Around town this week

This weekend the Life is Beautiful Festival is taking over downtown. Vegas already hosts several other major events including the Electric Daisy Carnival, but that takes place up at the racetrack. This event takes over Fremont Street and several surrounding blocks. Tickets have been sold out for a while now, but we have been seeing articles in the local paper about road closures and the best ways to get downtown because several streets are being closed. There are several outdoor stages, and multiple food court areas, with music being part of what your ticket covers. Groups appearing include Imagine Dragons, Empire of the Sun, Beck, The Killers and a few dozen more. It sounds like an interesting event. There is a nice little video that announces it (looks like they took over Fremont Street at around 3am):


Circus Vargas is setting up a big top tent over at the Rio for people that like a ‘real’ circus, as opposed to all of the Cirque du Soleil shows around.

We already have several inches of snow up on Mt. Charleston, an hour north of town. I don’t know their schedule, but the ski and snowboarding resort up there should start up the snow machines soon and open their season, usually around late November. Though not nearly as big as the resorts in more northern climes they have eleven trails, three chair lifts and a freestyle park and provide an alternative to our gambling resorts. The mountain is over 14,000 feet high and the snow provides a contrast to the 85f Fall temperatures we are having down here. For now people can drive up and play in the short stuff, unless it’s melted with the recent temperature increases.

On the Strip Caesars Entertainment is still building the big wheel at the Linq where the circle is complete and they are installing the central cables and hanging cars, but their rebuild of Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall into the Gansevoort Hotel has hit a snag. Evidently the Massachusetts Gaming Board has found that one of the Gansevoort officials has ties to the Russian mob, and asked Caesars to withdraw their proposal for a casino in that state because of it. So they cancelled contracts with Gansevoort, and we are waiting to see what the new hotel name will be. Caesars is putting $185,000,000 into the remodel to convert the small property into a 188 room luxury hotel, with a multi-story Drai’s Nightclub on the roof and Gaida’s restaurant on the overpass level.

At the south end THEhotel at Mandalay Bay will change over to be controlled by the Morgans Hotel Group and be renamed to Delano Las Vegas. All 1100 suites in the 43 story tower, along with the common areas and all other areas of the hotel are being redesigned and renovated. It will be interesting to see how they change those big letters up on the top floor to the new name. The Morgan Group also owns the Light Group which runs multiple restaurants and nightclubs around town, including several in Mandalay that are also being remodeled. I hope this one comes out well, as we stayed at THEhotel last year and really liked the facility. Breakfast down at the coffee shop was equally nice. I enjoy hitting different hotel coffee shops, and hope the remodel just makes it better. I was really disappointed with the Palms coffee shop redesigned; we used to go there quite often for breakfast but stopped a few years ago when things seemed to go downhill.