My day in stunning Valley of Fire State Park near Las Vegas during Super Bowl LVIII

Posted on by December 24, 2024
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Valley of Fire State Park

Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, taken by the author on Sunday, February 11

While the eyes of the U.S. were obsessively focused on Sunday upon a certain football game (and pop singer) in Las Vegas, I chose a different course. The dog and I drove 50 miles north to Valley of Fire State Park. The 70-square-mile preserve sports breathtaking scenery and, just as significantly thanks to surrounding mountains, no cell phone service and an eerie quiet broken only by wind gusts and the occasional call of a bird.

Blessed by a sunny day with temperatures in the mid-50s, we wandered around dramatically bright red Aztec sandstone, sand dunes, limestone formations and other outcroppings in a variety of shapes and sizes, all crammed into a space just 10 miles across. Some features are as much as 150 million years old, formed by the upheavals of Mother Earth, the inundation and receding of flood waters and the weathering of time. There were enough arches and fallen arches to interest any podiatrist. Valley of Fire provides much food for thought about where this planet is headed.

The park also provided a refuge of sorts. My personal reasons for completely avoiding Super Bowl LVIII were philosophical. It was my continuing (and admittedly inconsequential) protest of the terrible record of the National Football League in protecting the long-term health of the players who have helped make all but two of the NFL’s 32 principal owners billionaires. Coupled with Nevada’s own lousy record in health care and the proximity of the game just seven miles from the New To Las Vegas world headquarters, it was imperative I get out of town for the day. (Read my fuller objections by clicking here.)

The contrast between the naturalness of Valley of Fire and the artificial glitz of Las Vegas, with a pyramid-shaped hotel and cheesy scaled-down replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, is startling. Valley of Fire is the real deal. Continue reading →

Super Bowl LVIII sponsor NFL and Las Vegas share big health care woes

Posted on by February 10, 2024
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Las Vegas health careNow that Super Bowl LVIII is upon us here in Las Vegas, it’s time to rehash an issue I’ve harped upon. In my view the country’s most popular sporting event and the country’s most popular entertainment town are a perfect fit for this shocking reason: Both offer shameful healthcare to their constituencies, and have for a long time.

Allow me to explain. Since much of this material is drawn from a post early last year, forgive me for sounding like a broken record. But maybe I’m just spoiled. Before becoming New To Las Vegas, I lived around places with terrific health care like Seattle, Los Angeles, Houston and New York. Continue reading →

This week in Nevada: Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, centennial of world’s first gas-chamber execution

Posted on by February 8, 2024
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first gas-chamber execution

Gee Jon (courtesy Nevada Historical Society) Quarterly)

Most of the U.S. and even much of the world will be fixated this weekend on Las Vegas when Super Bowl LVIII (58 for those not fluent in Roman) is played in Allegiant Stadium between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. It will be a first for Nevada, which until not too long ago was on the National Football League’s boycott list for moral reasons due to legalized sports betting in the state. Then team owners and Commissioner Roger Goodell realized widespread gambling would greatly increased the value of their franchises and decided they could live with some immorality.

As it happens, this first for Nevada coincides with the 100th anniversary of another big Nevada first raising questions of morality. For it was on February 8, 1924–a century ago tomorrow–that Nevada carried out the world’s very first capital punishment execution by lethal gas. Touted at the time as a humane alternative to electrocution, hanging, firing squad, guillotining, stoning, burning at the stake or whatever, the execution of Gee Jon didn’t go well. A huge story at the time, the botched process brought ridicule and contempt to the Silver State and helped trigger wide debate for decades about how to properly carry out capital punishment.

Gas chambers, in Nevada and some other U.S. jurisdictions, eventual gave way to lethal injections–until some executioners started having problems legally getting the drugs necessary to carry out death sentences. Earlier this month, Alabama carried out the first execution in years using gas, in this case pure nitrogen, depriving condemned killer Kenneth Smith of oxygen and thus life. Witnesses were split on whether it prevented undue suffering to the condemned. Some states are even authorizing firing squads again.

And, amazingly, a still-undecided case that was argued nearly a year ago before the Nevada Supreme Court–the very same panel that greenlighted a different kind of gas a century ago–concerns whether Nevada, which has more than 60 persons on Death Row, can carry out an execution using yet another untested procedure used nowhere else in the world. In this case it would be lethal injection, but employing a mixture of chemicals never before used but which are easier to get. Nevada hasn’t executed anyone since 2006. In December 2022, a court on procedural grounds blocked lame duck Democratic governor Steve Sisolak’s effort to commute all death sentences to life without the possibility of parole.

There are lessons to be learned here, especially whether a thinly populated desert state devoted to minimal government can pull off such a feat. Much of the following account repurposes material previously posted from time to time on this blog since I became New To Las Vegas. Continue reading →

Near Super Bowl LVIII, a posted sign shows why Las Vegas is, uh, different

Posted on by February 4, 2024
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Sign, Nevada State Recycle, Las Vegas

Here’s more evidence that Las Vegas, host in less than two weeks to Super Bowl LVII, is, uh, different than other places. A sign posted prominently by the front door of Nevada State Recycle, one of Las Vegas’s leading recyclers of electronic and other items, lists material that won’t be accepted. The roster starts out rather unsurprisingly–asbestos, raw sewage, contaminated soil, radioactive waste, septic tank pumpings, etc.

Then–almost as an afterthought–there is the final entry at the bottom of what Nevada State Recycle won’t take, in red print, no less:

“Stolen items.”

Yes, in Las Vegas, folks have to be told they can’t get just ditch purloined property–maybe to get rid of the evidence–by handing it to a business establishment that doesn’t pay for donations. You can see the sign in the nearby photo. Continue reading →

New history of American Mafia deals a little with Las Vegas

Posted on by January 16, 2024
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Las Vegas MafiaThe one-liner is in terrible taste, but absolutely too funny to ignore. It’s found in the newly published Borgata, Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia (Volume 1), by Louis Ferrante, an ex-Mafioso himself. He describes the 1947 assassination of Las Vegas mobster Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, shot from a rifle nine times in the head at point-blank range while reading a newspaper in the living room of his girl friend’s Beverly Hills home.

“With Siegel’s blood and brains all over the newspaper,” Ferrante cracks, “it can be said that the Los Angeles Times got the story first.”

The line comes in “The Desert King Dethroned,” one of two chapters dealing with the rise (and fall) of Siegel as Las Vegas’ most famous resident mobster, despite the fact he lived in Sin City barely a year before his violent exit. But that’s largely it in the book for any history of the Mob and Sin City. Borgata volume 1 ends with the Mob being chased out of Havana after Castro came to power in 1959. This move is widely credited with focusing organized crime on Las Vegas, where gambling already at least was legal and mobsters could skim off winnings, uh, tax-free. I suppose we’ll have to wait for volumes 2 or 3, which Ferrante implies in his text already have been written. (Borgata, by the way, means mafia family, and Ferrante counts 26 of them across the U.S.). Continue reading →

Ho, ho, ho! Faux charity with no track record is back illegally ringing a bell in Las Vegas

Posted on by January 15, 2024
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faux charity’tis the holiday season, when folks are in a generous mode and perhaps have let down their guard. I’m here to warn you about a wolf in charity clothing–“Ray Wolfe,” to be specific.

That’s the new name of the computer-generated voice using soundboard technology that recently cold-called the New To Las Vegas world headquarters. “Wolfe”–I use quotes because there was no such person–wanted me to contribute to something called Police Officers Support Committee PAC, part of another something called POSC PAC. With a sense of urgency, “Wolfe” made an extremely quick general spiel about the urgent need to support law enforcement followed by an extremely quick ask for a donation.

I paused. “What will you use the money for?” I asked.

“Okay,” “Wolfe” said. “Goodbye.” Click.

Totally on the up-and-up, of course. Continue reading →