Touring Vegas; Bus to Nowhere; So long, Sammy

Paste Magazine is having one of those love/hate moments with Las Vegas that seem de rigeur for glossy publications. After a few preliminary digs at the Las Vegas Strip, it settles into a survey of the best places to go off-Strip. The fact that aforesaid choices are obvious ones is offset by their also being good choices—and values for the dollar, which is always important to emphasize ever since Sin City ceased to be a bargain destination. The Pinball Hall of Fame is tops on the list, followed by the Neon Museum, the Container Park, both Frankie’s Tiki Room and the Golden Tiki, and the Mob Museum, which now contains an operational speakeasy, which you can’t visit unless you know the password (Paste omits this useful knowledge). It’s a fact. This itinerary, which could fill up a well-spent day, will need to be revised next year when the Pinball HoF moves on-Strip. Owner Tom Arnold hasn’t said where it’s going but it will still be must-see Vegas, wherever it lands.

* Scrap Reno-based Inland Streamliner from your travel plans. The bus company, which has one operational vehicle, saw its fleet reduced to zero after its single bus failed a safety inspection. It was selling rides even before it had authorization to operate. Inland Streamliner operates out of a private residence in Reno, where that lone bus is parked in the yard. Company president John Wang made a number of pretty dodgy claims when the Reno Gazette-Journal came calling. He also had to walk back ridership policies that barred undocumented immigrants, non-English speakers and “social justice warriors,” as well as restricting travel by college students and professors. (Knowledge being a dangerous thing, you know.) For the moment, Wang’s one-bus company is mass-transit’s Flying Dutchman, inhabiting a limbo between this world and the next.

* Las Vegas Metro has a job opening. The officer who froze for five minutes outside Stephen Pollock‘s suite while Pollock rained death on a Mandalay Bay crowd, has been fired. “I’m inside the Mandalay Bay on the 31st floor. I can hear the automatic fire coming from one floor ahead, one floor above us,” reported Officer Cordell Hendrex. And yet he did nothing. Compounding the dire situation, Hendrex’s backup was a first-day trainee. So much for the first line of defense. “I know I hesitated and I remember being terrified with fear and I think that I froze right there in the middle of the hall for how I can’t say,” Hendrex later wrote. Had his terror-stricken paralysis not been leaked to the media, Hendrex would still be pounding a beat for Metro. Thank God for the Fourth Estate.

* Only two nights are left to enjoy Hyde nightclub at Bellagio. The Hyde partnership between Sam Nazarian and MGM Resorts International was part of a dicey relationship whereby Smilin’ Sammy offloaded his Sahara customer database to Circus Circus in order to get in bed with MGM’s club business. Maybe The Naz wasn’t trying to sabotage the Sahara but he came darn close.

* Ongoing construction at Binion’s Gambling Hall has exposed the original, petrified wall that was an integral part of The Mint. Celebrities who had their photos snapped there included Patsy Cline. Let’s hope it becomes a must-pose spot again.

* Adios, Sprinkles Cupcakes. Evidently Linq Promenade wasn’t a good enough location to keep the sugar merchants in business.

* Congratulations to Rampart Casino on the completion of its second parking structure, adding 450 spaces—and at no charge to customers.

* Whoops! Somebody at Station Casinos failed to file the necessary paperwork for a Fourth of July fireworks show at Red Rock Resort. As a result the Summerlin skies were somewhat pyrotechnically challenged.