Desert companion - May 2017

05 MAY

17

VOL/ISSUE

MAY

2017

THE

15.5

ADVNTRS TRAVELER’S GUIDE The exploits are nice, wish you were here!

Our postcards from the edge.

P LU S

Dial your nostalgia to 10 — the Starboard Tack is back

FOR SPIRITS WITH SPIRITS, TRY THESE HAUNTED RURAL BARS Riding with Downtown cops — adventure of a different kind

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EDITOR’S NOTE

58

THRILLS AND CHILLS

A

cquire experiences, not things! goes the contemporary adage (typically as the text on a gauzy, saturated Instagram bikini-beach photo that looks suspiciously like an artisanal beer ad).

Whatever, I’m as perniciously materialistic as the next moaning zombie Costco shambler, but, yes, I’m totally on board with the notion in principle. And how apt: That’s kind of the theme of this issue’s travel feature, “The Adventurous Traveler’s Guide!” (p. 50) The premise: to pump up the adrenalin and awe quotient of your typical day trip while also celebrating a Southwest sense of place. The result: thrill sessions with a side of chill sessions. For example, in this feature package, Scott Dickensheets and Scott Lien go jeeping (yes, it’s a verb) in Sedona, drinking in the vortex-rich beauty of Arizona’s high desert between smacks of their foreheads against the vehicle’s doorframe. Frequent Desert Companion contributor Alan Gegax spends some quality time at one of his favorite natural areas in Nevada, Cathedral Gorge, discovering even more of its hidden twists and secret curves — less like a hiking trip and more like catching up with an old friend. Staff writer Heidi Kyser goes landsailing in Jean, racing along a dry lake bed on a windpowered buggy. And in Joshua Tree, writer Greg Thilmont catches a cosmic-existential buzz during an evening of personalized stargazing with an astronomer whose enthusiasm for celestial bodies is truly stellar.

As for me, I jetpacked in Pahrump — and I did it with all the athletic elegance and poise you’d expect of a loudly screaming/ NEXT flailing person encased in an extremeMONTH sports exoskeleton. But, to dial up My eyes! My that adage again, sure, experiences eyes! It’s our may be better than things, but they’d photo contest issue! be cheap, lunch-line, a la carte thrills

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without context, without story. How could one merely jetpack on an artificial lake in Pahrump without checking into the town’s larger story of its rebrand as a destination for pastimes other than those involving vanilla body oil and an egg timer? (Though it must be noted that, to Pahrump’s eternal credit, the development of amenities such as a noteworthy destination winery has not caused the town to forget its other historic economic drivers, beef jerky and fireworks.) We hope you consider these adventures as gateways to truly getting to know the places in your own regional neighborhood. I think they call it “cultural and experiential tourism,” but I just think of it as, you know, checking things out.

Of course, there are other adventures in this issue: Dan Hernandez reports on a day in a cop’s life from the front seat of a Metro squad car (p. 26), and Dave Clark writes about the colorful and storied rural bars that dot the region (p. 38) — and for culinary adventure, check out the pancreas-throttling guava chiffon pancake that Scott and I vivisected with our mouths (p. 48). With so many experiences packed into one issue, I suspect your Instagram filters are going to be working Andrew Kiraly editor some serious overtime. Onward!

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May 2017

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VO LU M E 1 5 I S S U E 5

THE POWER OF STORIES AFTER Hyde i a Bro adb e nt fo u nd t h at b e i ng t h e face o f A ID S aware ne s s i s i ns pi ri ng — and i nt e ns e.

THE Th e n t h e re ’s h e r l i fe b e h i nd t h e s ce ne s. story by STEVE FRIESS

CURTAIN 40

illustration by HERNAN VALENCIA

I

n 1996, a 12-year-old Las Vegas girl named Hydeia Broadbent made a speech to the Republican National Convention, bringing it to “a tearful standstill” with her story of being born with AIDS to a drug-addicted mother. It was her mission to put a different face on the disease, to widen the country’s understanding of who the victims are. She was a sensation. She became a big story, a national story, refracted again and again through endless media outlets.

That wasn’t the story Desert Companion told. We told a much different, less conventionally inspiring story. Catching up with her for our August 2011 edition, writer Steve Friess recounted what came after the limelight: a sad and tragic story of “a fractured family with versions of their history so incongruous as to be irreconcilable,” featuring a young girl who’d lived well beyond the point her doctors told her she’d die. She was still trying to get her life back together.

As we spend this year reflecting on

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Desert Companion’s first decade of publication, there’s a lot we’re proud of. A strong commitment to reader service, being a prime example, whether it’s food stories that introduce you to palate-expanding new cuisines, or travel packages (see Page 50) that, ha, tell you where to go, or culture guides that urge you to experience this city’s boundless creativity. We profile everyday people who make this a multilayered, richly textured place to live. We disinter the region’s fascinating history.

But we’re particularly proud of some of our outstanding features and journalism. Stories like Hydeia’s, which might have been reduced to a dry stack of facts and quotes in a newspaper, but here, in these pages, was contoured into a human story, told with the empathy, length and narrative drive that distinguish the best magazine writing.

Perhaps you remember our July 2014 issue, with Heidi Kyser’s patient, comprehensive and exquisitely told investigation into the life and death of disgraced local physician Ralph Conti — beloved by his patients even as he was ensnaring some of them in a bogus stem-cell scam.

Another piece that no other publication would have or could have done.

Not long after that, in Feb-

ruary 2015, Heidi was back with a hardhitting account of the possibility that naturally occurring asbestos is marring some land near Boulder City, and that some people’s health might be affected.

Last August, she reported on the spotty state of rural medicine in Nevada.

That same issue was fronted by a cover story in which writer Stacy J. Willis probed the day-to-day life of Charleston Boulevard, a lively and energetic ribbon of history, commerce and micro-cultures that spans the valley. Perhaps only Desert Companion would have bothered to knock on the door of the last house on Charleston and ask what it was like to live there.

We’ve always thought of these pieces, and many more like them — covering medicine, education, the law, culture, and much more — as another form of reader service. They flesh out your sense of the city with a more nuanced understanding of the people and issues that make it what it is, and what it might become.

Why did he do it?

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O O The puzzling crime and untimely death of pediatrician Ralph Conti

story by HEIDI

K YSER

PART ONE

One summer evening eight years ago, Nina and Lawrence Dibbs drove to Foothills Pediatrics on the Siena campus of St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson. The couple, married nearly 30 years, was excited: They were going to visit someone who, they thought, could help slow the accelerating march of Nina’s progressive multiple sclerosis, which had recently begun to make her legs feel like two-ton dead weights.

The source of their hope was not a pediatrician, however; it was Alfred Sapse, owner of a business called StemCell Pharma, who was marketing and selling what he described as a revolutionary cure for several diseases, including MS. Nina’s aunt had discovered Sapse on the Internet. “Nina, you don’t have to go to Europe for the stem-cell treatment, after all!” she had shouted through the phone earlier that day. “They’re doing it right down the street from you!”

Nina called Sapse, and he told her to come right over.

The reason she and her husband were going to a pediatrician’s office is that Sapse wasn’t licensed to practice medicine in Nevada — or anywhere in the U.S. Although he claimed to be the scientist behind the procedure Nina sought, he needed a licensed physician to actually perform it. Enter Ralph Conti, owner of Foothills Pediatrics and a phenomenally popular doctor throughout the valley, where he operated five other locations, in addition to the one in Henderson.

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P U B L I S H E D B Y N E VA D A P U B L I C R A D I O

MISSION STATEMENT

Desert Companion is the premier city magazine that celebrates the pursuits, passions and aspirations of Southern Nevadans. With awardwinning lifestyle journalism and design, Desert Companion does more than inform and entertain.

We spark dialogue, engage people and define the spirit of the Las Vegas Valley.

JOIN US FOR OUR 5TH ANNUAL

PHOTO SHOWCASE CELEBRATE with us as we AWARD PRIZES to the finalist photos from Desert Companion’s

“FOCUS ON

NEVADA” photo contest.

Enjoy light bites and wine while feasting your eyes on the beautiful PHOTOGRAPHY.

PUBLISHER Flo Rogers CORPORATE SUPPORT MANAGER Favian Perez EDITOR Andrew Kiraly ART DIRECTOR Christopher Smith DEPUTY EDITOR Scott Dickensheets SENIOR DESIGNER Scott Lien STAFF WRITER Heidi Kyser GRAPHIC DESIGNER Brent Holmes ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Sharon Clifton, Susan Henry, Jimmy Hoadrea, Kim Trevino, Markus Van’t Hul SALES ASSISTANT Ashley Smith NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Couture Marketing 145 E 17th Street, Suite B4 New York, NY 10003 (917) 821-4429 advertising@couturemarketing MARKETING MANAGER Donovan Resh PRINT TRAFFIC MANAGER Karen Wong SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER Tammy Willis WEB ADMINISTRATOR Danielle Branton CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dave Clark, Cybele, Alan Gegax, Dan Hernandez, Joseph Langdon, Greg Thilmont, Chuck Twardy, Erica Vital-Lazare, Misti Yang CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Jenna Dosch, Peter Frigeri, Aaron Mayes, Aaron McKinney, Sabin Orr, Lucky Wenzel EDITORIAL: ANDREW KIRALY, (702) 259-7856; ANDREW@DESERTCOMPANION.VEGAS FAX: (702) 258-5646

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ADVERTISING: Favian Perez (702) 259-7813; favian@desertcompanion.vegas SUBSCRIPTIONS: (702) 258-9895; subscriptions@desertcompanion.vegas WEBSITE: www.desertcompanion.vegas Desert Companion is published 12 times a year by Nevada Public Radio, 1289 S. Torrey Pines Dr., Las Vegas, NV 89146. It is available by subscription at desertcompanion.vegas, or as part of Nevada Public Radio membership. It is also distributed free at select locations in the Las Vegas Valley. All photos, artwork and ad designs printed are the sole property of Desert Companion and may not be duplicated or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. The views of Desert Companion contributing writers are not necessarily the views of Desert Companion or Nevada Public Radio. Contact Tammy Willis for back issues, which are available for purchase for $7.95.

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VO LU M E 1 5 I S S U E 5

26 FIELD NOTES On patrol with Metro’s Downtown command

By Daniel Hernandez

38

34 SOCIETY

FEATURE

Adia Lancaster is on the front lines of the fight against human trafficking

By Erica Vital-Lazare

50 DESTINATION: ADVENTURE

38 TRAVEL

From mulepacking in the Grand Canyon to stargazing in Joshua Tree to landsailing in Ivanpah, get your kicks this season with a sense of place

Beer, banter and Wild West history is served up at these rural haunts

By Dave Clark 43 DINING

DEPARTMENTS ALL THINGS 17 OUTDOORS

Empowering women to enjoy the great outdoors 20 BOOKS Laura

McBride’s ’Round Midnight 21 ZEIT BITES Comedy!

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Blinded by science!

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Insane in the pancake 65 THE GUIDE Do it do it do it do it!

72 END NOTE The last satirical tripplanning flow chart you’ll ever need

By Scott Dickensheets

MAY

2017

THE

VOL/ISSUE

15.5

ADVNTRS TRAVELER’S GUIDE The exploits are nice, wish you were here!

Our postcards from the edge.

P LU S

Dial your nostalgia to 10 — the Starboard Tack is back

FOR SPIRITS WITH SPIRITS, TRY THESE HAUNTED RURAL BARS Riding with Downtown cops — adventure of a different kind

ON THE COVER PHOTOGRAPHY Scott Lien

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05

17

B UT I T ’S AN ALL-NATURAL GL A S S C EILING

COMMUNITY

Wild women Why are fewer American females than males into outdoor recreation, and why does it matter?

B Y H E I D I K YS E R

I L LU S T R AT I O N A A R O N M C K I N N E Y

Chance, fate and choices in ’Round Midnight page 20

E

verything changed for Toyya Mahoney late one evening in the spring of 2012, when she was sitting alone on a bench at the Katherine Landing amphitheater near the edge of Lake Mohave. She was a National Park Service seasonal employee there, one of few living onsite, and didn’t have much to do after the ranger program that had just finished. So she sat, looking at the moon, the lake, and — jolting her out of her reverie — a coyote walking by.

She remembered what her North Las Vegas family, for whom “getting outdoors” meant playing kickball with neighborhood kids in their cul-de-sac, had said when she told them she was moving to the Arizona desert for a job: “‘I don’t know how you’re going to go to the middle of nowhere. Aren’t you afraid? Do you need a gun?’” she recalls them saying. “They thought it was going to be this horror experience, like (the movie) The Hills Have Eyes. …

They thought I was going to be attacked by coyotes.”

And now here she was, alone in the dark, with a coyote nearby.

“Before I could look again, it was gone — it had run all the way down to the water, and even when I first noticed it, it was probably at least 10 feet away,” she says. “In that moment, I

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17

ALL THINGS

community

learned that what my family had thought wasn’t true. It had shaped my reality and put fear in my mind, but it wasn’t true. I needed to figure out my own connection to the outdoors. That day had an impact on the rest of my life.”

Mahoney says that this connection and the NPS mentor who fostered it, Amanda Rowland, helped her through a difficult period that included the death of her mother.

To maintain balance, she does what she calls “healing hikes,” treks to isolated places where she can leave her troubles on the trail, returning to the city with a lightened heart and fresh perspective.

FORCE TO RECKON WITH Having studied gender disparity in outdoor recreation, REI is doing something to try to solve it. On May 6 the company launches a national effort to get more women outdoors.

Called “Force of Nature,” it’s expected to inspire 1,000 events around the country, including a Las Vegas one at Skye Canyon housing development near Red Rock. Over Mother’s Day weekend, Friends of Nevada Wilderness, Outdoor Afro, and other community groups will lead a hike, camp-out, and bike ride, as well as educational sessions on topics like how to use a map and compass, and cook in a Dutch oven.

Outside also published a female-focused issue coinciding with REI’s “Force of Nature” news release. With a photo spread featuring ski racer Lindsey Vonn, swimmer Diana Nyad, and eight other iconic female outdoorswomen, the magazine implicitly tackles findings from the retailer’s January survey: namely, that nearly two-thirds of respondents couldn’t think of a female outdoors role model, and 60 percent believe men’s interest in outdoor activities is taken more seriously than women’s.

“We want to support women-specific groups and foster female leaders in the outdoors,” says REI’s Ashley Lee, who’s organizing the Las Vegas event. “This is the year of women’s empowerment and equality. We want to harness that and create an opportunity for women to come together and cause a shift in the outdoor industry.”

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And she helps others make the same connection. Over the past five years, she’s worked with several organizations to connect city dwellers and at-risk youth with the outdoors. Today, Mahoney volunteers with Natural Leaders and Outdoor Afro while working at the Bureau of Reclamation, where she’s learned about trail maintenance and environmental conservation. This month, she’ll put that knowledge to use in the All American Trails young leadership program.

Mahoney is exceptional. Some 143 million Americans participate in outdoor activities, according to the Outdoor Foundation’s most recent annual report. Of those, 54 percent are male, 46 percent female.

Indoor fitness is much more popular than outdoor activities among women in Mahoney’s age group (21-25).

To understand why this is, outdoor retailer REI commissioned a study in January. Respondents — some 2,000 women ages 18-35 from across the U.S. — overwhelmingly said they believe the outdoors is conducive to good mental and physical health. Nevertheless, around seven in 10 said they wished they could spend more time in the outdoors, but can’t due to obstacles such as weather, time, and no one to go with them.

In addition to these practical barriers, the study identified several social factors.

Around 60 percent of respondents said they face the same gender-related pressures in the woods as in the workplace, citing “be sexy,” “lose weight,” and “smile more” as common expectations.

“There’s so much focus on how we look and being thin, and there are so many unhealthy ways to get there,” says clinical psychologist Carli Snyder, who specializes in women’s mental health issues such as anorexia, anxiety, and depression. Snyder leads an early-intervention group called Girl Nation that aims to instill confidence and self-acceptance in teens before they fall victim to the unrealistic portrayals of women in commercial media.

Also, these images may clash with those of female adventurers. “In my experience, women are reluctant to embrace an outdoors identity,” says Ashley Lee, outdoor programs and community

outreach coordinator for REI. “When you see the word ‘outdoorsy,’ it can have a negative connotation for women, because when you’re outdoorsy, you’re not pretty.

You’re dirty and sweaty.”

While some outdoor sports may require trading makeup for gear, Mahoney believes there’s a place outdoors for females of all kinds, tomboys to girlie girls. She says women frequently arrive for Outdoor Afro hikes in colorcoordinated outfits, and she refuses to give up her own regular manicures, even when she’s working in the field.

“I think sometimes it’s just the newness and unfamiliarity of outdoor recreation,” she says. “They might want to try it but don’t know how. Or they’ll see a woman riding a bike and think, ‘She’s so advanced, I’ll never be able to keep up with her.’”

Snyder believes this is why it’s important that women be encouraged to try: to gain the confidence of tackling a challenge on their own, without the help of a man, and with the support of other girls and women.

Lee saw this in action last year when she participated in an all-women, nineday road rally from Lake Tahoe through the outskirts of Las Vegas to San Diego.

“My experience had always been, ‘Beat out the next girl,’ but in this event there was so much love and appreciation,” she says. “There were so many times when people were knee-deep in rocks and mud, and we’d pull over, flip the hair up in a bun, and dig each other out. We’d whip out the wrenches and do what we had to do to get unstuck.”

Banding together is also a great way to avoid the real risks women take in the outdoors, which aren’t immune to sexual harassment and violence. Snyder stresses that there’s strength in numbers, and that confronting fears — just as Mahoney did — is deeply empowering.

“Think about what it would be like to complete an event you really want to do,” Snyder advises. “Try doing something with a friend, something challenging, but in a situation where you’re safe — with a group, or with a satellite phone. That way, you can push yourself out of your comfort zone, and that’s the only way we grow in life.”

ALL THINGS

zeit bites

REVIEW

Matters of choice Decisions echo across decades for the women in Laura McBride’s “honest Las Vegas tale,” ’Round Midnight B Y C H U C K T WA R D Y

N

ear the end of ’Round Midnight, after an armed confrontation, a police negotiator reflects: “Crazy town. Crazy, crazy town.”

He’s talking about Las Vegas, of course. Because, of course, it is crazy.

This is not the snarky outsider’s contempt that Las Vegans learn to endure or ignore, but rather the local’s acceptance that it is indeed a rather peculiar place, but in ways visitors cannot appreciate.

Author Laura McBride, who flashed valley savvy in 2014’s We Are Called to Rise, knows whereof she writes because she lives here and teaches at the College of Southern Nevada. Nothing about the hostage scene is Vegas-y — an ex-lover might be threatening a homeowner and her maid in Boise right now — but the city Benny and Bugsy built is the only setting for this standoff. And maybe it’s something about Las Vegas that renders the climax somewhat anticlimactic.

Set in a fading, older hotel-casino, ’Round Midnight (Touchstone, $25.99) carries its characters through three generations, each of three parts opening in the Midnight Room of the El Capitan,

A tremor in the FARCE

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“No sets, no costumes, no props.” Because Charlie Ross is an actor describing a one-person stage show, such talk of presentational minimalism isn’t surprising — it’s a thing in the theater, Spalding Gray 101. Except that this isn’t just any stage show. It’s a piece of popculture sanctity that’s nearly unimaginable without sets, costumes, and props: Star Wars. That’s right, Ross

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in 1960, 1992, and 2010.

The name suggests the El Cortez, although McBride locates it south of Downtown.

In any event, the once swanky casino-hotel decays as choices made in and about it propel puzzled characters through secrets and regrets. The main characters plunge on because it is life’s only option, to cast behind them their compromised desires and troubled memories.

At the novel’s core is June Stein, a restless young woman who flees her hometown in the late 1950s for Las Vegas and Odell Dibb, her husband and partner in the El Capitan. Their mysterious backer is the only nod at Mob Vegas, and he appears to be behind the death of Odell’s old friend and the beating up and exile of Eddie Knox, the Midnight Club’s popular singer. June and Eddie get it on, and when June turns up pregnant with her

performs a one-man, super-condensed version of the original trilogy — episodes 4-6 in about an hour — with no whiz-bang to fall back on. No gleaming space-Nazi helmet, no John Williams score, absolutely none of the droids you’re looking for. Just a guy using his voice and body language to do justice to a galaxy far, far away: “It’s just me doing the impressions

second child, she’s pretty sure it’s Odell’s, but she’s wrong. And it is clear immediately because Eddie is black. Las Vegas is just awakening to its racism — McBride name-checks the Moulin Rouge — and a white casino owner’s wife just can’t have a black child, sorry.

Orphaned daughter Coral grows up in a black family, but learns in the book’s middle section that her mother, Augusta, actually took her in when she was just days old. Coral discovers almost accidentally that she can sing — it’s in the genes, right? — and does so in San Francisco,

and sound effects.”

Feel that? Millions of nerds crying out in confusion, why? Well, for the same reason Han agreed to fly Obi-Wan and Luke off Tatooine: He needed a job.

A theater graduate from the University of Victoria, Ross had discovered that acting jobs aren’t that numerous.

So he set out to create one.

It turned out to be pretty easy to pack those three

movies into an hour. Beneath its special effects, the story is pretty basic. Still, his take is definitely not, as they say, canon. “It’s more like an irreverent homage.”

He intends the barebones presentation to return viewers to the state of childhood wonder endemic to the movies themselves.

Your memory has to infill bits of narrative he had to elide, which it can do

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but comes home to Las Vegas to teach music in a portable trailer and to wrestle with who she is. “It was true that her heart could still skitter unevenly if she thought of the instant before Augusta said yes to keeping her,” McBride writes, reflecting on just one of the book’s dire choices and fates. June wonders: “And really, where was the moment that should have happened differently?

Which was the choice that had set all the others in motion? And would a different choice have been the right one?”

Another lamentable choice leads Honorata Navarro from her village in the Philippines to Manila, to Chicago, and eventually Las Vegas, where luck (and where else?) threads her fate into June’s and Coral’s. Honorata’s narrative also edges into that of Engracia Montoya, housekeeper at the El Capitan and native of another long-ago Spanish colony. Her undocumented husband has been deported, and her son has died after falling off a skateboard. Honorata’s relating of this defuses the climactic face-off.

A gambling-addict Roman Catholic priest occasionally drifts downstage as both witness and agent. Neither Father Burns nor McBride is preachy, but redemption in doing the right thing, the solace of accepting fate, perhaps, echoes through ’Round Midnight. McBride crafts passages of sterling imagery and diction, but can be self-consciously writerly, too. Mostly, though, she tells an honest Las Vegas tale about life and fate, with characters, not caricatures.

because the films have “impregnated our imaginations.”

“I can just make a reference and people will remember it.” Scott Dickensheets 7p, May 13, Clark County Library, free; 3p, May 14, Windmill Library, free, lvccld.org

LAUGH VEGAS Crapshoot Comedy Festival cofounder Paul Chamberlain talks about his audacious Downtown event

Three nights, two-dozen comedians, and several venues all within walking distance of each other on East Fremont. That’s the first Crapshoot Comedy Festival, May 18-20 and headlined by Dave Attell, Tig Notaro (pictured right), Bert Kreischer, and more.

Paul Chamberlain and his wife, Kacky, who’d previously put on comedy festivals and events in Maui, are behind it. Though they moved here from Maui last year, they’re not strangers — they lived here 2008-2013. A former tech-industry marketer and entertainment journalist, Paul Chamberlain partnered with Zappos, the El Cortez, and the city to get this off the ground. We picked his brain.

ON HAVING THE FESTIVAL DOWNTOWN I always had my eye on Downtown when we were here. We came back last year, and I saw how much things had changed, and I said, “It’s time.” So we leveraged our success from Maui and notified the industry: “Hey, we’re back, and we’re gonna do it in Vegas — but real Vegas, historical Vegas.”

ON THE APPEAL OF COMEDY I have always been in love with stand-up comedy. I regard it as the single greatest American art form. I would be so bold as to say jazz comes in second. There’s just something about stand-up, and the guts of just standing up with a mic and making drunk people laugh.

I’m sure you’ve experienced it, when you’re in a room and the comic is hot and the room is well behaved and completely focused at that center stage, it’s magical.

That’s what we want to try to reproduce.

ON WHETHER THE SPECTER OF THE SHORT-LIVED LAS VEGAS COMEDY FESTIVAL GIVES THEM PAUSE No. Actually, it was emboldening.

Because (that) was the anithesis of what we wanted to do. It was a festival only in name. There was nothing intimate. It was an embarrassment of riches with all the names — Seinfeld and Bill Burr and John Oliver and Wanda Sykes — it was just an amazing collection of talent. But a lot of people, both in the industry and in the general public, felt it was inaccessible.

We wanted to create that intimate club setting, where you would see four amazing

comics for 20 bucks, and it would be a true walking festival.

ON THE INTIMACY OF THIS FESTIVAL They’re performing 20 minutes. It’s not one of those things were you go to a show and it’s like, Okay, I’ve gotta invest an hour, I really don’t know who this comic is, but I’ve heard about him — no. You’ll be able to see four of them, and mix and match throughout.

ON GETTING HEADLINER DAVE ATTELL That was a real get. That was a vote of confidence from him, because we’re still the only festival he’s doing in 2017. We plan to treat that accordingly. It’s a very special thing to us, especially with his connection to Vegas.

ON THE SCOPE OF THE FESTIVAL It’s an audacious lineup, 27 comics, 32 shows — but it’s 6,000-8,000 tickets. Which, spread out over three nights, with different rooms, doesn’t mean 6,000-8,000 people.

You don’t get a second chance with festivals. The first year has to leave a crater. It has to get noticed. The whole concept of Let’s try it with five comedians and do a room and

try to build it from there doesn’t work. You have to come in with a splash.

ON SENSE OF PLACE One of the things that is really special is that we have these immensely popular comics coming, who have these great followings.

But then we’re doing a locals showcase. And the local showcase is gonna be in the Zappos chambers (at 440 seats, the festival’s largest venue). We want to create this worldclass, new destination, U.S. comedy festival that’s still heavily anchored in the area. Scott Dickensheets For a full schedule and ticket prices, see crapshootcomedyfestival.com

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ALL THINGS

people

PROFILE

Alexandra Arrieche

MUSIC DIRECTOR, HENDERSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

A

lexandra Arrieche was always the shy kid in school. “Never the center of attention,” she says. Not exactly the type of personality, she admits, that you would expect of someone taking center stage as conductor of the Henderson Symphony Orchestra.

But when she got the chance to spend her afternoons at a musical conservatory, a rare opportunity in her native Brazil, something magical happened.

“It was kind of like Harry Potter going to wizard school,” Arrieche says. At her personal Hogwarts, she began living a “double life.” She became a focal point, cobbling together mini orchestras on the fly to perform music she had composed. No matter that an early ensemble was a bit dominated by the 10 friends who all happened to play the flute — she was making music, making magic. She was at the center.

As a conductor and music director, that is still her role today.

“Conducting is not only moving your arms!” she jokes. Offstage, there are all the aspects that come with helping to run an orchestra, from organizing rehearsals to fundraising, and the technical demands that require a conductor to internalize every note played by every instrument.

In rehearsal, she likens her job to that of a theater director, with one key difference: Each musician has only a fraction of the score. Imagine each actor having a script with only their own lines. Everyone knows when the queen is coming and when the fight starts, she says, “but you don’t know who you’re talking to.

You don’t know if you’re happy, if you’re sad. You don’t have the

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context.” The conductor is the only one who has the whole story, and she has to tell it to the musicians before they can tell it to the audience.

Finally, there is the aspect Arrieche likens to painting or sculpture. She speaks of shaping the music, of light and dark, of drawing out particular colors.

But how does one get musicians to play in a different color, exactly?

“That’s the Harry Potter thing,” she says. That’s where the magic happens.

“It’s incredible how just the presence of a different person (changes) the sound of the orchestra,” she says.

“Conducting is so physical. It’s body language. … We have all different shapes and ways to move and express.

Just that can make all the difference.”

It’s worth noting that the

bodies doing the conducting are still predominantly male. Women conductors have faced the predictable prejudice — that they lack the proper gravitas, risk distracting their male musicians, or should restrict themselves to certain composers (Debussy yes, Stravinsky no). It wasn’t until 2007 that a woman conducted a major American orchestra, when one of Arrieche’s mentors, Marin Alsop, took up the baton for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

At just 35 years old, Arrieche is in the vanguard of a new generation of conductors. She is helping to expand the concept of who can create classical music, and wants to expand the concept of who can enjoy classical music, as well. As a Brazilian, she did not grow up within a classical tradition that can seem a bit “sacred” — exclusive, even intimidating.

“Music is for everybody,” she says.

“We should not have any walls.”

That’s a fitting sensibility for the Henderson Symphony Orchestra, which has all volunteer musicians and presents concerts for free.

Arrieche believes that music does not need to be intellectualized or revered. It should be experienced and enjoyed — a little less sacred, a bit more magical. Joseph Langdon The Henderson Symphony Orchestra will perform its season finale at 8p, May 12, in the Henderson Pavilion, 200 S. Green Valley Parkway, hendersonsymphony.org

P H OTO G R A P H Y LU C KY W E N Z E L

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23

ALL THINGS

open topic

SOCIETY issue of our own Desert Companion Family: “The technology industry is so critical to everything we do today as a society. We have to build a workforce to fill jobs that don’t exist yet, and that we don’t even know the technology for yet. So we as educators have to start preparing our children.” Similar sentiments crop up everywhere, from legislative and social conversations about the school system to, say, the Nevada System of Higher Education’s “New model for funding higher education in Nevada, which talks of “greater alignment with the state’s focus on economic development.”

And I think, well, hold on a minute. Build a workforce — is that what school is for?

By now you can see where this is going, and yes, I know we’ve got more pressing educational concerns than an overemphasis on STEM. America’s students are middle-of-the-pack in international scholastic achievement. Nevada seems forever barnacled to the bottom of every educational ranking — Education Week gave us a D grade in January — while the Clark County School District lately seems to be continually restructuring, deconstructing, or suing someone. And all this unfolds amid a combative sociopolitical climate that imparts a grim, apocalyptic urgency to pretty much everything.

All true. Nonetheless, this STEM thing drives deeper than it first seems and, in fact, poses a question crucial to education in the 21st century, perhaps the crucial question: What do we want schools, from With graduation season almost here, a few reflections K-12 to higher ed, to do? about STEM, the humanities and the whole point Build a workforce! might be your answer. of going to school anyway And, sure, I feel you, to a degree. In this

BY SCOTT DICKENSHEETS recession-singed, automated, offshoring era, it makes a certain kind of sense to aim students at high-tech jobs now that robots t’s not that I don’t get the value of STEM education. I do. As an adult who relies on are stealing the low-tech ones. At the same his kids to figure percentages and his grandkids to work the remote, I understand time, doesn’t that seem like such a narrow, all too well the downside of lacking proficiency in Science, Technology, Engineering, limiting chute to herd our kids into? Trunand (ugh) Math. Plus, what’s not cool about kids making robots? Soon enough, if it’s not dle dutifully toward your job, kids! It could already, technology will be to us what water is to the fish in that David Foster Wallace be that I just bunch up with old-fashioned parable, the one in which a fish asks, “What’s water?” That is, something truculence at the idea of so ubiquitous and necessary to life that it’s taken entirely for granted. So, in treating children as units DISCLOSURE My wife works for theory, I’m down with the STEM. of economic development, the school district, But then I see a quote like this, from an official with the Clark County School but, having put three sons though not in a District’s Community Partnership Program, which appeared last year in an through the school district,

Not the droids you’re looking for

I

capacity affected by this argument; she had no hand in this piece.

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I L LU S T R AT I O N B R E N T H O L M E S

and with a glurge of grandkids soon to follow, I still prefer the approach perhaps best articulated by Martin Luther King Jr.: “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.

Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.” Sounds like he’s talking about creating good citizens, not turning out worker drones.

Dismiss me as a crazy idealist — you wouldn’t be the first — but I’m certainly not alone in thinking this way. A few months ago, I talked to Jeremy Gregerson, head of the Meadows School, about what he termed “the vocation-ization of education in this country,” a growing sense among politicians, parents, some educators, and some students themselves that “if you can’t immediately apply it to a paying job, it must not be worth learning.” So where does that leave the softer disciplines of the humanities?

The embrace of STEM itself isn’t the problem, we agreed. He’s not advocating an either/or situation. Technological literacy is a good thing, as my granddaughter reminds me every time she hands back the remote. What’s worrisome is the fervor of that embrace, and the way it retasks the purpose of education as an economic driver, and the devaluation of the humanities that sometimes goes with it. Consider this New York Times headline from last year: “A rising call to promote STEM education and cut liberal arts funding.”

Yet, an education rich in humanities is, or should be, every bit as vital to a student’s future — and ours. “Computer science is important, and coding is important,” Gregerson says, “but without adding creativity, and empathy, and an understanding of human communication, coding and computer science don’t really get you very far.” As one online commenter put it, “We’re investing so much into developing the right side of our brains, we’re forgetting that it’s only half of what we have to work with.”

Because this is a philosophical argument, I brought this up to a philosopher.

“What is the function of education?” wondered Bill Ramsey, a UNLV philosophy professor, when I asked him about it. It’s misguided to frame going to school or col-

lege primarily in workforce terms, he says.

“We should be thinking about what kind of citizens we want to live next door to.”

Still, let’s look at it in workforce terms for a minute. Because it’s not like the liberal arts are antithetical to the high-tech workplace, no matter how many jokes you crack about the job prospects of philosophy majors. (“You gonna think for a living, har har har!”)

In December, David Kalt, founder of Reverb.com, an online marketplace, wrote a blog post for The Wall Street Journal, asserting that workers with liberal arts degrees are “by far the sharpest, best-performing software designers and technology leaders.” Why? Liberal arts majors have been encouraged in critical thinking, as Gregerson and Ramsey both pointed out.

“Critical thinkers can accomplish anything,” Kalt says. (Ramsey: “I’d be willing to bet you can apply a philosophy degree to a lot more careers than you can a mathematics degree.”) I’ve seen plenty of similar commentaries lately.

Kalt concludes, “I’m suggesting that if more tech hires held a philosophy or English degree with some programming on the side, we might in the end create better leaders in technology and life.”

I particularly like the way he put technology and life on equal footing. This is where we bend back to the main point, what I think is the overlooked thing in our rush to embrace STEM for the sake of Nevada’s economic future: As much as a good job, a good society is a desirable educational goal, and that will ultimately require ever more thoughtful, multidimensional graduates. Because while technology may be the water we live in, capitalism is still the fishbowl that contains it. And capitalism isn’t all that concerned about happy outcomes for the fish. It cares about production, consumption, and profits (mostly for the sharks).

Sure, prosperity can address some of our problems, but it can’t solve nearly all of them. Look around our strife-riven, usversus-them, anger-filled trollscape, and tell me we couldn’t use waves of graduates clomping offstage, diplomas or degrees in hand, who’ve been groomed to be creative, engaged citizens as well as drones.

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25

FIELD NOTES

DOWNTOWN BLUES A prostitute, a fleeing perp, and hard-earned street smarts — on patrol with the Downtown command B Y D A N H E R NA N D E Z sight. The lot separating us is surrounded by fencing — every 10 feet, fliers state “We Buy Houses / Fast Cash.” The girl is heading toward a Lowe’s parking lot. The home-improvement store has “no-trespassing” signs posted specifically to allow cops to question suspicious loiterers; “Lowe’s hoes” is how some refer to them.

We drive there in the police SUV and, sure enough, find her in the parking lot.

Her eyes are half shut, tattoos blot her arms and neck, she’s 23 years old, and her name is not Cherish, but it’s a name like that — one meaning “beloved” and suggesting the opposite of a person used for an hour in a dingy flophouse.

L

F

rom his car, Metro officer Aaron Perez focuses his binoculars on a young woman standing by a white picket fence outside the Lamplighter Motel. It’s a cold day, yet she’s wearing short shorts. Between her and us is a vacant lot — the last piece of real estate on East Fremont before the city jurisdiction ends. Where she’s standing, people arrested for nonviolent crimes such as prostitution rarely go to jail due to overcrowding in the Clark County penal system. Perez tells me that the pimps and drug dealers Downtown know that, and it’s why they choose the Lamplighter.

“It’s a daily-weekly, like a Siegel Suites. In the 12 years that I’ve been here, we get a lot of people who rent these rooms just to sell dope out of them for a week. You have pimps shack up there with their girls. Sometimes, it’s as bad as seven or eight girls on that corner, getting in and out of cars.”

This girl is alone, and boards have gone up in the some of the Lamplighter’s windows.

Metro is using civil forfeiture laws to “lean on” motels proven to cater to illicit activity.

The Safari Motel was recently shuttered, and the Lamplighter will go dark soon, too.

Perez is waiting to see if she “connects” with someone. But the girl steps out of

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* * * * *

ater on, I ask Perez, “Do you know how I got to do this?” At this point we’re several hours into his shift and have already talked about work, family, relationships, life in Las Vegas, crime and punishment. Cops do so much car time alone that when they can talk, they talk. I’m the same way. But why I wanted to do a police ridealong is yet to come up.

“The captain said you wrote some article?”

We’re driving down Charleston. Perez has just shared that last night, on this street, he stopped a man walking toward a convenience store with a BB gun in his pocket. A background check revealed prior convictions for armed robbery — specifically for stickups at convenience stores. As he recalled it, Perez told the guy, “You haven’t done anything illegal, yet. Don’t go doing what I think you were about to do.” I asked why he’d stopped the guy, and Perez said, “Jaywalking.”

“Yeah, I wrote an article.”

In the January issue of Desert Companion, I shared a story about being stopped and frisked after crossing Las Vegas Boulevard against a “don’t walk” signal. The jaywalking tale included comment from a Metro spokesman, but more extensive

I L LU ST R AT I O N B R E N T H O L M E S

Live Orchestral Screening

The Loves of

analysis came from a criminologist who said automatic body searches during routine stops do more harm than good.

They rarely land weapons and erode public trust.

Now, I wondered, was I being set up on this ride-along?

After “Stopped and Frisked” came out, I’d been contacted by Capt. Andrew Walsh, the top cop in the Downtown Area Command. He invited me to coffee in the spirit of listening to critics and fostering community relations. We met at PublicUs, where he admitted that officers (and in particular younger officers) will sometimes over-enforce their orders. A call to curb pedestrian fatalities had resulted in a wave of jaywalking tickets, yet giving warnings the way Perez did on Charleston can just as well suffice to prevent those deaths. Knowing when to request a body search is another part of the job that takes some experience, Walsh said.

Given that my jaywalking stop took up almost 30 minutes of two officers’ time, it was obviously not the wisest use of police resources. This ride-along was arranged as a gesture of transparency, but also, I suspect, so that I might see what smart policing looks like.

After all, I’m not cruising around with one of the department’s many rookie cops. Metro’s current hiring spree has brought on many officers in their early 20s for whom this is a first job. Perez, on the other hand, is a 13-year veteran of the force who previously worked for sheriff departments in L.A. County and Tooele, Utah, in addition to being a Marine Corps veteran of the war in Iraq.

He’s 41, burly, and quick-witted. He has two kids, a Game of Thrones ringtone on his cell phone, and a keenness to joke that his two statistical divorces are out of the way — one for the military service and another for his police career.

During this shift, we respond to a domestic call in which the alleged aggressor is locked out of her apartment, weeping, barefoot and bleeding from the hand while dressed in nothing but a nightgown. In come reports of gunfire. We speed toward those with the windows down to better hear if shots ring out. And we catch the aftermath of a hit and run.

The driver is several blocks away from the original accident and staggering from

Pharaoh

The Henderson Symphony Orchestra performs one of the best film scores to a screening of this 1922 German historical classic. Follow the story of Pharaoh Amenes as King Samlak offers his daughter’s hand in marriage as a proposal of alliance. Witness a story of love and war under the summer stars with a film billed as having one of the best original film scores of the silent era.

Friday, June 9 | 8pm Henderson Pavilion | 200 S. Green Valley Pkwy.

Tickets start at $15

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27

FIELD NOTES his wrecked car in a drunken fugue state.

But for this article, I want to focus on a stop outside the Lowe’s on East Fremont.

M

* * * * *

ost shoppers ignore the girl in front of the police SUV. Perez asks if she has any priors, and she mutters, “Drug trafficking.” Back in the car as he does a background check, Perez tells me, “A lot of these girls are just working for their next hit.” The computer lights up with recent charges for solicitation, but there are apparently “way more” narcotics arrests.

“The fact that she’s out working the streets as a prostitute to me means she’s not a dope dealer. I’d almost be willing to bet my entire paycheck tomorrow that every dope charge she has was for the man she held the dope for when they got stopped. That’s what they do — these pimps don’t care about these girls.

They care about how much money these girls make, and that’s it. When they get stopped, if he has a gun and a bunch of dope on him, he’ll give it to her. Nine times out of 10 she’ll get pinched for it, and he’ll get off scot-free.”

A man in a baggy tracksuit walks up to us from the parking lot’s backside, claiming to be her boyfriend. He has bloodshot eyes. “Okay, but I need you to wait over there,” Perez says, pointing to a planter 30 feet away. “Keep going. Further. Further ...” The man grudgingly walks away.

“Over by that tree. There you go.”

Cherish barely acknowledges her boyfriend’s arrival. If anything, she seems annoyed. Back in the car, Perez tells me, “Most likely this guy’s her pimp. In street-level prostitution, the girl will walk around — he’ll be somewhere nearby so he can see what car she gets into — and then when she comes back, he’ll take all the money that she earned in case she gets

arrested. But it’s hard to get him on anything because he doesn’t engage in the act.”

Perez is writing her a warning citation: loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution. The guy watches us shiftily, his hands in his pockets. Then he walks toward us again, muttering something about “a question.” Perez steps out. “Hey, man, I told you to wait over there!” Pretty soon, Perez is searching the guy. He pulls a 9mm magazine from the man’s front pocket and reaches for handcuffs, but the guy jerks free, breaking into a sprint.

Perez leaps after him. I see them running through the parking lot and hear Perez’s voice over the police scanner breathlessly calling it in. The guy hops in a white Volvo — Perez has his hand on his holster, concerned, he tells me later, that the guy will drive at him or shoot.

Perez yells the license plate number over his radio as the Volvo peels off.

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Another set of tires squeal — an undercover cop at the other end of the lot fishtailing after the Volvo. Perez jumps in his car to join in the pursuit, leaving Cherish behind. “The crime at this point is obstruction,” he radios in. “The guy wouldn’t leave my stop.” We zigzag through traffic, stop when we lose him, then receive a tip from an oncoming motorist that a white car just sped onto the next street, which leads to a housing development. There, we meet up with the undercover unit, but the Volvo has disappeared.

“God, that pisses me off!” Perez says.

“It worried me that he wouldn’t leave my stop, and now I know why. He’s probably got a gun in his pocket.” We’re driving back to the Lowe’s parking lot to see if the guy is picking up Cherish. “Here’s the thing. If that guy’s gonna walk up to us like that, who else is he gonna walk up to? That guy is not gonna think twice before robbing that store, or robbing this guy on the corner, or robbing this family walking to the laundromat.”

The 9mm magazine has only two rounds in it, but the gun it belongs to probably has a bullet in the chamber.

“I just wish I would’ve pulled the gun out. But at least he didn’t, either. Anytime I can avoid a shootout with someone, I’m happy. My kids like me coming home, for some reason.”

P

* * * * *

erez has been shot at nine times during his police career. Finding ammo on the guy obviously put him into alarm mode. But even if he’d found the gun, that in itself wouldn’t justify an arrest in Nevada. Perez tried to put handcuffs, or “hooks,” on the man so he could do a background check; convicted felons are among the few Las Vegans barred from possessing firearms. But fleeing to his car pretty much negated the chance for an arrest.

Metro has a policy against car chases for anything less than a violent crime or drunk driving. Shortly after Perez called in the pursuit, he and an officer in the unmarked car were told to stand down.

Apparently, what I saw was them holding back.

And there lies the tension between what police see and feel on the street, and what the law and department policy will allow. From the beat cop purview, a

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29

FIELD NOTES potentially armed, aggressive pimp just fled a possible jail sentence. The cop wants to see the thing through. But from a legal standpoint, a guy interrupted a loitering stop and ran to his car, and that’s not worth zipping through city streets for.

I had asked Captain Walsh what the hardest thing about policing Las Vegas is, and without hesitation he mentioned the prevalence of guns combined with loose firearm laws.

In 2015, Governor Brian Sandoval signed a bill overturning handgun registration requirements in Clark County.

Many of the guns that criminals use are acquired through burglaries, but since Metro’s gun registry has been purged and eliminated, it’s difficult to prove the weapons were stolen unless the original owner kept the weapon’s serial number and provided it during a robbery report — a rare occurrence, I’m told.

“There’s a story I’ll tell you,” Walsh

said. “We arm our officers with intelligence: These are the bad guys, these are their pictures, this is what they’ve been arrested for, this is who’s wanted. Right?

Just a ton of stuff so that when they go out, they’re focused. You, Mr. Law Abiding Citizen, are not our customer. And, lo and behold, there’s Joe the Criminal out driving a car. We stop him. He’s a documented member of one of these crews that we know are shooting up houses and shooting at each other. They’re involved in a lot of violent crime. Inside that car we find a loaded .45 caliber handgun. Inside that car we also find graffiti implements — magic markers. So what do you think he goes to jail for?

“The gun is not required to be registered anymore. It’s not reported stolen.

He doesn’t go to jail for anything related that firearm — he goes to jail for having a f**king magic marker. The pen is deadlier than the gun.

“That’s a huge challenge for us. The gun is not illegal in his car, even though I can give you tons of cases this crew is involved in over the last 24 months that have touched our entire city. These are the things that drain the resources of the police department and change neighborhoods. Before long, this guy is involved in some type of horrific event. He’s either dead, he kills somebody, or he kills an innocent bystander. And when we look back we think, ‘Well, gee, we did stop him one time before. Where was the opportunity to charge him with something substantial?’”

* * * * *

T

he Volvo hasn’t returned to the Lowe’s, and Cherish is gone. Perez retraces his steps to see if the guy dropped anything in the lot. He also watches his body-camera footage to relay a better physical description of the guy to

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A Mother’s Day Tradition Without hesitation, Captain Walsh says the hardest thing about policing Las Vegas is the prevalence of guns combined with loose firearm laws. the other patrol units, and it only takes a few minutes for one of them to find Cherish in the neighborhood that Perez uses to spy on the Lamplighter. We drive there.

“What’s up, Cherish?” Perez says.

“You wanna go home or you wanna go to jail?”

She wants to go home.

“You do? Because I wanna take your ass to jail. Where’s your boy at?”

She doesn’t know. There are four patrol cars guarding this quiet residential corner. Five officers, all male.

“Where does he live?” She says Sahara and “that way,” and that’s it. “What’s his name?” She calls him Ross, but they just met this morning, she says, so she doesn’t know his last name. “Did you choose-up with him or is he your boyfriend?” Perez asks — meaning, are they a couple or do they work together? She won’t say. “Does he got a Facebook?” She’s not sure. “What’s his phone number?” She doesn’t have it.

She doesn’t have a cell phone, anyway, but she does have a question: Why was there an undercover cop watching them in the Lowe’s parking lot? I wondered that myself. Turns out it was Perez’s friend who showed up as a kind of preemptive backup since he’s notorious for “getting into shit” — his own words.

There is talk of putting Cherish in jail to bait the guy into picking her up. But she hasn’t done anything to merit that, so eventually they let her go. No jacket, no cell phone, nothing but a police citation, and a detective’s phone number in her pocket, she walks off under the evening light.

“She ain’t giving him up,” Perez tells me.

Since she didn’t cooperate, Cherish’s misdemeanor warning was escalated into a fine that can only be voided if she provides

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FIELD NOTES information on the man. “That’s daddy, bro — she ain’t giving up daddy. Eventually he would get out of jail, and he knows where she’s at. She ain’t risking her life.”

* * * * *

T

here are 70,000 residents in the nine square miles policed by the Downtown Area Command. Between the I-15 and Mojave, Sahara to the south and Owens to the north—that’s the zone, and within it is one more place Perez can look for the guy. The Volvo’s license plate number was registered by a 50-year-old woman who lives one mile away, in an apartment complex near Charleston and the 95. As we drive there, Perez reflects on the moment when the guy walked up to us a second time. The brazenness of it still amazes him.

“Things escalate like that in an instant. Had he turned around with a gun in his hand, I would have had about half a second to decide, am I shooting him or not? You don’t have time to take factors in, which kind of sucks. As quick as that guy took off running is about how fast we get into shootings around here.”

I’m grateful to have ridden with a cop who didn’t agitate the situation further by pulling his gun. As the event unfolded, I had wondered what the best course of action was for myself. Duck? Get out and run? Fortunately, sitting in frozen panic was fine.

“Now you know why you had to sign a waiver,” Perez says.

We turn in to a cul-de-sac. It’s a row of two-story stucco apartment buildings with cracked walls, faded paint, splintered trim, and not a tree or plot of grass in sight. Perez uses the driver-side spotlight to check out cars and building numbers, alerting some of the tenants that a cop has arrived. Silhouettes fill windows and peek from behind curtains. A few people go out to the stairway landings to watch. The Volvo isn’t here. But Perez will still knock on its owner’s door.

First, he shows me the shotgun release button, “just in case you need to defend yourself.” I’m waiting in the SUV, next to the 12 gauge that I don’t know how, and certainly don’t want, to use.

Something about it recalls a thing Walsh had said about the job’s extreme learning curve. I see Perez deal with

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potentially violent encounters, play both the good cop and bad cop during interrogations, and, later on, mediate a domestic dispute that requires calming down a fiercely angry woman who kicked out her partner, yet refused to allow the woman to take luggage, or a jacket, or even shoes to the women’s shelter where she’ll stay the night.

Perez is 41. I wonder how this all looks when a 22-year-old handles those stops.

“A lot of police officers get hired between the ages of 21 and 25,” Walsh had said. “Think about this theoretically. If I get a 22- or 23-year-old police officer assigned to my area command, they’ll have to deal with issues like prostitution, drugs, gangs — the expectations for that young officer will be that he or she is a gang-intervention expert, a detective, a social worker. He’ll be a person who can deal with someone who is mentally ill and in a crisis. He’ll be able to walk into your home or mine and take charge of any situation — and a lot of times these situations may become violent in a heartbeat. We really have put a lot of pressure on police agencies to be the catch-all in society. We also want them to be highly educated, we want them to be compassionate, we want them to know and understand diverse cultures that they are going to come across, and for good reason, because we don’t want to offend people. You got all this in the brain of a person who’s 23 years old. It’s definitely challenging.”

Perez talked to an older couple at the residence who claimed not to know the Volvo’s owner. They’ve lived at the address for almost two years, and the car was registered there last May, so he suspects they’re protecting someone. Maybe they got a warning call, he posits. “Unless these people just picked a bunk address to register the car to, which I doubt.

“Chances are they’re family,” Perez says. He saw a resemblance and believes the people he just met were the guy’s parents. “For the most part, family’s not going to hang family out to dry.

I understand that. Whether he’s a criminal or not, he’s still your family. It is what it is.”

He speeds up behind every white Volvo we see for the rest of the night.

“We’ll get him eventually,” he says.

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TRAVEL

West world: The Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings offers modern amenities with a backdrop of Wild West history.

DRUNK HISTORY Long after their mining boomtowns went bust, these rural bars still serve brews and burgers — and a hair-raising ghost story or two B Y D AV E C L A R K

W

hether you’re into high-concept mixology, fine wine or cheap suds, Vegas is a worthy drinking town. But you can hit your favorite watering hole only so many times before you start to miss a certain sense of adventure.

Luckily, there’s plenty to be had at one of Nevada’s many old boomtown bars. Their mining glory days may be well behind them, but they still serve cold beer, juicy burgers, and great atmosphere.

PIONEER SALOON

Where stargazers, history-lovers, and ghost-hunters become good friends The Pioneer Saloon is perhaps the state’s most notable haunt in more ways than one. For starters, the 103-year-old saloon has a killer atmosphere, enhanced by the bullet holes pockmarking the walls — the result of an infamous card game gone fatally bad. In fact, the coroner’s report

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from 1915 hangs next to the punctures.

According to owner Noel Sheckells, the shooting was ruled a justifiable homicide

by Goodsprings’ justice system, since card shark Paul Coski was caught cheating. Just about every Wild West story you can conjure likely happened here.

“It was a rip-roaring town with up to 8,000 miners at one time,” Sheckells says.

Goodsprings was the No. 1 lead-producing area during World War I, frenetically delivering materials for bullets. At one time, Sheckells says, an entrepreneur supplied more than 200 prostitutes to the workers, which proved another source of town friction: A scrap over the affections of a working girl spurred another saloon death. Today, the atmosphere in one of the oldest stamped-tin structures in the U.S. is much more amiable, starting with Sheckells himself.

“It’s the friendliest place on earth,” he says. “People come in not knowing each other, and by the time you leave, you have

more friends than you know what to do with. It’s magical.”

The saloon had cast a spell on Sheckells when he first ventured inside in 1991. Long fascinated by its history, he snapped up the property in 2006. Since then, he says, he’s invested more than $2 million in preserving the building, and has launched a full-service restaurant, gift shop, and expansive outdoor area with fire pits. Karaoke (on Friday), live music, keg parties, haunted lock-ins, and astronomy nights (with 18 commercial telescopes) fill the calendar. However, Sheckells’ favorite is Thursday, which is fine dining night (complete with acoustic music) in the Clark Gable-Carole Lombard Room. It is bedecked in memorabilia from the Hollywood power couple’s 1940s heyday. Gable left his own mark on the saloon: His cigarettes burned holes in the bar in 1942 as he anxiously waited three days for word of the fate of Lombard, whose plane had crashed on nearby Mount Potosi.

Film buffs, history lovers, bikers and ghost hunters from around the world are drawn to Goodsprings, whose population has shriveled to just 200. It’s hosted movie shoots, truck commercials, and, perhaps the oddest, a gathering for Swatch aficionados. (Every year, the company takes its biggest spenders to an exotic lo-

P H OTO G R A P H Y J E N N A D O S C H

The LOVE The LOVE story stor

cale, one year choosing Pioneer Saloon.)

Sheckells’ sons have also enjoyed the saloon’s ever-growing notoriety: One now runs the bar, and the other is a chef who directs the restaurant. Along with the familial atmosphere, Sheckells most enjoys entertaining travelers from around the world who discover this rough-cut gem of Nevada mining history. “All the people I get to meet is fantastic,” he said.

“I love to engage with people and give them a free tour.”

Plus, he’s committed to preserving Pioneer Saloon’s history as the oldest continually operating saloon and restaurant in Clark County and, perhaps, the state.

Sheckells even refused entreaties from the show “Bar Rescue” to revamp the building, which was originally ordered and shipped via train from Sears, Roebuck & Co. For Sheckells, the past is his present to patrons.

“It’s one of Southern Nevada’s nicest treasures,” he says. “It’s something that should be here for a long time. The younger generation gets to come and experience the Old West.”

(In Goodsprings, 310 NV 161, 702-8749362, pioneersaloon.info)

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HAPPY BURRO CHILI & BEER

This old Beatty haunt has a spicy secret While a taste of Wild West lore is the most celebrated aspect of the Pioneer Saloon, Happy Burro has garnered its fame from its storied, award-winning chili. Conveniently situated outside of Death Valley (and the ghost town of Rhyolite), Happy Burro Chili & Beer is

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TRAVEL

a must-stop for famished hikers. It also serves as a daily gathering place for some of the most welcoming residents of Beatty (population 1,000). Owners Patti and Fred Summers had been competition chili cooks looking to retire, when they eyed a former mining district office dating to 1906. Upon moving from California, they promptly stripped the inside to its original appearance, while living in the former hotel they purchased next door. “My husband is quite good at building things,” Patti Summers says.

(That includes the one-of-a kind urinal in the men’s restroom, which flushes via actual motorcycle handle bars.)

While the restaurant is rather simple inside (four barstools and a table), the Summers found that mastering the art of chili can be a complex science. “It took me a year to come up with a recipe that I like,” says Summers, who’s been cooking chili for nearly 25 years.

Their passion was first stirred when Fred entered a small cookoff where he met an official from the International Chili Society. Since then, they’ve satisfied their craving for competition, crisscrossing the globe with their chili. After

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Vintage spirits: Left years of traveling, they’ve Pioche, about two and a top and bottom, the settled comfortably into half hours northeast of Happy Burro in Beatty the small-town charms of Las Vegas. In fact, when is known for its chili; Beatty. They’ve also grown checking in, you’re adtop and right, Pioche’s fond of “Sarah,” a benevovised to tell the front desk historic Overland Holent ghost they share their if you are looking for a tel & Saloon; bottom historic home with. Their “ghost-free stay.” That’s left and right, Bonnie introduction was swift: “I because Pioche quickly Springs Ranch offers was falling one day, then all earned a reputation as history, live music and of a sudden I had a hand on one of the most cutthroat plenty of emus to pet. my arm to steady me and towns in the Old West: hold me up,” Summers says. The tightAccording to local lore, 72 men were knit community they’ve become a part killed in gunfights before the town’s of plays an equally supportive role. “I first natural death occurred. have a lot of friends who come over, One of the men murdered was the have a beer and visit,” Summers says. great-grandfather of retired bartender “There’s a lot of camaraderie between Jim Kelly, who is also a noted local hiseverybody.” (In Beatty, 100 W. Main St., torian. “There were almost 100 saloons 775-553-9099) here during its heyday, and almost as many houses of ill repute,” he says.

Silver was discovered in Pioche in OVERLAND HOTEL & SALOON 1864; the deposit ranked second only Steeped in history, this Old Nevada to the Comstock Lode. The populahotel and saloon attracts spirited tion then swelled to more than 10,000, company peaking in the 1870s. The town’s fortunes fluctuated throughout the years, If you’re seeking something truly otheraccording to Kelly, as the area became worldly, you’d be hard-pressed to saddle the second-largest producer of zinc and up somewhere more steeped in spirits lead during World War II. (Now, Pioche than the Overland Hotel & Saloon in

only boasts roughly 700 residents.) Kelly moved to Pioche from Las Vegas 15 years ago. It was a homecoming of sorts, with two of his great-grandparents hailing from Pioche. He was giving tours at the town’s famed million-dollar courthouse (built in 1871 and not paid off till 1936) when he was called to fill in at the saloon. “I had never bartended before in my life,” he says.

But he poured himself into the job and the history of the Overland, which was erected in the early 1900s, but succumbed to fire in 1947 and was rebuilt.

Highlights of today’s incarnation include 12 themed hotel rooms (from Anasazi to Victorian) along with the antique, three-part bar. Portions of it were shipped from McGill and the Mt. Wilson Ranch, while one section originating from San Francisco dates from the 1850s. Also still standing on the property is an old miner’s rock house from the 19th century. That relic is a reminder that the town’s Wild West ways are now permanently retired, as are many of the saloon’s patrons. “There’s a gathering of guzzling geezers almost everyday, and I’m one of them,” Kelly says.

(In Pioche, 662 Main St., 775-9625895, overlandhotelnv.com) BONNIE SPRINGS RANCH

The drama of the Old West lives on (also, feel free to pet the llamas) While many decaying desert towns mine their boom-and-bust history, Bonnie Springs’ attractions are of a more recent vintage. Bonnie Levinson bought the property near Red Rock in 1952, when it comprised a restaurant, bar, and small house with no electricity. In 1974, she and her husband opened

Old Nevada, a mock1880s Wild West town featuring staged hangings, gunfights, and melodramas. Later they expanded to include a 50-room motel as well as a petting zoo with more than 20 species of animals, including more than 70 peacocks, a lynx, and an emu. And those sights include the panorama of Red Rock Canyon, towering above the town, as well as a night sky that’s light years away from the obscuring Vegas haze. Ensconced in its sylvan surroundings, the ranch offers horse rides and rock climbing, while the saloon showcases karaoke on Fridays and live music on Saturdays. (That’s not to mention the newest attraction, Zombie Paintball Express, held the last Saturday of the month, where visitors duel zombies from the confines of a bus.)

Beneath the modern amenities, however, are layers of history. “That’s due to the fact that this place used to be a stopover for wagon trains going through the Old Spanish Trail,” explains events manager Tim Harrison. “They would resupply themselves here with water.”

Plus, a Paiute Indian burial ground is nearby. Often, Harrison is the last one to depart the ranch following conventions, weddings, and other special events, which can make for eerie experiences.

“There’s a little girl by the school house, several apparitions at the opera house,” he says. “You hear all kinds of stuff.”

Nods to the area’s history can be also be found in the museums, one featuring 1800s-era wax figures and the other housing turn-of-the century artifacts.

The modern history continues as well with two of Levinson’s children running the ranch. Few could have envisioned what it was to become when Bonnie was fortuitously shown the property after arriving in town to sell her California-bred turkeys.

Today her dream of a family-friendly Western town keeps one boot planted proudly in the past, even though it’s just a few paces from Las Vegas. “You can’t get that unique character in many places,” Harrison says.

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SOCIETY

IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE Sex trafficking takes place every day just under the surface of ‘normal’ life — but people like activist Adia Lancaster work to make it less normal B Y E R I C A V I TA L - L A Z A R E

A

sk Adia Lancaster what human trafficking looks like, and she will tell you: It looks like you and it looks like me. “Gated community. Henderson. Summerlin.

Middle-class family. It doesn’t matter. It can happen to anybody. You have to accept that and take proper precautions.”

She will go on further to say human trafficking looks like prostitution. It looks like a step into a parallel universe populated by “Romeo” and “gorilla” pimps

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(who coerce by seduction or by force, respectively) operating below the surface of normalcy in a society programmed to excuse itself and turn the other way.

“Las Vegas is such a unique city,” says Lancaster, 38, project director of New Hope Foundation International (NHFI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to navigating survivors to services and educating the public. “Our numbers keep increasing for the visitors we get each year.

We’re having conventions every weekend.

We have celebrities who are performing every night here, and we have fights that are going on, and we’re probably going to have the Raiders team. That brings an influx — a demand — and people think this is the adult playground. Whatever happens here, stays here. You can call this number and get a girl to your door. But guess what?

These escorts also have pimps. The girls in the strip club, these girls, often, their pimps are right there. Those massage parlors — those girls are being trafficked. So it’s like how do we fight this mindset of, ‘Come, whatever you want, you can have.

We allow it.’”

Lancaster hopes to combat the issue and the mindset through public awareness.

Sunday mornings often find her in local churches delivering talks on human trafficking to wide-eyed congregants, after having spent Saturday night working outreach on Fremont Street with NHFI staff and volunteers, handing out brochures to tourists, and engaging with locals.

P H OTO G R A P H Y AA R O N M AY E S

It was on one of those evenings, late last year, that NHFI volunteers were approached by a young woman on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Fremont. She said she wanted to get out.

NHFI volunteers took her to Safe Nest that night and the next day bought the young woman a bus ticket back home to California. “She saw us out there many times before,” Lancaster says, “and when she found the opportunity, she seized it.” Lancaster counts that evening as a victory in the fight against those who would exploit another human being as a disposable commodity in our streets and in our homes, in adult video chat rooms and Strip hotels, and also in the battle against a culture of shame and judgment that can look at the shadowed figures tottering on high heels on Fremont Street, or biding their time in lounges along the Strip, and “make the assumption that this condition of slavery is in any way voluntary.”

“Know that that girl right there, the one you’re pointing to, she’s 13 years old and she has a pimp, and she is forced to do that. She has to make a thousand dollars that night before she can come home and sleep or eat. That’s the reality. And the reality is that the youngest girl Metro has found out there (in 2015),” Lancaster says, “was 11 years old.”

There is something both disconcerting and comforting in sitting across from Adia Lancaster in New Hope’s Downtown Las Vegas Boulevard offices. She is at once the most calming presence you will ever encounter and the most impassioned.

There is something tastefully ascetic and disciplined in her bearing, which may have come from a father who was a longtime educator, a Marine, and a one-time seminarian. Hair pulled back from the high bones of her face, fitted jacket contrasting with pleated slacks in slate, she is uniformed, and when she says it’s the aim of organizations like New Hope and sister programs Purple WINGS, Rape Crisis Center, Salvation Army SEEDS of Hope, and Center 4 Peace/Embracing Project to bring awareness and end trafficking, you know she possesses the will and the patience to see it through. “When I connect with survivors, it is more about: How can

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SOCIETY we support you? What can the community do? And how can we share your story, your experience in a way that is sensitive, trauma-informed; getting their wisdom.”

In keeping with United Nations protocols, the NHFI website defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”

“It doesn’t matter if we legalize prostitution,” Lancaster says, thinking of the 15 counties in Nevada where prostitution is legal, and brothels like the Moonlight Bunny Ranch and Sheri’s Ranch Brothel have operated legally since 1971. “In many ways it’s like putting out a welcome mat for trafficking to flourish,” Lancaster says. “It’s really fighting that mindset, and we have to say, ‘No, we’re not going to call this prostitution,’ because there is no such thing. A child never grows up saying, ‘I want to do this. I want to be a prostitute.’ They are sex trafficking victims.

And when we look at that 11-year-old, we want to use the term the commercially coerced, sexually exploited child because they are victims of this atrocity.”

Lancaster’s own childhood was an uncommonly balanced one. Born in California to an African-American father who firmly believed in education, and a deeply involved mother from the Philippines, she and her sister were raised in a home filled with love and discipline, and it shows. Lancaster graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in human development, and pursued nonprofit work out of a desire to help the vulnerable and the voiceless.

She says that while she does not have a story of direct victimization, what she has is a belief that security, fresh opportunity and a restoration of self is a right we should all hope to attain for men and women who have been pushed outside of safety, pushed outside of community and “pushed outside of the possession of their own bodies.”

New Hope Foundation International

“It doesn’t matter if we legalize prostitution,” Lancaster says. “In many ways it’s like putting out a welcome mat for trafficking to flourish. ... A child never grows up saying, ‘I want to do this.’” began as an organization called Congo Justice in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Japanese filmmaker Richard Fujita was living in L.A. and watching the horrors unfold on the evening news. “I wondered what the U.N. could do to stop it and make sure it did not happen again, then I wondered what I could do.” Fujita’s first efforts were in funding farming and sustainability in the Congo. It was during this time that he noticed the ways in which sex was weaponized, in the form of exploitation and rape, by one village against another. After he moved to Las Vegas in 2010, his work continued. It also became clear that the global issue had a parallel closer to home. “In Las Vegas you could see the same type of human trafficking, using sex for the benefit of destroying life.” The green hills and carnage of east Africa may seem far from our Southern Nevadan experience, but Adia, along with Fujita, felt it was all a circle, an open loop of shared cause, shared circumstance.

“At the time there was a bill that Obama had passed that became a law,” recalls Lancaster. “We were getting signatures to D.C. to implement a portion of the law that says our allies like Rwanda and Uganda have a part to play in stopping exploitation in the Congo.” The Democratic Republic of Congo Relief, Security and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006 was co-sponsored by Senator Hillary Clinton, and it called for a halt to sexual violence perpetrated against women and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The bill goes on to recommend that the secretary of state withhold assistance — the appropriated $52 million for fiscal year 2006 — if the secretary determines that the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not making sufficient progress toward accomplishing the policy objectives.

Lancaster and other victims’ rights advocates sent forward a petition, entitled Petition 1152 — the number of women in the Congo who were victims

of rape each day — that called for then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to act on the law and withhold funds. It was during an event for Congo Justice in March 2012 at UNLV that Lancaster introduced the topic of sexual violence not only in the Congo, but in our global community. “We bridged what is happening locally with sexual violence and human trafficking, and we had survivors speak, and a former vice detective and politicians. We realized it was important.”

Congo Justice became the New Hope International Foundation, and in 2013 the organization produced the documentary Surviving Sin City: The Power Lies in a People United. The 30-minute film weaves a seamless tapestry of survivor testimonials with community leaders, such as Lieutenant Karen Hughes of Metro’s vice and narcotics division, Alexis Kennedy of UNLV’s criminal justice department, Assemblyman John Hambrick, and Chris Chapel, lead pastor of Casa de Luz. As sexualized violence had become normalized in Congo, many of us were, and continue to be, unaware of how normalized a certain brand of exploitation and accompanying violence has become in our own backyards. “That’s still a very challenging thing,” Lancaster says, regarding the ways we see and yet refuse to see it. “A lot of our mass media desensitizes us to objectifying women, violence against women and the masculinizing of our young boys. We’re fighting against what’s being portrayed out there.”

Perception is everything when it comes to reframing prostitution as human trafficking in the public mind. Daniele Dreitzer of the Rape Crisis Center sees the misjudgment in the judgment we assign. Like Lancaster, Dreitzer understands the fragile thread of humanity that stretches between the teetering woman in heels on Fremont, the girls brought in from California and sold on a dream of a false Romeo’s love and riches, the homeless teen coerced into selling

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his body by a family member or trusted friend, and the Rwandan mother whose brutal violation is part of the spoils of war. “We’re so inclined as a society to look at individual issues as sort of a slice, or a piece of a pie, but the whole pie fits together. Every trafficking victim has been a victim of sexual assault,” Dreitzer says. “Whether there was money exchanged in a situation doesn’t change the fact that they ultimately have not consented to what is going on. Even when they’ve been coerced into thinking that they’ve consented.”

Dennis Hof, owner and operator of the Bunny Ranch, stresses the distinctions between legalized prostitution and trafficking as ones of safety and choice.

“There are no underage girls in legal brothels,” he says. “Every worker who comes in must come in with positive ID and fingerprints verified by the sheriff’s department. The sheriff also talks to these women, privately, so that they are free to say, ‘I want to be here,’ or ‘I don’t want to be here.’ Our system works. It is the only thing that will cut down on sex trafficking. If a consumer has a choice between legal and illegal, he is going the legal route.”

tims around the world being sold and exploited. Here, Metro has recovered 2,229 victims of sex trafficking since 1994. Just last year, it recovered 107 children victimized by human traffickers.

Other grim numbers were released in February as Arizona State University researchers completed a yearlong study of sex trafficking in Las Vegas. They found that two-thirds of the victims were younger than 18, and one in five was brought to Las Vegas from elsewhere. Out of the 159 cases Las Vegas police identified as cases of sex trafficking, nearly three out of four were not prosecuted, often because victims feared reprisal from pimps. Esther Rodriquez Brown of the Embracing Project finds the numbers frustrating. “My problem is we don’t do anything with the demand. I know that pimps should be incarcerated, and traffickers, but when you talk about sexual exploitation in our city, most of the pimps come from the same background as our girls —

poor, minority. We have to hold them accountable, but the point is, what are we doing to the people who come to Vegas to buy sex from our children?”

Lancaster acknowledges the perfect storm of factors that caused Arizona State to conduct such research with our city at its center, and she points to one of the testimonials featured in the documentary Surviving Sin City. In it, the mother of a Centennial Hills high school student who was trafficked warns us of the three things traffickers rely on, “Our ignorance that this is not happening, so that they can continue doing it. Our denial so that we say, ‘No, this can’t happen to me,’ and then our inaction. We don’t want Las Vegas to represent this, and we have to be the ones who say it.”

To report instances of human trafficking, call local authorities, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline at 888-373-7888, or the Department of Justice Hotline at 888-428-7581.

“A comprehensive history of Nevada’s sagebrush heart.”

—Cyd McMullen, Great Basin College

In 2013, Lancaster was recognized by former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, now Senator Cortez Masto, for the impact NHFI made in bringing greater awareness of the issue of human trafficking to the community. The recognition came during the 77th session of the Nevada Legislature as Masto introduced and helped pass Assembly Bill 67, which was signed into law and took effect on July 1, 2013. The law establishes the sex trafficking of children and adults as a crime, makes victims eligible for state assistance, and allows them to sue their traffickers.

January was National Human Trafficking Awareness Month. A new PSA campaign featuring Attorney General Adam Laxalt was screened to a gathering of social workers, community organizers, and vice officers in Metro’s Downtown headquarters. Produced by the Nevada Broadcasters Association and the offices of the attorney general, the series of announcements feature Laxalt unraveling the numbers: There are 21 million vic-

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Sideburns and swizzle sticks: A scene from the Starboard Tack in 1973. The storied bar has reopened.

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DINING OUT

Old navy: The Starboard Tack’s nautical theme sails again, from its fish and chips (left), rattan furniture and rum cocktails such as the El Marinero (below). Far right, co-owners Lyle Cervenka, left, and Bryant Jane. Below right, Starboard Tack owner Bob Kostelecky, left, surveys the bar’s popular salad bar in a 1973 photo.

THE DISH

COME SAIL AWAY The storied Starboard Tack returns for another voyage — rum, rattan and all B Y M I S T I YA N G

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as Vegas is more nostalgia than city at times, considering people’s endless fascination with the era of mobsters, eccentric millionaires and raucous Rat Pack misadventure. Icons such as The Sands, The Mint, The Desert Inn and The Stardust were usually the center of the action, but there were countless watering holes off the Strip where the party continued after the show was over.

The Starboard Tack was one of those

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spots. Tucked among nondescript apartments off Sahara and Pecos, the original Starboard Tack opened in 1971. Under Bob Kostelecky, who purchased the bar-restaurant in 1973, the place quickly became known for its generous pours, fresh seafood, graveyard specials, and lively clientele.

“The main improvement was giving everybody a fair-sized drink. They called it a bucket,” recalls Judy Stewart, Kostelecky’s spouse at the time. “It was usually a two-hour wait for dinner,” she adds.

One reason for the wait: The Kosteleckys had a friend in La Jolla who would send fresh swordfish to the Starboard Tack twice a week. Legend has it that entertainers from Bobbie Gentry to Ringo Starr would end up at the Starboard Tack on the graveyard shift for a round of drinks and a “Bait Plate” featuring filet mignon tips. Another late-night tradition: furtive trysts in a booth hidden behind the bar. And the Starboard Tack’s legendary annual Halloween party was nothing less than a freewheeling, costumed bacchanal.

The Starboard Tack also figures into

Vegas history’s darker chapters. It was the site of an attempted car-bombing in January 1977, presumably stemming from a labor dispute between the restaurant and the Culinary Union, then led by the pugnacious Al Bramlet, whose body was discovered in the desert outside Vegas a month later. (One theory is that Bramlet had refused to pay the arsonists for the defective bomb, for which he paid the ultimate price.) But such drama only seemed to fuel the Tack’s allure. In fact, Kostelecky eventually opened a sister restaurant on West Sahara, the Port Tack.

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ulling back from the business, Kostelecky leased out the Starboard Tack in 1990, and the new operators changed the name to Gilligan’s Hideaway in the late 1990s. When Gilligan’s Hideaway closed last year after a run as a respectable neighborhood bar, it was a fateful moment for two locals who’d dreamed of reviving the Starboard Tack.

“We were coming in and checking out Gilligan’s, and we fell in love with it,” says Bryant Jane, who co-owns the new Starboard Tack with Lyle Cervenka. Jane is a Las Vegas native familiar with the original Starboard Tack and its lore; Cervenka was lead bartender at Velveteen Rabbit for several years. “I

knew the history of the Starboard Tack,” Jane says. “I had never been, but I had been to the Port Tack. It was one of the fancy places you go to when you’re young in Las Vegas.”

Jane and Cervenka aren’t new to the bar business; most recently, they were partners in the short-lived amaro bar Retroscena in the back of Radio City Pizza downtown. In landing the storied space, it also helped that Jane and Cervenka had a connection: They knew Bob Kostelecky’s son Milo, who owns the building. “They were ahead of the curve, because they would ask me questions about the old Starboard Tack, and they were curious if it was ever going to become available again to lease,” says Milo.

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DINING OUT TROPICAL VIBE

Hyper link: The Starboard Tack’s hot dog is infused with Asian flavors.

The Starboard Tack had its soft opening in March, and the result of Jane and Cervenka’s work is a retro revival complete with floral wallpaper, rattan furniture, a tropical cove mural by local artist Spencer Olsen — and the bar’s original stained-glass boat scene that began its life behind the bar almost 50 years ago.

“Everything has a good tropical vibe,” says Cervenka. This extends to both the beach-worthy cocktails and the food. A rum bar was a natural fit for the nautical theme.

“It’s a rum bar, 100 percent,” says Jane. The Black Tot Last Consignment Royal Naval Rum is just one bottle behind the bar that backs him up. The $1,000-per-bottle Black Tot is from the British Royal Navy’s remaining stock from the days when it used to issue daily rum rations to sailors. Of course, beyond the rum drinks, there’s a full bar as well. (And they also brought their amaro

collection from Retroscena.)

The dining menu includes bar staples such as a burger and fish and chips, but there are tropical twists, too, with a Thai hot dog and a spicy West Indies fried chicken sandwich. The Pu-Pu section is more adventurous; with daily oysters and poke,

it brings back the top-quality seafood the original Starboard Tack was known for.

“We still want to keep that neighborhood bar feel,” says Jane. “That’s our essence more than anything else.” It’s a perfect fit for the return of an institution that began in the same spirit.

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TUACAHN.ORG

EAT THIS WHEN?

EAT THIS NOW! Lyonnaise Salad at Andre’s Bistro & Bar

6115 S. Fort Apache Road, andresbistroandbar.com

S A L A D : C H R I S T O P H E R S M I T H ; C O C K TA I L : B R E N T H O L M E S

When a bowl of leafy greens takes its moniker from a world capital of gastronomy — Lyon, France — it’s sure to be substantial. The Lyonnaise Salad at Andre’s Bistro & Bar lives up to the reputation with epicurean aplomb … and lots of lardons. Crispy chunks of pork belly are topped with light, snappy frisée endive and a soft-poached egg. A zingy warm sherry vinaigrette brings everything together.

Just puncture the egg, swirl the ooey-gooey yolk around, and devour everything with Gallic gusto. A crusty baguette with salted butter comes on the side, as does a charming tray of cornichons and pickled onions with Dijon mustard. You can call it a bacon ’n’ egg salade if you want; we won’t tell the Académie Française.

Greg Thilmont

Cocktail of the month

THE WHITE LINEN AT TURMERIC: FLAVORS OF INDIA Don’t be put off by the oonsta thunderbeats shaking the sidewalk outside Turmeric; inside, the music is muted, turning the restaurant into a fun Fremont East people-watching fishbowl with a soundtrack. Class up the gawking with The White Linen.

It presents just like the name: crisp and refined. The base is floral Hendrick’s Gin, sweetened with elderflower and tinged with lavender. Classy, sure, but not stuffy: Go ahead, no judgment here, have another. Andrew Kiraly 700 Fremont St., 702-906-2700

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DINING OUT

Hawaii doing?

Clockwise from top: The Kalua Pig benedict; Pistachio Crème pancakes; Guava Chiffon pancakes

C INNAMON’S L A S VEGAS

TABLE FOR TWO

MORNING DELIGHT

7591 W. Washington Ave. #110 702-478-7027 cinnamonsvegas. com

Andrew: My pancreas is salivating insulin in anticipation!

Andrew: I’m not a big breakfast person. I usually just have a functionB Y A N D R E W K I R A LY & S C O T T D I C K E N S H E E T S al, soylent-like smoothie, with green stuff in it. So Open on interior of Cinnamon’s Las Vethis will be an indulgas, a newish Hawaiian-style casual eatery gence. Are you a big pancake person? at Buffalo and Washington.

Scott: Not really. Their doughy richness gets to me pretty quickly. At some of these Waitress: Are you going to do the full fancy-pancake places, it seems almost like it’s a reframing of dessert as breakfast. or the half-order of the Kalua Pig? Andrew: Pancakes always sound good Scott: (apparently offended by the very on the menu, but when you eat them, it’s idea of a “half order”) Oh, the full order.

Andrew: Could I try one guava chiffon like a syrup-saturated Ace bandage. pancake and one pistachio pancake?

(As vaguely islandish music plays overWaitress: Sure! head, the food arrives. First up, the Kalua (She leaves)

Life’s a griddle at the island-styled Cinnamon’s, where there’s a cool hotcake for every taste

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Pig, a pair of small shredded-pork heaps in a traditional eggs Benedict setup.)

Andrew: (chew-murmuring — chewmuring?) Oh, my God. That’s good. Salty, shredded pork. Eggy, bready goodness.

See, our instincts are telling us to eat the savory first, because we are unconsciously registering this (gestures at pancakes).

(More chewmuring.)

Andrew: There’s something satisfying when you spear a chunk of egg and bread and it hangs off your fork like you tore it off an animal that you hunted down. Primal!

Waitress: (sidling up.) So, what do we think?

Andrew: Great so far! We’re working up to the pancakes as the grand finale.

(Bob Marley comes on the sound system to tell us he hopes we like jammin’, too.)

Andrew: (trying some kimchi fried rice) Pretty good! But I’m going to hit it with some hot sauce, hashtag dontjudgeme.

Scott: I won’t unless you put it on the pancakes. I might get a little judgey then.

Andrew: Mmm, not bad. I almost want a little more kimchi pop. This is more like a strongly worded letter suggesting kimchi.

(Guava Chiffon pancake time!)

Andrew: Let’s just look at this in all its glistening, diabetic glory! Now, I’m gonna shove this in my face. (Shoves.) Mmm ... oh! (chewmuring indicating joy) ...

Bob Marley: We’re jammin’, we’re jammin’, and I hope this jam is gonna last ...

Andrew: It’s like a vending machine of candy dumping into my mouth hole — that’s a good thing. This is a gooey, sinful, indulgent pancake.

Scott: Very good. And we should note, for journalistic purposes, that it’s the size of a Fiat hubcap.

Andrew: Do you like how I hold it over my hand, let the sauce drip, then lick my hand after I eat the pancake?

Scott: Yes. That definitely needs to be noted in the story. For the public good.

(Pistachio Crème pancake time!)

Andrew: The guava chiffon had a lot of sensory things going on because it was positively swimming in its own juices.

Scott: This is a more minimalist

P H OTO G R A P H Y B R E N T H O L M E S

GET VIP ACCESS experience. (Basically, it’s a pancake piped with ribbons of pistachio frosting.)

Andrew: It almost presents more as a piece of cake.

Scott: In fact, it begs the question of whether we should put syrup on it. I’m going to try it like this. (Chewing) It doesn’t have a typical pancake experience. More like a pastry. But I like it without syrup.

Andrew: God, I can feel the diabetes!

My inner Wilford Brimley!

Bob Marley: I hope you like jammin’, I wanna jam it with you ...

Andrew: Let’s take it to the next level: I’m gonna put a little syrup on it ...

Scott: It can’t be said we won’t push the envelope for the sake of journalism.

Andrew: Maple-pistachio-pancakio explosion!

Scott: Seems like it would be too much.

Andrew: I like it with syrup.

Scott: Is that because the syrup appeals to some platonic ideal of a pancake?

Andrew: Yeah. Puts it more into a breakfast context. But the flavors actually complement each other.

Bob Marley: We’re jammin’, were jammin’ ...

Andrew: Okay, watch this. I’m putting a little syrup on the pistachio ...

Waitress: (sidling up.) Okay, be brutally honest.

Andrew: Oh, it’s excellent. But now watch this: I’m going to cross the streams.

(Dips syrup-soaked pistachio pancake INTO THE GUAVA SAUCE. He’s out of control!) You might wanna call security!

(He eats it. Sound of envelope once again being pushed for the sake of journalism.)

Andrew: Oh, my God — it’s like a Skittles commercial in my mouth!

Waitress: That’s the best description I’ve ever heard.

Andrew: So, which did you like better, the pistachio or the guava?

Scott: Pistachio. But I could eat more of the guava — the tang of the guava cuts through the doughiness of the pancake.

Andrew: I liked the guava better; the mush factor. (Groans.) But I can feel myself starting to get dizzy ... double vision ...

Bob Marley: You guys gonna finish that rice?

Subscribe today to Desert Companion. Not only will you get a year’s worth of our award-winning city magazine delivered to your door. But you’ll also be supporting quality journalism, fine writing and great design.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! www.desertcompanion.com/subscribe

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DESERT THRILLS WITH A SENSE O F P L AC E

SAILS TEAM: Heidi Kyser leads the pack during an afternoon of land-sailing at Jean dry lake bed.

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➽ There are thrillseekers, and then there are chillseekers — adventurers who prefer to get their adrenaline in measured doses between eating, drinking, sightseeing, and relaxing.

Whether you’re a weekend warrior or an endorphin junkie, these quick Southwest jaunts offer the best of both worlds: high adventure with a sense of place.

bed with DeTour Vegas

Safak Sahin didn’t come to Las Vegas from Turkey in 2006 to start an adventure sports tour company — he was a Fulbright Scholar working on a doctorate in hospitality management at UNLV — but he seems born for it. In a 10-minute explosion of chatter and maneuvers, the slight, dark-haired Sahin pulls five land-sailing crafts out of a trailer, assembles them, recounts the history of his company, DeTour Vegas, and initiates my group of four family members in the art of driving a three-wheeled cart with a sail attached to it across a dry lake bed, Jean in this case.

“I was a member of the paragliding club, and the president of the club had one of these (land-sail crafts), so he let me try it,” he says. “I fell in love at first try … because with the same wind you can go any direction.”

There has to be some wind, however, which can make the sport tricky to schedule for tourists, whose time in town may be limited to days without the requisite minimum 8-10 mile-per-hour breezes. That’s partly why Sahin — a windsport hobbyist who launched

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H OT E L N I P T O N C O U R T E S Y O F H OT E L N I P T O N / D R . G A L E N E V E R S O L E

‘KIND OF LIKE FLYING’ Sailing a dry lake

DeTour Vegas in 2013 while his career as a hospitality professor was stalled in the U.S. immigration bureaucracy — also offers ATV outings, which are less dependent on weather.

Locals, on the other hand, can play it by ear, wait for good wind forecast, and book a land-sailing tour a couple days in advance. The experience is worth that flexibility (and the $200 per-person cost for a fourhour excursion). DeTour takes care of everything from refreshments and transportation to permits and equipment. Everyone in my group was riding the 15 mph winds within minutes of being seat-belted into our crafts, laughing as we picked up speed, and yelping as we rattled over bumps and grooves in the hard desert floor.

“It’s really exhilarating, the feeling of being pushed by the wind. It’s kind of like flying,” says Jennifer Sahin, Safak’s wife and DeTour’s co-owner.

“It’s awesome at night on a full moon. Really awesome.”

It also has a lower barrier of entry than other wind sports and is more eco-friendly than adventure sports that produce emissions. The Sahins work with the BLM to make sure they stick to designated recreational areas and give tour participants mandatory reading on the protected Desert Tortoise.

“We really love this sport,” Jennifer Sahin says. “It’d be great to see more locals doing it.” Heidi Kyser Info: detourvegas.com

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➽ When you’re done land-sailing, go another 15 minutes south on I-15 and stop by Primm Valley Resorts for dinner. Your best bets are Guillermo’s Mexican restaurant at Buffalo Bill’s or GPs Steakhouse at Primm Valley.

And make sure to take a doggy bag/to-go order (see next item).

(Primm Valley Casino Resorts, 31900 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Primm, NV, primmvalleyresorts.com) ➽ Why stay in Nipton at all?

Because it’s the gateway to Mojave National Preserve, home of Cima Dome natural formation, Rock Spring historic site, and Holein-the-Wall campground

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and nature trail, among countless other sites and activities. Stay as long as you can, but even a short visit should include time for a visit to the Kelso Dunes (1) and Kelso Depot Visitor Center (2), the historic and geologic highlights of the area.

(Mojave National Preserve, 760252-6100, nps. gov/moja/index. htm) ➽ From Primm, head another quarter-hour south on I-15, and then take the Nipton Road exit east to Nipton, California. There — for

those who don’t mind the periodic honk and whistle of a train roaring through town — are the charming, rustic accommodations of Hotel Nipton (3), a restored 113-year-old bedand-breakfast with campsites, RV hookups and tented cabins on the grounds.

Another caveat: when we visited in March, the restaurant was closed two out of three days, so plan to bring your own food.

(Hotel Nipton, 107355 Nipton Road, Nipton, California, 760-856-2335, nipton.com)

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PLACEMAKERS ➽ Caliente (1) is the perfect hub for a weekend adventure in eastern Nevada. All five of Lincoln County’s state parks are within an hour’s drive, and the town itself has everything a vagabond traveler needs, including three motels that all score highly on TripAdvisor. The

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town exudes a Western, frontier feel, exemplified by the 1920s mission-style train station that now serves as the town hall. For meals, I frequent the Knotty Pine (775-726-3767).

The service and food (especially the burgers) are surprisingly good for such a small town.

➽ The high canyon walls of Kershaw-Ryan State Park (2) hide a verdant paradise of lush grassy lawns, manicured flower beds, and park facilities so well-maintained they practically sparkle. Actually, the spring that feeds this canyon literally sparkles, as it feeds into a children’s wading pool that is open to visitors

during the hot summer months.

The Canyon Overlook trail gives a beautiful perspective of the park from above, where the stripe of green at the canyon’s bottom lies in stark contrast to the parched desert all around. (parks.nv.gov) ➽ Half a billion years ago, our humble section of North Amer-

ica had yet to emerge from the ocean’s depths.

These Cambrian Era seas teemed with forms of plant and animal life unlike any the Earth had previously seen.

As they slowly died off, they collected on the sea floor, where their bodies were squeezed between layer upon layer of detritus that would eventually become the

shale found at Oak Springs.

Today, at the Oak Springs Trilobite Site (3), a well-placed rock hammer can split those layers back apart, revealing the fossils preserved inside. And if you’re lucky enough to split open a rock and find a trilobite, it’s yours to keep. (travelnevada.com, search “Oak Springs”)

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Cathedral Gorge’s maze-like passages

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K E R S H AW - R YA N S TAT E PA R K C O U R T E S Y O F N E VA D A S TAT E PA R K S

MAZE FOR DAYS: Cathedral Gorge is only three hours away, but its endless slots and narrows beg for an overnight stay in the park.

RS

WELCOME TRA VEL TO SLOT ER S ’ GU IDE COUNTRY The endless fun of

I can’t get enough of Cathedral Gorge. Of the five state parks in Lincoln County, this is easily my favorite. What makes the park special, and what keeps me coming back, is the line of cliffs that serve as the eastern border of the park. The whole formation is less than a mile long, but it’s jam-packed with a seemingly endless series of slots that cut back into the cliff like hallways, forking and twisting and closing over, drawing intrepid explorers ever further, deeper, in search of what’s around that next bend.

My most recent trip started with a visit to the “Moon Cave,” a set of slots the park rangers were kind enough to mark with a sign. After venturing into the main passage, a quick left brought me to a narrow tunnel maybe two feet high and ten feet long. Head first, on my belly, I crawled in, twisting left, then right, as I followed the curve scoured out of the million-year-old bentonite clay by centuries of intermittent rain. Clambering

out the other side, the passage opened up again to allow exploration deeper into the cliffs.

At the back of Moon Cave is an actual cavern, but it’s at the top of a natural chimney 20 feet high. Climbers courageous enough to try the ascent face an equally unnerving descent once inside. I’ve never been brave enough to make that plunge.

Most of the “caves” in the park VOL/ISS are not as demanding. In UE 1fact, 5.5 the combination of level terrain and self-guided exploring means people of all ages and ability levels can enjoy Cathedral Gorge. There are easily enough major slots to fill a full day, and minor slots that look like dead ends can unexpectedly open up, leading to further exploration. I have been going to Cathedral Gorge for years, and I find new treasures every time.

Three hours from Las Vegas, Cathedral Gorge is close enough for a day trip, but to get the most out of a visit, I recommend staying at least one night. Three hours is plenty far enough from Vegas to get profoundly dark skies, and the stargazing at Cathedral Gorge is truly impressive. The park has sites for tent or RV camping, and the campground is clean and well-appointed.

Central bathrooms have real, flushing toilets, running water, and hot showers. Campsites have picnic tables and shade ramadas. And the park hosts regular ranger programs in the evening.

My favorite time to visit Cathedral Gorge is in late September, during the annual Dutch Oven Cook-Off State Championship. Cooks from around the state vie for titles in a variety of categories, but the real winner is always my belly, stuffed full, and ready for a relaxing night around the campfire. I can’t wait to go back. Alan Gegax Info: parks.nv.gov

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➽ A “foodie paradise,” according to the Arizona Republic, Chef Jeff Smedstad’s Elote Café (2), attached to the Arabella Hotel Sedona, is a dinner-only Mexican

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place. “They don’t take reservations,” the check-in clerk told us. Instead, she said, people begin lining up at 4:30 to claim a time slot. “The food is worth the wait,” the Republic assures us. If you like Elote’s food, you can buy Elote’s cookbook. (771 State Route 179, elotecafe.com) ➽ Is looking for a “vortex” — said to be a special spot where energy moves in and out of the earth — silly?

Who knows.

As long as it involves tramping around some beautiful Arizona slick rock while you wait for the goosebumps,

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it’s okay by us.

Sedona is lousy with vortexes, but the Airport Vortex is easy to find and get to (a short albeit steepish hike) and the surroundings — and selfie angles — a great. (Airport Road, greatsedonahikes.com) ➽ Once a private apple orchard, Slide

C H A P E L O F T H E H O LY C R O S S : M A T T H E W P. D E L B U O N O ; L A M B A D O B O : J I L L R I C H A R D S P H O T O G R A P H Y

➽ Here’s an unabashedly spiritual location: Chapel of the Holy Cross (1). This narrow, soaring slice of architectural modernism, completed in 1956, rises from a hillside outside of town and commands spectacular views through its windows.

You needn’t be religious to find it inspirational.

(780 Chapel Road, chapeloftheholycross.com)

JEEP DATE Bouncing through paradise on the trails of Sedona IDE

GU ’ the S R E On dashboard EL GPS screen,Jeep’s V A we’re floating, R T

Rock State Park is now a complex of hiking trails, historical buildings, and a creek-fed, slickrock water park, all sprawled at the foot of dramatic, patina’d rock walls. A great stop on the way out of town. (6871 N. Highway 89A, azstateparks. com)

gently, in a featureless white Matrix void, with absolutely nothing around us. Meanwhile, absolutely everywhere around us swells the real-world beauty and deep magic of Sedona, Arizona, through which we’re jouncing, violently, on a rock-addled, gonzo rut called Greasy Spoon, the basic roadness of which is apparently so slight that SkyNet has simply blanked on it. That meaty smack you hear is my shoulder greeting the doorjamb for the umpteenth time. We’re going about 3 mph, straight down.

“Woo-hoo!” Scott, the driver, shouts as we rattle to the bottom of the hill. The rush!

He’s elated. I’m busy racking my vocabulary for a word that describes how four-wheeling — wheeling to aficionados —

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whipsaws you around the passenger seat no matter how slow your roll or how securely you’re belted in. Ooh, whipsaw actually works pretty well.

BAM! See, there I go again; hello, doorframe!

Damn, though, this place is gorgeous. (Merely gorgeous?

This is where my vocabulary fails.) The red stone spires robed in high-desert juniper and domed by the biggest sky since Montana — this is what draws an estimated 4 million beauty-guzzling visitors a year.

Hikers. Bikers. Vortex-seekers.

And wheelers. Numerous trails exist specifically for off-roading, varying in their degrees of technical challenge — the rises, drops, twists, and rock obstacles that add woo-hoo to the experience — and frequently beset by a rainbow infestation of pink, red, orange, and yellow tourism Jeeps.

Midway through our twohour bounce along Greasy Spoon, my phone buzzes. It’s my wellness app telling me I’ve reached my 10,000-step goal, even though I’ve spent

the whole day in this seat.

That’s whipsawing.

Hey, look, a bobcat! Aw, nice of it to ferry that tired rabbit across the trail in its jaws. I love seeing the wonder of nature in action.

Another buzz, this one a news alert: missiles in Syria.

Seems there’s no escaping real life, not even in paradise.

We roll back into town with the setting sun behind us, still vibrating from a couple great rides that day. Even though we’ve come to Sedona on a Thursday to avoid the crowds, we can’t avoid the crowd throttling the restaurant district. We snag the last table in The Cowboy Club and toast our adventures with drinks and rattlesnake sausage.

The next morning, I watch dawn creep down the face of the sandstone ramparts that fill the balcony’s view from my room at the venerable Arabella Hotel. Then we’re off to tackle Broken Arrow, a classic Sedona trail that launches right out of a neighborhood of swank custom homes. The first obstacle is a rock wall that looks pretty vertical to me, but, with a roar of low gear and applied horsepower, Scott pilots the mighty Jeep Wrangler up and over, his joyous whoops not entirely drowned out by the audible clenching of my sphincter.

The rest of Broken Arrow is like that: slow, juddering drives punctuated by surges up and down blunt rock faces, a symphony of Jeep snarl and butt-clench, the whole experience bear-hugged by a landscape that holds a profound spiritual significance to many, from Native Americans to new-age believers to real-estate agents.

We bounce through our last obstacle, a daunting stretch of terraced drops called “the steps.” It’s exhilarating — if not enough to entirely blot out the jitters of the real world, at least enough to bring my blood-anxiety levels down to a tolerable level. “Somewhere at the bottom,” I squawk, flinging helplessly and happily in my seat, “there’s a pile of crumpled Jeeps driven by people who didn’t master this the way we have!”

Scott Dickensheets Info: visitsedona.com

BUMP IT UP: “Wheeling” in Sedona is a bumpy affair, but there are many opportunities to take in amazing views.

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the snow for a good half-hour, waiting for the other six tourists in my group to be assigned their rides. Before letting us into the muddy pen at concessionaire Xanterra’s ranch, hostess-wrangler Adriana E VOL/ISSU McNeme had joked, “In our 5 .

5 1 100-plus years of leading mule rides at the Grand Canyon, no one has died. Let’s not change that today.”

Her quip set the tone for the outing: good-natured fun, tinged with a stark warning.

We were, after all, going to approach the deepest canyon in the world on the backs of animals that, as McNeme put it, “have their own brains.”

“What’s the most hair-raising thing that’s happened to you while leading a ride?” I asked Lenss, as we hit the trail and the snow gave way to breezy sun. “Has a mule ever taken off into the forest?”

“Oh, people fall off occasionally,” he said. “Broken arm, that kind of thing. Nothing serious.”

I would say the view is almost worth a broken bone.

Our ride — one hour out and one hour back — was on a dedicated rim trail far removed from the pedestrian bustle of the Village and Visitors Center.

From time to time, Lenss pulled our group over, coaxing

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Let yourEmule do RS L the walking in E V Grand Canyon TRA

At 9 a.m. on April Fool’s Day, I was on the back of a mule, Li’l Jed, at Grand Canyon getting snowed on. Not fluffy “White Christmas” snow, but wet sheets that pelted my yellow, “Mule Rider”-stenciled slicker and left ice chunks in Li’l Jed’s mane.

“Do you guys ever cancel a ride due to weather?” I asked our group’s wrangler, Kevin Lenss, a bowlegged, grayhaired cowboy straight out of central casting.

“Rarely.”

Li’l Jed and I sat there in

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us into a row facing the canyon, and told us stories about points of interest we could see. Down to our west were the Mormon Flats, so-called because the Latter-Day Saints who built the South Kaibab Trail down into the canyon would stop for work on the Sabbath and hold services up on the plateau. To the east, the point from which the conquistador Garcia Lopez de Cardenas looked down at the Colorado River and estimated it to be less than 10 feet wide. During intervals where we passed through the forest, Lenss drew on his biology degree to point out varying species of agave, or wallows dug by javelinas at the feet of piñon trees.

I grew up on horseback, so the ride was a bit tame for me.

But it thrilled the other people in my group, who were inexperienced horsemen, including one guy who said it had been on his bucket list. Xanterra does

MULE IT OVER: Mulepacking in the Grand Canyon offers incredible views at a leisurely pace.

Right, wrangler Kevin Lenss leads the pack.

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➽ Stay at El Tovar Hotel (1), the 112-year-old luxury lodge built from native boulders and Oregon pine that made an appearance in National Lampoon’s Vacation and has hosted dignitaries from Albert Einstein to Bill Clinton.

Also plan to have dinner at El Tovar restaurant, the park’s only fine-dining eatery, but book early.

Every table fills every night on the weekend. (1 El Tovar Road, Grand Canyon, 928-638-2631, grandcanyonlodges.com/ lodging/ el-tovar) ➽ Why does everyone suddenly think he’s a hiker when he gets to Grand Canyon?

Because the bottom beckons, and the first half is the easy part: the descent. It masks the trail’s

steepness (a net elevation change of 4,380 feet over 7.8 miles), causing folks — some 250 a year who have to be rescued — to misjudge how hard the return will be. Unless you’re an experienced hiker, opt for the three-mile trek down Bright Angel Trail to the second rest area and back out, max. (nps.gov, search “Bright Angel”)

➽ Visit the Historic Kolb Studio Art and History Exhibits.

Sitting precariously on the cusp of the canyon near Bright Angel Lodge, the studio offers a compact tour of the longtime home of brothers Emery and Ellsworth Kolb, who set the standard for generations of Grand Canyon explorerphotographers.

(Grand Canyon

National Park Historic District, South Rim, 928-638-7888, nps.gov, search “Kolb Studio”) ➽ On the way to Grand Canyon or back home, set aside an hour or two to visit Seligman on Route 66, off I-40. Eat at Westside Lilo’s Café (2,3) for a healthy dose of kitsch ambience amply compensated

for with tasty food, most of it cooked by Lilo herself. Scattered down the main drag is a series of fun stops, including a second-hand and general store, and a coffee and ice cream shop.

(413 Chino Street, Seligman, AZ, 928422-05456, westsidelilos. com)

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rides down into the canyon, too, for those more adventurous.

One word of advice, though, regardless of which route you pick: Check the weather report.

What’s too cold (or wet, or hot) for you probably isn’t for Lenss.

Heidi Kyser Info: grandcanyonlodges. com/things-to-do/mule-trips

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CYCLE IDE U G ’ ER S L E V OF LIFE TRA On the comeback (bike) trail in Kanab, Utah

Kanab. Ka-what? Kanab!

I know, I know — you’re all about Park City and Moab and even St. George, all brand names when it comes to sweat ’n’ heave tourism in Utah.

Kanab? It’s sort of known as an onramp to bigger and better adventures. But that’s changing. Kanab, population 4,400, is hoping to emerge as a mountain biking destination unto itself, with a small but growing artisanal beer/coffee/pizza beardo-hipdustrial complex to support it. The town’s two inaugural bike trails, Raven and Roadrunner, are short but strenuous runs carved into a hill that bookends the town at the north. If you, oh, say, used to ride a bike like waaay back two decades ago and now you’re in your forties and merely straddling a bicycle for the first time in years feels like mounting a very volatile and paranoid baby giraffe, wellll, there’s a bit of a relearning curve; each single-track trail offers a bracing 20-minute ride with moderately challenging ridges, rocks, drops and squiggles to negotiate. Your first time through is a mere handshake; these are the kind of trails you get to know through multiple extended conversations, which may entail getting pitched into a bush that, whoa, didn’t look that prickly (personal experience speaking).

The new trails are the product of an active biking commu-

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nity, led by Kanab Cycling Club President Christina Hansen, who’s working with the city government to ultimately build 40 miles of trails in the area.

City officials understand that bike trails are more than outdoors amenities for citizens; they’re a smart investment in tourism infrastructure. “Plus, it’s getting crowded in Moab,” Hansen says. “People are looking for other places to go.” For weekend warriors and casual riders, low-key Kanab makes for a perfect two-day jaunt.

If you want to level up, consider heading out of town to Gooseberry Mesa, northeast of Kanab. Just outside Hurricane, this tabletop mesa features a network of multitrack trails that strike a balance between trickier passages of technical rock-hopping and ribbons of open, easy, scenic trail. Best of all, they’re uncrowded, so the prospect of you (projecting here), gawky larval noob, getting mauled on the trail by screaming leather-necked Mad Max mutants is slim to nil.

NOW GEAR THIS: Top and right, Gooseberry Mesa offers challenging rock-hopping; below right, Kanab’s Roadrunner trail is short but lively — and a preview of more trails to come.

Note that Gooseberry Mesa is a mountain biking day-trip destination that requires driving over some chunky dirt roads (four-wheel drive not required but recommended), so pack snacks, water, and sunblock for the breaks when you’ll want to sit down, catch your breath, and take in the view from the top — likely in rich and satisfying solitude.

Andrew Kiraly Info: kanab.utah.gov P H OTO G R A P H Y C H R I STO P H E R S M I T H

PLACEMAKERS ➽ Kanab feels like it’s in a state of permanent Sunday — lazy, beery, yawny Sunday, not churchy, boring Sunday — and I suspect the vortex spouting this Sundayness is at the Rocking V Cafe. The decor is Southwestern DayGlo sunset — purple floor, orange walls — but the vibe is sleepy and affably smalltown. The menu of riffy AmeriMex will perk you up, though; I recommend the shrimp quesadilla, black bean salad, and house-made guac to fuel your adventures. And yes, hallelujah, praise be, whatever, there’s hope for Utah, they serve real beer and cocktails. (97 West Center St., 435-644-8001, rockingvcafe. com) ➽ Wait. You’re going to be spending most of your time outdoors. Why stay at a place like Canyons Boutique Hotel?

(1) Because you’re a grown-

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up who understands the fortifying virtues of good sleep and a certain je ne sais pimp.

Lots of dark wood, polite but not obsequious discretion, and, of course, all the amenities you’d expect of a full-service hotel. (190 N. 300 West, 435-644-8660, canyonshotel. com) ➽ Oh no! You totally forgot to pack your paracord survival bracelet! (It exists, it’s a thing.)

Part bookstore, part gear shop, part coffee hangout, Willow Canyon Outdoor (2) is the spot to

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pick it up — and chew the fat with locals. Don’t underestimate the small coffee bar; their espresso will wake. You. The. Hell. Up. (263 S. 100 East, 435-644-8884, willowcanyon. com) ➽ Okay, Moqui Cave (3) is a corny kitsch trap lying in wait off the main highway, an old cave turned into a hybrid gift shop/ ad hoc fossil and Native American artifact exhibit, but the breadth of diversion makes it worth the $5 entry, particularly the collection of dinosaur tracks and the abiding

opportunity to say, “Hey, I’m in a CAVE cave cave cave …”

(4581 US-89, 435-644-8525) ➽ The décor is rugged — stone floors, woodslab tables — but the hearty vegetarian dishes emerging from the oven at Peekaboo Canyon Wood Fired Kitchen also boast culinary refinement.

The “Mushroom Madness” pizza is so earthy and rich, you can’t possibly eat another slice.

Okay, maybe one more. (233 West Center St., 435-689-1959, peekabookitchen.com)

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PLACEMAKERS ➽ There’s something about this part of the desert that’s definitely otherworldly, or at least just downright surprising. To wit, the Simi Dabah Sculptures (1) is a huge forest of metal art in the town of Joshua Tree. What does it all mean? (simidabahsculptures.com)

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➽ For the most scenic route to Joshua Tree National Park and its environs, drive the two-lane backroads through the gorgeous Mojave National Preserve with photo stops at the Kelso train station and then the retro Route 66 attraction of Amboy. The first lodging you’ll come across is

the classic roadside oasis of the 29 Palms Inn (2) with its adobe bungalows and swimming pool.

The barbecue burger in the on-site restaurant is stupendously towering and delicious.

(73950 Inn Ave., 760-367-3505, 29palmsinn.com) ➽ If there’s a hip downtown near Joshua Tree National Park, it’s surely the crossroads

of Twentynine Palms Highway and Veterans Way in Joshua Tree. There, Pie for the People (3) bakes outrageously good New York-style pizza with funky combos including the “David Bowie” with plum sauce. Other food groups are available at nearby Joshua Tree Coffee Company and Crossroads Cafe. (61740 Twentynine Palms Highway,

760-366-0400, pieforthepeople. com) ➽ Travel astrally, or inwardly as it were, at the Integratron in Landers, heading north to Barstow.

The distinctly domed building offers harmonic sound baths and other acoustic treatments. It’s booked out for months, so something must be working! You can also get metaphysical at

the Joshua Tree Retreat Center with architecture

by Frank Lloyd Wright and his son, Lloyd, back on the Twentynine Palms Highway. (Integratron, 2477 Belfield Blvd., Landers, Calif., 760-364-3126, integratron.com; Joshua Tree Retreat Center, 59700 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, Calif., 760365-8371, jtrcc. org)

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JOSHUA TREE STAR TREK

A personalized look at the cosmos with a literal night watchman

proprietor of Coyote Telescope Tours, for a caravan ride up twisty canyon roads to Pioneertown Mountain Preserve, a protected — and lightless — haven in the Mojave Desert wilds. Once we arrived at the lofty spot, Hammonds secured his wide-barreled, high-tech Celestron looking glass to an industrial-strength tripod.

Shortly after, I peered deep into the vastness of space for a show of the ages: the glowing, gossamer wings of the Orion Nebula, a solar nursery.

“We’re looking at a gaseous cloud that’s about 1,400 light years away,” said Hammonds, explaining the vista. “And that cloud is the result of a supernova. In the center are four tiny stars are called the ‘Trapezium.’ They’re baby stars, like a hundred thousand years old.

They’re just born.”

It was an absolutely gorgeous brood.

Secluded from the light pollution of Las Vegas and Los Angeles by mountains and distance, the frequently clear skies above Joshua Tree blaze nightly with a vast, glittering chandelier of glowing orbs.

And the evening’s skies were definitely no disappointment, even with a waxing crescent moon washing out many dimmer celestial bodies from view.

Throughout the star party, Hammonds explained the highlights of the heavens in a gregarious, approachable, and informational manner. He started the tourist-friendly enterprise in 2014 after retiring from the military, and his enthusiasm for astronomy was on full display as he tapped buttons on the telescope’s control panel. With each new set of coordinates, we gazed with

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CELESTIAL SEASONINGS: Left, glimpsing infinity through a Celestron telescope; right, Hammonds’ photo of the Andromeda Galaxy.

It was inky dark shortly after sunset on Saturday, April 1, outside lively Pappy + Harriet’s, an old 1940s Western movie set that’s been converted into a glorious palace of Americana kitsch, live music, and flowing drinks near Joshua Tree National Park.

But I wasn’t headed inside for a twangy shindig like the fun-loving crowd moseying into one of the best bars in the Southwest. Rather, I was meeting Darryl Hammonds,

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wonderment at new bodies in the brilliant firmament. A fuzzy, oblong cloud was the playfully named Cigar Galaxy.

Jupiter was regally ringed by its four major moons. As a finale, a lunar glimpse at Earth’s closest neighbor focused on Tycho Crater with its central mountain looking like a frozen raindrop hitting a tranquil pool. All were totally stunning. (If you’re into nighttime photography and the Hubble Space Telescope, ask Hammonds to show you some of the photos he painstakingly takes and composites on his nights off. With a phone filled with mind-blowing hi-res images, he’s a paparazzo of the original stars.)

Hammonds’ excursions are an especially good deal for families or groups visiting Joshua Tree National Park.

He’ll meet where it’s convenient for you from Twentynine Palms to Yucca Valley, and the flat fee includes up to 10 party-goers. Scientific inspiration and aesthetic wonderment are included in the package.

And as for the existential sense of being a minuscule, meaningless mote that some of his clients exclaim when beholding such vast magnificence beyond, he’s remarkably downto-earth and humanistic in his philosophical outlook.

“You shouldn’t feel insignificant,” Hammonds said. “If anything, you should feel very significant because you have a brain to be able to comprehend and understand what you observe.” Now that’s a truly cosmic outlook. Greg Thilmont Info: Pappy + Harriet’s, 760365-5956, pappyandharriets. com; Coyote Telescope Tours, 844-648-3759, coyotetelescope.com

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A BLAST — LITERALLY Jetpacking to heroic heights in New Pahrump

For a few precious, power-drunk seconds, I’m hovering triumphantly like Iron Man, lording it over all of Pahrump, and I even keep my balance long enough for the cinematic fantasy to get a little mental music going (it’s an electric-guitar version of “Flight of the Valkyries,” if you must know) before an errant micro-swivel of my ankles sends me zagging sideways like a rogue bottlerocket. I crash into an early lunch of lakewater.

“I’m sending you back up!”

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IDE

Emil says from his jet ski. He twists the throttle, sending water through the tube that tethers us, and I launch skyward again.

Iron Man, take two!

Jetpacking and jetboarding are tricky and demanding, but addictively exhilarating in those superhero moments when you carve a perfect donut turn across the water.

Once a YouTube curiosity, jet-based water adventures have not only become popular with day-cationing thrillseekers, but they’ve come into their own as bona fide sports with their own tricks and techniques. (In Pahrump, “Stairway to Heaven” and “Underwater Submarine” used to be things you’d likely see on the menu at the Chicken Ranch.) The good news is that you don’t have to be a tattoo-sleeved brogre to have

a good go at flying over the water. By the end of a 40-minute session of jetpacking and jetboarding ($259), I was floating around like a plausibly menacing Baron Harkonnen, and even got enough confidence to try my hand (and flailing legs) at a few tricks like “Walking on Water” and “Dolphin Dives.” (Which, in my case, might be better described as “Flounder Slaps.”)

“I love the feeling of freedom, the sense of escape of ’boarding,” says Jetpack America Manager Emil Nedelcu. Once

H2OHHHH!: Andrew Kiraly does his best superhero impression with jetboard and jetpack. Afterwards, he did a 122 mph lap in a Corvette and his poor widdle tummy hurt ooh poor baby.

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an avid wakeboarder in Florida, Nedelcu tried a jetboard 10 years ago and fell in love with it. I can see the attraction.

Jetpack America is on the campus of the Spring Mountain Motor Resort and Country Club, a 330-acre spread of improbable poshness in Pahrump. (If you have an extra $3,000 lying around, you can also take a Corvette driving course at its Ron Fellows Driving School.) For a day trip that mixes different kinds of buzz, you could do worse than a jaunt to Pahrump for watersports, wine-tasting, and other diversions. Pro tip: If someone at Spring Mountain Motor Resort offers you a “hot lap,” know that the only nether region it involves is your stomach hurtling into your mouth as you fly around a racetrack at 120 mph. Andrew Kiraly Info: springmountainmotorsports.com

➽ Jerky is Pahrump’s spirit animal, and Miguel’s Fresh Jerky is its, I dunno, church?

See, great jerky defies metaphor.

Anyway, Miguel is a 17-year veteran of the chewy dried tasty flesh arts; I recommend his peppered and original beef, but adventurous molars should chaw on the surprisingly flavorful venison jerky.

For vegetarians, the dried fruit and nuts (butter toffee peanuts!) are the bomb.

(Highway 160, near Gamebird Road) ➽ Wine snoots may not necessarily swoon at a sip of what’s on offer at the

Pahrump Valley Winery (1) — and that’s okay. Since taking it over in 2003, Bill and Gretchen Loken have poured heart and soul into developing it into not just a full winemaking facility, but a classy, accessible retreat for the rest of us.

They’re well on their way to producing wine made completely from Nevada-grown grapes — a true miracle in the desert. Have the penne alla vodka at Symphony’s with their rich, sassy zin. (3810 Winery Road, 775-751-7800, pahrumpwinery. com) ➽ Big-ass explosions: The

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other thing that’s legal in Nye County. Red Apple Fireworks (2) is a veritable candy store with shelf upon gleaming shelf of near-prograde pyrotechnics.

“This stuff is as close to Disneyland as you can get,” an employee says, gesturing to walls of colorful packages with names like Title Bout, The Star Chamber and YOWZA! (3610

Highway 160 #402, 775-7277200, redapplefireworks.com) ➽ Front Sight Firearms Training Institute really is that — a gun resort that’s become a mecca for serious shooters who prize its topflight trainers.

And, at 18 years and still growing, it’s a Nye County institution. (1 Front Sight Road, 800-9877719, frontsight. com)

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babysbounty.org/donate-to-las-vegas/ call 702-485-2229 or help@babysbounty.org

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YOUR ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT CALENDAR FOR MAY

11 4-27 CARRIE THE MUSICAL MAJESTIC THEATRE

A New York Times critic once compared this musical to the Hindenberg, securing it in the pantheon of American kitsch. And no one stages American kitsch with the gusto of Troy Heard and his madcap crew at Majestic Repertory Theatre. 8p and 5p, through May 27, Alios Las Vegas, 1217 Main St., $25, $27, majestic repertory.com

WILDFLOWER HUNTING: SPRINGTIME HIKING IN THE MOJAVE DESERT CLARK COUNTY LIBRARY

Spring’s here! Time to flee the plotzing news cycles and — and we mean this literally — stop to smell the flowers. But what’s blooming? Where exactly? These guys will tell you: park interpreters David Low (Spring Mountain Ranch State Park) and Chris Johnson (Valley of Fire). Get sniffin’! 7p, free, lvccld.org

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All month WENDY CHAMBERS, EXPLORATORY SURGERY WINCHESTER COMMUNITY CENTER

Now this is body painting — “Chambers seeks to translate her research of both living and postmortem bodies into paintings which offer access to an often uncomfortable subject” (from her website). Paint + flesh = awareness of one’s own mortality.

Let’s go!

702-455-7340

SUNG KOREAN DANCERS CLARK COUNTY LIBRARY

18-3 THE CHRISTIANS COCKROACH THEATRE

Lucas Hnath’s critically acclaimed play examines a church divided when its pastor has a change of theological heart about the existence of hell. 8p and 2p, through June 3, $16-$20, cockroach theatre. com

Centerpiece of a Korean festival that will also feature taekwondo demonstrations and photos of the Korean countryside, this dance troupe, outfitted in authentic costumes, will introduce viewers to traditional and modern Korean performances. 2p, free, lvccld.org

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THE GUIDE ART

MAUREEN HALLIGAN, SEE THE FOREST

THROUGH MAY 5; CLOSING RECEPTION AND ARTIST TALK, MAY 5, 6P This installation asks viewers to participate in the process of viewing through the work and examining the layers that make the paintings. Playfully placed in a “park” of Astroturf, five paintings comprised of laser-cut images deconstruct common objects into abstract shapes and forms. Free.

Clark County Government Center Rotunda Gallery, clarkcountynv.gov

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE THROUGH MAY 13

An exhibition of two complete editions of artist books illustrated by Salvador Dali: The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri (1960) and The Decameron, written by Giovanni Boccaccio (1972). These books contain 110 prints authorized by the artist. Free. Marjorie Barrick Museum at UNLV, unlv.edu

PROCESS

THROUGH MAY 13 A showcase of 10 contemporary American artists who are reshaping the process-art tradition into a profound expression of 21st century studio practice. The exhibition will include painting, photography, mixed media, and sculpture. Free. Marjorie Barrick Museum at UNLV, unlv.edu

WENDY CHAMBERS: EXPLORATORY SURGERY THROUGH JUNE 1

Chambers investigates the material connection between painting and the human body. The exhibition is comprised of paintings, each of which emphasizes the qualities of both paint and flesh: their color, viscosity, and texture. Free. Winchester Gallery, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv. gov

LATIN JAZZ PATIO CONCERT & WINE TASTING MAY 5, 7P

Pianist Cocho Arbe’s quartet plays al fresco as the audience tastes varieties of wine. Arbe came from Peru in 1986, has performed with Sheena Easton and Paquito D’Rivera, and recorded with Carlos Santana as a featured guest on the album Los Hijos del Sol. $16 admission; $10 for six wine tasting tickets. Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE AND TIP CITY MAY 5–6, 7P

McBride is a multi-award-winning jazz bassist, composer, and arranger who has worked with Natalie Cole, Carly Simon, and Sting, among others. He promises an evening of jazz standards alongside his own compositions. $39–$65. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

PANGEA IN CONCERT MAY 6, 2P

Hong Wang, who plays more than 20 wind and stringed instruments, is joined by Albert Chang on piano and violin; harpist Mariano Gonzalez; and Chinese Uighur guitarist Arkin Abdulla. $11 advance, $13 day of show.

Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

MUSIC OF HOLLYWOOD MAY 6, 7P; MAY 7, 2P

The Silvertones will perform all the greats of Hollywood, from Mary Poppins to Singing in the Rain. All songs have been artistically arranged and scored by George Pucine with Tim Cooper’s skilled craftsmanship on the piano. $10. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com

BETSY WOLFE & ADAM KANTOR MAY 8–9, 7P

THE NEON TEAPOT PRIZE

Broadway performers Wolfe and Kantor present an evening of cabaret, sharing their favorite tunes and stories. $39–$69. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

A juried ceramic teapot exhibit that benefits the artistic education of Vegas teens. Free. Las Vegas City Hall Grand Gallery, 495 S. Main St., theneonteapotprize.com

UNLV JAZZ VOCAL ENSEMBLE WITH JAZZMIN

THROUGH JUNE 8, MON–FRI 7A–5:30P

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MAY 10, 7P

This show features student musicians from UNLV’s Jazz Studies Program and is co-sponsored by UNLV School

of Music, Division of Jazz Studies.

Free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org

CHRIS MANN: A NIGHT WITH THE PHANTOM MAY 12–13, 7P

The Voice finalist Mann starred in 700 performances of The Phantom of the Opera, and will be performing songs from that classic show alongside other Broadway hits. $36–$49. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

THE STAR (L’ETOILE) BY EMMANUEL CHABRIER

MAY 12–21, FRI–SAT 7P; SUN 2P In Sin City Opera’s production of this opera bouffé, the story takes place beyond space and time, in the realm of King Ouf, who expects his usual birthday gift: an execution. When his astrologer foretells that the king’s fate is linked to that of the young man chosen to be executed, the reactions keep the audience roaring to the end. $15. Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, sincityopera.com

SOUL MEN STARRING SPECTRUM MAY 14, 7P

Las Vegas quartet, Spectrum, sing and dance their way through soul and R&B hits of the Motown era, and beyond. $42–$45. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

CLASSICAL MUSIC FROM A CHILD’S HEART MAY 16, 7P

Renaissance Music Academy and the Classical Music Education Foundation present a collection of young musicians performing classical works..

Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

ANTONIA BENNETT IN GEORGE BUGATTI’S PIANO BAR MAY 19, 7P AND 9P

Ms. Bennett is the daughter of legendary entertainer Tony Bennett and has performed with him for decades.

For this show, she will be singing songs from her latest album Embrace Me. $39–$45. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

DESERT CHORALE: ANNUAL MEMORIAL DAY CONCERT MAY 22, 7:30P

The Desert Chorale is a 60-voice, non-profit, community chorus. Its

Channel 10

members represent all areas of the greater Las Vegas Valley and are from all walks of life. They will perform a patriotic celebration of the USA. Free.

Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall at UNLV, thedesertchorale.org

FROM PARIS TO SHANGHAI MAY 26, 7P

Drawing on her French and Chinese heritages, chanteuse and songwriter Jessica Fichot performs a combination of French chanson, 1940s Shanghai jazz, swing and international folk. Armed with her accordion, toy piano and multilingual vocals, Fichot is backed by a band of clarinet/ saxophone, upright bass and guitar. $16 advance, $19 at the door.

Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

Outdoor Nevada - Season 2 Premiering Wednesday, May 10 at 7:30 p.m.

THE LON BRONSON BAND MAY 27, 8P

Bronson leads his 14-piece band in performing the hits of Blood Sweat and Tears, Chicago, Tower of Power, and others. $15–$25. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

CABRERA CONDUCTS BRUCKNER

MAY 27, 7:30P; PRE-CONCERT CONVERSATION 6:30P The Las Vegas Philharmonic presents Anton Bruckner’s 6th Symphony. Also featured are Mozart’s Overture to Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and Richard Strauss’ Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra, featuring Liam Boisset on oboe. $30–$109. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

DAVE DAMIANI & RENEE OLSTEAD — BENDING THE STANDARD

Victorian Slum House Series premiere Tuesday, May 2 at 8 p.m.

A Place to Call Home Series premiere Sunday, May 7 at 6:30 p.m.

JUNE 1, 7P

Damiani and Olstead perform their clever and fresh arrangements of the American Songbook and the New American Songbook with the hottest young orchestra in the country. $25–$45. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

MORGAN JAMES — RECKLESS ABANDON TOUR JUNE 2, 7P

With her music videos generating more than 800 million views online, James has earned widespread recognition as a world-class vocalist, songwriter, and actress. $39–$55.

Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

American Epic Series premiere Tuesday, May 16 at 9 p.m.

National Memorial Day Concert Sunday, May 28 at 8 p.m.

VegasPBS.org | 3050 E Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, NV 89121 | 702.799.1010 M AY 2 0 1 7

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THE GUIDE THEATER AND COMEDY

ESCALANTE CANYONS

ART

FESTIVAL e v e r e t t r u e s s d ay s

September 22– October 1, 2017 Celebrating Fourteen Years of Art Inspired by Place

AN EVENING WITH DAVID SEDARIS MAY 4, 7:30P

Join best-selling author Sedaris for all-new stories and observations, with sneak previews of his work to be published in 2017, as well as an audience Q&A. With sardonic wit and incisive social critiques, Sedaris has become one of America’s preeminent humor writers. $49–$59. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

MAGIC MIKE LIVE LAS VEGAS

THROUGH MAY 31, THU–SUN 7:30P AND 10P Currently in previews, official opening night April 21. This show is an all-new, first-class entertainment experience based on the hit films Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL. It is a sizzling 360-degree dance and acrobatic striptease spectacular guaranteed to bring on the heat. $49–$139. Club Domina at Hard Rock Hotel, magicmikelivelasvegas.com

PETER PAN

MAY 4–13, THU–SAT 7:30P

Arts & Crafts Fair

Peter and his mischievous fairy sidekick, Tinkerbell, visit the nursery of the Darling children late one night.

With a sprinkle of pixie dust, they begin a fantastical journey across the stars to new lands that none of them will ever forget. Bring the entire family to enjoy this co-production with the Rainbow Company Youth Theatre. $27.50–$33. UNLV Performing Arts Center, unlv.edu

Speaker Series

THE CHRISTIANS

Peggy Trigg, The Fallow Field (detail), 2016

Plein Air Painting Competition SEPT 22–27

Art Collector’s Sales SEPT 29–OCT 1

Demonstrations/Workshops SEPT 22–30

SEPT 29–30 SEPT 25–30

Live Music SEPT 29–30

Wild & Scenic Film Festival SEPT 22

Escalante, Utah

is located in the heart of Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument between Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef National Parks.

www.escalantecanyonsartfestival.org

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MAY 18–JUNE 4, THU–SAT 8P; SUN 2P Lucas Hnath’s soul-searching drama journeys into the crisis of belief that is ignited in a flock of Evangelical Christians when their pastor announces a radical departure from church doctrine. $16–$20. Cockroach Theatre, cockroachtheatre.com

LVIP COMEDY SHOW MAY 20, 7P

The Las Vegas Improvisational Players offer all-fresh, clean-burning comedy and music made up on the spot. $10 adults; $5 children and military. Show Creators Studio, 4465 W. Sunset Road, lvimprov.com

THE SWEETS’ SPOT WITH MELODY SWEETS MAY 22, 9:30P

A night of cabaret, burlesque and great music with Melody Sweets and her all-star band featuring Lon Bronson. $25–$40. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

CLOWNTOWN

MAY 27–28, 2P Set in a world where humanity is forced to deal with the existence of natural-born clowns, one clown must return to the city he abandoned to find his lost love and solve a diabolical murder that may destroy his kind forever. This musical concert will benefit the Nevada Conservatory Theater. $30. Judy Bayley Theatre at UNLV, unlv.edu

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

MAY 31–JUNE 11, TUE–SUN 7:30P; JUNE 1, 3-4, 10-11; 2P Cameron Mackintosh’s spectacular new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s beloved show features new scenery, new choreography, new staging, and many exciting special effects — including the show’s legendary chandelier. $29–$127. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmith center.com DANCE

KOREAN CULTURE FESTIVAL WITH SUNG KOREAN DANCERS MAY 6, 2P

The Sung Korean Dancers will mesmerize the audience with their fluid movements and authentic costumes set to traditional and modern day Korean music. Free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org

SHIRLEY CHEN & CHINESE DANCERS MAY 7, 2P

In celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, you are invited to explore the majestic culture of China through a live performance of Chinese folk dances. Free. Concert Hall at Whitney Library, lvccld.org

TICKET TO BROADWAY! MAY 13 AND 20, 7P; MAY 14 AND 21, 2P

The best dancers aged 55–92 tap out the greatest hits from Smokey Joe’s Café, Kinky Boots, 5 Guys Named

Mo, Victor Victoria, Kiss Me Kate, and Pippin. $11. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com

NEVADA BALLET THEATRE PRESENTS PETER PAN MAY 13, 7:30P; MAY 14, 2P

This full-length production is based on the classic tale by J.B. Barrie. $29–$139. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

TIKI ROOM DANCE SERIES: ALOHA NUI LOA MAY 15, 2P

In celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the guest performers are the hula dancers of Aloha Nui Loa. Free. Large Conference Room at the Clark County Library, lvccld.org

A NIGHT ON BROADWAY MAY 16, 6P

This show promises a high-energy celebration of Broadway with tributes to classics such as West Side Story and Cabaret to the more contemporary Hamilton and Waitress. The performers range in age from 4 to 18. $18–$55. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

Discounts/Promotions (discount off of total camp sessions) for members and general public For camp schedule and registration form, visit www.discoverykidslv.org

I T ’S A BLA S T !

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, ACT I / PAQUITA MAY 19, 7P

Students of ANBT’s Children’s Program join with the Pre-Professional Ballet Students for Act I of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with youngest students dancing as fireflies, bees, and ladybugs, and older students as Puck, Titania, and Oberon. Paquita is the second act of the evening, featuring variations that are some of ballet’s most celebrated examples of 19th-century classicism. $18–$55.

Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

SHOWGIRL FOLLIES …

ENCORE!

MAY 27, 7P; MAY 28, 3P Paying tribute to the iconic entertainment found only in Las Vegas, this show features entertainers, sparkle, talent, and a “wow” factor that is worthy of our fair city. $20. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com

Experience Science and History by the Megaton

$4.00

Learn how America’s Cold War warriors unlocked the secrets of the atom in the Las Vegas desert.

OFF

GENERAL ADMISSION WITH THIS AD

JUBILEE

MAY 31, 7P The Tamburitzans present dance and

A Program of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation

Admissions (702) 794-5124 | Group & School Tours (702) 794-5144 755 E. Flamingo Rd. Las Vegas, NV 89119 | www.NationalAtomicTestingMuseum.org M AY 2 0 1 7

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THE GUIDE music from Croatia, Armenia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Russia, Ukraine, France, and India — with a finale “Dance of the Roma” that will leave you breathless. $20. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com

STAR CATCHERS RECITAL JUNE 2, 6P

The award-winning Winchester Star Catchers Dance Program celebrates its 15th anniversary with hip-hop, contemporary, jazz, and ballet during its annual spring recital. The dance program features more than 80 students, ages 3 to young adult. High school senior Myia Clark will be featured. $8.

Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov DISCUSSIONS AND READINGS

WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WORDS OF WISDOM ABOUT DOING THE RIGHT THING MAY 8, 7:30P

John Quiñones, award-winning co-anchor of ABC Primetime, forces all of us to take a good look in the mirror, holding it up not only to ourselves, but to the nation. What do we do when we witness injustice, racism, bullying? Free, tickets required. Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall at UNLV, unlv.edu

DANCES OF INDIA MAY 28, 2P

Purbasha Banerjee, Artistic Director of Nritya Academy of Indian Dances, discusses the culture behind classical and modern dances of India. Following her lecture, the dancers of Nritya Academy of Indian Dances will give live performances of “Bharata Natyam” and Bollywood. Free. Concert Hall at Whitney Library, lvccld.org FAMILY AND FESTIVALS

‘OHANA FESTIVAL MAY 6, 10A–4P

Commemorating Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month and highlighting the importance of ‘ohana (family) in Polynesian cultures, this family-friendly event will feature great food, live music, performances by local hula schools, cultural workshops, island craft activities, an outdoor “luau” with kids’ games, and more! $6. Springs Preserve, springspreserve.org

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ICE CREAM FESTIVAL MAY 20, 10A–4P

A festival full of sundaes, cones, novelties, and root beer and orange soda floats, this kid-oriented event will feature live entertainment, carnival games, a bubble play station and more. $10 adults, $8 children 3–12, free for children younger than 3.

Springs Preserve, springspreserve. org

BLUES & BREWS FESTIVAL MAY 27, 4–8P

Each ticket includes unlimited samples of beers from across the country and around the world. Commemorative mugs will be available to the first 1,900 guests. Local and national blues acts will provide the backbeat while vendors will have plenty of tasty food options for purchase. $35–$75.

Springs Preserve, springspreserve. org FUNDRAISERS

THIRD ANNUAL RUN/WALK TO RAISE AWARENESS AND FUNDS FOR BRAIN TUMOR RESEARCH MAY 21, 8

Each year 70,000 adults and children in the United States are diagnosed with a brain tumor and nearly 14,000 lose their lives. For those who live, the tumors, benign or malignant, cause extreme disabilities. Fundraising benefits The Musella Foundation and Desert Gray Matters. $30. Sunset Park, walktoendbraintumors.org/nv

ROMANIAN RHAPSODY GALA JUNE 3, 6P

The Las Vegas Philharmonic Guild honors Lia Roberts, Honorary Consul General of Romania. The event will include a champagne reception and silent auction, followed by a dinner and a live auction. Musical performances will include a welcome salute

by T.A.P.P.S. (Trumpeters Alliance to Perform Patriotic Services), the Romanian Children’s Choir, and other special guests. Proceeds benefit the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s Youth Programs. $195. Westgate Resort & Casino, lvphil.org

Rigoletto Verdi’s

Presented by

Starring Michael Chioldi (pictured) So Young Park and Kirk Dougherty Rubin Casas and Danielle Marcelle Bond

Opera conducted by Music Director, Gregory Buchalter of the METROPOLITAN OPERA.

Friday, June 9, 2017 7:30 PM Sunday, June 11, 2017 2:00 PM Judy Bayley Theatre University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Box Office: 702.895.2787 Photo courtesy of Marco Ayala

END NOTE I, CHARTICUS

ROAD TRIP! Not sure where to go? Let us help you plan your perfect spring getaway!

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GOING ALONE?

UNLESS MY FAMILY FINDS OUT FIRST!

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ON THE HIGH SIDE OF BARELY ADEQUATE

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NATURALLY! (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?)

ENOUGH TO RETAIN CONSCIOUSNESS

I CAN PUT UP WITH MY CHAUFFEUR FOR A FEW HOURS

THE WONDROUS JOY OF SPOTTY CELL RECEPTION

THE MISERY OF KINDA LEARNING SOMETHING

MOAB

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VERY! TOOK OUT A THIRD MORTGAGE!

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SMALV.COM Southwest Medical Associates is part of OptumCare, a leading healthcare delivery organization that is reinventing healthcare to help keep people healthier and feeling their best. Southwest Medical is a trademark of Southwest Medical Associates, Inc. Optum and OptumCare are registered trademarks of Optum, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2017 Southwest Medical Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.