Post-pandemic, what will be left of the Las Vegas Strip?

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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Las Vegas StripUndoubtedly, the phrase of the year in 2020 across our planet is “social distancing.” This is also Las Vegas’s absolute worst nightmare. There probably is no other city in the U.S. whose economy is more completely tied to a lack of social distancing. “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” the cheeky former official slogan of Las Vegas image-makers, was premised on an extreme lack of social distancing, with folks normally thisclose all the time.

With the nation’s highest statewide unemployment rate at 28.2%, Nevada in general, and Las Vegas in particular, face a loooooong road back to any semblance of recovery. (The unemployment rate in the Las Vegas area in February was just 3.9%) How long? For starters, somewhat longer than it takes for folks to feel comfortable getting on airplanes and traveling long distances for the privilege of losing a lot of money gambling in casinos.

I’m thinking maybe sometime in 2022–and that’s if an effective coronavirus vaccine can be developed, mass produced and administered in record time. Otherwise, who knows? Continue reading →

Far from Las Vegas, did Gannett claim Pulitzer Prize credit for papers it didn’t own?

Posted on by May 6, 2020
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GannettOn Monday, Columbia University announced the awarding of the prestigious Pulitzer Prizes for 2020. These haven’t been good times for print media, so the winners understandably were quick to proclaim their triumphs.

In barely an hour, USA Today, flagship of the Gannett chain, now the largest in the country by total circulation, put online a story about how a Gannett paper, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, won the breaking news Pulitzer for its coverage of questionable last-minute pardons issued by Kentucky’s governor.

All well and good. But the story contained this sentence: “Gannett … has won at least 56 Pulitzer Prizes.”

“At least?” In my half-century as a journalist starting long before becoming New To Las Vegas, I never have encountered a news organization that didn’t know exactly how many Pulitzers it has won. Something is up here. Continue reading →

Carolyn Goodman isn’t the mayor of the Las Vegas Strip, or me

Posted on by April 22, 2020
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Carolyn Goodman

Carolyn Goodman and Anderson Cooper on CNN today

Several hours ago, three-term Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman made an absolute fool of herself on national TV by telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper the coronavirus shutdown of the economy should be ended, but she has no responsibility for any sickness or death that might result. She added she had offered her city as a”control group” to see how many residents would die, but was turned down by authorities.

I’ve been getting angry messages from people complaining about “your mayor.”

Listen up, folks. I live in unincorporated Clark County, part of the Las Vegas Valley, but not in the City of Las Vegas. So she’s not my mayor. In fact she’s not even the mayor of the Las Vegas Strip, which also sits in unincorporated Clark County.

But there’s some interesting history here–even involving the former bread-and-butter of Goodman’s now-retired mob lawyer husband, Oscar Goodman, who also served as Las Vegas mayor. I described the backstory in a 2017 post. I’m taking the liberty of re-purposing some of that material below. Continue reading →

Watching the pandemic play out in Las Vegas–a century ago

Posted on by March 14, 2021
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pandemic play out in Las Vegas

Las Vegas Age, October 5, 1918

A sudden increase in illness cases around Las Vegas–and worse. A significant death rate. Closed schools. Instructions to stay apart and wear masks. Inadequate medical staffing levels. Months of fear.

Oh, I’m not describing the ongoing coronovirus pandemic in Las Vegas (and the world). Rather, what I’m writing about are events hereabouts concerning the famous “Spanish flu” influenza pandemic from 1918 to 1920, as reported in the pages of the leading local newspaper of the day, the Las Vegas Age.

But maybe some things don’t change much.

The worldwide 1918 influenza epidemic (the word pandemic was known but not widely used at the time) was a serious problem in the Las Vegas area for about three months during the fall of 1918, then apparently came back in a lesser way a year later in early 1920. All told, it appears there officially were about 40 deaths in Clark County, where Las Vegas is, attributed to the influenza epidemic. However, that likely was a significant undercount.

Still, Las Vegas and Clark County back then were backwaters with a total official population in 1920 of only 4,859. So that worked out to one death for every 121 persons. This was 24% worse than the estimated national mortality rate–675,000 deaths in a population of 107 million--of one death for every 159 persons.

There are now 2 million people in Clark County. Thus, that 1918 rate would produce more than 16,000 deaths. But so far, there have only been 100 deaths attributed to coronavirus, or one death for every 20,000 persons. While the pandemic is far from over, the death rate is not even 1% of what was experienced in 1918. Right now the U.S. death rate is significantly higher than Clark County’s–one for every 14,700 residents. Continue reading →

From Las Vegas, thoughts on the pandemic recession and the election

Posted on by April 13, 2020
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pandemic recession

Larry Kudlow, Trump’s chief economic adviser (via Wikipedia)

Larry Kudlow, President Trump’s chief economic adviser, said yesterday the financial damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic would start receding within two months. (Last month, he said “weeks and months.”) Other Trump supporters have trotted out that old financial bromide, “This time is different.” They argue that the origins of this recession—and that appears to be what we’re in now—are so transitory that the financial distress will go away fast and with no lingering effect.

I beg to differ.

As a student of financial history long before becoming New To Las Vegas, what I’m seeing is the same old thing. The economic history of the United States consists of a simple repeating pattern: boom, bubble and bust. And the bust part is rarely over quickly. Continue reading →

Only in Nevada (even if not in Las Vegas)

Posted on by March 22, 2020
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From Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak’s coronavirus order that nonessential businesses in the state must close for 30 days (emphasis added at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters):Only in Nevada In case you wonder, prostitution is legal in much of Nevada, although not in Clark County, where Las Vegas is; Washoe County, home of Reno; or Carson City, the capital, which is an independent city.

In 2018, voters in Nye County, immediately to the west of Clark County where prostitution is legal, elected Republican Dennis Hof to the State Assembly in a landslide. This was noteworthy for two reasons: (1) Hof, a TV personality who wrote an autobiography entitled The Art of the Pimp, was the owner of seven brothels in Nevada, which he said would be good experience for working with other lawmakers, and (2) he had died three weeks before the election, found deceased in his bed the morning after his 72d birthday party.

Nothing says Nevada quite like a dead pimp elected to the Legislature.

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