Fertitta!", especially since we know he's wanted a casino there and was even rather colorfully accused of surreptitiously installing casino infrastructure in his Galveston convention center. He got a good chuckle out of that one, as I recall.

Good thing they don't gamble ... do they?

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:09:00 -0700

(Well, only with their shareholders' money, perhaps.)

Huffington Post, with the considerable assistance of VegasTripping.com, has sifted through the contributions of casino industry moguls during the last election cycle and all I can say is I'm sure glad these folks' business acumen (usually) exceeds their political prescience. Overwhelmingly, the captains of our industry backed loser after loser, with a preponderance of contributions to going to newly unemployed Jon Porter (R-NV) and to the vaporware presidential candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.

Las Vegas Sands President William Weidner has a truly dreadful political batting average. Boss Sheldon Adelson can gloat that he connected with more pitches than Weidner did. (Since the RNC and RSCC failed their main tasks in '08, I'm counting those as "strikes.")

William Weidner exaggerates the extent of his political acumen.

Former MGM Mirage CEO J. Terrence Lanni more or less "broke even," while Wynn Resorts Director Elaine Wynn's early and frequent support of President-elect Barack Obama gives her the Prescience Award. (Husband Steve didn't do too badly when it came to picking winners, either ... especially if one counts his primary-season support of Sen. Joseph Biden toward the latter's eventual vice president-elect status.)

Harrah's Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman is the closest thing to a liberal -- with donations to Sens. John Kerry and Christopher Dodd in '04 and '06, respectively -- and the only consistently Democratic donor in the bunch. Columbia Sussex CEO William J. Yung III (three Dem donations to one GOP one) went 0-2 at the federal level and 2-0 at the state one ... though it still hasn't gotten him a Kentucky casino.

Still, given the number of times this roster of CEOs and presidents (including multiple Fertittas [Fertittae?] and a Maloof) rolled snake eyes, you wouldn't want them placing bets on your behalf.

E-Can debuts

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:27:00 -0700

We got out of the way of the front doors of Eastside Cannery last night just in the nick of time. For all the apprehension about opening new casinos in the current economy (especially when locals' gambling budgets have taken a big hit), patrons were out in force for the opening, literally charging the casino floor when the doors swung wide. Whether by car or by foot, it was impressive turnout -- not the mob scene that greeted The Palms in 2001 -- but quite a heartening sight nonetheless.

E-Can is yet another nail in the coffin of the old "entrapment" theory of casino design. The entryways are airy and easily visible throughout the casino floor. Aisles are wide and, even with 2,100-plus slots, one gets that sense that Cannery Casino Resorts could have jammed in quite a few more but elected not to. Good on them.

Ceilings aren't so low as to be oppressive, but not so high as to engender the "slot barn" feeling of Palazzo or South Point. The various eateries are distributed in a "restaurant row" along the east wall. The sports book is very open and spacious, and wouldn't look out of place at a Strip casino -- and is far superior to some Strip books I could name, but won't.

We gorged a little too much early in our go-around, so we didn't do justice to each restaurant's offerings. (Though, for the record, oysters on the half shell and covered with chives and melted cheese tastes a helluva lot better than it probably reads. Kudos on the sausage-stuffed mushrooms, too.) If what was on display -- and in our stomachs -- last night was a representative sample of the everyday fare, my biggest concern will be whether such a high standard can be maintained over the long haul.

If you grew up in the Sixties, as I did, the prevalent color and décor schemes will have a comforting familiarity. The overall aesthetic could be called 'Light Industrial,' and I don't mean that in a cute or pejorative way. Exposed pipework appears to be part of the statement, although I'm not so sure about the lack of drop ceiling. I couldn't tell whether the acoustical tiling has simply been omitted or is going to be installed later.

There's not a lot of fine detailing; strong colors, acute angles and long, undulating curves all typify a casino where the design elements are writ large. Sometimes form takes precedence over functionality: Stools in the sports book and one of the restaurants may be pleasing to the eye but they're distinctly unforgiving to the ass. On the other hand, the keno lounge is as classy and comfortable as any I've seen in Vegas.

Given the unbelievable thrift with which "the dollar Bills," Messrs. Paulos and Wortman* pulled E-Can off, one does feel the compulsion to scan the place for obvious economies, trying to figure out how they did it. The exterior is pretty Spartan; big, sharp and sweeping lines (and a wraparound neon display after dark) endeavor to divert one's attention from an otherwise utilitarian look.

Inside, certain of the wall coverings and materials screamed "Cheap!", especially around the proscenium in Marilyn's, the live-entertainment lounge. Some upfront savings will probably mean frequent-replacement costs on the back end. Then again, I heard similar criticisms of The Palms when it opened (and George Maloof arguably overcrowded his slot floor in the early going -- a mistake not repeated here), but keeping construction costs low was one of the cornerstones of that place's success.

Paulos and Wortman's heir, James Packer, will be in profit on E-Can a lot more quickly than will any recent or forthcoming Station casino, given the latter company's current tendency to spend lavishly and then scrimp down the road. Assuming that maintenance is proactive and frequent, I don't see any downside for E-Can.

Despite my longstanding fondness for Sam's Town, the pioneering Boyd Gaming property will seem that much more like a crowded and badly laid-out warren of gambling rooms -- definitely Old School, if that's what you dig. Given the two casinos' proximity, I can see Sam's Town evolving into a "dormitory" where people stay or park their RVs, take advantage of the movie theaters, etc., but do their playing at E-Can. Plus, the cheerful, retro Cannery "brand" has struck quite a chord with Las Vegans. Aggressive counter-marketing will have to be the order of the day.

* -- "The dollar Bills" was Hollywood's nickname for producer William Pine and his business partner, William Thomas, so named for their budget-conscious tendencies. It seems affectionately apt for the Paulos/Wortman duo, who balance fiscal conservatism with quality.

Ola, Amigo!

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:38:00 -0700

As of yesterday, I'm a newly minted Amigo card holder, having joined Station Casinos' spinoff players club for its Fiesta properties. (Chalk up a very modest victory for Fiesta's spirited marketing efforts.) Why Station, having put nearly a decade of effort into building up Boarding Pass, went and pulled it from the two Fiestas in favor of a new card without any brand equity ... well, that's a puzzler.

Perhaps its a way of repositioning the Fiestas for sale, though this is a heckuva time to be peddling assets, even if Station has a trainload of debt to pay down. If that's the case (and I'm 101% speculating here), Station wouldn't be the only company in town to discover that it missed the boat when it came to offloading non-core assets.

Whatever the case, I now have $6.63 in "Samurai Master" winnings to show for my shiny new players card. Yup, "whale" is my middle name.

But what to make of Fiesta Henderson? An "Amigo" here and an El Pollo Loco there, and it's still about as Latin as Nelson Mandela in a sombrero. In the older part of the casino floor the African decor ill-advisedly chosen by original owner Ameristar Casinos is still luxuriating about at every turn. It's not hard to see some of the reasons why, in its original incarnation as The Reserve, this was a rare Ameristar mega-goof, one which has apparently scared the company off the Vegas market to this day.

When it opened, in early 1998, The Reserve was operating in the shadow of Sunset Station (which was also bigger, more fashionable, and a lot closer to where the people were). Even by locals-casino standards of that time, The Reserve had a small casino floor, rendered dark and claustrophobic by the Trader Horn design scheme, with its big fake trees and heavy canopies. Station has considerably enlarged the place and substantially upped the number of amenities. The Station-built side is airier and more appealing, if visually nondescript.

If you look at it from Station's standpoint, with two flagship properties on the Boulder Strip, it made sense not to knock themselves out re-doing The Reserve. They were endeavoring the best of a bad situation: agreeing to take a dud casino off the hands of Craig H. Neilsen so that Station could make a quick getaway from Missouri, where Ameristar assumed control of Station's scandal-brushed riverboats. So what's now Fiesta Henderson arrived on Station's doorstep as sort of a red-headed stepchild and the trick was to make it thrive without eating into business at favored sons Sunset or Boulder Station.

As for the "Fiesta" brand, it was one that George Maloof had grown into marquee value up in North Las Vegas. Unfortunately, Station didn't seem to know what to do with it after buying Maloof out, so now "Fiesta" is just a means of designating casinos that don't rate the "Station" moniker but which are a healthy cut above a Wildfire or a Lake Mead Lounge, to say the least.

So I'm left figuring out where Fiesta Henderson fits into the grand scheme of things. If Arizona Charlie's Boulder has gotten too dingy for you, I can definitely see the appeal. But there's no question that nearby Sunset Station is the infinitely superior casino-hotel product, unless you crave a more a laid-back experience, away from the teenybopper crowd, in which case Fiesta Henderson might float your boat.

Kudos to Fiesta management, by the way, for recycling all the used paper from its bingo rooms. The question for other casinos in town is: Why aren't you doing the same?

Speaking of themed casinos, former bargain-casino mogul Gary Primm is back in the news these days, as though to remind us who we have to thank for New York-New York, home of -- among other things -- the Strip's most dysfunctional sports book. (You have to sit in the slot stools on the other side of the corridor to see the TV screens without requiring the services of a chiropractor.)

MGM Mirage is in the process of effecting an upgrade on the property, one of several they've had to perform in order to gradually de-Primm-ify it. NY-NY was far from the worst of the hyper-themed casinos (Excalibur, anyone?) but it wasn't until the tail end of the cycle, when Paris-Las Vegas was rolled out, that it seemed possible anyone (the late Arthur Goldberg, in this case) could go that route and wind up with something stylish.