☰
A Wisconsin man who plays Let It Ride every time he visits Las Vegas hit a royal flush at the Flamingo on Thursday night, taking down the $1.3 million progressive jackpot. The South Milwaukee resident, whose wife by his side was his "good luck charm," is the eighth player in the past nine months to win $1 million or more while playing table games at Caesars properties in Nevada.
Jimmy Vaccaro, long-time Las Vegas bookmaker, is predicting that the Kansas City Royals MLB team will be sold to a group that will want to relocate the team and Las Vegas will be their number-one choice. According to KTVN, ABC's Las Vegas affiliate (Channel 13), the Royals are for sale for around $1 billion and, due to their losing records over the past three years and lagging attendance numbers, a move is likely.
Three casinos in Indiana will start accepting sports bets on Sept. 1, the same day sports wagering becomes legal in the state. Penn National will open sports books at Ameristar Casino East Chicago and Hollywood Casino in Lawrenceburg tomorrow; Indiana Grand Casino in Shelbyville will also start accepting sports bets. Horseshoe Hammond will open its sports book Sept. 4 and French Lick Casino's (in French Lick) will open Sept. 6. Nine more casinos and three off-track betting parlors plan to open up for sports betting throughout the rest of September; the Indiana Gaming Commission is awaiting the final paperwork before giving go-live authorization. Indiana is now the 13th state to offer sports wagering.
The number of out-of-towners streaming into Las Vegas this Labor Day weekend, estimated at 325,000, is up 1.2% from last year. Sixty percent, or nearly 200,000, are expected to arrive in their own cars, mostly from southern California, thanks to the lowest gas prices in nearly three years (a gallon at Costco and Sam's Club is $2.79). A hotel-occupancy rate of 96% is projected, same as last year. And traffic on I-15 southbound on Monday will, as always, be ferocious.
Caesars Entertainment has announced that it's ending its bid to build a resort-casino in Japan in favor of focusing on the merger with Eldorado Resorts. The three "integrated resort complexes" up for bid are still a long ways off; neither their locations nor a formalized proposal process has been decided on. Still, competition is fierce for the estimated $20-billion to $25-billion-a-year gambling market, with MGM, Sands, Wynn, Hong-Kong based Melco, and Genting Singapore all vying for the lucrative licenses.
McCarran International is the third U.S. airport in four years where facial-recognition software is being tested for identification purposes. A 30-day test is being conducted through September 26 at the TSA pre-check counter in Terminal 3. Participation is voluntary; to participate, your photo is taken at the checkpoint, then compared to the photo on your ID for verification. The other vital statistics on your ID will also be captured, though reportedly, neither your photo nor vitals will be retained.
Twelve months after 10-year-old dolphin Bella became pregnant, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl at Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage. At birth, the so-far unnamed baby, born August 16, was nearly 30 pounds and two feet long. The baby makes four generations of dolphins at the Habitat; her great-grandmother, Duchess, is 44 and has lived 15 years past her life expectancy. Visitors can see the two-week-old dolphin during Secret Garden hours, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m daily. Admission is $22 for adults, $17 for children ages 4-12, and 3 and under free.
Playboy Playmate of the Year 2011, headliner of the Las Vegas show "Pin-Up" from 2013 to 2017, and co-star of the E! television show, "The Girls Next Door" Clair Sinclair has opened Clairbnb, a seven-room bed and breakfast at 427 South 11th Street between Lewis and Clark avenues two blocks west of Maryland Parkway. Each room has a theme, such as the Swingin' '70s, Vintage Glitz, and Lovie Dovie suites, with rates in the $180s during the week and $440s over the weekend. Get the details and make reservations at Clairbnb.com.
Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City is the first casino to accept legal sports wagers in Oregon; on Wednesday, former Dallas Cowboys star Ed “Too Tall” Jones placed the first bet, a $5 wager on the Cowboys to win the Super Bowl. Oregon becomes the 12th state to accept sports bets since May 2018 and they're the first sports bets in Oregon since 2007, when NFL parlay game Sports Action ended an 18-year run. The Oregon State Lottery's sports betting app will be launched in a few more weeks, though it won't allow NCAA wagers. The Mill Casino in North Bend will open its sports book "soon" and other Native casinos are "in discussion" on sports betting.
Barely eight months since the name of the first hotel-casino to be built from scratch downtown was announced and four months since the first concrete for the foundation was poured, the Circa high-rise hotel and low-rise sports book are taking shape. The hotel tower is rising fast, up to level six of 35; the shape of the tri-level sports book is evident from the steel framing. The restaurants, bars, and retail shops will be announced in early January.
The southbound I-15 ramp that provides access to southbound US 95 will be closed from 9 p.m. tonight until 4 a.m. tomorrow morning for repairs to the bridge. Slow down and follow the (small temporary) signs for the detours.
A story on CardPlayer.com reports that Phil Ivey's total cashes of $133,398 in this year's World Series of Poker were confiscated by U.S. Marshals on behalf of the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, to which Ivey owes more than $10 million as a result of a lawsuit he lost over baccarat play. "While Ivey was running deep in the Poker Players Championship," CardPlayer writes, "a Borgata lawyer served notice to WSOP management that they'd obtained a writ of execution against Ivey for his cash. It wasn’t confirmed that the WSOP forked over the money until last week." The article adds, "The latest development in the saga effectively ends the chances that the poker world will see Ivey play a poker tournament in the United States any time soon."
Only a month after Southwest Airlines announced it was discontinuing flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport in order to consolidate its operations at LaGuardia, discount carrier Frontier Airlines is taking over a number of Southwest's Newark routes, including Las Vegas. The new flights will begin in mid-November.
Sunset Station is holding a football-betting seminar today at 6 p.m. in Club Madrid. Chuck Esposito and Brian Blessing will host a panel made up of Andy Iskoe, Hank Goldberg, Bruce Marshall, and Bernie Fratto, and free pizza and soft drinks will be available.
Got a Hilton credit card? If so, every stay at a Hilton property for which you pay with the card will earn you triple points. The Power Up promotion is particularly potent in Las Vegas, which has more than two dozen Hilton-family properties. You can get all the details on Hilton's upcoming double- and triple-point promotions in today's Travel Game blog on this site. And keep your eyes peeled for similar alerts, along with a truckload of up-to-the-minute information on credit-card points, airline miles, travel deals, cash back, and much much more, on our Travel Game pages (easily accessible from our home page; just scroll down an inch and look to the left!).
Last week, we reported that the poker room at the Colorado Belle in Laughlin was closing and that two poker rooms remained in the far southern Nevada gambling town, at the Riverside and Harrah's. We were taken to task a bit by a correspondent who noted that Avi Resort and Casino, 10 miles south of Laughlin on the Fort Mohave Reservation, also has a poker room. Avi is an outlier, but with a Laughlin address, so we stand corrected -- for the next week anyway. We now hear that Avi will be closing its poker room on September 2, leaving exactly two poker rooms in Laughlin, as originally reported!
This is the time of year when even desert-rat heat-loving Las Vegans (like us) start to grumble, "Enough already." But it looks like we're in for more record-high temperatures; the National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat watch through tomorrow evening. Temperatures are expected to reach 108 over the two-day span. It's the third watch this month, which is also one of the driest on record (no measurable precipitation at all). Normal temperatures for the end of August are in the high 90s.
In a surprise move, Station Casinos has changed the format of its main football contest. After returning for just one year, the “Great Giveaway Football Contest” has been retired again in favor of the new “$1 Million Pro Football Pick & Play.” The $25 entry fee has been dropped and players will get 1-3 free entries, depending on players club tier status. Complete details of this and all the other contests around town are available on our Football Contest page.
Excalibur will open a new bar and restaurant next to its sports book in October. Vagabond will serve typical sports-bar food (we're wondering how much they'll charge for the fried-egg and bologna sandwich); it's also advertising an "extensive" draft-beer menu. It will feature a stage for live music, an outdoor patio, a separate video-game arcade, and 18 high-def TVs for sporting events.
A 2,400-square-foot Razer retail and gaming store will open at the LINQ promenade on September 7. It will be the U.S.' second retail space for Razer, one of the pioneers of esports and the operator of the largest global ecosystem of gamer hardware, software, and services; the other is in San Francisco. Razer will occupy two floors at the LINQ, a hangout for gamers and a retail space upstairs and 10 gaming stations for esports tournaments downstairs. The LINQ continues its evolution into the world's most wired casino.
A note in today's Las Vegas Review-Journal by entertainment columnist Jon Katsilometes caught our eye: The History Channel's reality-TV show "Pawn Stars," taped at the family-run pawnshop in Las Vegas, will surpass 600 episodes this season. "The Simpsons" holds the record for the longest series in American TV history with 662 episodes over 30 seasons; "Gunsmoke" is in second place with 635 original episodes in 20 seasons. "Pawn Stars," History network's highest rated show, expanded from 30 to 60 minutes early this year.
With all the attention on Rachel, Nevada, these days over the uncertainty of the so-called Alienstock music and art festival, we thought we’d retrieve a blog post written by Huntington Press editor and former Nevada guidebook writer Deke Castleman a couple of years ago. We dug deep into the archives, threw out the mothballs, dusted it off, polished it up, and brought the post back into the light of day; you can see it here. The text provides the background on this unusual little settlement and the photos (all by Deke) give you a good look at what the projected crowd of up to 45,000 festival-goers (though the Westgate sports book puts the over/under number at 49-1/2) will be up against.
We've been getting questions about the massive piece of public art at the southwest corner of W. Charleston Blvd. and Western Avenue near the I-15 interchange. The six-ton, 17-foot-tall, and 66-foot-long metal sculpture is called Found Font and is part of the Neon Gateway for Project Neon, the recently completed $1 billion highway-improvement project that runs through central Las Vegas. Paid for out of the the landscaping and aesthetics budget of the project, the sculpture represents a spiral shape used in many historic neon signs as well as in highway design and engineering "for connecting and transitioning the geometry between a tangent and a circular curve," according to a story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Now you know.
More than 175 bowlers from 34 countries are competing for the 2019 World Bowling Women's Championships at the 60-lane South Point bowling alley. Competition begins today at noon and runs through Friday. A link to live streaming coverage of all qualifying rounds can be found at worldbowling.org.
Cleo Mediterranean restaurant at SLS/Sahara is closing tomorrow. According to unverified reports, it will reopen in only a week as an Italian restaurant.
Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that federal transportation funding is based on the new high-occupancy vehicle lanes that run through central Las Vegas being enforced 24 hours a day seven days a week. In all the discussion about 24-hour enforcement since long before the lanes opened a couple months ago, this had never been brought out. Nevada won't be giving up that money anytime soon.
SuperContest Weekend runs today and tomorrow at Westgate Las Vegas, with VSiN broadcasting from the SuperBook. This is always an interesting scene, with many sports-betting luminaries congregating in the evenings. Go to our football contests page for information on the SuperContest, SuperContest Gold, and all of the pay and free Las Vegas contests that have been announced for this season.
India's biggest lodging company, Oyo Hotels and Homes, has purchased the Hooters Hotel and Casino on W. Tropicana for $135 million. Highgate, a New York-based hotel and investment management company, is partnering with Oyo in what will be called Oyo Hotel and Casino when the deal closes, possibly within the next month. Highgate will assume management of the hotel and Paragon Gaming will continue to operate the casino. Founded in 2013, Oyo Hotels & Homes claims to be "the world’s third-largest chain of hotels, homes, managed living, and workspaces," with more than 23,000 hotels and 125,000 vacation homes globally.
The sports book at the Westgate, known for its hundreds of proposition bets on the Super Bowl, has posted some just-for-fun lines on Alienstock. The over/under on people RSVPing that they're going on the Facebook page is 1,750,000-1/2 (love that half on 1.75 million!), though the over/under on actual attendance is 49-1/2. There are also a couple of What Will Be More props: number of alien life forms found in the "raid" or Las Vegas Raiders' Super Bowl appearances through 2023; and people storming Area 51 on September 20 and Vegas Golden Knights wins in 2019-2020 (just the regular-season games, though).
Block 16, the "food hall" (upscale food court) that opened at the Cosmopolitan over Labor Day weekend last year, has been a huge success. VegasEater.com has published some interesting numbers about how much food has been served on the Block in its first year. The total food items have surpassed a million, which include 100,000 coffees and 81,000 donuts at Donuts Sliders Brew, nearly 64,000 sandwiches at Lardo, 60,000 fish-sauce wings and pad Thai at Pok Pok Wing, and 85,000 cocktails and 60,000 beers at Ghost Donkey, the hidden bar.
On August 29, SLS Las Vegas will change its name again, this time back to Sahara, which it changed from exactly five years ago. The Sahara opened in 1952 and closed in 2011; it reopened on August 23, 2014, as SLS (Style, Luxury, Service). In April 2018, it was sold to current owner Alex Meruelo, who has invested $150 million in upgrades, including new signage for the new name and a just-announced 18,500-square-foot two-story addition that will house a nightclub-theater overlooking the pool area; construction will begin next year.
Golden Entertainment has closed the poker room at the Colorado Belle in Laughlin. That leaves two poker rooms in Laughlin, one at the Riverside, the other at Harrah's, though neither is as nice as the one at the Belle.
According to a study by AutoSlash.com, Nevada imposes the highest fees and taxes on renting cars at a base rate of 16.85% (a 10% surcharge and a 6.85% state sales tax). Clark and Washoe counties tack on an additional 2% for a total of 18.85%. Nearly $1 out of every $5 you pay to rent a car here goes to the state and county, while the rental-car companies charge more for airport pickup and other considerations. Minnesota (16.63%), Arkansas (165.%), Washington, D.C. (16%), and Rhode Island (15%) round out the top five highest.
The Italian restaurant Terra Rossa opens Monday, replacing Masso Osteria at Red Rock. It’s the second go-round for Terra Rossa, which opened with Red Rock and operated there until 2015.
Singer, songwriter, musician, and actor Dwight Yoakam will perform "An Evening With Dwight Yoakam and the Bakersfield Beat" in a nine-show mini-residency at the Encore Theater, six in December (4, 6, 7, 10, 12, and 14) and three in March (4, 6, and 7). The shows will focus on the Bakersfield Sound, which Rolling Stone calls a "raw mixture of twang and rock & roll" that artists like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens put on the map. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time.
During a conference call with investors, the president of Madison Square Garden Co. revealed for the first time how much MSG Sphere will cost. The company's estimate is $1.2 billion, while the general contractor puts the ultimate price at $1.7 billion. (The two are negotiating over the difference.) Even if the final cost falls somewhere in between, it was a shock to MSG investors, who sold off enough stock to drop the share price nearly 10%. By comparison, T-Mobile Arena cost $350 million. However, MSG expects the Las Vegas Sphere to host the most events of all its venues, which include Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and MSG Sphere London.
According to Apartment Guide, modern one-bedroom apartments in the 700- to 900-square-foot range are currently running $1,025 to $1,100 in Las Vegas. That's approximately $125-$150 per square foot. Smaller 325- to 775-square-foot studio apartments are going for $625 to $700, or $90-$190 per square foot.
Officials in Lincoln County, where Rachel is, have prepared an emergency declaration that will enable them to request state assistance with funding overtime for emergency and law-enforcement personnel working overtime at the two festivals now planned for the equinox weekend, Alienstock in Rachel and UFOlogy Expo at the Alien Research Center 45 minutes away in Hiko. The Lincoln County Commissioners also approved permits for both events, on the condition that the organizers appear at the Commission meeting on September 3 with full security, medical, parking, and other plans in place to the commissioners satisfaction. The number of potential festival participants continue to creep up; it's now at 40,000.
Minor League Baseball has announced that Las Vegas Ballpark, home field to the Las Vegas Aviators, will host the Triple-A winner-take-all championship game next year. The teams at the top of the two Triple-A leagues in the U.S. (the third is in Mexico), the Pacific Coast and International, will meet on Sept. 22, 2020. This year's game is in Memphis on Sept. 17.
Country superstar Jason Aldean will return to Las Vegas for a three-night engagement called "Ride All Night Vegas" on December 6, 7, and 8 at the Park Theater. It's a more intimate setting than the arenas and stadiums Aldean has been playing in recent years. It's also the first non-festival appearance Aldean will be making in Las Vegas since his performance during the Route 91 Festival when the mass shooting occurred. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m.
A complicated deal for $200 million in state-backed tax-exempt bonds to pay off maturing debt and fund new Las Vegas Monorail stations at MSG Sphere and Mandalay Bay has taken a turn for the worse: Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak will not sign a certificate that would secure the loan. The Monorail claims it has other avenues for raising the funds.
The San Antonio Stars were 8-26 in the 2017 season. Then they were sold to MGM Resorts, changed their name, moved to Las Vegas, hired a top coach, drafted six-four college-standout A'Ja Wilson, and acquired six-eight Liz Cambage, the WNBA's highest scorer. Yesterday, after beating the Chicago Sky on the road by a score of 100-85, the Aces clinched the franchise's first playoff appearance since 2014. Their record of 18-9 is third best in the league. If they can overtake the Connecticut Sun (18-8) for second place, they'll earn a double-bye in the best-of-three semifinals.
Two lawsuits have been filed in Massachusetts claiming underpayments by the casinos at blackjack. The lawsuits charge that 6-5 blackjack payoffs at Encore Boston Harbor and MGM Springfield are illegal under state law. From what we’ve seen, it appears that the rules do reference and allow 6-5 payments, so we assume there may be some unclear language that suggests certain games (e.g., games using multiple decks) should not be allowed to pay 6-5. The Encore suit also charges underpayment on slot cashouts, this, too, in a seeming challenge to the way the rules are written. These suits don’t figure to get much traction (an early ruling already favors Encore), but they shine a light on the player-unfriendly 6-5 payout.
A 600,000-square-foot industrial building near M Resort in the far south Las Vegas Valley has finally been identified as an Amazon fulfillment center. Ground was broken in April on the massive building, which is expected to be completed sometime in spring 2020. Warehouses are sprouting up around Las Vegas at a rapid clip; since 2017, nearly 14 million square feet of warehouse space have been built.
The National Weather Service has issued an excessive-heat warning for mid-week. Temperatures will flirt with the 110s Tuesday through Thursday, six to eight degrees higher than normal. The monsoon season has been a dud so far, with no measurable rain in August and less than a half-inch in July. The forecast calls for dry weather for at least the next week.
Daniel Cormier is a -140 favorite over Stipe Miocic in today’s UFC main event. In the other featured match, Anthony Pettis is -140 over Nate Diaz.
VitalVegas.com's man about town and interactive marketing manager for the Fremont Street Experience Scott Roeben reports that the Hard Rock will be closed for all eight months of the transition to Virgin. Previously, the property was scheduled to close for only four months, but according to Scott, "Leadership at the resort thought better of the original 'phased' approach and has now opted to close completely for the eight-month renovation period." The Hard Rock will close on February 4 and reopen sometime between November 15 and December 15 of next year.
Tickets went on sale yesterday for the display of large artwork by Tim Burton, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, animator, and artist, at the Neon Museum from Oct. 15 through Feb. 15. Tickets to the primary exhibit, an hour-long experience, are $30; a separate admission fee to the 30-minute nighttime light show costs $24. The director of Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Corpse Bride, three Batman movies, and Las Vegas-based Mars Attacks!, Burton’s 2009 show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York drew more than 800,000 attendees; it was the third-most popular exhibition in MoMA’s history. Buy your tickets at the Neon Museum's website, neonmuseum.org.
According to unconfirmed reports, interest is finally heating up over the 38.5 vacant acres on the south Strip across from Mandalay Bay on which two concrete pillars of the failed SkyVue observation wheel still sit. Construction on SkyVue began in 2011 and the pillars reached 200 feet in 2012, but the project stalled, then died, and the land was put up for sale in 2016 for $380 million. Since then, the price tag has come down to $300 million, which reportedly has generated interest. One possible project for the site is a massive parking garage to help handle the hordes attending events at Allegiant Stadium. Time will tell.
When it opens later this month, Mama Rabbit Bar at Park MGM will feature "the country’s first sculptural slot machines and an accompanying mural inspired by the legend of Mayahuel, the Mexican goddess of agave and fertility." The vividly painted fiberglass mural-sculpture-slot display is being produced by Spanish pop-surrealist artist Okuda San Miguel; the slot machines will be 12 feet tall and resemble two deer and, of course, a rabbit. And an ultra high-resolution message marquee is going up in front of Treasure Island to replace the static Avengers Station sign. The curved sign will be 175 feet long and 45 feet high, one of the largest on the Strip, when it debuts in early 2020.
The surface level of Lake Mead will fall to just inches below the level that prompts voluntary conservation measures for downstream water users. The voluntary cutbacks won't affect Nevada, however, because ongoing conservation efforts are already saving seven times the amount of water dictated by the shortage. Also, thanks to the mighty snowpack from last winter, total runoff in the Colorado Basin watershed will be 125% of normal by the end of this water season, increasing the system's water capacity to 55% of normal, up from 49% a year ago at this time.
Since it opened in April, Las Vegas Ballpark has wracked up a number of claims to fame: largest video scoreboard in the minor leagues (and larger than those at five major league parks); league-leading attendance; an abundance of free parking; celebrity-chef food concessions; the first stadium in sports history with all seats made from breathable mesh; and BaseballParks.com Ballpark of the Year 2019. But perhaps the biggest indication is that the park's swimming pool, just beyond the centerfield fence, has been booked all season, with a long waiting list. It costs $2,000 to rent for the night, which includes 50 tickets to the game, and was completely booked for the season as of mid-May.
On his latest podcast, Colin Jones, author of our newest book 21st Century Card Counter and founder and director of BlackjackApprenticeship.com, the world's leading blackjack training website, interviews Andrew Uyal, author or our second newest book, The Blackjack Insiders. It's a 52-minute recording that reveals the unique perspective of a Mesquite casino floor supervisor turned national card counter turned Las Vegas Strip table-games executive and is definitely worth a listen. Link to it here.
Veteran race-car driver Gene Woods, who runs an outdoor go-kart experience near Sunset Road and Las Vegas Boulevard, has opened another Gene Woods Racing Experience, this one located Neonopolis downtown. It opened yesterday and, along with the new Cat's Meow karaoke bar and House of Selfies, Neonopolis is as full as it's ever been.
Iowa’s online and retail sports books start accepting wagers today. Iowa is the 10th state to allow sports betting since the U.S. Supreme Court decision opening the door in May 2018. It's projected that the Hawkeye State's fledgling sports betting business will reach full maturity in five years and generate more than $4 billion a year in bets. Next up is Indiana, where at least one sports book is expected to open on September 4, a day before the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers play the first NFL regular-season game of the year.
George Strait has added two dates to his "Strait to Vegas" tour. The country superstar will perform at T-Mobile Arena on August 23 and 24, December 6 and 7, January 31, and February 1. Strait, known as the "King of Country," has 60 number-one hits, more than any other artist in any genre of music; he was one of the first artist to perform at T-Mobile on April 23, 2016, two and a half weeks after it opened.
A new report, "State of the Legal Cannabis Markets," by two stock-market research companies predicts that California's marijuana market will generate more than $7 billion in sales in 2024, nearly tripling the $2.52 billion in 2018. That will represent 25% of total U.S. sales of legal weed. However, California cannabis consumers pay up to 45% in taxes, which has fueled a "persistent black market" in the Golden State and could constrain sales and margins. Next door in Nevada, however, the report avers, total legal spending is expected to rise from $567 million in 2018 to $1.41 billion by 2024. "On a per-capita basis, this works out to $415.57 in spending -- more than double California ($172.08) and higher than every other state in the country." Plus, in Nevada, consumers pay significantly less in taxes (25%), which helps reduce illegal production and sales. The report concludes that Nevada could become "the most lucrative cannabis market in the United States."
Police were called to Encore Boston Harbor three times late Monday night to break up fights large and small. The first occurred at 2 a.m. outside the Memoire nightclub and involved "a large number of patrons"; one man was arrested. The second occurred at 2:15 a.m. in the lobby when a man and two women got involved in an altercation over "inappropriate touching" and bystanders took sides. The man was arrested. Only 10 minutes later, police had to quell another disturbance and disperse a large crowd after the violence moved to the casino. All this on a Monday night.
Station Casinos goofed earlier this month when it advertised multiple-points days on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays throughout August on its website. It seemed that Stations was simply continuing a machine promotion that had been running for months, but it actually canceled it without notice. Now, Stations seems to have acknowledged its gaffe by reinstating the promotion: 10x points on slots, 6x points on video poker Mondays through Wednesdays (Mondays and Wednesdays only at the two Fiestas).
What started out as a joke on Facebook, then attracted two million enthusiasts, is morphing into a full-blown festival in Rachel, NV, a town of around 50 full-time residents with 20 motel rooms within 70 miles. Though Rachel is only 150 miles from Las Vegas, it's light years (so to speak) from the everyday world; think Burning Man with rattlesnakes. Still, the festival is gaining steam, with the organizers bringing in water, toilets, food trucks, even artificial turf, and setting up a camping area. Admission is free, but camping charges run from $80 (for a tent with no parking) to $140 (for an RV with no hookups). Parking will cost $60. Alienstock will run from 9 a.m. Saturday Sept. 20 to 11 p.m. Sunday the 21st.
Hawaiian Airlines will begin four-times-a-week non-stop flights between McCarran International and Maui's Kahului Airport on December 15. A special introductory ticket offer of $199 one-way is in effect till tomorrow. Hawaiian flies non-stop between Las Vegas and Honolulu three times a day (Southwest's Hawaii flights, which began a few months ago, stop in California on the way).
Students return to Clark County public schools today for the 2019-2020 school season, so take care when driving around the valley, slowing down to 15 mph in school zones and 25 mph in the surrounding neighborhoods. The fine for speeding in a school zone in Las Vegas is twice the amount for speeding in a non-school area (a $205 ticket for going 10 miles over the limit in a non-school area goes to $410 in a school zone). Clark County has the fifth largest school district in the U.S., behind only New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami-Dade, with roughly 325,000 students.
If you're wondering about the three-story steel-beamed shell of a building under construction just south of Walgreen's and across from Park MGM, it's a small-format Target scheduled to open early next year on the property formerly occupied by Smith & Wollensky. The only Target on the Las Vegas Strip will be 20,000 square feet, roughly 15% the size of a full-format normal Target store.
The Baltimore Orioles stunned the Houston Astros yesterday, beating them 8-7 with a three-run homer in the bottom-of-the-ninth, to complete an upset for the ages. The Astros were -550 favorites at some Vegas sports books, among the largest single-game favorites in baseball-betting history. The books took a bit of a bath, as the public loves to bet big underdogs; according to David Purdum of ESPN.com, at Caesars, 89% of the tickets and 97% of the money was on the Orioles.
A new sports bar called Hardway 8 has opened in Henderson. The name derives from the nickname of UNLV’s first Final Four basketball team in 1977. The bartop is made from reclaimed wood from the Convention Center bleachers, where that team played its home games.
The "California effect" has long played a part in the evolution of Las Vegas, but it's believed to be having an inordinate impact on the current new-luxury-home market. The first six months of 2019 saw the sale of 313 new luxury homes in Las Vegas, defined as $750,000 and higher, compared to 234 in the same period of 2018, 145 in 2017, and 108 in 2016. Of those, 123 million-dollar-and-higher new houses were built and sold, compared to 87 in 2018 and 52 in 2017. Summerlin registered 55 of the seven-figure new houses sold.
The sign is up, a fence surrounds the site, and of course there's a fancy new website, and the local developer of the $850 million 45-story 720-room non-gaming Majestic Hotel at 305 Convention Center Drive says he'll break ground next spring, with a completion date in 2023.
Author and Las Vegas' preeminent food critic John Curtas is preparing a big new edition of our annual food guide Eating Las Vegas and has sent us his list of new names that will appear in the front-of-the-book Essential 52 restaurants. With 17 (so far) replacements, he's changing out a full one-third of Las Vegas' top restaurants, the most in nine editions. We won't list them all here; we want the book to hold some surprises. But here are the six that opened most recently: BBD's (Palace Station), Hatsumi (downtown), Mabel's and Vetri Cucina (the Palms), Spago (Bellagio), and Vetri Cucina (the Palms). Look for Eating Las Vegas 2020 in early November.
Netflix's TV series "Glow," which stands for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and follows the fictionalized careers of professional women wrestlers in the '80s, premiered its third season last night and the setting is Sin City. Out-of-work Hollywood actresses and misfits take their glitter and spandex world to a grind joint where Geena Davis (Thelma and Louise, "Grey's Anatomy") is the entertainment director. The show streams on Netflix and the 10-episode third season is now available.
Single-game tickets to all 2019-2020 regular-season Vegas Golden Knights games played at T-Mobile Arena will go on sale to the general public Monday August 19 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. Tickets can be purchased at vegasgoldenknights.com or axs.com. All season tickets are sold out; a $100 non-refundable deposit (that's credited to the cost of the ticket) is required to be put on the waiting list.
The long-awaited opening of the Crack Shack, a gourmet fried-chicken chain with five locations in southern California, is happening the day after tomorrow. Crack Shack is fronted by celebrity chef Richard Blais of "Top Chef" fame, another restaurant that "reimagines" classic comfort food centered entirely around antibiotic-free Jidori chicken and free-range eggs. The three-meal menu (yes, chicken for breakfast) consists of five- and ten-piece fried-chicken plates, six sandwiches and bowls, deviled eggs, chicken "oysters" (the two small round pieces of dark meat near the thigh that many chicken lovers regard as the most flavorful and tender part of the bird), Mexican poutine (jalapeno cheese wiz replaces the cheese curds and gravy in the traditional Canadian poutine), schmaltz (Yiddish for chicken fat) fries, and a "Hangover" breakfast sandwich (fried egg, fried breast or thigh, and coffee aioli on a giant biscuit). The Crack Shack is located right on the Strip next to Eataly and is open daily, 9 a.m. to midnight Sunday–Thursday, till 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
It took three years and a billion dollars, but all good things must come to an end, and Project Neon, the largest and most expensive public-works effort in Nevada history, was officially declared finished yesterday. The road work encompassed four miles of Interstate 15 between Sahara Avenue and the Spaghetti Bowl, as well as 63 miles of repaving, 29 new bridges, 10 miles of drainage improvements, several new interchanges and ramps including a Neon Gateway to downtown, surface-street-connection improvements, and new digital signage (which will go into effect in October). Smooth sailing!
Willie Nelson was scheduled to perform a six-show mini-residency, "Vegas on My Mind," at the Venetian on October 18, 19, 22, 23, 25 and 26, but due to a "breathing problem," all have been canceled. Ticket holders should contact the place of purchase for information about refunds or rain checks.
Las Vegas recorded its hottest day of the year on Monday: 113 degrees. The high temperature also tied the record for August 5, set all the way back in 1969. And it was one degree short of the high temperature for all of 2018, set on July 28 last year. The 113 degrees could stand as the high for 2019; today will barely hit 100 and the two-week forecast shows temperatures hovering around the seasonal average of 104.
Wave goodbye to the 60-year-old Macayo’s Mexican restaurant on E. Charleston just east of Fremont Street. It was just announced that August 25 will be its last day in business. The closing date is only five days before the owners are reopening in a new location under the name Blue Macaw (English for macayo) on September 1. The new restaurant is taking over the space formerly occupied by Famous Dave's Barbeque at 9695 W. Flamingo Road, close to the 215 Beltway, with the same staff and the same menu as Macayo's.
The Facebook page that prompted more than 1.2 million people to vow to join an event to storm Area 51 and "see them aliens" was taken down on Saturday for violating Facebook's "community-standards" protocol. When the page was restored yesterday after Facebook admitted it "made a mistake," it revealed that its originators apparently learned a little geography: The event has been moved to Rachel, NV, which is twice as close to Area 51 as the original site on US 95 at Amargosa Valley junction. Rachel, however, is even more remote and is issuing warnings that the area's wifi will be down the weekend of the event (Sept. 20-22). In addition, the tourism department of Belize offered 10 of the 54 Rachel residents a free trip to Central America to avoid all the fuss that could descend on the town that weekend. You can get more info by reading our Question of the Day on this event and our blog post about Rachel.
A mistake on Station Casinos' website has led to some confusion among machine players. Though the website advertised the promotion, 6x/10x points Mondays through Wednesdays, which had been in effect for many months, as ongoing, the mailer calendar didn't list it. Late on Friday, the players club manager confirmed that bonus points were not available in August as they had been. The website listing, however, wasn't corrected until Monday, so many players didn't get the memo before showing up. You can read the whole story, as well as which bonus-point promotions are still in effect, at Jean Scott's Frugal Vegas blog.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the chief executive officer of Caesars Entertainment, Tony Rodio, spoke about resort fees on a second-quarter earnings call with analysts and investors on Monday. Apparently referring to the recent $6 increase in the fees at Aria, Vdara, and Bellagio, Rodio said, “At some point, there’s going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I want us to be very judicious and cautious about taking those rates any further. It’s certainly a revenue stream that’s hard to walk away from and it’s been accepted at this point," he added, "but we’re getting pretty high.”
In the August Las Vegas Advisor we turned our members on to the “biggest chicken sandwich we've ever seen," served at a Magoo’s Bar on the west side. According to reports we've received, however, you probably can’t find Magoo’s anywhere online since it was (kinda) recently converted from a Loose Caboose. Trust us on this: Even though your Google search might not confirm it, the Magoo's with the big crispy chicken sandwich is located at the corner of Flamingo and Buffalo (official address 4045 S. Buffalo). The monster sandwich comes with a chicken patty that dwarfs the bun and is topped with cheese, lettuce, and tomato. It comes with a pickle and fries or slaw for $10, add $1 if you get it to go.
El Loco, the roller coaster at Circus Circus' Adventuredome indoor amusement park, has started running again. It was closed on March 25 after a rider was ejected from her seat while it was moving. The woman, between 25 and 30, was reportedly a double amputee, but no further details were ever released about who she was, how the accident happened, or the extent of her injuries.
Inside Game, starring Will Sasso, Scott Wolf, Lindsey Morgan, and Michael O’Keefe, will premier in theaters in cities with National Basketball Association teams on November 1. It's based on the 2007 scandal involving three childhood friends, including a bookie and an NBA referee, who came up with a "foolproof" scheme to bet on games that the referee, Tim Donaghy, was officiating. Unfortunately for the trio, during an unrelated mob investigation, the FBI uncovered the scheme. Donaghy pleaded guilty and served 15 months in a federal prison camp in Pensacola. It was the biggest betting scandal in NBA history.
At the topping-off ceremony yesterday, in which one of the last steel beams that connect the 26 roof trusses was installed, the Raiders organization and Las Vegas-based Allegiant Airlines confirmed the rumors that Allegiant has purchased the naming rights to the stadium where the Las Vegas Raiders will play beginning next season. Although the terms weren't specified, it's widely believed that Allegiant will pony up $20 million to $25 million per year in cash and services for 30 years for the privilege of attaching its name to the $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat indoor stadium.
In what sounds to us like a throwback to the castles-in-the-sky announcements of vast new developments from 1990s' Las Vegas, a real estate investment trust called Bleutech Park Properties has publicly unveiled plans to build a $7.5 billion "smart city" somewhere in Las Vegas. The mixed-use development will showcase the entire (fanciful) range of smart-city technology: renewable energies from solar/wind/water/kinetic, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, automated multi-functional designs, drones, the Internet of things, security handled by robots and around-the-clock biometric systems, flooring that will capture and reuse energy from human movement, wearable technology, supertrees designed to reduce carbon emissions, water intake, and waste, even smart buildings with "self-healing concrete." BleuTech Park will also include affordable and luxury housing, office and retail space, hotels, and entertainment venues. The proposal is similar to other privately funded smart-city test sites, like Quayside in Toronto that Google’s sibling company, Sidewalk Labs, is developing, and Nevada-based Blockchain LLC, which has announced even more ambitious plans to build a 60,000-acre city near Reno. Bleutech claims that it will break ground on its smart city this December, which is projected to take six years to complete. Though it all sounds cool enough, we're not exactly taking the under on the timeline.
After a year-long hiatus from performing, long-time female impersonator Frank Marino will join the cast of Legends in Concert for two months. Marino, who's been impersonating Joan Rivers for the past 35 years, will be the emcee of the show as Rivers; it will be his Rivers character's final appearances, as he's retiring her when he starts up Frank Marino's Divas Las Vegas, which closed last year at the LINQ, again in February at an unnamed Strip venue. Joan Rivers died in 2014.
An article written by Buddy Frank, who has 30 years of experience in slot operations/management and casino marketing, gives you an inside look at the some of the issues that concern slot managers and manufacturers. Here are a couple of quotes of significance to machine players and casino consumers. "I agree that a player cannot 'feel' the hold percentage one way or another in a short period of time. Manufacturers openly certify this condition on every official PAR sheet, proclaiming that slots only hold true [to their programmed payoff percentages] as they approach 10 million handle pulls." [A PAR sheet indicates how a slot machine is designed to perform.] And, "If you examine the just released numbers from the Nevada Gaming Control Board for the last 12 months ending in June 2019, you’ll see that the Las Vegas Strip added 1.4% more machines this year and tightened all their games to a record high of 8.16%. Their revenues rose 3.95%. But across town in North Las Vegas where the slots are much looser (6.66%), revenues grew 5% with 1.4% fewer machines. Loose, not greed, is good." It's a technical piece that, unless you're in the slot business, is a little hard to decipher. But if you're interested, you can find it here: cdcgamingreports.com/commentaries/its-not-a-myth-players-can-detect-slot-machine-hold-percentage/
Starting tomorrow and continuing through October, two blocks along Main Street between Carson and Ogden avenues, on either side of Fremont Street, will narrow to one two lanes, one northbound and one southbound, due to construction materials being delivered and staged at Circa. The lane closures will be in effect 24 hours a day.
According to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, Las Vegas home prices were up 6.4% year-over-year in May, the highest among the 20 largest markets in the U.S. for the 12th consecutive month. However, the gain was less than half of what it was in August 2018: 14%. According to Zillow, buyers are "taking a breather," as home prices have been rising for so many years; the reduced demand increases supply and slows price inflation. In the first six months of 2019, builders closed 4,245 sales of new single-family homes, down 7.4% from the same six-month period in 2018. They also closed 684 attached homes, up 17.1%, revealing a trend away from expensive single-families and toward less costly condos and townhomes.
A scaled-down version of the show Cherry Boom Boom, which lasted for six weeks at the Tropicana four years ago, will return to Las Vegas starting August 15. Five dancers will run through 15 numbers during the 70-minute show at Hooters' Night Owl Showroom at 11 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, in the slot recently vacated by Little Miss Nasty, which relocated to 172 at the Rio. Tickets for the non-topless show start at $45. And contrary to rumors, Honey Boo Boo won't be one of the dancers in Cherry Boom Boom.
This year's annual Vegas Food Expo at Mandalay Bay (October 8-10) will host the Disgusting Food Museum, a traveling pop-up exhibition originally unveiled in Sweden a year ago. The exhibit displays up to 80 of the world's nastiest and most distasteful foods (at least according to the exhibits' organizers). These include rotten shark (a gourmet treat in Iceland), durian (the infamous fruit that stinks so bad it's prohibited on public transportation around Asia), lamprey pie (a favorite of English royalty), maggot-infested cheese (a Sardinian delight), escamoles (tree-ant larvae loved in Mexico), shirako (cod sperm scarfed in Japan), fruit-bat soup (a Guamanian goody), sheep eyeball juice (a hangover helper in Mongolia), Hostess Twinkies (yep! believe it or not) from the U.S., and cuy (spit-roasted whole guinea pig beloved in Ecuador and Peru; during a stint in the Andes, LVA editor Deke Castleman developed quite a taste for it: "The little feet make convenient handles for digging out the meat, which is tasty, but greasy and a challenge to get at," he says). General admission for the Food Expo is $99 and tickets can be purchased at gfba.vegas/ticket-purchase.
The Gemini Solar Project, proposed for a 7,100-acre patch of desert just south of I-15 near the Valley of Fire road, would generate enough electricity to supply hundreds of thousands of houses in Nevada, Arizona, and California. In addition, one of the world's largest battery complexes would capture and store the electricity and power 400,000 houses in Nevada even on cloudy and rainy days. Some environmentalists, however, are concerned about the 220 desert tortoises the project would displace, more than 700 acres of the endangered three-corner milkvetch that would be destroyed, and long-term damage of the Old Spanish National Historic Trail. The period for public comments on the project continues through September 5; if Gemini Solar is approved, construction could begin as early as next March.
Colby Covington is a -275 favorite over Robbie Lawler in today’s UFC main event. In the other featured match, Jim Miller is -145 over Clay Guida.
Happy Place, a 15,000-square-foot pop-up exhibit coming to Mandalay Bay on August 23, is the latest "most Instagrammable pop-up in America,” according to UrbanDaddy.com, the nightlife, culture and travel website. Happy Place's immersive interactive buzzword experiences include stepping inside a chocolate-chip cookie, hanging out with a life-size unicorn, diving into a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, taking selfies among 40,000 handmade gold flowers, seven-foot-tall stilettos, and mirrored Xs & Os surrounded by 1,000 red lips; navigating an upside-down room that defies gravity; frolicking in the world’s largest indoor confetti dome; and bathing with your clothes on in the "signature" Rubber Ducky Bathtub of Fun. John Katsilometes, the Review-Journal's entertainment columnist, calls it a "when you see it, you get it" space and we suspect that's true, if you're 30 or under. Happy Place has made stops in L.A., Chicago, Toronto, and Boston and will introduce new features when it arrives in Las Vegas. Hours will be daily from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. through January. Tickets will start at $30 and go on sale tomorrow at happyplace.me/tickets.
Cannabition, the world's first interactive cannabis museum, has closed its 10,000-square-foot space downtown at Neonopolis. Ticket prices, we believe, were too high (ahem) at $24.20-$42 and attendance was sporadic at best since Cannabition was opened last September. Scott Roeben at VitalVegas.com has heard that the museum, which featured such exhibits as the world’s largest glass bong (24 feet tall), Hunter S. Thompson's "Red Shark" Chevrolet Caprice convertible, giant huggable foam buds, stoner culture, and multisensory lessons about botany, chemistry, and psychoactivity, will relocate to the huge Planet 13 dispensary, which has tens of thousands of square feet to spare.
An inside source has revealed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that "rumors abound" that the Raiders and Allegiant Airlines have "locked in a deal valued at around $20 million to $25 million per year for an unknown period." An ESPN sports reporter has also tweeted that a naming deal between the two is "close." Allegiant is headquartered in Summerlin, so the deal makes local sense for the bargain airline. Allegiant also has a multiyear partnership with the Vegas Golden Knights to be its domestic airline; it was recently named as the official airline of Minor League Baseball.
The rock band Foreigner will appear at the Venetian Theater for a 10-show residency next year: January: 24, 25, 29, and 31; February 1; April 17, 18, 22, 24, and 25. Foreigner was one of the most successful bands in the late '70s and '80s, with 16 Top 30 hits, including “Cold As Ice,” “Hot Blooded,” “Feels Like The First Time,” “Urgent,” “Long, Long Way From Home,” and our favorite, the number-one hit “I Want To Know What Love Is.” These days, the band includes 74-year-old founding member and guitarist Mick Jones, vocalist Kelly Hansen who replaced the original Lou Gramm 15 years ago, and a keyboardist, guitarist, bass player, drummer, and multi-instrumentalist. Tickets start at $49.95 and are on sale now at ticketmaster.com.
MGM Resorts International has raised the resort fee at Bellagio, Aria, and Vdara to $45 per night. That now equals the highest in town along with Wynn/Encore, Venetian/Palazzo, and Waldorf Astoria. As of now, the fees at other MRI properties are unchanged. For more information, check out our complete list of resort fees.
The Denver Broncos are -2.5 favorites over the Atlanta Falcons in tonight's Hall of Fame Game that opens the NFL season. The total is 34.5.
They're all covered in the new issue of the Las Vegas Advisor. You can also read about how to play a video poker bar bonus; it might sound easy enough, but usually lots of moving parts are involved. Plus, get the scoop on two new comedy clubs, the most expensive eats in Las Vegas, Caesars’ Vanderpump phenomenon, the biggest chicken sandwich possibly anywhere, a new drive-in-movie theater, bargain prix fixe menus in several top restaurants, free drinks in a gentlemen’s club, the world champion of poker, a show with VIP seats in hot tubs, a casino’s curious move to 100% video poker, even a haircut happy hour — all in the August LVA.
Boulder Station is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month; Station Casinos' second property opened on August 23, 1994. Marking the anniversary are dining deals, such as $1 tacos and $5 margaritas at the Guadalajara restaurant; $5 Miller Lite and $5 Jack Daniels shots in commemorative glasses that you can keep; gambling promotions, such as the $125,000 Friday Night Drawings and a car giveaway at bingo; gift days on Aug. 20 and 27; and a performance by Night Ranger on August 24 at the Railhead (tickets start at $27.50). When it opened, Boulder Station was a giant leap forward in locals casinos, with its attached movie theater and day-care center, fast-food outlets, and great lounge.
Not only can the Las Vegas Aviators claim the highest attendance of all Minor League Baseball teams, but it can now add major national recognition to its growing list of accomplishments: BaseballParks.com has just announced that Las Vegas Ballpark is the winner of its 20th-annual Ballpark of the Year Award. Every year since 2000, BaseballParks.com has presented this honor to the new or remodeled baseball stadium with the best combination of site selection, exterior appearance, architectural design, and fan amenities. The selection is made by an advisory panel of ballpark experts and there was a lot of competition this year, with six new pro parks opening their gates, the largest number in the past decade. Aviators fans can watch the presentation of the award at the team’s home game on Saturday against the New Orleans Baby Cakes (Miami Marlins affiliate). Tickets are $15-$22.