As the partial government shutdown continues unabated, the lines at security checkpoints at Reid International and airports around the country stretch for what some observers call "hours." Funding for the Department of Homeland Security was cut off a little less than a month ago and the impact is showing up now bigly. TSA workers will miss their first paycheck this week and increasing numbers of them are taking unscheduled time off. Plan on leaving an extra two hours for domestic flights at the busiest times, mostly 6-10 a.m., to get through security, three hours for international flights.
The Southern Nevada Art Museum opened downtown on Friday at 1029 S. Main St., just north of E. Charleston next to the Arts Factory. The 10,000-square-foot exhibit space features more than 500 pieces from 88 artists dating as far back as the 1400s. According to the press release, the collection was assembled through a nonprofit organization and artwork personally acquired by the executive director/curator. Works include art by Picasso, Dalí, Goya, Rembrandt, Renoir, Ziggy, Michael Godard, Donovan Fitzgerald, Kat Taz, and many more, covering modern, abstract, cubism, and impressionism. The Friday door unlocking was the soft opening; the grand opening will take place sometime in May. Admission is $10 and hours are Sun.-Thurs.10 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri.-Saturday till 6.
The Athletics' owner John Fisher told the Review-Journal, in an article published this morning, "We’re absolutely running on time and on budget,” referring to the stadium build. He added, "I hope it stays that way, because these things are sometimes unpredictable.” Fisher was in town to attend Big League Weekend, with the A's playing the L.A. Angels at Las Vegas Ballpark. Of course, a major construction project is unpredictable, but was he hedging his bet? He also said that the majority of the "final pricing" was completed in January, which ostensibly means that the $2 billion price tag shouldn't change. The last piece of the puzzle is the $1.1 billion that Fisher will be paying out of pocket, unless he can attract additional investors in the team, which so far he hasn't been able to do, at least that's been announced.
When Zero Bond opened in New York in 2020, "it quickly became the city's definitive power room," writes Forbes in a story about the Las Vegas branch of the venue opening on Tuesday night. "No photographers. A members-only door. An eclectic room where the city's most influential voices in entertainment, finance, and tech feel comfortable enough to actually talk to each other." The founder of Zero Bond told Forbes, "The place feels as intimate and design-driven as Zero Bond in New York, while embracing the scale and energy that only Vegas can offer. Vegas is often about spectacle, but the most meaningful moments happen in private." At the invite-only 20-person event last night at the Wynn, the glitterati were out in force: Kevin Costner, Gwyneth Paltrow, Orlando Bloom, Ryan Phillippe, Grace Van Patten, Jackson White, Corey Gamble, Jeffrey Beacher, Ashley Benson, Brandon Davis, and Crayton Carrozza. Costner, 71, raised paparazzi eyebrows by staying close to Brooks Nader, 29, model (think Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue) and actress. In case you're interested, Zero Bond charges $1,000-$5,000 in initiation fees (based on age and tier), $2,750 to $4,400+ annually for standard membership, and $50,000 initiation fee and $7,500 annually for a Founding Membership that allows access to both the New York and Las Vegas clubs.
The Savannah Bananas, known as the "Harlem Globetrotters of Baseball," will play three games at Las Vegas Ballpark on April 30 and May 1 and 2. Celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, the barnstorming exhibition baseball team plays a fast-paced entertaining version of the game called "Banana Ball," featuring choreographed dances, backflip catches, and fan-focused antics. The scoring celebrations are epic, the world's tallest hitter stands 10 feet over the plate (on stilts), the umpire twerks and does a robot dance, among others, after every strike three call, hitters are escorted to bat by the likes of the Backstreet Boys, Tony Hawk, Joey Chestnut, Johnny Bench, Eli Manning, and Mickey Mouse. Tickets aren't cheap, starting at $256, and the games last a time-limited two hours (to ensure the fast pace), but it sounds very entertaining.
Don’t forget to move your clocks ahead by one hour for Daylight Savings Time, which began at 2 a.m. this morning. Making the change is especially important if you want to bet today’s early games.
Max Holloway is a -200 favorite over Charles Oliveira in tonight's UFC main event. In the other featured match, Caio Borralho is -235 over Reinier de Ridder.
The World Baseball Championship has begun and the United States is the -110 favorite to win the tournament. They're followed by defending champion Japan at +340 and the Dominican Republic at +380. The championship game will be played on March 17.
Another day, another extension of the Metallica residency. After playing coy for almost a year about its shows at Sphere, the heavy-metal band has extended the original eight-show residency three times now, twice in the last two days. Thursday's dates included two weekends next February; yesterday's is four dates a year from this month: March 4, 6, 11, and 13. (Next, we expect tickets to go on sale for shows two years out.)
The median price of existing single-family homes in February was $482,000, down a half-percentage point from February 2024 and a bit below the record high of $489,000 set last November. The median price of condos and townhomes in February was $285,000, down just under 6% year over year. Curiously, prices remain near record levels as inventory continues to rise. At the end of last month, listed single-family homes were up 17% over last year and condos/townhomes were 24% higher. Meanwhile, sales were down. Houses dropped nearly 10% year over year and condos 8%.
And the dates keep coming. Originally announcing eight shows for its Sphere residency on Feb. 25, Metallica quickly added eight more dates on March 3 and even more quickly tacked on six more yesterday. The count is now up to 20 and shows extend out a full year. The new dates are February 4, 6, 18, 20, 25 and 27. Tickets for all shows are on sale now. We're bringing earplugs and aspirin.
David Copperfield has announced the end of his 25-year residency at the MGM Grand. His last performance will be on April 30. The most commercially successful stage magician in history, according to Forbes, isn't exactly retiring. The 69-year-old Copperfield wrote in a social-media post, "I'm excited to announce the largest and most challenging project I've ever tackled." Could it be making the moon disappear, which he announced in 2023 and scheduled for 2024? He claimed he's been working on it for 30 years. We'll see.
Sartiano's Italian Steakhouse, a reportedly popular restaurant on Prince Street in the SoHo district of Lower Manhattan, opened yesterday at the Wynn adjacent to New York-based social club Zero Bond, which is opening next Tuesday. The restaurant looks out over the 18th hole of the Wynn Golf Course and Sphere -- quite the view. According to the Review-Journal's "first look" coverage, the Wynn and Manhattan menus are mostly the same, though the steak program has been expanded for Las Vegas. Amazingly, the Vegas menu with prices is posted: Caesar salad $25, meatball appetizer $28, jumbo prawn cocktail $36, pastas $39-$55, with a tableside fettucine alfredo for $75, seafood salad with caviar $125 ($455 for a large), steaks $87-$235, side dishes $20. Obviously, these minimum $250-per-person dinners are meant for whales on comps. If that's you, we'll join you if you like.
The Eastside Cannery, shuttered since the pandemic, was imploded last night around 2 a.m. You can see a three-minute video of the event here. The tower is dropped in the first 30 seconds, then it's two and a half minutes of dust and wind and rubble. Still, it's always cool to watch a (vacant) building cave in.
North America's largest construction trade show, CONEXPO-CON/AGG, has overtaken the town and continues through Saturday. Held every three years, the trade show is "a global gathering platform for the construction, aggregates, and ready-mixed concrete industries." More than 130,000 attendees, including upwards of 2,100 equipment manufacturers, are flooding three million square feet of exhibit and classroom space, mostly at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The average price of a gallon of gasoline in Las Vegas rose 12 cents, more than 3%, from yesterday to today as the effects of the war in Iran start to show up. The national average increased by 12.1 cents per gallon between Monday and Tuesday, the largest single-day increase since 2022 and the fourth-most in a single day in history, according to AAA. A gallon of unleaded now averages $3.84, up 15 cents since a week ago and 32 cents in the last 30 days. The petroleum analyst for GasBuddy told the Review-Journal that a gallon of gas in southern Nevada could increase by up to 60 cents in March, due to the war and the typically seasonal change from winter to summer gas.
A lot of classic rock, oldies, and pop acts will be appearing in Las Vegas in the coming months; here are our favorites: Cheap Trick at the Venetian April 17 and 18; Smokey Robinson and Gladys Knight at the Palms April 25; Nora Jones at the Venetian May 9; Pablo Cruise and Pure Prairie League at Westgate June 20; Firefall, Atlanta Rhythm Section, and Orleans at Westgate July 4; and best of all, Pat Benatar and (guitarist husband) Neil Giraldo at the Palms Aug. 21.
Illuminarium, the 360-degree, digital, immersive entertainment venue located at AREA15, will close permanently on Friday. This was announced in a stealth Facebook post on February 13 and posted via a one-line banner on the venue's website (unearthed by Canada Roy). We've reviewed several shows there ("Space," "Lite-Brite," "Amplified") and generally liked them, though the Las Vegas landscape for immersive and digital art is highly changeable. Perception Las Vegas, a standalone building on the North Strip that featured a digital show on Leonardo DaVinci, closed with no fanfare last year. Paradox Museum is being taken over by TJ Maxx. Arcadia Earth, Lighthouse Art Space, Museum Fiasco, immersive Van Gogh, and immersive Disney have all come and gone in the past few years. No doubt the high-rent Illuminarium will be replaced by something even more high-tech.
In case you've never seen it, or want to see it again, or were looking for it on Netflix and couldn't find it, Martin Scorsese's 1995 classic film Casino, starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesce, and Sharon Stone, is available for streaming on Netflix again. From what we understand, Casino was taken off Netflix due to the standard cyclical nature of streaming licensing agreements. Netflix's contract with Universal Studios expired, but since the movie is so popular, the streaming service paid to re-license the content, allowing it to return to the library. Casino is always worth seeing again, if only to catch the cameo from our guy Frank Cullotta.
Here's a new one. After announcing an eight-date residency at Sphere last week after a nearly year-long buildup, Metallica posted a note on X yesterday that "due to unbelievable demand (wow, guys!)," six more dates have been added. The other reason it's new is that the presale will open tomorrow at 10 a.m., but the dates haven't been identified. Also, tickets for the first eight dates (October 1, 3, 15, 17, 22, 24, 29, and 31) don't go on sale until Friday. Is the band, ticket distributor, and/or Sphere trying some kind of marketing experiment? Who knows? But we've never seen this approach before.
The U.S. commercial (non-tribal) gaming industry hit a record high for gross gaming revenue (GGR) in calendar-year 2025, generating $78.7 billion, a 9.2% increase over 2024's total, according to the American Gaming Association’s Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker. Casino games earned $50.9 billion, up 2.3%, sports betting won a hair under $17 billion on a total handle of $167 billion (a hold of 11%), and igaming hit $10.7 billion, a 22.8% increase year over year. All 38 commercial gaming markets recorded annual revenue increases in 2025. All told, casinos, sports books, and online gambling paid $18.1 billion in taxes. Tribal casinos, meanwhile, generated their own record in GGR, $43.9 billion, for fiscal year 2024 (reported in July 2025), marking a 4.6% increase over the previous fiscal year. This revenue, derived from 532 gaming operations in 29 states, was the fourth consecutive year of record-breaking performance. Gambling in the U.S. is a $125 billion or so industry.
Average Las Vegas temperatures in March start out a bit cool and rise steadily, but not too high. From an average high of 66 degrees on the 1st, temps top out at 74 on the 31st. The lows go from 47 to 52. The record temperatures can, of course, be much more extreme: 92 is the highest (set on the 21st in 2004) and 19 the lowest (set on the 2nd in 1939, brrr). March historically has the second highest rainfall during the year at .59 inches.
Las Vegas Strip gross gaming revenue plunged in January, dropping 11% from $840 million a year ago to $747.6 million last month. Baccarat, as usual, was blamed; revenue from the baccarat tables shed 44% year over year, from $214.3 million a year ago to $118.5 million last month, despite an increase in drop of 14%. It's a difficult comparison, given that the hold went from an unusually high 27% in January 2024 to 13% in January 2025. That said, all other reporting jurisdictions, except one, were also down: Boulder Strip casinos by 7%, downtown 5.1%, and locals casinos 4%. Only North Las Vegas was up, by nearly 5%. Statewide gaming revenue fell 6.5% year over year.
The Review-Journal reports that LPM, the French-Mediterranean restaurant the Cosmopolitan, will close on March 31. Though we love French food and this place looked good, it wasn't on our review radar. It opened in late 2023, a little more than a couple of years ago, and prices were très cher, mon frère: escargot $30, three-course small-bite bar menu $45, brunch $85 per person, (very) small plates $13, and the like. No word on what might replace LPM or when.
A story in USA Today, "Vegas feels busy on weekends, but the midweek slump is real," reports that U.S. carriers "have trimmed schedules as demand has softened." It quotes data from Cirium, a provider of aviation data and analytics, showing that airlines have cut their scheduled seats into Reid International by 7% in the first quarter from a year earlier. Canadian airlines have cut 30% from the available capacity, as our brethren to the north continue to travel everywhere except the States. We agree with the summary of the story: "On Fridays, it still feels like peak Vegas, but by Monday, it's a whole different vibe."