Question of the Day - 21 March 2018

Well, your news is a bit dated — almost two years old.

But first, the obligatory background for those who don’t know about the painting, or Vickie’s for that matter.

The Four Queens on Fremont Street was the original location for White Cross Drugs, Las Vegas' first 24-hour pharmacy, which opened in 1955 and featured a soda fountain that was a favorite of a teenage Wayne Newton, performing with his brother Jerry at the time at the Fremont across the street. The pharmacy’s lunch counter, known as the Liberty Café, was reputedly the first 24-hour restaurant in Vegas.

In 1964, the Four Queens bought the property and White Cross moved south down Las Vegas Boulevard to its ultimate location near Oakey. It remained there for 48 more years, till it closed in March 2012. (At the time, it was reported that another independent pharmacy had been cut off by its main supplier for ordering too many controlled prescription drugs; apparently, that reflected badly on the other local drug stores, which were also cut off from their supply and had to close.)

Teddy Pappas had been the owner of the separate but adjoining '50s’-style diner, renamed Tiffany’s Café, which didn’t close. He sold the operation to his niece, Vickie Kelesis, and her husband; Vickie had been a waitress there for many years when she bought the place and renamed it again, after herself.

That brings us to the painting in question. It’s untitled, so it’s generally referred to as “That Painting.” It depicts a verdant forest landscape, with deciduous and conifer trees, a mossy bank, and a stream running down the middle of the composition. It’s a serene, almost paint-by-numbers, wooded landscape, but floating in the upper-left foreground is a hard-looking furrowed-brow man with long hair and a beard, bracketed by the barrels of two long guns.

“That Painting” was given as a gift to Vickie Kelesis by a delivery man who sat in his truck in the parking lot and painted; he also gave her two other paintings before he left Las Vegas to move to Greece. She says that the artist told her the man was supposed to be Clint Eastwood, but didn’t explain why. (In fact, CafePress, the online retailer, stopped selling T-shirts featuring the painting, fearing that it could infringe on the copyright of the Clint Eastwood movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales.)

Anyway, fast forward to 2015, when the Food Network gave Vickie’s Diner a makeover for its “American Diner Revival” show. The TV crew took down “That Painting” and replaced it with vintage photos of Las Vegas landmarks.

Well, Vickie Kelesis started receiving phone calls and emails; she claims she heard from “thousands of people,” who thought that it’d been taken down for good. It hadn’t. She’d just locked it up in storage in the back of the restaurant, so the show’s crew wouldn’t touch it. Then she rehung it over one of the remade booths, where customers in the know gather to snap selfies.

Fans of “That Painting” actually have their own Facebook group; they visit Vickie’s when they can to make sure it’s still there and all right.

A story about the painting on myrecipes.com quotes Ginger Bruner, “a Las Vegas native, musician, artist, and radio professional, and one of the self-appointed guardians of that painting.

“Everyone loves the thing,” says Bruner, “even if they think it’s a terrible piece of art — and it is a terrible piece of art. Nothing about it is good. But that’s what makes it great.”

The story also quotes Vickie Kelesis, who says she was recently offered $20,000 to sell "That Painting" to “some people from Philadelphia.” She told them no.