restaurant week

I list my favorite blogs over there on the right so that I can go read them. Most post once or twice a week, a few every day and one several times a day - that’s Vegas Chatter which a few days ago posted about Restaurant Week here in Las Vegas. This is a yearly event that quite a few restaurants participate in. Each restaurant creates a special fixed price menu for the event (in addition to their regular menu) and when you order from it they make a donation to our local organization Three Square which provides meals and a food bank. It’s been going on for several years, and I usually find out about it when it’s over.

Last year I found out early and was able to grab a reservation at Andre’s – a place I have wanted to try since we moved here. We had a great time, and the fixed price meal was about half the price of ordering full menu items, so it did get us into a fancy place to try it out for a lot less money. This year I found out ahead of time, and so made two reservations; one for lunch at MOzen Bistro in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and later in the week for dinner at Jean Georges in Aria. We’ve heard about how good the restaurants at City Center are but have not taken the time to find out, so this motivated me to jump into two places.

Las Vegas probably has more fancy restaurants than almost any other city, and from what we hear it’s a lot less expensive to eat here than almost anywhere else. I didn’t realize that until I started hearing what it costs in other big cities. I did notice our hotel rates can be a lot cheaper than California hotels – when we recently visited San Francisco and San Diego the room rates for some not so very nice places were much more than we have paid for fancy suites at the big hotels here. Granted, here we can pick the slow times when rates are low and had specific stays laid out in California, but I don’t think most places have hotels that change their rates nightly based on occupancy or planned occupancy the way Vegas hotels do.

So I figured that perhaps it would be nice to try some of these places that we live near, and pretend we are tourists at least for a couple of hours. Now that we’re getting older I find the fun things my wife and I enjoy doing are more like a quiet evening in a nice restaurant than getting drunk at a noisy club. (well, never liked doing that anyway).

not very blurred

We have tall walls around our cubicles at work, but they aren’t soundproof. Mike in the cube next to me always has a fan running and a local pop station on his radio. For the past week or so the station has been playing Robin Thicke’s song several times an hour – guess it is finally big around here. This probably means that after two weeks it will never be heard again, until it is background music in Home Depot in about ten years. Every time it comes on I recognize the background beat and just flash back to the video: Blurred Lines (which Vevo doesn’t let me embed and our company security software doesn't let me see, so I hope the link works.) I have no idea why those images keep flashing in my head to the music.

Cooking with Joe (and Valerie) - Cherry Clafoutis

Another one of those recipes provided by Valerie , this time a cherry clafoutis. Saying it reminds me of the word Shipoopi from the music man. Watching that makes me want to go out and dance; go Buddy Hackett! (Clafoutis – clafoutis – clafoutis!!!)


Sorry about that. Back to my recipe. Well, not mine, but I made this marvelous concoction any way. Cherries are still in the supermarket, so I figured this would be a nice way to prepare them. It’s more of an egg custard with cherries, but it tasted marvelous. I didn’t dust mine with powdered sugar like Valerie, but it still eats well.


You can see the Clafoutis recipe over on her web site. I only have a few of those wonderful cast iron cookware pieces, I can see that she favors blue over my flame color.

E Friday (again finally)

Granddaughter E came down with her mother for their annual August visit and pool party. There were only two things that she wanted to do while here: hit the Rio buffet and swim in our warm water. So we did both, the buffet coming first


She and mom and grandma took multiple helpings of crab legs as usual (the Rio has them every day) but this time she liked the lasagna better than the crab. Those skinny legs are too much work.

And we’ve been in the pool several times a day. Water temp is around 34c (94f) which is a lot warmer than the pool at the park in Portland where she swims.


Saturday is the party, looks like not too many kids this year as other activities have already been planned. Oh well, we’ll still be swimming.

Upgraded kitchen and key lime pie (with Valerie again)

We finished up the tile and trim in the kitchen last weekend – only thing left to do is put in the flooring and kickplates. We are doing a floating cork floor, found what we wanted at Lowe’s and order it, got a phone call yesterday that it’s in, so looks like in a few weeks we will be done. (can then move on to changing around the office). Here is what it looks like from the TV room – can’t see my big ovens, they are behind the tile wall to the left, you can just make out the edge of the refrigerator.


Lots of counter space for working – the counter under the window is eighteen feet long (5.5 meters), and the one up front is seven feet by three (2m x 1m). The tall cabinet to the left of the window has a roll up front, where we put the coffee machine and some appliances. All the cabinets have drawers, so we don’t have to go crawling into lower cabinets to find things. No upper cabinets except over the fridge, but we still have lots of storage space. B is trying to figure out what to put on that blank wall to the right – either some stainless steel shelves or a big painting. Quite a change from before, and what I originally envisioned. We were going to do more traditional cabinets, a light birch wood with simple frames, but when we got to Ikea B saw a sample kitchen with the shiny white cabinets and thought how easy they would be to clean and our whole design changed.

The lights are a mixture of fluorescents down the center and LED spotlights over the counters. It’s pretty bright in there when everything is turned on, at a lower power cost than those big fixtures that were in there before. We’ll probably change from that round table to a rectangular one right at the end of the island, then move the fan so it’s centered over the table. So still a few things to do. Behind the refrigerator is a nice big pantry, a place to put canned stuff and tools. I also got something else I’ve always wanted, a big stand mixer. The only thing I’m missing is a good food processor, have a little one but a lot of recipes expect you to have all of the tools.

What have I been doing in there? Well, enjoying that big gas cooktop for one thing – I like cooking with gas instead of the electric range we used to have. And also using those two big convection ovens we put in. Over there on the right is a link to Valerie , who posts lovely baking recipes. I’ve been trying several of her recipes and enjoying the summer fruit that has been available. I posted a few before, but one of the latest has been a key lime pie.

Key limes are these little limes that originated in Florida. Small and not very tart


Her Key lime pie recipe called for a lot of zest, which did make it rather tart. I think I used too much, ended up a little too tart for my taste, but that’s the fun of recipes, you can make it again and change things around. It might have been tart, but with that marvelous crust it still went rather quickly.


Go look at her site for the recipe. You can use regular limes if you can’t get the little ones, but will probably have to use more sugar to compensate. I’ll be posting more of the things I’ve been making, and a full kitchen tour when the flooring is in.

Kool funky Friday

Kool and the gang are celebrating their 49th year entertaining. The group is in town this weekend, and an article in our local paper by columnist Doug Elfman discussed the group and how they recently were the opening act for both Van Halen and Kid Rock. They started out with jazz, moved to funk, but I remember when they were big for Disco. You can still sit in your seat at work and bounce to the music.


Especially the ladies


Or Jungle Boogie on the Midnight Special – (any old farts remember watching the latest music on that show?)

Disco? That’s funkie!
But when I think funk I always remember this commercial

Cooking with Joe and Valerie - crumb cake!

I’ve been enjoying the new kitchen layout, and though we aren’t finished yet I have to make sure everything works. We now have the counters in, the real quartz ones that replace the temporary plywood we’ve had for several months. We put up a small tile backsplash and finished grouting it last night, now there is just the trim and flooring.

We put in some nice big convection ovens, something I have wanted for a long time. Especially useful at Thanksgiving when there always seem to be more oven items than oven space, and at Christmas when I make a bajillion assorted cookies. (Yes, it seems like that many). Between then I like to try different things. One of the blogs that I like looking at is Valerie’s over there on the right – she has interesting stories and some great baking recipes. I’ve got a bag of cherries at home so I can try the latest, and I’ve already tried several that came out pretty good. Unfortunately I can’t take photographs as nicely as hers, but one of the recent things I made was a marvelously crumby crumb cake:


I like a lot of crumbs on my crumb cakes, and for this one more than half the height is in crumbs. I’ll not list the recipe here, but go on over to her place for the recipe for Cinnamon Orange Crumb Cake . It’s really good.

Last month was strawberry season, and she had a different way to prepare them, as little hand pies:


These too were pretty good. You could use other fillings, but they were tasty, and in a zip lock traveled well to be snacks at work. Again, recipe for Strawberry Hand Pies on her site.

It’s interesting clicking over there, I never know what I find but it all looks marvelous, and I wish I had the time (and lack of waistline) to try them all. Last week was her key lime pie, photos of that whenever I pull them off of the camera, but this weekend will probably be the cherry thing. Thanks Valerie.

Cats

We have several cats that wander through our yard. A few can be attributed to neighbors, but some appear to be feral cats, just living off the land. One in particular is a regular visitor, we’ve been seeing it for three or four years now, it likes to come and sit under the bushes near the back door and watch our bird feeder. I would much rather have birds than cats, but one seems to attract the other.

Last year this one had a single kitten, and they were in the yard daily. Eventually they left and we didn’t see them for several months, but a few months ago the older female showed up again. Back in mid-May B was looking out the window and saw this group:


That’s mom lying in the grass with four kittens playing around. We once came home and mom cat ran across the driveway with a big white Siamese, who we assume is the father. A nice assortment of kittens, two the same grey striped as mom, one black and one white like dad. A very good example of how genetics and inheritance works.

The kittens seemed big enough to be eating on their own, and once in a while B put out some food, which they all ate. As expected mom soon started parceling out the kittens, I guess they grow up and have to be pushed away. It ended up that the white one was left in our back yard, a nice safe area where food periodically showed up. So B rose to the challenge and started leaving out food, and moving the food dish closer to our back door.


And what was the end result? Of course, exactly what you expected:


She is a typical Siamese, blue crossed eyes, and she jumps a lot, and for $147 the vet said she is quite healthy. I would much rather have a little dog, which is a lot easier to control. But now she has slowly started turning into a lap cat (on her terms of course) and bats around the toys (and whatever else is around). We’ve got wooden blinds on the back doors, which she really likes using as ladders. Last night she made it up into the bookcases in my office, and eventually will be up to jumping on the kitchen counters. One thing I really don’t like about cats, I’d rather have my food to myself. Oh well, as long as my wife doesn’t turn into the crazy neighborhood cat lady.

A note to Nancy

A note to Nancy (from http://flaneriesparisiennes.blogspot.com/) je n'ai pas votre adresse e-mail et j'espère que vous viendrez ici - pourquoi avez-vous verrouillez votre blog? J'ai adoré les photos de Thaïlande. S'il vous plaît laissez-moi po.

Several of the blogs that I like (over there on the right) are disappearing. I had to pull off two today, usually I wait until there is no new post for three months in the hope that people will come back. I know people have lives, and this is nothing but a short diversion. At times I too don't feel like putting anything up, but here I am anyway. Thank you to those who do continue to write.

busy weekend

We had a nice weekend. Started out with meeting Rob from Scotland and his family for breakfast at Bouchon’s on Thursday, then walking them around a few casinos, ending up at the Bellagio watching O. The group is traveling from Chicago to LA on old Route 66, hitting Disneyland and then going on up to San Francisco. Sounds like a very nice vacation – wish I could take a month off and do something like that.

On Friday evening they came over to our house and started with a swim in the pool – it was 42c (106f) with water temp of 33c (92f), all temperatures a little above what they are used to. We ended up getting forced out of the pool due to a big thunderstorm that quickly blew through – rain, a lot of lightning, and winds gusting to 70mph. We see storms like that fairly frequently in the summer, but a first for the group from Scotland. We ended up with a big Mexican dinner, and they took off to rest up for a Grand Canyon helicopter trip the next day.

I ended up spending all of Saturday back at the Sands, helping to set up Mr. A’s birthday website. I did the last one for him five years ago, when he turned 80 and flew 300 close friends on the corporate 747 to the new Sands casino on Macau. This year for his 85th he is taking a similar sized group to the new Sands casino in Singapore. The private web site lets them sign up for events, tours and the big birthday banquet. As last time, everyone seems to wait until the last minute to decide a web site was required, and then continue to make changes every day. The event is now just two weeks away, and still management is requesting changes. I wonder what type of notice they got that this would be Mr. A’s birthday party. Surely the hotel had to reserve a block of rooms, and the planes had to be scheduled, and and and. Oh well, more work for me.

On Monday a measurement guy came out to take the final measurements for our kitchen countertops. They’ll be fabricating this week, and come out to install next Monday! Then it’s backsplash tile, trim and flooring. We may have a completed kitchen in a few weeks. Yea!

Let’s finish up with another sky shot. Taken long before the storms came in.

Hot summer days

Rob is visiting the US from Scotland. He is driving down old Route 66 from Chicago to LA, and evidently seeing quite a few things along the way. On his trip he is spending several days in Las Vegas (even though Vegas is several hundred miles off of Rt 66 he still wanted to see the town) and we had the pleasure of meeting him yesterday and showing him around some of the Strip. He is traveling with his wife, son and daughter who all seem to be enjoying the trip so far. From here they move on west down to LA and then up the coast to San Francisco. Sounds like a trip I would like to make.

We were at the Bellagio yesterday afternoon, and waited to see the big water show which takes place hourly. We were there at 3 in the afternoon, and it was 106 f (41c) while we stood on the sidewalk and watched the water boom. The water cannons at times are quite loud – like a series of firecrackers, sometimes much louder than the music. This is what we saw.


The height and amount of water is impressive – it shoots up over 140 meters (460 feet). There was a light wind, sometimes we caught a bit of spray which was refreshing in the heat. They vary the songs, but I think the two played in the above video were the ones we heard, the sun was a little higher but that is basically what we saw. The show at night is also impressive, with colored lighting effects as well. The water show runs on the hour every day, except when it’s windy. During high tourist season it’s every fifteen minutes. The walkway out front can get really packed but July is slow time in Vegas and we had lots of room in the shade of the trees.

I think I walked them a little too much – I have a tendency to just keep going. We ended up the evening by seeing the Cirque show O at the Bellagio. When we walked out of the casino into the parking garage it had cooled off, down to 104 (40c), but it felt like an oven in the big concrete parking garage with no breeze. Reminded me of my early years back in New Jersey, with no air conditioning and no breeze, just lots of humidity (which we don’t have here).


In the city people went up to Tar Beach – to sit on the flat rooftops of apartment buildings in the hope of catching some breeze. For kids they turned on the fire hydrants and we ran through the spray out in the street.

angryparsnip has been writing about hot summer days in Tucson, which is more like my time here. Her stories reminded me of when I was in the Navy stationed up in central California at Lemore Naval Air Station. It was July one year, the heat there is about the same as it is here in Vegas, over 100 every day. This album had just come out, along with Santana’s Abraxas. I remember sitting on the waterbed out in the garage (does anyone have a water bed anymore? I really liked ours) in the heat with the garage doors open onto the little dirt alley listening to those albums, so unlike anything I’d heard before. So this is an easier hot summer day, west coast style:


What are your summer days like, more frantic or laid back?

more clouds

Another quiet week here for us. Just waiting on a call from the counter people about when they plan on putting in our counters – we selected a new style of DuPont quartz for the top, and are waiting on shipment of the slabs. I thought only granite and natural stone were sold in slabs but it seems man made quartz is too. Oh well, we’ve been living with the kitchen for quite a while, guess a little longer will not hurt much, as long as it’s done by granddaughter E’s annual pool party scheduled for the end of August.

Smoke from the fire on Mt. Charleston has decreased considerably. There were some thunderstorms over the weekend, we got very little rain where we lived but I think there was some water falling up over the burn area which helped the firefighters. Supposedly the fire is now 60% contained, whatever that means. I don’t understand all of this effort – if the fire was started by a lightning strike why don’t they just let it burn? For thousands of years if a fire started there was no fire crew that put it out, isn’t that stuff supposed to burn off once in a while and make space for new growth?

Let’s go back to cloud pictures for a bit, this one over the park near our house. It reminds me of that painter that we used to see on PBS who talked about painting pretty little clouds.

Dining room done!

We moved into our house here in Vegas ten years ago. One reason that we purchased a house instead of renting is that we like to change things. Not sure exactly why, but it is difficult to leave things as is.

Since we moved in we made major changes to the yard, the biggest was removing about 20,000 square feet (1900 square meters) of grass and converting the area to desert type landscaping, with low water requirement trees, shrubs and ground cover. Since the major change we’ve swapped some trees and bushes and put in more things. Many plants don’t do well here because of the poor alkaline soil, and others don’t like the below freezing winters. Most plants can take our heat as long as they get enough water. A number of smaller plants get frozen out each winter and are replaced with hardier ones. One really cold winter caused a few young trees to die.

Inside we have also done a lot of changes. Our house was built in the late 60’s and some things have worn out, other things required updating. We’ve replaced a number of the single pane windows with dual pane energy efficient ones, replaced the big tank water heater with a tankless, installed gas (the house used to be all electric) to drive the water heater and cooktop.

Most recently we’ve been working on the kitchen, moving a wall, replacing cabinets and appliances and lighting and flooring. There used to be a door from the kitchen directly into the dining room in addition to an opening from the kitchen to the family room. We closed in the door to the dining room which resulted in more wall space for cabinets as well as a longer end wall in the dining room. This allowed us to install some nice cabinets on the dining room wall, resulting in this:


The dining area isn't a separate room, it's the end of our front room. The mirror, lights, cabinet and table are all from Ikea. B did the big painting. We still have to get a new rug for under the table, can’t find exactly what fits somebody’s image. I installed the small spot lights on the wall, tiny fluorescents. Over to the right is the family room, future step is to pull up the carpet and install the wood flooring like the front room.

Waiting on the countertops for the kitchen (ordered but slabs not here yet), we finally picked out the flooring (a natural cork floating floor). After the counters go in we have some backsplash tile to put up, then the flooring goes down, trim put in and we’re done! I’ve been using the new ovens, and so nice to have a big gas cooktop. Photos of that to come when we’re done.

clouds

It’s a little smokey outside right now, there is a big brush fire on Mt. Charleston about 60km north of the city. Not much of a wind, but the smoke has come to the valley and is obscuring the mountains and early morning sun. Not as bad as the fire in Arizona, but it has been burning for a day and is being challenging for the firefighters. Brush fires are a problem out west, with the hot dry summer days contributing to things. This one was started by lightning on the mountain, not accidentally (or on purpose) by people.

A few weeks ago, before it got too hot, I caught some clouds in the sky during one of our evening walks. This is what I like about Vegas, the blue sky and wispy clouds.

Route 66

On a trip over to the US from Scotland is Rob , who for some reason is travelling the whole length of old Route 66 from Chicago to LA. I don’t know if he will post many photos of the trip (I hope he does). But I found this video of someone’s travels. Wow, some portions o fthat road look rather exciting. A lot of freeways have paved over the old road, but it looks like there are still a lot of miles of back streets and small towns.


Nice trip, I think I’d like to do that someday as well.

Living in New Jersey I first heard about this road from reruns of the old TV show from 1960.

yes, it's hot even for us

OK, just to keep talking about it. Yesterday in June, when our hottest time is usually the last two weeks in July, hit a new record for me (47c+):


And yes, yes we do keep it warm inside (have to balance what we want with the price of electricity to run the air conditioners, we have a big house). I wear shorts and a t shirt and am very comfortable at that. Last week I kept the pool covered for four days without uncovering it, and the water temp got up to 98f (37c). I rolled the cover back and left it open for two days. With evaporation we lost a half inch of water but it dropped back to my favorite 92f (33c) and we’ve been floating around every evening. In the summer it’s a balancing act between keeping the cover off to cool it with covering it during the day which means it heats up.

If you are coming to Vegas over the next two months be sure to bring your swimsuits and buy and use plenty of sunscreen, the highest SPF you can get – 80 recommended. We go down to the Strip and see red tourists every day. And drink plenty of water, with our 2% humidity you can evaporate over a gallon a day, and quickly be overcome by heat stroke and dehydration.

In anticipation of three days at that temperature our local garden expert suggested that we take all of the almost ripe tomatoes off of the vines and bring them inside before they cook. We ended up with over ten pounds worth and (5kg) and have been eating them like crazy. Yea summer!

Our garden is blooming, and we've picked a lot of tomatoes over the past few weeks, but it looks like that's the end of those for a few months. Tomatoes don't set fruit when it's too hot, and it looks like this weekend will be the start of our hot period, which usually comes the last two weeks of July, but 118f (48c) is predicted for tomorrow. We also put a few of these back there, which seem to be a good symbol of Las Vegas, especially this weekend.


Along with some of our clear blue sky.

Dogs in the Park

We have been going out for walks in the evening to get some exercise. We leave the house right around sunset and walk over to a park a few blocks from our house and then walk around the perimeter a few times before coming back. The park covers a full block, which in Vegas is about ten acres. The center is open grass with trees and a concrete walk around the outside, with picnic tables, grills and shade structures scattered near the streets, and a big children’s play structure in one corner. The grassy area is not flat, but there are usually people practicing soccer anyway.

Depending on when we go we sometimes see assorted people walking their dogs. Since we’ve been doing this for a while we are recognizing most of them and talking a while. Last night quite a few of them showed up together. This is what the park looks like


And zooming in you can see the assortment of dogs there.


A few minutes later we were treated to some color in the sky. Because of our low humidity and usually no clouds sunsets are not usually very spectacular.


This might be our last sunset walk for a while – right now it’s 102 (40c), with 117 (48c) predicted for this weekend. That usually peaks at around 5pm, but it doesn’t cool off very much until after midnight. I think we’ll go back to floating in the pool at sunset instead.

Quiet evenings

We’ve got a big swimming pool out in our back yard. Well, not back but alongside the house. This is our first house with a pool. Didn’t have one in San Diego – our lot there was alongside a canyon and not really wide enough, and the weather was a little cool anyway. When we looked at houses in Vegas in anticipation of our move we had several requests: first was no homeowners association, I’ve discussed that concept before and I do not plan on ever living in a place where someone else can decide what I should do with my house and yard.

Our second request was for an older house with a big yard. Down in San Diego we were fairly close to downtown. The house was built in 1929, and the lot was a little over a half acre (1675 sq meters), with a portion of that rambling down a hillside into a canyon. We had a large garden and liked doing outside stuff. Las Vegas is filled with new housing developments, and we looked at many. Drawbacks were that all of them had homeowner associations, and it seems people buying new houses in Vegas didn’t do much outside, as the lots were barely larger than the houses; usually less than a meter between homes and around a three meter deep back yard. I guess it’s the heat here, people just stay inside with air conditioning and don’t do things outside. We ended up with a house built in 1969 (old for Vegas) with 0.6 acres (2,000 sq. meters).

Las Vegas started out with the train station and train yard over a hundred years ago and grew out from there. Then in the 50’s casinos started growing southward along Las Vegas Boulevard, just outside the city limits (to avoid city taxes). Apartments were built just east of the casinos to house workers, and then the valley started filling up in all directions from these central areas. The Las Vegas area now has almost 2,000,000 people living here. The Las Vegas valley is relatively flat, so development built outward fairly consistently, with no big open areas left unfilled. Most housing is single family homes, with no large central concentration of apartments or condos, so we are really spread out. The valley is about 20 miles wide (32km) with mountains down both side, and developments now spread out east and west right up to the mountains. Most new construction is southeast to expand the city of Henderson or towards the north.

Some people built homes away from the city core, and you can drive around the valley and recognize these little pockets of older places by the groupings of larger trees. We live in a desert, so far this year we have had around .6 inches (2cm) of rainfall. Native vegetation is just low bushes scattered around, with no trees, so anything over a meter high has been planted and watered fairly recently. Older homes usually have mulberry, pine or salt cedar (tamarisk) trees. These types of trees require a lot of water, and with recent water restrictions are not planted anymore, but were popular plantings in the 60’s. Many homes around us have tall (20 meter) pine trees, while our house has two large olives out front and a big peach tree and an ash out back. Some type of beetle is attacking the pines, and quite a few big trees in the neighborhood have succumbed and are standing all brown and dead.

Most older homes have gone through several owners since construction, and with the heat and sunshine usually one of the owners put in a pool along the way. Ours is a rather large rectangle, about 6 x 12 meters. It’s not heated but there is a cover that rolls up at one end and is pulled across by a motor to close. We usually keep it covered, to keep out the dirt and slow evaporation. With the bright sunshine and warm days the water temperature is now up to 34c (94f) which makes it rather pleasant to float around in. Last night we were out there at sunset, enjoying the warm water and darkening skies. While we have converted most of the yard from grass to low water desert landscaping we did keep a large section of lawn out back, where the peach tree is planted. Being one of the few lawns in the area this attracts a lot of birds, so our yard is usually quite noisy with all of the comings and goings and arguments. A large group of sparrows like a big bush (3 meters high, 2 wide) on the side and quite a few spend the night in it. This leads to a lot of chirping at sunset which dies down as it gets dark. We imagine them all saying good night to each other, over and over. A small group of bats nest somewhere in our neighborhood, and they fly over the grassy area catching insects.

So we float in the water listening to the decreasing chirping and watch the bats flit back and forth overhead as the stars appear. Usually cold drinks are on the edge of the pool to provide refreshment. We can just see the tips of the taller casinos down on the strip over the eastern wall, but some trees we planted out there are getting big and that view has decreased. It’s just a very pleasant way to quiet down and end the day.

Kinky Boots

I’m sitting here reading other blogs, and looking at an old post on tourists over at Frankie G’s (over there on the lower right) where he is discussing tourists in Vegas. I liked one paragraph that is fairly descriptive of what happens when people get here for the first time: “I have a theory about why the Las Vegas tourist is generally less tolerable than others. Resentment can build up fast in this town for a tourist. The first step off the plane is a kick in the head. Las Vegas looks nothing like you imagined. Then you find out that every single step of Las Vegas Boulevard is designed to leave you with less money, the restaurants are twice as expensive as they need to be, the bus system sucks, the cabbies suck, the cops are cowboys, and your proven blackjack system didn’t work. All of your expectations, delusions of grandeur, and preconceived notions are shot down one by one.” Sounds pretty much like Vegas to me.

Locals however know what to expect, and there are a lot of things for us to do that don’t involve the Strip, though we do like to go down and walk around once in a while. Kind of like people that live in southern Florida; how many times do they go to DisneyWorld?

The Union Pacific Railroad had a big hand in starting Las Vegas. This was a convenient place to stop for water for their engines a long time ago, and they quickly put in a big engine yard, station and switching yard. A few years ago the UP gave the city over sixty acres that they didn’t need anymore (and were being taxed on) right across the freeway from downtown. It took the city a while to figure out what to do with this property, and they are still discussing things to put on it. But one of the things that was built is the The Smith Center for the Performing Arts which opened a few years ago. It’s the home to the Las Vegas Philharmonic and the Nevada Ballet Theatre, has several stages and quite a few interesting things come through there. We saw Wicked when it came by, as well as several other events. They just announced that the musical version of Kinky Boots will move from Broadway in New York and start touring next year, and this will be their first stop, probably sometime in September 2014. They did a number from the show at the recent Tony Awards, where the show won several awards.


We have seen the movie it is based on several times, and look forward to catching this adaptation when it comes here. It looks like a road show will travel well.