Sh*t You May Have Missed While Sweating to Keith Sweat (if that’s a thing)
It’s Sh*t You May Have Missed for the week ending January 13, 2016.
Hey, all! BigAZMarty here with this week’s goings on about Las Vegas, our favorite place!
1. Railroad Pass Casino is starting construction on its travel center, read LV Sun here. That will be the last gas station until you get pretty far into Arizona when I-11 opens. Unless…someone builds something south of Boulder City where it’s bypassing that town. I-11 will eventually link Phoenix to Las Vegas (largest two cities not connected by a direct freeway link). You can read about here as it’s also supposed to be one of the CanaMex transportation corridors that will eventually run from Nogales to Reno and possibly north of that up to Canada.
2. Yup new visitation record was broken last year, read LV Sun here. 42.9 million visitors in 2016….that’s a lot of comp’d drinks!!
3. LV Sun has a pretty good short summary on CES here without going into small details. They cover the bigger show items in a fairly easy to read format.
4. With those visitation numbers for 2016, no surprise that the big casinos (reporting more than $1 million) have finally had a profitable year, read LV Sun here. Interesting that gaming Year over Year continues to drop (2015 43.2% to 2016 42.6%) so you have increasing visitation, but less spent on gaming due to resort fees and now parking fees and of course tighter casino hold (slots/VP/BJ odds favor house more now). EDGE Vegas has some interesting comments that will be lower down this article for options off the strip.
5. Golden Entertainment is planning on opening seven more bars in the LV Valley; you may have seen them as PT’s or Sierra Gold bars, read LV Sun article here.
6. The Alabama – Clemson title game will probably be one of the biggest sportsbook losses of 2017, read LV Sun article here. So know that the sportsbooks will be trying to find ways to make up that loss for the rest of the year although they did make a lot off college football in 2016.
7. Affinity Gaming’s sale to Z Capital is up in front of the Gaming Control Board this week for approval, read LV Sun here. This will take the firm private with Z Capital being the owner if it clears this and then the Gaming Commission approves it. The article lists the properties they own.
8. Keith Sweat’s residency at the Flamingo is starting read LV Weekly via LV Sun here. Don’t know about you but I can’t remember any of these songs by title alone for some reason, I will have to check Spotify for them and jog the noggin.
9. Just missed it, In-N-Out is open at the Linq Promenade, read LVRJ here. Vital Vegas has their article up with more photos here. I guess it’s a soft opening because there isn’t much of a crowd yet. We will be there in April (Green Day with X at MGM Garden Arena), so we will have to try it. And yes, I was a depraved youth who used to drive a car with the modified In-N-Out Burger bumper sticker (cut out the B and the R from BurgeR and mount on a black bumper). And yes it was instant opposite sex repellent…was just young and stupid. That sticker is probably in a junk yard somewhere as the car was sold for junk in 1988 (cost more to repair and had close to 200,000 miles on it).
10. Momofuku’s is also open at The Cosmopolitan, read LVRJ here. I had no idea that means Lucky Peach.
11. Hmmm, hopefully, MGM can find a person that makes sure the quality stays high at MGM Resorts as their old Restaurant Manager Steven Katz has left for Canter’s Delis in Las Vegas. Read LVRJ here.
12. MGM Grand and NewYorkNewYork were without power for about an hour. Their generators worked, so it wasn’t a big issue for them. Evidently, wind blown debris into a substation isn’t necessarily a good thing for electricity. Read LVRJ here. Here’s the running score: MGM – 3 power related issues in the last 12 months and Caesars Entertainment – 2. But, Caesars for sure outdoes MGM on time power remains off. In both Paris and Rio outages, the backup generators were also taken offline which caused an evacuation due to the fire alarm batteries being run down.
13. Resorts World site has some new scaffolding and activity, they are, I am sure, making sure the existing skeletons can be built on instead of tearing down and starting from scratch. Read LVRJ here for details. Hopefully, the construction cranes will start to migrate to the site soon.
14. Katz is reporting Pin Up to be ending on its 4th Anniversary at the Stratosphere. Read LVRJ here. I wonder if CZR/PH will grab it as it would make a good complement to Crazy Girls at PH. Vital Vegas reports on Pin Up closing as well here.
15. Robin Leach gets skewered and loves it!!! Read his review on Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey show at SLS’s Foundry Theater here. These two were funny when they were doing “clean” TV comedy, should be hilarious without the leashes that were placed on them by network TV censors.
16. The old Main Street Station rail cars are going for a good cause, the parking lot that the Stevens bought came with the rail cars. They, in turn, gave them to Western Elite which will put them to good use in Ely, NV as Western Elite Polar Express at Christmastime. Read Vital Vegas here.
17. Norm’s reporting that the Mayweather/McGregor fight is a go, as well as some sad news about jazz pianist Buddy Greco, read here.
18. EDGE Vegas has two articles on off strip resorts that provide a better value for your money than the overpriced and overly fee’d (Resort and Parking) Las Vegas Strip resorts. Read here and here.
19. Caesars Palace puts up a temporary eating establishment to quickly replace Serendipity 3, read EATER Vegas here for the new Stripside Cafe and Bar. From what we know it will be eventually redone as some Gordon Ramsey eatery TBD in the future.
20. VegaSeven has a good look as to what we will expect in 2017, read here, too bad parking fees are in there as well.
Well, that’s it for this week’s news, and now to our Intrepid Editor In Chief Michael Movestro for our news and other items.
Thanks, BigAzMarty! Intrepid? You wrote four articles this week (including this one), you’re intrepid! Speaking of which did you know that NYC has the Intrepid Air, Sea and Space Museum? It’s an old aircraft carrier and it has a space shuttle! I went there a few years ago. Going up those submarine style stairs was quite the workout.
Hi, peeps! So, yeah…last week in this spot I said there would be a podcast last Sunday, and there wasn’t, and I apologize. So instead of saying “a new episode is happening …” and not delivering on it, I just won’t say anything and you can be surprised when it does happen. :) And now, here are the stories we brought you last week!
21. George Addams reviews Hooters renovated rooms and shares casino updates.
22. Blonde4ever Takes a Tour of Casa de Shenandoah.
23. BigAzMarty checks-in to a Mandalay Bay Executive Suite Room.
24. BigAzMarty reviews Las Vegas’ first Virgil’s Real BBQ at Linq Promenade.
25. BigAzMarty shares his Trip Report from New Year’s Eve.
26. Fisherman reviews Nacho Daddy’s.
That’s it for this week, we’ll see you next week!
A computer professional who has worked at several types of positions with several different businesses and still learning and changing.
Introduced properly to Las Vegas and Laughlin by the spouse and have been going ever since 1990.
A frequent visitor from not to far away where it’s almost always 10 degrees warmer than Vegas.
