the full issue as a pdf

the
Sports, LEISURE & Outdoors issue
03
March
15
+ Palate play Bar food scores a gourmet goal at Sporting Life
Natural
Highs
➤ Stone temple zealots
The sport and religion
of rock climbing
➤ The nature next door
More great hikes in your
own backyard
➤ Field trips
A photo essay on
outdoor life in Las Vegas
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Somebody’s
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off your
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Shouldn’t it
be you?
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your share of a $2.7 million
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our extra earnings are really yours. Earlier this year,
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For information and to open an account,
Call (702) 228-2228, or online at OPENCCCU.com.
EDiTOR’S Note
Outside
chance
N
ow is a great time to get outside — and not just
because of the weather. In fact, if I were the
type to indulge in grandiose, hyperventilating,
all-caps overstatement, I’d say we got a full-on
NATURAL WONDERS RENAISSANCE going on up in here. *Makes it rain with pine cones.* From
Great Basin National Park to Sloan Canyon, there’s been
a sanguine streak of victories and vindications lately affirming that — in contraindication to recent shady Congressional feints at, ugh, reanimating the corpse of a
nuke waste dump at Yucca Mountain — the Silver State is
not (to go earnestly bumper-sticker on you for a moment)
a wasteland. Consider: After years of grassroots activism
and populist realpolitiking, Protectors of Tule Springs
finally saw preservationists’ dreams come true with
the creation of the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National
Monument. And after years of idling on standby thanks
to a sour economy, Sloan Canyon National Conservation
Area gets an ambitious improvement plan this month,
promising amenities that will raise its profile to match
that of Red Rock and Valley of Fire. Up north, academics,
preservation activists and park officials have launched
a campaign to make Great Basin National Park, home to
some of the darkest night skies in the continental U.S.,
the site of a world-class astronomical observatory. Next
door, meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has
introduced a bill that would protect millions of acres of
desert just beyond our doorstep, expanding Death Valley
National Park, Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave
National Preserve. And the continued push for land preservation by Sen. Harry Reid’s office promises to protect
even more of our most sensitive, valuable and beautiful
desert. In each case, sure, this expands the playground
of Nevada public lands — this means
more hikes to complete, more summits
Next
to conquer, more gorgeous vistas to use
MOnth as selfie backgrounds. And, of course, it
Style is in
fosters a more ennobled kind of tourism
season with
that doesn’t involve drinking daiquiri out
our spring
of a plastic Eiffel Tower without pants.
fashion issue
4
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
But besides that, I also like to think these happy developments have in them the power to nudge the world’s
perception of our personality, so the word Nevada instinctively evokes more than desert wastelands or neon
misadventure.
And yet words like nature and phrases like public lands
always conjure a certain out-thereness that make of the
natural landscape an other, severed from our everyday
experience. Well, you don’t have to drive or walk far to
see real Southern Nevada. On p. 38, we bring out another installment of our much-loved hikes in your own
backyard — and that applies whether your backyard is
Henderson or Centennial Hills. Another story in this issue will make you reconsider how you think of Southern
Nevada’s backyard — that is, Red Rock National Conservation Area. Certainly, it’s both a gem of a hiking destination and beautiful backdrop to the clamor and gleam
of Las Vegas. But after you read Heidi Kyser’s piece,
“Stone Temple Zealots,” you might envision Red Rock as
something closer to a holy site. Heidi’s deep dive into the
world of rock climbers reveals a fascinating subculture
of aficionados for whom the sport is much more than a
sport. It’s also a philosophy, a religion, an
obsession and a way of life. And Red Rock
is their shrine, their ocean and, in some
cases, their white whale.
But I’m flinging mere words to try to
lasso a profound relationship that we
flatlanders can only hope to understand.
Which, to get grandiose again, is the point
of getting out in nature in the first place:
To momentarily divest ourselves of the
approximations of language and enter a
world where words don’t have to suffice.
Andrew Kiraly
editor
Follow Desert Companion
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4 color process
®
The will to do wonders®
®
The will to do wonders®
WISHES
W E LCO M E
Caesars Foundation is proud to support Make-A-Wish
Southern Nevada’s Walk for Wishes event for our
third consecutive year, which helps further its mission
of helping children with life-threatening medical
conditions be enriched with hope, strength and joy.
Please join us on Saturday, March 21st.
For more information, visit www.snv.wish.org.
facebook.com/CaesarsFoundation
@CaesarsFdn
March 2015
1
Reader Brent Parrish is leaving Las
Vegas, and we’re sorry to see him go.
A magazine needs good readers every
bit as much as it needs good writers, artists
and editors, and Parrish certainly fit the bill,
as his farewell letter makes clear. It’s also
an excellent primer on how to settle in and
come to love a place that isn’t always easy
to love:
I hated Las Vegas. It is full of concrete,
strip malls and ubiquitous housing developments. Worst of all, there is not a single
ounce of sweet gray fog. My union with
Las Vegas was an arranged marriage, one
that ripped me from the love of my youth
and the only home I’ve ever known: Northern California. I left Napa feeling an acute
emptiness over all the things I had left unexplored. To make my stay more excruciating, the promotion promised to my wife
(also our largest motivation for moving)
was being given to someone else. Smaller
misfortunes followed, and the reality of
my location seemed like pure lunacy. I
couldn’t have chosen this!
Things didn’t change in one day but
I know for sure it started with a trip
Downtown to a place called EAT. I was so
thrilled to see things on a menu that were
grown on a farm in the same state that I
was living in! And right across the street
was some construction project being
built with shipping containers! That’s the
day I knew there was hope, maybe this
arranged marriage to Ms. Vegas could be
something, maybe there could be love. … I
was also introduced to the best free magazine I will ever read: Desert Companion.
I read at least half of the November 2013
issue over one cappuccino that day. I was
so engrossed that I nearly forgot how
perturbed I was that it was November
and it wasn’t cool enough to even wear
6
March 2015
[email protected]
Vo lU m e 1 3 I s s u e 2
DesertCompanion.com
HEALTH
long sleeves.
Even though my real
marriage was in a rapid
decline,
everything
else was getting better.
I had some great new
friends, and we started
WAITING
our own hiking club.
TO INHALE
After exhausting trails
at Red Rock we spent
nearly every Tuesday
last summer hiking
at Mount Charleston,
then descending to the
west side of town to
swim in the shade and push our culinary
boundaries with nothing but a tabletop
grill. ... Of course there were copious
amounts of craft brew consumed, too!
I would be remiss not to recount a little
sandwich shack in front of a dive bar on
the most famous street in Las Vegas. I
don’t know what I ate before the Goodwich. I love seeing those same owners
buying fresh greens from the grocery
store I work at. I get giddy as a kitten
with yarn when I get to see local celebrities shop where I work, like a lovely and
personable food events coordinator or a
magazine editor who always says hello
to me. And how great is a city where you
can attain ramen at 2 a.m. and which has
more genuinely great pizza places than
an octopus has arms? That city is so great
I might not ever want to leave it. Sadly, as my marriage has ended so must
my marriage to this city. I have to go back
to start over. I never would have thought 16
months ago that leaving Las Vegas would
break my heart, but it has already begun to.
There is plenty that needs to change about
Las Vegas, but there is an overwhelming
tide of people who really care. This can
feel like a stoic and
unwelcoming place;
Las Vegas isn’t a
place where beauty
has fully established
itself, but it is better
for that reason. There
is so much to love but
you have to find it,
you have to make this
city yours because it
won’t do it for you.
Northern
California may be my
home, but Las Vegas will always be my city. Farewell.
Breathe
uneasy:
Researchers
Rodney Metcalf,
left, and
Brenda Buck
After two UNLV researchers discovered asbestos in Southern
Nevada soil, they wanted to study it further. Why did state health
authorities stand in their way? B Y H E I D I K YS E R
S
itting in her small, cluttered office on the fourth floor of UNLV’s
Science and Engineering Building,
geology professor Brenda Buck
pauses to ponder my question:
Has her recent discovery of naturally occurring asbestos in the Boulder City area
had any personal — emotional, maybe —
impact on her? The sun shines through
a north-facing window, lighting up her
strawberry-blond hair and blue eyes.
“Yes,” she finally says. “I used to board
34
FEBRUARY 2015
DESERTCOMPANION.COM
034_health.indd 34
my horse, Jimmy, at a stable in Boulder
City. Sometimes, when my grandkids were
little, I’d take them for rides out there. I
can’t remember specifically where we’d
go or whether it was windy, which would
have increased their chance of exposure
(to any asbestos in the air), but I do think
about that now.”
A few weeks later, from his Carson City
office at the Nevada Division of Public and
Behavioral Health, Ihsan Azzam says almost
exactly the opposite, without the slightest
hesitation: “I would move to
Boulder City in a heartbeat,”
he says. “I would be happy to live there with
my kids and grandkids. I would not be worried about the risk at all.”
As the state epidemiologist, Azzam
says, it’s his responsibility to make sure
Nevadans are safe. Sounding every bit as
sincere over the phone as Buck appeared
in person, he repeats several times that he
is convinced her discovery is no cause for
alarm, that the existence of asbestos in the
environment alone does not equal an impending public health crisis.
How are we to know who’s right?
Buck has recently been on a public
speaking tour of sorts, appearing in community forums and academic gatherings
to present the findings she and fellow
UNLV geology professor Rodney Metcalf
have gleaned from nearly five years of collecting and testing soil samples in Southern Nevada — findings that were published in an academic paper in January. At
P H OTO G R A P H Y C H R I STO P H E R S M I T H & B R E N T H O L M E S
1/23/15 1:05 PM
2
There was some Facebook response
to Heidi Kyser’s February report
“Waiting to Inhale,” about asbestos
in the soil near Boulder City and the scientific/bureaucratic squabbles it prompted.
Bruce Reynolds wrote: “Interesting
story, and perhaps the danger from the
asbestos around Boulder City is minimal.
And perhaps not. But I’d like to know more
about where the asbestos is, how much of it
is there and what the health risks are. The
State of Nevada and the EPA need to do a
lot more studies!!”
Norman Umberger, on the other hand,
didn’t seem worried at all. “If you know
anything about asbestos, you know the
danger is minimal to the public and zero
from environmental.”
Jason Reek, identified on social media
as a research assistant at UNLV’s Department of Geoscience, countered: “I don’t
think it’s very accurate to say there is zero
danger from asbestos occurring in the
environment. It doesn’t matter what the
source is, the moment of entry into the
lungs it become a hazard.”
5K RUN AND 1-MILE FUN WALK
MARCH 28, 2015
Join Cirque du Soleil for its 14th Annual 5K Run and 1-Mile
Fun Walk at the Springs Preserve. Run or walk with your
favorite Cirque du Soleil artists at this annual event that
includes music from cast and crew, photo opportunities
with performers and a circus play area for children!
This event is presented by Cirque du Soleil in partnership
with the Springs Preserve. All proceeds support the
Springs Preserve and Cirque du Soleil Foundations.
REGISTRATION IS OPEN AT WWW.ACTIVE.COM
For more information visit www.cirquedusoleil.com/5KRun
March 2015
Vo lU m e 1 3 I s s u e 0 3
www.desertcompanion.com
Features
52 Stone
temple
zealots
They came, they climbed, they
stayed — among the thousands
of rock climbing tourists who
flock to Southern Nevada is a
hardy tribe of those who couldn’t
leave the wonderful red stone
behind. Inside Vegas’ climbing
community. By Heidi Kyser
From paddling to parkour,
football to fishing, stargazing to bird-watching — our
photographers capture the
panorama of outdoor fun
in Southern Nevada.
8
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
b i r dwat c h i n g p h ot o b y s h a n t i c o l a n g e lo - c u r r a n
62 out there
LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
CONDUCTED BY MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS
W I T H P I A N I S T Y U JA WA N G
MONDAY, MARCH 30 – 7:30pm
PHOTO BY ART STREIBER
AN EVENING WITH
GARRISON KEILLOR
THURSDAY, APRIL 16 – 7:30pm
In a solo performance, the acclaimed host of A Prairie Home Companion
shares hilarious anecdotes about growing up in the American Midwest,
the people of Lake Wobegon and “late-life fatherhood.”
© ROLEX FADIL BERISHA
AN EVENING WITH
March
12 – 6:00pm
BRUCE
HORNSBY
SATURDAY, APRIL 18 – 7:30pm
APRIL 28 – MAY 3
TICKETS STARTING AT $29
VISIT THESMITHCENTER.COM TO SEE THE FULL LINEUP
702.749.2000 | TTY: 800.326.6868 or dial 711 | For group inquiries call 702.749.2348
361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89106
March 2015
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Vo lU m e 1 3 I s s u e 0 3
34
38
26
46
departments
All Things
34 community
45 Dining
75 The Guide
19 biz20Selling LV’s tap
Hitting the streets with
homelessness activist
Merideth Spriggs
By Matt Kelemen
46 The DishScoring
Grab your umbrella,
it’s cultural monsoon
season!
22 environment
What’s next for Sloan
Canyon?
24 zeit bites
March in a flow chart
26 ProfileA golf
prodigy tees up her
future
28 StyleModel Dani
Reeves: selfie queen
30 Open topic
Can’t we keep up with
Tulsa?
10
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
38 outdoors
Hiking in, practically,
your own backyard
By Alan Gegax,
Heidi Kyser and Brent
Holmes
big at Sporting Life
48 Eat this now
There’s no Benny like an
Arepas Benny
50 at first Bite
At Bardot Brasserie,
you’ll always have Paris
80 End note
Urban hiking sketchbook
By Scott Dickensheets
on the
cover
photography
Alex Johnson
by Aaron Mayes
G u t t e r CREDIT L e f t
water for fun and profit
Stumped About
Tree Care? Hire Us.
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.
Publisher Melanie Cannon
Associate Publisher Christine Kiely
Editor Andrew Kiraly
Art Director Christopher Smith
deputy editor Scott Dickensheets
staff writer Heidi Kyser
Graphic Designer Brent Holmes
O
Account executives Sharon Clifton, Parker McCoy, Favian Perez, Leigh
Stinger, Noelle Tokar, Markus Van’t Hul
ur tree professionals and certified arborists take great pride in
thoughtfully and skillfully performing the highest quality tree care in
Southern Nevada. We really know our trees; we want to know yours, too.
• Pruning & Trimming
• Fertilization & Soil Management
• Insect & Disease Management
Marketing manager Lisa Kelly
Subscription manager Chris Bitonti
• Planting & Transplanting
• Tree & Stump Removal
• Young Tree Development
Web administrator Danielle Branton
traffic coordinator Karen Wong
ADVERTISING COPY EDITOR Carla J. Zvosec
Contributing writers Cybele, Shanti Colangelo-Curran, Alan Gegax, Mélanie Hope, Hugh Jackson, Matt Kelemen, Debbie Lee,
Sage Leehey, Aaron Mayes, Greg Blake Miller, Christie
Moeller, Molly O'Donnell, Greg Thilmont, Mitchell
Wilburn
Mention the word SAGE when scheduling your
tree service for 15% off (Offer expires March 31, 2015)
Editorial: Andrew Kiraly, (702) 259-7856;
[email protected]
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Design | Installation | Renovation | Consultation | Maintenance | Tree Care
Hardscapes | Small Jobs | Irrigation | Lighting
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March 2015
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Advertising: Christine Kiely, (702) 259-7813;
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Call (702) 452-5272
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Contributing artists Shanti Colangelo-Curran, Aaron Mayes, Chris
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Subscriptions: Chris Bitonti, (702) 259-7810;
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Website: www.desertcompanion.com
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.
com, 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 Chris Bitonti
for back issues, which are available for purchase for $7.95.
ISSN 2157-8389 (print)
ISSN 2157-8397 (online)
Brunch chic.
Saturday and Sunday.
Aria.com
Board of
Directors
Officers
cynthia alexander, ESQ. chair
Snell & Wilmer
Jerry Nadal vice chair
Cirque du Soleil
TIM WONG treasurer
Arcata Associates
Florence M.E. Rogers secretary
Nevada Public Radio
Directors
kevin m. buckley
First Real Estate Companies
Dave Cabral emeritus Business Finance Corp.
Louis Castle emeritus
Patrick N. Chapin, Esq. emeritus
Richard I. dreitzer, Esq.
Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, LLP
Elizabeth FRETWELL emeritus
City of Las Vegas
bOB GLASER BNY Mellon
gavin isaacs Scientific Games
Jan Jones Blackhurst
Caesars Entertainment Corporation
John R. Klai II
Klai Juba Wald Architects
Lamar Marchese president emeritus
William mason
Taylor International Corporation
Chris Murray emeritus
Avissa Corporation
William J. “Bill” Noonan emeritus
Boyd Gaming Corporation
kathe nylen Anthony j. pearl, esq.
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
MARK RICCiARDI, Esq. emeritus
Fisher & Phillips, LLP
Mickey Roemer emeritus
Roemer Gaming
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March 2015
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Winter is over, and now is the time for adventure. Fly 20 feet in
the air with your own jetpack, roar over dunes in an ATV, or speed
around one of the biggest racetracks in the world, all in Pahrump.
Find your spring adventure at VISITPAHRUMP.COM
On February 5th, Nevada Public Radio invited its major donors, Board of
Directors, Community Advisory Board, corporate supporters, and community
dignitaries to our premiere annual event, Bids, Bites & Beverages.
In addition to enjoying signature beverages and gourmet bites, guests
participated in both silent and live auctions. The event raised over $50,000
and we welcomed over 400 guests to the Donald W. Reynolds Broadcast
Center. Check out more photos at facebook.com/desertcompanion.
03
15
de signer Water, water, everywhere ...
A model’s tips
on style — and selfies
page 28
business
Real thirst
With alkalized water brands tapping our
precious local supply, has the bottled water
business gone too far?
B y H e i d i K ys e r
A
few months ago in her Carson City home, Abby
Johnson’s cleaning lady held up a bottle of Real
Water and declared that the stuff had changed
her life — she was sleeping better and feeling more
energetic since she started drinking it, she said. “Let me
see that,” Johnson replied, examining the bottle. Amid
the fine print, she saw these words: “Source of water: Las
Vegas Valley Water District.”
“This is not what it seems to be,” she told her cleaning
lady, explaining that the product was treated tap water.
“Her eyes got really big,” Johnson says. “She was shocked.”
Here’s the irony: Johnson heads the Great Basin Water
Network, whose raison d’etre is to kill the Southern Nevada Water Association’s plan to pump water from Eastern
Nevada, where Johnson has a second home, and ship it to
a certain increasingly thirsty — and dry — metropolitan
center in the south.
“We’re focused on encouraging meaningful conservation in the Las Vegas Valley as an alternative to
the groundwater pipeline project,” Johnson says. “It’s
illogical to take water out of the (Colorado River) system
and export it. We’re all for economic development, but
I l lu s t r at i o n c h r i s m o r r i s
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
19
ALL Things
business
Hear
more
if there was one thing Las Vegas should
import instead of export, it would be
bottled water.”
Brent Jones disagrees. The CEO of
Affinity Lifestyles, Real Water’s parent,
argues that his company is creating jobs
— 40 to 60, he estimates — by providing a
good product that consumers are clamoring for. He pays the standard commercial
water rate, just like the casinos and hotels
whose myriad customers run countless
gallons down the drain each day. And,
notes Jones, who’s also the state assemblyman for District 35 in Enterprise, he’s
not doing anything illegal.
Still, some say there’s something
unseemly about taking a resource from
the public supply, repackaging it and
selling it at a premium to outsiders. Has
bottled water crossed the line between
what should and shouldn’t be allowed? Or
is it simply smart business that should be
left alone to flourish?
Hot water
Real Water is on fire. Jones won’t give
out his closely held company’s revenue
or profit numbers, but he says that the
brand’s top customers are Sprouts and
Whole Foods, and that market research
firm SPINS ranks it No. 2 in the natural
products category. He has facilities in
San Diego and Tennessee, and plans to
expand into Texas. And Real Water’s website includes a photo gallery of celebrities
from Common to Courtney Cox flaunting
the square bottle with the “RE2AL” logo.
That little “2” has a lot to do with
the product’s popularity. It refers to E2
Technology, the company’s proprietary
method for — to use its lingo — “infusing
it with negative ions.” Asked to explain
the process, Jones declined, saying only,
“It’s alkalized, which a number of waters
are becoming now. No one else has
figured out how to permanently infuse
the water with negative ions. People
make it that way with machines, but you
have to drink it right away. We’ve figured
out how to make it shelf-stable.”
Indeed, Real Water isn’t the only local
company jumping on the alkalization
bandwagon. Alkame Water’s website also
features a photo gallery of celebrities
that drink its alkaline product, although
20
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
What’s the
ers help to fund the infrastructure
it focuses mainly on athletes and
future of
for treating and delivering this waclaims its water is also “oxygenatLake Mead?
ter to their homes. Is it fair that they
ed.” Red Rock Springs Water is one Hear a
discussion
foot part of the bill for Alkame and
of several selling alkaline water in
on “KNPR’s
Real Water’s business? (Commerbulk — through large refillable jugs
State of
cial customers with a 1.5-inch pipe,
— and offers a lengthy explanation Nevada”
such as Real Water’s, pay the same
of why it is healthier than other
at desert
companion.
base rate as residential customers
water. Jones is more circumspect.
com/hear
with a 5/8-inch pipe — $1.16-$4.58
Although he refers to Real Water
more
per 1,000 gallons — but commercial
as a “healthy product,” he won’t
customers have significantly higher
elaborate, citing FDA regulations
surcharges. A dozen 1-liter bottles of Real
that prevent natural products from
Water sell for $28 on its website.)
making health claims.
SNWA is neutral on the issue. “You’re
This convenient conundrum — being
paying to make sure that the water coming
able to claim your product is healthy while
to your house is safe to drink,” spokesman
being legally prevented from explaining
Bronson Mack says. “These guys are paywhy — has produced some skeptics. “Yeah
ing for the water going to their business.”
… I’ve got nothing,” says UNLV ChemMack points out that it’s pretty hard
istry Department Chair David Hatchett,
to argue against a specific abuse of the
searching the SciFinder online database
public water system when anyone can
for studies of alkaline water’s health
take a jug to a park, fill it up at a fountain
benefits. “I’m always of the opinion that, if
and take it home. Or that residents
you do the science, I’ll listen. The problem
widely patronize bulk distributors
is, there’s no data on this.”
such as Sparkletts, which tap, treat and
Besides, Hatchett says, there are two
repackage municipal water.
obvious problems with the whole alkaBut, he adds, “One element to think
line/negative ion water business. First,
about, from a larger, socially conscious
alkaline-water makers tout its acid-balposition, is that it takes a lot of power to
ancing properties, but, Hatchett says, “If
treat and deliver our water. It takes a lot
you drink something with high alkalinity,
of power and fossil fuels to bottle water.”
your body will continue to produce acid
According to the Pacific Institute, prountil it’s neutralized.”
ducing bottles for American consumpSecond, and most emphatically, he
tion in 2006 required the equivalent of
adds, “There’s no such thing as negative
more than 17 million barrels of oil, not
ion water. You have to make a positive ion
including the energy for transportation.
to have a negative ion. It’s basic physics:
It also produced more than 2.5 million
Charge neutrality must be maintained. If
tons of carbon dioxide.
it’s not, you couldn’t swim in the ocean,
This, consumer watchdog agency
because you’d get electrocuted.”
Food & Water Watch says, is especially
That said, Hatchett thinks he may
egregious for a product that is readily
know why people such as Johnson’s
available on tap in virtually every home
cleaning lady feel better when they drink
in the country. In a 2013 position paper
Real Water: It tastes good, so they take
titled “Take Back the Tap,” the orgain lots of it. And the better hydrated your
nization writes, “Consumers should
body is, the better it works.
switch back from bottled to tap water
All bottled up
and reclaim the clean and affordable
Healthy beverage fads come and go (reresource that flows from our faucets.”
member when Gatorade was considered
In other words, the power is in the
good for you?). The enduring problem is
purchaser’s hands: the environmental,
bottled water in general. For one thing, the
energy and financial costs of bottled
U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act requires that
water; or, your monthly water bill plus,
municipal water companies like the Las
if taste obliges, the price of a home
Vegas Valley Water District provide the
filter. Which one will you choose?
public with a safe potable supply. Ratepay-
RT?
E
S
E
D
E
H
T
R I N G TO
B
R
E
T
A
W
S
W H AT D O E
A little water can bring life to the community. Which is why we’re working hard to make
sure that Southern Nevada has a reliable water supply for families, neighborhoods and
businesses. Over the years, the community has conserved billions of gallons of water and
is still continuing to flourish, proving you don’t need a lot of water to grow a city. So let’s
stay water smart, Southern Nevada. Learn more at snwa.com.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority is a not-for-profi t water utility.
ALL Things
outdoors
Rocky road:
The BLM has
big plans
in store for
Sloan Canyon.
conservation
Diamond in
the desert
Among natural areas, Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area
has long seemed like a neglected stepchild. But that’s about to
change B y S a g e L e e h e y
L
et’s play compare and contrast.
Red Rock and Sloan Canyon
are both national conservation
areas. They both feature breathtaking
vistas, amazing petroglyphs, diverse
wildlife and, of course, wonderful hiking
opportunities.
But the similarities end there. Drive
through Red Rock and you’ll see a
well-appointed visitors center, clearly
marked hiking trails, educational kiosks,
plentiful parking. Drive through Sloan
Canyon and, well, you’re in for a bumpy
ride, figuratively and literally. The road to
get to the 48,000-acre area is rough and
rutted — four-wheel-drive is a must — oh,
and good luck finding a restroom or interpretive signs, let alone a visitors center.
When you visit Sloan Canyon, you’re
pretty much on your own. It’s often been
a source of wonder to both visitors and
22
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
activists: Why doesn’t Sloan Canyon seem
to get any love?
It isn’t about love but, rather, money.
Bankrolled largely by interest from a $65
million federal land sale, Sloan Canyon
doesn’t get annual federal funding,
nor does it rake in the fat fees — think
entrance fees, camping fees, special
recreation fees — that Red Rock does. (To
be fair, Sloan Canyon is about a quarter of
the size of Red Rock, and receives about
78,000 visitors per year while Red Rock
sees about 1.2 million.)
The result: the national conservation
area christened in 2002 has remained
something of a gem in the rough — despite longstanding plans to make the area
more visitor-friendly. It’s been a source of
anticipation — and some frustration — to
outdoors enthusiasts and activists such
as J.T. Reynolds, president of Friends
of Sloan Canyon. They feel like
the BLM has been a little overcautious
in spending only the interest from the
land sale money for fear of depleting its
bankroll.
“And that’s okay. That’s one option to
consider, but you still need to put facilities out there and you still need to have
personnel to manage those resources and
to better protect them,” he says.
More than a decade later, Sloan Canyon is still rough around the edges. Blame
the economy: In the boom years, a 2005
plan that envisioned a visitors center, a
paved entrance road and trail improvements was put in deep hibernation when
the economy crashed — right on Sloan
Canyon’s doorstep. Planned community
Inspirada, a major prospective source of
Sloan Canyon’s visitors, faltered and went
into bankruptcy. “It didn’t make sense to
build a road that was going to require a
third of the funding when there was suddenly going to be virtually no visitation,”
says BLM spokesperson Kirsten Cannon.
“The fate of Sloan Canyon and the fate of
Inspirada were intertwined.”
Now, with the economy (and Inspirada) revving again, the plan is back
— tweaked and scaled down a bit, but
definitely back. Set for release this month,
the Sloan Canyon National Conservation
Area Implementation Plan will include
a visitors center, information kiosks and
professional staff — finally spending
down the $65 million bankroll dedicated
to the area. “People are eager to see
something on the ground now that the
economy is bouncing back,” says Cannon.
Friends of Sloan Canyon Vice
President Terri Robertson is certainly
eager. When she first learned of housing
developments slated near Sloan Canyon, she had concerns about suburban
encroachment. Now she sees the people
moving in as potential allies in preserving
this natural gem of Henderson.
“The more good people you get out
here,” she says, “the better it gets.”
P h oto g r a p h y C h r i sto p h e r S m i t h
ALL Things
zeit bites
Song of
the Shark
chart palpitations
What should I
celebrate in March?
1. I’M ready to
par-tay!
Beer?
In memory of
Jerry Tarkanian
2. I’M geeky, yet also
ready to engage in
modest carousal!
Pi day
march 14
YES
Do you understand why Pi
Day would be March 14?
Do you
totally trust
your BFF
Brutus?
NO
first day
of spring!
MARCH 20
Save a
Spider Day
Ides of March
Beer + yelling at
TV screens?
march madness
Beer + unfortunate
ethnic stereotyping?
st. patrick’s day
Have you been trying to
devise a drinking game related to six-sided shapes?
Want to
totally creep
us out?
Hasn’t
everyone?
Sun-Earth
Day
NO
Hexagonal
Awareness
Month
MARCH 18
MARCH 17
Beer + seccessionist
ardor + Rick Perry impressions + 10-gallon hats?
texas independence day
3. let’s get serious
for a minute
Is that actual pie in
your pie hole?
Want to redress
a bit of historical
imbalance?
MARCH 2
Sure do!
NO
NO
YES
(You might
want to rethink
that answer)
National
Nutrition
Month
To hell with all that.
Wine me up, Pierre!
international
francophile month
NO
NO
Doesn’t
everyone?
begins mARCH 17
YES
MARCH 15
MARCH 14
Women’s
History Month
Colorectal Cancer
Awareness Month
What are your
favorite guts?
Colon!
Kidney!
World Kidney Day
March 12
24
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
The Rebel enters
the gym.
He enters the gym
and takes his seat.
He enters the gym
and takes his seat
and watches as the
spotlights swirl.
He watches the spotlights swirl as his students, tall fellows, greet each other in the glow.
The students, the tall fellows, listen as the
Rebel’s name is proclaimed.
The Rebel’s name has not always been spoken in kind tones. The Rebel breaks rules, they
say. Sometimes, they may even be right. The
Rebel says everyone sometimes breaks rules.
The Rebel has chosen a city. Here his name
is proclaimed. The people howl, they shout.
The madness beneath these lights is joyful. If it
were a hateful joy, a joy that comes merely out
of adulation, celebration, aggression, elevation
of man to god, unwholesome integration of
circus and church, it would be frightening.
But it is not a hateful joy. It is something
more like love.
The Rebel knows how to laugh at himself.
He does not seek power. He seeks beauty.
The Rebel tells himself that the ends justify
the means. Even his allies, from time to time,
grow uncomfortable with the means, or the
rumored means. Does the Rebel break rules?
Or are the rules themselves broken? Is it acceptable to break broken rules?
The beauty: The students play basketball. No
one has ever played basketball like the Rebel’s
students play basketball. A strange wind whips
through the arena, lifts them, swirls them in
celestial motion, sweeps them across the universe, toward the center, the knotted strings,
the opening in the knotted strings. The ball falls
through, again and again, a storm without end.
The motion of these young men, almost
boys, creates gravity, and the gravity pulls
upon the city, and the city finds a center and
the center finds a soul, and the soul fills the
boys and the city and the Rebel. None of us,
not the citizens, not the boys, not the Rebel,
expected to be here. This desert does not
need us. But now we realize, all of us, that we
need it. — Greg Blake Miller
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March 20, 2015
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funds and awareness for critical water issues
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ALL Things
people
profile
Veronica Joels
Junior golfer
C
oming from a 14-year-old, it’s kind of a shocking confession: “I’d
rather be on the golf course than with my friends,” says rising golf
star Veronica Joels, quickly adding, “I love my friends, obviously,
but me and a golf ball on a course — I don’t have anything else going on.
It’s just nice and calm.” Ah, calm. The lives of teenagers are rarely calm to
begin with, but calm is especially rare for Joels these days amid the growing
buzz about her talent on the green. Joels is only a freshman at the Meadows School, but she’s already being courted by more than 25 Division One
colleges because of her skills in golf. While most of her classmates probably
haven’t even thought about their college plans yet, Joels is busy fielding
letters from golf programs around the country. (Her current favorite is
Stanford, but she said she hasn’t visited enough yet to choose — and she still
has a few years to make that decision.)
But she’s not dawdling in the
meantime. Joels is utterly committed to
— you might even say obsessed with —
golf. After school, she golfs at her home
course at TPC Summerlin for about
three hours until it’s dark — and then
even longer on the weekends. She also
teaches clinics for kids and for women
on Saturdays. “It’s really fun for me,
and it teaches me a lot. It takes me back
to fundamentals, so it helps my swing
a lot. And it helps me to focus on the
basics again.” She learned those basics
early. Joels began golfing at the age of
9 and, not long after, started competing in local tournaments. “And that’s
when I realized that I could probably
go somewhere with this,” Joels says.
By age 13, she won the U.S. Kids Teen
26
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
World Championships in her division.
“And that’s when I realized I could
probably take this all the way. I could
get a scholarship for this.”
What accounts for Joels’ fast rise?
Passion? Practice? The strange magic of
being a prodigy? To her, it comes down
to having the heart for it. “It’s mostly
about determination, how bad you want
it. … If you want it bad enough, you’re
going to try to get it as hard as you can.”
Joels certainly wants it. She has won 94
junior tournaments and is sponsored
by Titleist and FootJoy. She’s ranked
355 on the Junior Golf Scoreboard, 304
on the Polo Golf rankings and 254 on
Golfweek rankings. In her graduating
class of 2018, she’s ranked at about 30th
P h oto g r a p h y C h e c ko S a lg a d o / f OCALc HROME
in the world.
Her father, Doug, attributes much of
her success to her perfect form, which
came from being taught solid technique
from the beginning. “She just has a really
good mechanical swing, and she has
outstanding technique. … She hits the
ball very long, and being a long hitter is
probably her biggest asset,” he says.
There is a downside to her passion.
Joels’ high standards for herself means
losing is not part of any game plan. “I
know I can beat everybody out on the
course, but if I don’t play my best and
if I don’t count on myself and I focus
on the other people too much and I get
beat because of that, I hate that. I hate
that so much.” — Sage Leehey
M arch 2 0 1 5
DesertCompanion.com
27
ALL Things
style
5 Things
I can't live
without
trendsetter
Dani Reeves
The fashion model on style, seasonal trends and great selfies
1
Bond No. 9 NYC
Central Park West,
perfume, $200-$295,
Saks Fifth Avenue
Fashion Show
By Christie Moeller
B
orn in Hamburg, Iowa, Dani Reeves kickstarted her modeling career after she won
the 2007 Miss Iowa USA competition. Today
she lives in Las Vegas, but her modeling gigs take
her everywhere from L.A. to Milan.
2
Peter Thomas Roth
FIRMx firming night
moisturizer, $125, Sephora
in the Forum Shops, Miracle
Mile, Town Square and
Downtown Summerlin
How would you describe your personal
style? Incredibly eclectic and diverse while main-
taining a very glamorous element to each look.
What is your style motto? Tom Ford couldn’t
have said it better: “Dressing well is a form of good
manners.”
3
Free People limited
edition Gianna’s
Valentine dress,
$600, Free People
Fashion Show and
freepeople.com
Your best advice for tackling spring
2015’s trends? You must be able to relate to the
trend in order to pull it off. If you’re not comfortable
and do not feel 100 percent about yourself when you
walk out of the door, it’s not for you. If you’re still
looking to integrate that season’s trend into your own
personal style, but don’t want to take on the pressure
of buying something, try incorporating it through
hair styles, scarves, jewelry and belts. Accessories are
a girl’s best friend (besides diamonds, of course ... and
shoes and makeup ... and well, anyways …) and can transform any outfit!
What spring trends are you looking forward to wearing? This season a lot of
designers traveled back in time to the late ’60s-early ’70s. This was one of my favorite periods
when it comes to fashion inspirations. This spring, the designers did a great job bringing back
exciting trends such as skinny scarves and A-line skirts. Of course, fringe was on every runway
this season. There is something sexy and magical about the movement of fringe. I also really love
the accessories I saw this season. My favorite was mismatching earrings. Whether in different
colors or in lengths, the beauty is in the irregularity.
4
LANVIN pave
crystal LOVE
necklace, $1,345,
Neiman Marcus in the
Fashion Show Mall
If you could swap wardrobes with anyone, who would it be? I really
love the fashion consultant and editor-at-large for Vogue Japan, Anna Dello Russo’s closet.
Reportedly having more than 4,000 pairs of shoes, this woman is my hero! I mostly admire
that she is not afraid of anything when it comes to style.
What are your tips for the perfect selfie? I laugh at the quotes that talk about
selfies. Like, “For every selfie, there are about 30 that didn’t make the cut.” Ha! So true! For
the girl who has a flawless selfie on her first try, I either applaud you or think you’re some
kind of alien. For the rest of us who sit in front of our phones snapping one horrible photo
after another trying every angle, every pout and eye-squint, I totally can relate! The one
thing I know to be true when taking any photo is lighting is paramount to a great photo!
28
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
P h oto g r a p h y By lu c ky W e n z e l
5
Gucci Leila studded
platform sandal,
$696, Neiman Marcus
Fashion Show
Your help
will help change lives.
Like you,
Planned Parenthood of
Southern Nevada Cares.
No Matter What.
For over 40 years,
LEARN HOW YOU CAN HELP
WeCareSouthernNevada.com/DesertCompanion
Planned Parenthood of
Southern Nevada has been
honored to be part of your community.
And with your support and generosity, we
can continue to
take care of our
Southern Nevada families.
We do this by providing high-quality healthcare
for everyone, education and informative resources
as well as advocacy for women’s rights.
Your donations help to keep our doors open to our community.
We
need your support as we support Southern Nevada.
WeCareSouthernNevada.com/DesertCompanion
Planned Parenthood of Southern Nevada
ALL Things
style topic
open
civic life
growing number of cities and counties,
local officials, having glanced at the policy wastelands of Washington, D.C., and
most state capitals, are convinced that
they must act, locally, to help assure higher wages, child care, housing, transportation, non-predatory banking or paid sick
leave, and take other steps to tangibly and
meaningfully improve the lives of their
citizens. Cities and counties have discovered, or rediscovered, a willingness to
tackle stubborn problems instead of, oh,
waiting for Congress to do it.
So, naturally, the campaign for Las Vegas mayor is all about … a soccer stadium.
policy punch
SERIOUSLY, TULSA?
Local governments across the U.S. are doing fresh, important
things. Las Vegas is ... fighting over the meaning of an imaginary
soccer stadium? B y H U G H J A C K S O N
S
eattle got most of the headlines. But last year, nine other cities and one county in
the U.S. established higher minimum wages. Big cities were on the list — Chicago,
San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego — but several smaller California cities raised the
wage, too, as did Las Cruces, N.M. This year, at least a half-dozen local governments are
considering proposals to raise the minimum wage, most prominently in New York City
and Los Angeles (both city and county), but also in Portland, Maine, and Louisville, Ky.
In January, Tacoma, Wash., became the 16th U.S. city requiring employers to provide
paid sick leave. A couple weeks ago, Philadelphia became the 17th.
From Hartford to San Jose, to Denver, San Antonio and Tulsa in between, several cities are
establishing programs to provide universal or near-universal pre-kindergarten childcare.
Closer to home, Phoenix and Salt Lake City have moved aggressively on “Housing
First” programs, which provide homeless veterans with housing without requiring them
to pass a drug or sobriety test first. Both cities claim to have all but eliminated chronic
veteran homelessness.
When low-income citizens don’t make economic progress, it’s not just bad for them.
It’s bad for businesses that depend on people having enough money to buy whatever businesses are selling. A “precariat” class mired in unstable, low-wage, low-quality jobs, precariously and persistently teetering on the edge of financial collapse (i.e., maybe a third
of Southern Nevada’s workforce), weakens a community’s consumer core while raising
the demand for and cost of public services. Customary economic “thought” among politicians — promote growth and wait for all that yummy prosperity to magically follow
— has manifestly failed to deliver.
Instead, there is a turn to policies designed to help people directly — not just because
it’s good for people who are struggling, but because it’s good for the economy. And in a
30
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
Major League Soccer has passed on Las
Vegas for an expansion team. But the race
between Mayor Carolyn Goodman and
Councilman Stavros Anthony will still be
about Goodman’s effort to publicly subsidize a private sports franchise — inasmuch
as the race will be about anything at all.
Look, this isn’t really about them. By
ignoring the role of local government
in economic policy that might actually
pack a punch, Goodman and Anthony
are hardly unique.
Take minimum wage as an example.
Organized labor has spearheaded the
movement to raise the wage in Nevada.
That movement has targeted Congress,
corporations, the state Legislature and
has tried more generally to move the needle of public opinion. It hasn’t targeted
city or county governments.
“I’m not sure we’ve done the work to
move (city councilmembers or county
commissioners) on those issues,” says
Yvanna Cancella, the Culinary Union’s
political director. Part of that may be the
relative newness of local government
action on wage regulation, sick pay and
other issues. But Cancella says local governments in Nevada may not have the
authority to act even if they wanted to.
Clark County Commission Chairman
Steve Sisolak agrees. It’s a legal question
that “has never been brought up,” but “I
don’t think that we can have a separate
minimum wage,” he says. Sisolak, echoing
i l lu st r at i o n b r e n t h o l m e s
perhaps every county commissioner and
city councilman in the history of Nevada,
says that local governments can do whatever the state allows them to do, and no more.
The city would appear to be in the
same boat. There’s nothing in the City
of Las Vegas Charter, sort of the city’s
constitution, that authorizes wage regulation, says Val Steed, from the Las Vegas
city attorney’s office.
Well, could the state Legislature pass
a law authorizing local governments to,
say, raise the minimum wage or require
employers to provide paid sick days?
“I guess they could,” Sisolak says.
“Theoretically,” Steed says.
all the wage
“I’d love to do it,” says state Sen. Tick
Segerblom, D-Las Vegas.
Segerblom has proposed a state constitutional amendment to raise Nevada’s
statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour.
(There’s “not a chance in hell” it will
pass the Legislature, Segerblom recently
told the Sun.)
Segerblom notes that the current wage
($8.25 an hour, $7.25 for employees offered a qualifying health care plan) is in
the state constitution. So while he would
like the state to authorize local governments to raise the minimum wage, he
suspects that authority might be meaningless without the amendment. (The
constitution says employers will pay a
wage “not less than” the minimum. That
reads like a constitutional floor, not a constitutional ceiling. But I’m not a lawyer.)
Meantime, the prospects of a Nevada
city or county pursuing initiatives that
would cost public money — providing
affordable child care or a Housing First
plan for the homeless — are limited by
state restrictions on local government’s
ability to tax and spend.
It’s not as if the state refuses to grant
local governments any flexibility at all.
For instance, cities can subsidize wannabe soccer team owners.
We’ll be reminded of that over the next
few weeks during the campaign for the
April 7 mayoral primary (almost assuredly there won’t be a general election in
June because one candidate will win the
primary with more than 50 percent). But
attack ads about a non-existent stadium
erection should also remind us that local
governments across the nation are taking direct actions — as opposed to faith in
“pro-growth” policy — to improve their
citizenry’s economic well-being, and local
governments in Southern Nevada aren’t.
The conventional wisdom is “it can’t
be done.”
But Las Cruces? Phoenix?
Seriously, Tulsa?
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LET THE
ADVENTURES
BEGIN!
The smell of the sagebrush in
the background is the perfect
complement to the sight of RedTailed Hawks circling above us as
we travel down the trail of rutted
dirt and large rocks at times
little more than a fast walking
pace in a caravan of everything
Land Rover. Welcome to another
quarterly Land Rover Las Vegas
customer “Wheels Event”.
It all started at 8 am on Sunday at the
dealership, where invited customers and
their families show up for the big day. Once
everyone arrives they are greeted by a
continental breakfast and gourmet coffee.
After check-in followed by a few minutes of
a safety discussion and handed a delicious
lunch for on the trail later, all drivers were
provided two-way radios and we are on our
way for the day.
The Wheels Events are just one of
many things that Land Rover customers
experience. Last year, we had a gourmet
dinner prepared by a local top chef, and
served on the at the entrance of an active
mine with a 180 degree Las Vegas valley
view prepared by Chef Fernando of Del
Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse.
We also produced a fashion show with
models walking adoptable dogs from the
Nevada SPCA down a runway for charity right
in the showroom, to name just a couple.
We are also very active in the community by
supporting the local Boy Scouts, Adam’s
Place for Grief, Downtown events, and the
MS Society to name just a few, and have
done so for many years.
Land Rover Las Vegas has been here for
over 16 years and are part of the Findlay
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The future looks exciting for us as well. We
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19
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community
A voice on the
streets
On the
Hat's on: As much
as her ever-present
beanie, homeless
advocate Merideth
Spriggs is known for
her dedication and
upbeat nature.
goal of a “functional
zero” homeless populafront lines with homeless advocate Merideth Spriggs B y M at t K e l e m e n tion in Las Vegas. A veteran of San Diego’s war
eading north on Las Vegas Boucars at places where indigents gather. We
on homelessness, Spriggs brings a famillevard on her weekly outreach
meet Alonzo, who says he’s 73 and came to
iarity with new supertools and new federal
hike, long black curls cascading
Vegas from New York on a Greyhound bus.
funding to her adopted hometown. She’s
from beneath her trademark black
He’s so disheveled that Spriggs doubts he’s
able to build coalitions and move between
beanie, homeless advocate Merbeen on a bus anytime recently. The tip of
diverse groups, from nightlife executives
ideth Spriggs leaves behind the Fremont
his ring finger is gone and skin peels from
and government officials to shelter workStreet Experience and Downtown Projthe sticky hand he holds out to shake (staph
ers and unsheltered veterans. She spent
ect’s urban-renewal zone. It’s the Tuesday
infections are a risk in outreach work, so
2014 observing Las Vegas’ homeless situbetween Christmas and New Year’s Eve —
Spriggs carries anti-bacterial lotion rathation while employed by the Downtown
363 days since she vowed to work toward
er that avoiding contact). “A pair of socks
Rangers, getting to know the players. She
ending homelessness in Las Vegas — and
would help me out,” he says. “I’ve been
went to neighborhood meetings, arranged
the temperature dropped below freezing
wearing the same pair for five or six days.”
for representatives of advocacy organizaovernight. Dressed for the cold, and diminA lot next to a mostly abandoned strip
tions to meet and minimize the doubling
utive compared to the mostly adult males
mall looks like a refugee camp, dotted with
of efforts, and managed to find permanent
she encounters on her route, she has packtents both manufactured and makeshift,
housing for 23 clients. She hopes to do more
ages of socks, hygiene kits, bottled water
plus sleeping bags and piles of blankets.
with her own nonprofit, Caridad — Spanand emergency blankets tightly folded into
Spriggs is talking about how she’ll input
ish for charity — which she started in San
pocket-sized plastic bags. Each has a stickdata from today’s outreach into a Google
Diego but revived last year here. For a city
er that reads “Warmest Wishes from City
doc shared with city officials when we
that recently lost one of its most passionate
of Las Vegas Ward 3 Councilman Bob Cofcome across a Rorschach-like explosion of
voices for the homeless, the late Linda Lefin — Keep Someone Warm This Winter.”
brown on a wall. “That’s diarrhea from malt
ra-Randle El, Spriggs couldn’t be surfacing
Just before Bonanza Road, we pass a
liquor,” she says. “They’re basically dehyat a better time.
small pile of decaying matter that Spriggs
drated so when they go, it, like, shoots out.”
Caridad’s approach includes providing
identifies as discarded food donations. She’s
Helping bridge the gritty realities of
streamlined access to existing resources,
seen fights break out after well-meaning
street life with new outreach technology
services and volunteer training “at the lowsouls drop off food from the safety of their
is one way Spriggs is working toward the
est possible cost to taxpayers," and working
H
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MARCH 2015
DesertCompanion.com
P h oto g r a p h y b r e n t h o l m e s
with the city to identify potential clients
among the most frequent homeless users of
the jail and hospital systems.
In the vacant lot, Spriggs approaches a
tent warily, with a cheery, “Good morning!”
As a dog barks inside, a male voice accepts
her offer of socks. She gets no answer from
a nearby pile of assorted fabrics, but leaves
one of Bob’s blankets in case there is a person underneath. A man in one cardboard
box won’t turn to look as she offers help.
She’ll talk with more street people as we
circle back toward Fremont Street and the
Downtown Rangers’ Seventh Street headquarters, finding out if they’re veterans or
need assistance obtaining identification and
copies of birth certificates, before moving
on to the next person who might need her
help. Socks, for instance. Food is relatively
easy to obtain, clean socks not so much.
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The Homeless Whisperer
T
wo weeks later, she’s at the Downtown
Rangers’ office across from the El Cortez’s parking garage. Before the end
of January, most of the Rangers will be
laid off, as will Spriggs. She was brought
on 11 months earlier to teach homelessness-sensitivity to Downtown Project’s
“ambassadors of the downtown Las Vegas
community” after meeting DTP prime
mover Tony Hsieh on New Year’s Day
2014. It’s a meeting that came after a period of soul-searching for Spriggs, a former
aspiring youth pastor who had worked as
a homeless advocate in San Diego before
moving to Vegas. She woke up that morning with a flash-of-lightning realization:
She was ready to rejoin the fight against
homelessness. Meeting Hsieh led to employment with the Rangers, and Spriggs
began outreach activity in the Downtown
Project’s llama-shaped land holdings.
The layoff means Spriggs can now focus
full time on Caridad, which she says Downtown Project has offered to help fund with
a donation (she estimates Caridad needs
annual funding of $185,025, which she is
still considerably short of ). On this pre-layoff morning, she’s wearing the same black
beanie, which she first donned in California. “The clients in San Diego were always
trying to pull it off me. They’re like, ‘What’s
your hair look like without the beanie?’
I had one client who always teased me:
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MARCH 2015
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35
community
‘You’re really bald under there, aren’t you?’
… I’m just too lazy to do my hair.”
Spriggs is effervescent as she relates
her history, emphasizing her ups with exclamations (“Yay!”) and her downs with
whispered hushes. The Illinois native
first fought homelessness in Kansas City,
where she attended Nazarene Theological
Seminary and worked as an event planner
in nightlife, which first brought her to Vegas. She moved to San Diego in 2006 and
worked in administration at Point Loma
Nazarene University, but lost her job in
2008 at the onset of the recession. Spriggs
says she couch-surfed or lived out of her
car while trying to hold down jobs in retail
and at a coffeehouse. She began spending
more time among San Diego’s street denizens and developed a keen empathy for
people at society’s lowest rungs.
“When I was homeless, there’d be times
when I’d be sitting out and we’d get five
homeless groups, people just driving by
their leftovers and everything,” she says,
laughing as she recalls the advice she received from her street peers. “They’re like,
‘Just say, ‘God bless you.’ It makes them feel
better. That’s why they’re doing it anyway.’”
She also found out what it was like to
barely hold on to street stability, let alone a
job at a coffeehouse. “I’d always get parking tickets because you can’t always run out
and feed the meter, but I had finally gotten
a spot in this garage,” she says. “I couldn’t
afford (it with) the tips one day, and I actually had to panhandle to get my car out, and
that was the most humiliating moment.”
Another time she returned to her car at 2
a.m. to find a police officer and a tow truck.
“I was like ‘Please don’t take my car. That’s
like, my everything, you don’t understand.’
And he said, ‘You have unpaid traffic tickets.’ I said, ‘I can’t afford to pay them, please
don’t take my car. I can’t afford to work.
You’re ruining my life if you take my car.’”
The car was towed, and Spriggs was left
crying in the street with a dead cell phone.
After a year of being homeless, she was
hired by the San Diego Rescue Mission,
then worked for a nonprofit, PATH San
Diego. Her husband, whom she had married in July 2011 and who refers to her as
“the homeless whisperer,” helped her start
Caridad. Her experience in event planning
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MARCH 2015
DesertCompanion.com
“Now, ain't nobody invited (Merideth) in. She's got
something to talk about. She's made her own
way. She's making her own noise.”
led to some unorthodox coalition-building.
“Once I got going, it was the (nightlife)
industry family that supported me,” she
says. “What I discovered was that was an
area not tapped into in terms of homeless
services. They were good people, really
generous spirits that were willing to give
and willing to help.”
Spriggs says Caridad raised $5,800 in
monetary donations and $50,372 worth
of “in-kind donations” — clothing, socks,
underwear — for partnering agencies
from November 2011 to April 2013 (when
she and her husband moved to Las Vegas). Caridad’s debut event took place
in a nightclub, where church members
mingled with agency workers. “I tried to
get similar agencies together. ... So all the
youth providers, I do an event for them,
getting them all in the room and they’re
talking, and I’m giving them money but
also trying to facilitate community. I did a
lot of education. All that is what I’m doing
here, too, so I’m excited Downtown Project’s going to give me that platform, because they’re going to help me get it going
here. … I don’t want to reinvent the wheel.
I don’t want to be a service-provider. I
only want to do outreach and education.”
One of the first advocates she met with
in Las Vegas was Jimmy Rolson, client operations director for Catholic Charities of
Southern Nevada. “I asked him a bunch of
questions. He said I was asking questions
that were so hard, and were so knowledgeable, that he thought I was a reporter at
first,” she says. “‘He said, ‘Oh, you poor girl.
She doesn’t know anybody or anything in
this town. She’s never gonna make it. She
thinks she’s going to make a difference, but
we’ll be lucky if we see any more of her.’”
“After I started asking her if she knew
certain people in our community that deal
with homeless services, she sought all of
them out,” Rolson says. “These are not just
service-providers but people that make
things happen in the community. I started
seeing her in meetings and other events
and each time she had more and more to
do with what is happening in our community and our clients’ lives. … She did not just
come in when there are a lot of tools to address the homeless population, but she is
playing a big part of solving the homeless
issues. She has become a voice that the entire community listens to.”
The Homeless Listener
W
hat Spriggs doesn’t want is for
her enthusiasm to be interpreted
as a sign that she sees herself as
self-appointed savior for the homeless.
She wants to help agencies work together.
“She’s bringing people to the table,” says
Thomas “Chicago” Randle El of outreach
organization Straight from the Streets.
“And see, the thing is, she knows that
she’s got to come to the door, she’s got
to kick the door in and have something
to talk about. She’s got all that. She’s got
something to talk about. Now, ain’t nobody invited her in. She’s made her own
way. She’s making her own noise.”
Randle El met Spriggs after the death of
his wife, Linda Lera-Randle El. The media-savvy homeless advocate died in October 2014 after a long illness, leaving a void
that Spriggs is poised to help fill. Chicago
Randle El says he allowed himself a day to
mourn before he was back on the streets
doing outreach. Spriggs accompanied him
one night in December to look for a homeless woman in the area around Durango
and Rampart, and he was impressed by her
determination and street smarts.
“I can’t compare her to Linda because I
don’t know her that well,” he says. “But from
what I’ve seen in the last month, and what
I’ve heard, it’s good things because I’ve seen
she’s been shaking them up. (Laughs). She’s
on the front lines like me. She’s out. She’s
knowing people that I didn’t think she did
know. She knows them. That means, to me,
that she’s taking time out to listen to them.
She’s a listener, too. When you’re dealing
with the homeless, you got to listen to their
stories. That’s how you read people.”
“We have been working with Merideth
and her organization, and we feel she is
making a true impact in just a relatively short period of time,” says Stephen K.
Harsin, director of the City of Las Vegas’
Office of Community Services. “Her work
is greatly appreciated and invaluable to
our efforts on ending homelessness. Merideth is one of many examples of how
community partnerships can produce
meaningful results.”
All the Right Moves
T
he day after our meeting at the Rangers’ office, she co-leads a coordinated
outreach meeting at the Clark County
Social Services building. It’s the group's
second meeting. Twenty-three people representing the breadth of regional outreach
workers, healthcare givers and shelter providers responded to Spriggs’ invitation to
discuss issues affecting their work. Getting
everyone in one room is sign of progress.
“It takes the local governments, the
nonprofit organizations and the private
sector, including individuals, all working
together,” Harsin says. “We are now seeing that level of collaboration.”
Again wearing her black beanie, Spriggs
asks for success stories at the end of the
meeting. Narratives are shared by representatives of organizations such as Catholic Charities, Help of Southern Nevada,
Shade Tree, the Veteran’s Administration
and WestCare Foundation. They talk of
minor triumphs and near misses, of helping people get all-important identification
papers and birth certificates, of providing
transportation for veterans and helping
people stranded in Vegas find their way
back to family in other states. The 2014
South Nevada Homeless Census reported
a “total point-in-time count” of 9,417, and
an estimated 36,718 people who experienced homelessness during the year. The
people gathered in the room are on the
front lines of trying to reduce that number.
Spriggs encourages their efforts. “Humanizing the homeless” is the big picture for
Spriggs, a long process that takes positivity and patience balanced with the ability,
as Randle El says, to kick doors down.
“Merideth, to me, she’s bringing something new to the town,” says Randle El.
“She’s making the right moves. I just hope
other people want to work with her, because we’re two million strong. We can
nip this homeless thing in the bud if everybody works together.”
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MARCH 2015
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37
outdoors
Above::
View from
Exploration
Peak; below:
Arden Peak
Nature right
next door
Find a walk to remember among these
nine great hikes in your own backyard
Exploration Peak
Mountain’s Edge
This urban trail has a little
something for everyone
This urban trail has everything: a park
with an open, grassy field next to a hill of
primitive rock and dirt. In between are
restrooms, play areas, winding sidewalks
and covered picnic tables. Although the
hillside trail is less than half a mile long,
it quickly ascends 600 feet, making it a
heart-pounder. And because of the natural
surface and loop that winds up to the
peak and back down — and around and up
again, for the hardier among us — it makes
a great training circuit for trail-runners.
Those more into flat surfaces can hang
out at the park, which has its own circular,
paved walking path. The entire spot is
very dog- and kid-friendly, too. (1.2 miles,
30 minutes)
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MARCH 2015
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■ T reasure hunt
The top of Exploration Peak is a selfista’s dream, with 360-degree views of
the Las Vegas Strip, Red Rock, Sloan
Canyon and Lake Mead. A flat, circular structure ringed with a wide bench
provides the perfect place to set up a
tripod and strike a pose.
■ Getting there
9600 S. Buffalo Drive, at the entryway to Mountain’s Edge. Numerous
bike and walking paths lead to the
top. Heidi Kyser
Arden Peak
has a little brother next door who sold his
soul to TV and radio: Arden Peak. Arden
has nearly identical views of Las Vegas
and Henderson, and gets only a fraction
of the visitation, meaning trekkers can
snatch some ever-fleeting solitude with
their grandeur. And it’s a mile shorter
to boot! Tip: Stay clear of the broadcast
towers to avoid growing any extra limbs.
(5.5 miles, 3 hours)
■ T reasure hunt
Anthem
Tune in to broadcast views
The views from atop Black Mountain are
hard to beat, which is part of the reason
the trail is so popular. But Black Mountain
Hike this trail in the early morning to
spot coyotes returning from the hunt
on nearby golf courses to their dens
hidden in the desert.
P h oto g r a p h y b r e n t h o l m e s & C h r i sto p h e r S m i t h
Kinderschool,
Elementary &
Middle School
■ g etting there
Anthem East Trailhead, Shadow
Canyon Drive near Lewiston Place.
Follow the main Anthem East Trail
(well marked on Google Maps) and
turn right onto the “Service Road”
to Arden Peak. Alan Gegax
Lake Las Vegas Overlook
Lake Las Vegas
Get some alone time (and taste the
rainbow)
Keep the views all to yourself along this
beautifully built and almost completely unused trail that climbs to a pair of
peaks between Lake Las Vegas and
Henderson. The trail is well-defined
but poorly marked, which is part of the
reason it’s managed to stay something
of a local’s secret. The peaks have great
views of Las Vegas and Lake Mead, and
to the north, the panorama opens up
with a shocking palette of colors in the
aptly named Rainbow Gardens. Bring a
book, relax, and soak in the views. You
won’t be interrupted. (4 miles, 2 hours)
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■ T reasure hunt
About halfway up the hillside, a trail
drops to the right (north) and heads
for a huge alcove created by an almost-always-dry waterfall. It makes
an excellent detour, and leads to an
alternate route back to the park.
■ g etting there
Take Lake Las Vegas Parkway to
Terrazza Park. The trail starts west
along Las Vegas Wash, crosses a
bridge, then goes north into the
hills. AG
Northeast Las Vegas
Put the “out” in your evening
workout
The perfect length for an after-work
jaunt, with unobstructed views of the
Vegas Valley, Lone Mountain is almost
literally a backyard hike for residents of
the northwest. The trail starts at Lone
Mountain Park and meanders around
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39
outdoors
the mountain to the west side. Then the
trail gets steep. Really steep. In less than
half a mile, hikers ascend 600 feet to the
limestone peak with panoramic views of
the Las Vegas Valley. Don’t worry, there
is rest for the weary on Lone Mountain
in the form of benches about halfway
up. Sit for a spell before making the final
push to the summit. (2 miles, 1.5 hours)
■ T
reasure hunt
The limestone rocks that compose
Lone Mountain are rich in fossils. Keep
an eye out for fossilized corals, shells,
and plants. As an added bonus, spotting a fossil is a great excuse to stop and
catch your breath.
■ getting there
Lone Mountain Park, 9825 W. Lone
Mountain Road, Las Vegas AG
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MARCH 2015
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Calico Hills Trail
Red Rock Canyon
National Conservation Area
Get up close and personal with our iconic
landscape
This is the prettiest place in Southern
Nevada, if not on Earth — which, along
with the abundance of scramble-friendly
Aztec sandstone, makes it uber-popular,
particularly among tourists and rock
climbers. You may have to fight crowds
along the most heavily trafficked sections of the trail, but the rest of the route
makes it worth the wait. You can’t get
any closer than this to the rare beauty
of Nevada’s red-white-and-pink-striped
landscape. Although this is a moderate,
well-marked trail, it’s all-natural — no
paving or grading here. So, make sure to
take proper hiking shoes and plenty of
water, and be prepared to sit for a spell
as you roll up and down the path along
the base of the mountain. (2-6 miles, 30
minutes-3 hours)
■ T reasure hunt
If you’re there to give rock climbing,
bouldering or scrambling a try, watch
where you put your fingers and toes.
Scorpions, snakes and other beasties
are known to slumber in the sandstone’s crevices. Also note that after
a rain, climbing is prohibited until
two days later, as moisture makes the
rock breakable.
Clockwise from
opposite page: Calico
Hills, Seven Hills
Trail, Lone Mountain,
Stonehengerson,
Lake Las Vegas
Overlook
■ g etting there
Take Charleston Boulevard/State
Route 159 west to Red Rock and
turn right onto either Calico Basin
Road or Scenic Loop Drive. The
trail’s opposite ends, Calico Basin
and Sandstone Quarry, are found
respectively at the parking lot at
the west end of Calico Basin Road
and the second parking lot on the
right side of Scenic Loop Drive. HK
Stonehengerson
Henderson
Embrace the mystery with a hike
back in TIME Time time time …
Hike back to the Neolithic within a
stone’s throw of Henderson. In the unassuming foothills of the River Mountains can be found an ever-growing
number of “henges” people have built
along the canyon walls and ridgelines.
Lava rock monuments dot the hillsides,
varying widely in size and intricacy.
Who really put up these henges? It’s
a mystery that will be left to future
archaeologists, who will undoubtedly
ascribe profound meaning and celestial
alignments to the handiwork of creative
Hendersonians. (3 miles, 2 hours)
■ T reasure hunt
The whole hike is a treasure hunt,
but as an added bonus, keep an eye
out for the bighorn sheep that frequent this area and make their beds
on the shaded hillsides.
■ g etting there
Parallel park on Foothills Drive near
Stirrup Drive, take the trail due east
across the River Mountain Trail,
cross under the power line towers
and head into the canyon. AG
Seven Hills Trail
Anthem
A sneaker-friendly brisk walk —
strollers and pooches welcome
Like a chain connecting three stones on
a necklace, the Seven Hills Trail links
Allegro, Vivaldi and Sonata Parks into
a gem of an outing. This urban path is
paved in concrete, so it’s not ideal for
running, but its wide berth and smooth
surface make it popular among casual bicyclists, dog-walkers and stroller-pushers. It winds between the west-most
housing developments of Anthem and
the adjacent undeveloped land around
the executive airport, alternating urban
and wild-ish views, green spaces and
xeriscaping. Truly tailored to the city
hiker, Seven Hills Trail includes parking
lots, restrooms, covered picnic tables
and abundant pet waste bag dispenser/
disposal stations. (3 miles, 1 hour)
■ T reasure hunt
Get a brisk start for the little dips
and climbs between Allegro and
Vivaldi, which, if taken at a decent
clip, can really get the heart racing.
■ g etting there
Go south on Seven Hills Drive off St.
MARCH 2015
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41
outdoors
Rose Parkway to Allegro Park, just
south of Sunridge Heights Parkway,
between Wolff Elementary School
and Robert Realty (it’s a little hard to
see the entrance from the street, but
it’s there behind the office building).
The trail heads south from Allegro to
Vivaldi and then Sonata Parks. HK
Sloan Radio Tower
the trail edges
ever nearer the
tracks, look for —
and climb — the
road that zigzags
its way to the top
of the mountain. (6 miles, 3
hours)
■ T reasure
Southern Highlands
hunt
A free 'room' with a priceless view
Rooms at the M Resort with views of the
city come at a hefty price. Look down on
those suckers for the low, low price of
FREE with a cross-country hike to Sloan
Radio Tower. The hike mainly follows
old service roads across the desert.
Hiking south, the Southern Highlands
Golf Club will fade away to the left, while
surprisingly active train tracks creep in
on the right. The eponymous broadcast
towers are visible throughout the hike. As
Above: Sloan Radio
Tower trail; at right:
Bluffs Trail
Trains! Occasional runs
of lengthy
freight trains
provide a nice distraction during
the hike, and make the hike really
fun for kids who rarely see trains in
action any more.
■ g etting there
Find a legal parking spot on Starr
Hills Avenue near Dahlia Grove
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MARCH 2015
DesertCompanion.com
Street, then walk south on the dirt
road, passing the detention basin, to
get on the trail. AG
Bluffs Trail
Lake mead wash
A perfect vista over man-made
wetlands. Rock on!
This narrow, well-marked path winds
leisurely around the edge of the Las Vegas
Wash inlet to Lake Mead. From the path
beginning at the Lake Mead campground,
the plants and animals of this popular
birding spot are plenty, so bring those
fancy binoculars. The faint roar of water
from the valley below is so soothing you
won’t even remember the $5 park access
fee. (0.9 miles, 1 hour)
■ T reasure hunt
Rockhounds, rejoice. You’ll come
across countless textbook geological
formations and an amazing array of
stones.
■ g etting there
Take Lake Mead Parkway to the
national recreation area to campground site 724. Brent Holmes
Safe, not sorry.
DON’T TOUCH
CAR POLE
Electricity is part of our daily lives, but it can be
dangerous. Our folks are the experts. So, please
keep off and don’t touch electrical equipment
don’t climb power poles or substation fences or
sit on transformers. The best way to stay safe is to
stay away.
Some lines just aren’t worth crossing. If a power line
falls across your vehicle, stay in the car and wait
for emergency personnel. If you see a downed line,
warn others and stay away. A downed line may still
be energized.
CALL BEFORE YOU DIG
OUTAGE MAP
A shovel hitting an underground power line can be
as dangerous as contacting an overhead line. Spring
is coming, so when planting trees, digging holes for
fence posts, installing underground sprinklers or
other projects, please play it safe. Call Before You
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The Dish 46
03
15
eat this now 49
at first bite 50
Our c i ty's be st sp ots to eat & drink
Glass it up:
Inside Bardot
Brasserie
P hoto g ra p h y Sabin Orr
March 2015
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45
Dining out
Game on: Sporting
Life serves upscale
bar food such as
duck breast, pastry
dough gnocchi and
saffron mussels.
The dish
Out of
left
field
If your idea of bar food is uninspired
chicken wings and fries, The Sporting
Life brings some friendly gourmet
competition B y G r e g T h i l m o n t
46
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
R
ounding a corner at Jones and Robindale, I spy Sporting Life Bar for the
first time. With colorful signage incorporating a football, baseball, hockey
puck, etc., it strikes me as, eh, semi-interesting looking. But, really, it could
be any of a dozen other locals-oriented Las Vegas sports-themed watering
holes at this point. Entering Sporting Life, however, I soon get the notion
that this might be a step up in the world of sports bars. The bartops and tables boast
abundant, rich wood tones. There’s a minimum of cheesy flashing beer logo lights.
The walls showcase classy vintage poster reproductions.
Then I order the most prosaic, stereotypical sports bar menu item in history: chicken wings. My plate arrives — complete with obligatory celery and carrot sticks — and
I can tell these substantial wings did not plop out of some frozen bag willy-nilly into
a deep fryer. They’re whole wings, not separated, and they’ve been cured with green
salt (that is, salt mixed with fresh herbs), cooked confit-style to succulent tenderness
and accompanied by a house-made Asian chili glaze. I bite in.
Goooaaal! My taste buds get sacked by a full-court press courtesy of Chef Daniel
Dalton, the head coach behind Sporting Life’s impressive and adventurous culinary
game plan. Mixed metaphors aside, Sporting Life’s menu is almost like a trick play.
It follows the basic playbook of your standard mid-level sports bar, but then comes
out of left field with gourmet spins on standards from appetizers and sandwiches to
flatbreads and entrées.
P h oto g r a p h y S a b i n o r r
You can thank Dalton’s culinary conditioning for that. A New Jersey boy whose
parents owned a tavern, he went on to
study at New York City’s French Culinary
Institute (now the International Culinary Center). Like a free agent, he ventured through fine dining kitchens from
Manhattan to Jamaica to Aspen, Colorado, and Grand Teton National Park. A few
years back, he landed here in Southern
Nevada as a sous chef at Bouchon, where
he was suffused in the Thomas Keller
méthode. Now he’s transferred the intensity and passion of Bouchon to a more
casual kitchen setting.
“I’m keeping that awesome standard,”
Dalton says, using the example of an everyday kitchen staple to show the care
he brings to the kitchen. “This isn’t just
a head of lettuce, it’s a beautiful, living
piece of lettuce that someone cared for.
… Everything I’m doing is from scratch.
We’re doing the right thing at all times.”
Even the décor follows that principle:
The large, U-shaped central bar is fashioned from recycled Honduran mahogany that once was the basketball court of
the downtown Los Angeles YMCA. Various tables in the tavern are constructed
of reclaimed lumber from sources including a century-old Pennsylvania barn
and a Northern California water tower.
a mere dash or two of traditional paprika.
“I’m using fried capers for texture and
seasoning,” Dalton says of the crispy, salty
garnish that brings the snacks together.
The small plates menu starts with pork
belly, as well it should. Dalton’s take on
this midriff cut is a meaty, fatty baton of
cider-bathed pig over creamy polenta.
Again, polenta … sports bar. This place
stands out in the saloon league. Other
choices include a big bowl of saffron-scented mussels, crab cakes with piquillo purée
and mac ’n’ cheese with Tenaya Creek
brown ale (a local brewery that Dalton features in numerous recipes).
Salads are in the sweet spot at Sporting Life. The house dressing is a piquant
toasted cumin-sherry invention of Dalton’s, which lends a slight Spanish/
Mexican flavor to the vinaigrette. The
kale salad is not hip, it’s just plain good.
Multi-hued flowering Brassica oleracea
comes with poached egg and bacon lardons in a warm bacon vinaigrette. Curiously, this double-pig dish is not overly
porky, with the lemony dressing and egg
yolk toning down the meaty quotient.
The main event
T
he flatbread board, in keeping with
the rest of the menu, ups ordinary
tavern pizza’s game. Dalton’s grilled,
crispy dough planks keep things in the
Devilishly good
Italian-American zone with a Marghern the appetizers department, Dalton deita (fresh mozzarella, basil, garlic confit,
livers standards like nachos, but these
roma tomatoes and marinara sauce). And
hearty dippers are topped with proteins
then there’s the duck confit flatbread
such as beef asada or pork chile verde.
(this place is confit crazy), which offers
The tongue-in-cheek “Skins and Balls”
sumptuous shredded meat with sweet
are rich chicken croquettes riddled with
Medjool dates, creamy but tart goat
smoked gouda, bacon and green onion.
cheese and mostarda, a savory dried fruit
Other fried items include pork skins and
condiment with origins in medieval Italy.
pig ears with cayenne honey and pickle
In the sandwich corner, a sure conchips with roasted red pepper sauce. And
tender is the bistro steak sandwich. But
even though deviled eggs might cynically
this is no scraggly 19th-hole clubhouse
be seen as the new truffle fries — a trendy
version of beef on bread. Dalton’s take
thing served way too many times too at
involves sliced teres major, a tender secway too many places — Dalton’s version
tion of the shoulder region, with tangy
deserve all the raves they get. They come
bearnaise-aioli, fragrant fresh arugula
in the classic form of egg
and crunchy fried shallots
white cradles filled eleganton fresh ciabatta. A short
Sp orting
ly with celery and cornichrib Philly is stacked with
Life Bar
on-laced yolk farce. For a
peppers and onion, and
7770 S. Jones Blvd.
topping, Dalton goes beyond
the Reuben’s pastrami is
702-331-4647
I
sportinglifebar.com
Open 24 hours
Upcoming
Events
Desert Companion on Tour
with Norm Schilling
March 14 at 9:30am
Star Nursery
Open to the public
Nevada Public Radio
Recycle Event
April 25 at 8AM
Nevada Public Radio Parking Lot
Open to the public
Focus on Nevada
Photo Showcase &
Award Presentation
May 28 at 6PM
5th Street School
RSVP Required
More information at
desertcompanion.com
Promotional
Opportunities
Beyond Vegas
May 2015
The Travel Issue
Viva La ‘Rita
Margarita Promotion
2015
Medical & Dental Profiles
August 2015: Health & Medicine Issue
Contact Christine Kiely for more
information at 702.259.7813
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
47
Dining out
corned and smoked in-house.
Main event entrées reintroduce Sporting Life’s all stars: beef bistro filet, beef
short ribs and duck breast. Fresh off the
bench are roasted Idaho trout and a welcome take on gnocchi. Instead of potato bombs, Dalton’s dumplings are pâte à
choux morsels that are like resilient panbrowned soufflés. As far as daily specials,
Play ball: Sporting
Life's "Skins and
Balls" features
stuffed chicken
croquettes.
Dalton’s chalkboard can display zingers like Peking duck,
roast lamb or head cheese. It’s unpredictable in the best sense.
The bar program is respectable, with
nearly three dozen craft beers on tap, including Tenaya Creek, Henderson’s Joseph James, San Diego’s Green Flash and
a number of European entries. Of note is
Czechvar, one of the ur-beers from the
Czech Republic, which some call the “original Budweiser.” (And of course, there’s
Bud Light.) This is a sports bar, after all.
And the $5 Dark & Stormy (Gosling’s dark
rum and ginger beer) has got to be one of
Vegas’ best non-happy hour deals.
As a slight caveat for walk-ins: Note
that it is a bar, and this is Nevada. So it’s
a 21-and-up establishment, with gaming
and ashtrays. On the ashtray subject,
though, the bar is outfitted with a robust
ventilation system, and it’s not a smoky
dive at all. And as a bonus, Sporting Life is
an all-comers, all-sports, all-teams kind
of place. It’s not dedicated to one city, as
so many dicier, more insular sports bars
can be. Game on, indeed.
May we
Recommend ...
Deviled eggs
Are you over deviled eggs yet? Oh
no you’re not. The Sporting Life’s
version are rich with a bonus kick,
as the cornichon-rich yolk filling
is spiked with a generous dose of
paprika. Great as an appetizer, they
also do double duty as a light lunch.
“Skins and balls”
Limp mozzarella sticks may be a
time-honored game-time finger food,
but graduate to The Sporting Life’s
“Skins and balls” and you won’t look
back. These crispy, savory chicken croquettes stuffed with gouda, bacon and
green onion present a new standard
for bar food — like so many of the
menu items at The Sporting Life. GT
48
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
on the plate
Upcoming foodie events you
don’t want to miss
HOT PLATE
Eat this
now!
Arepa Benny
at Makers & Finders Coffee
1120 S. Main St. # 110, 702-586-8255, makersandfinderslv.com
It’s difficult to improve on eggs Benedict with its seemingly perfect blend
of salty, chewy, and tangy that always equals satisfied. Brunch novelties on
the classic usually involve trying to elevate the palate of Benny lovers by
substituting Canadian bacon with crab and asparagus and the like. While
these cloth-napkin varieties are delicious in their own right, the heartiness of
the original seems to linger longer in your stomach and in your memory. Finally, someone’s gone the right way, though: the way of filling Latin comfort
food. Makers & Finders’ Arepa Benny uses the thick Venezuelan corn cake,
the arepa, in place of the measly English muffin, and layers coffee-rubbed
shredded beef, vine-ripened tomatoes and golden poached eggs, topping
it all off with salsa verde hollandaise sauce, salt and pepper, and freshly
chopped cilantro. This is how you do gluten-free, people. Molly O’Donnell
Duck confit cinnamon roll
ag uac h i l e v e r d e : C h r i sto p h e r s m i t h
at Comme Ça
The Cosmopolitan, 702-698-7910, commecarestaurant.com/las-vegas
Few dishes both stimulate the senses and satisfy cravings like those
at Comme Ça. Case in point: the duck confit cinnamon roll. Flaky pastry twisted around cinnamon and rich, savory duck confit is just the
launching point for this dish. In addition to the roll, you also have a
duck fat, maple and smoked bacon frosting and huckleberry jam to
smother it in. No wonder this beautiful but decadent dish is the star
of an already legendary weekend brunch menu. Mitchell Wilburn
March Madness
at Lagasse’s Stadium
Through March
Hungry for some basketball-season
eats? In honor of March Madness,
Lagasse’s Stadium will be serving a
special menu through March. Menu
items include a tomahawk bone-in
32-ounce ribeye served with mashed
potatoes; a surf ’n’ turf plate with
tomahawk bone-in 32-ounce ribeye
with grilled shrimp with garlic herb
butter and mashed potatoes; chilled
Alaskan crab legs with clarified butter
and Lagasse’s Kick Up cocktail
sauce, and fresh shucked oysters.
In the Grand Canal Shoppes at the
Venetian. 702-607-2665, venetian.com
Farm Table dinner
at Honey Salt
March 16
Celebrating friends, community
and good food around a communal dining table, this month’s Farm
Table dinner features an Irish theme
in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. Expect
Irish classics given a popular twist,
with such dishes as shaved corned
beef and horseradish, beet salad,
braised lamb shanks and oatmeal
cream pudding. In addition, each
Irish-inspired course is paired with
a classic Irish beverage, including
Jameson, Guinness and, of course,
Baileys Irish Coffee. $45.
702-445-6100. honeysalt.com
Vegas Uncork’d
by Bon Appétit
April 23-26
Now in its ninth year, Vegas Uncork’d
by Bon Appétit, a celebration of
wine and spirits, returns to ARIA,
Bellagio, Caesars Palace and MGM
Grand, featuring a roster of tastings, demonstrations and meetand-greets. A few of the headliners include chefs Jean-Georges
Vongerichten, Gordon Ramsay,
Julian Serrano, François Payard,
Masa Takayama, Michael Mina, and
Guy Savoy. Highlight events include
a Master Series brunch with Border
Grill’s Mary Sue Milliken and Susan
Feniger, a farm-to-table party at
Sage, and, of course, the centerpiece, the Grand Tasting at Caesars
Palace. Ticket prices TBA.
vegasuncorkd.com
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
49
Dining out
at FIRST Bite
Feeding
les masses
Michael Mina goes mainstream
at his new Parisian concept,
Bardot Brasserie — but these dishes
please without pandering
B
y d e bb i e l e e
W
e appear to be approaching
a Goldilocks moment in our
local dining scene. From the
gold-leaf and truffle-topped
porridge devoured during
our city’s boom to the bacon-wrapped
and deep-fried versions made popular
during the bust, it’s been a while since
anyone has paid any mind to the classics. syrup, Eric Bordelet sidre, baked apple
Whatever happened to a solid meal, mi- bitters) and Charlemagne (Brenne single
nus the pretense or gimmicks?
malt whisky, Tempus Fugit kina, ChamThankfully, there are chefs moving
bord, pineapple), cocktails are cerebral as
toward a middle ground. Michael Mina
well as seductive. However, my table optis the perfect example. In 2013, after
ed for wines by the glass ($11-$32), which
shuttering his acclaimed Nobhill Tavern, our server — a Frenchman named Thieras well as his more casual property Se- ry, bien sûr — competently presented and
ablue, at MGM Grand, he unveiled Pub
poured without a trace of snootiness.
1842 — a laid-back man cave of a restauMina was present on my visit, but
rant where a peanut butter-and-bacon
credit is ultimately due to Executive
burger generated the most buzz. It’s a
Chef Joshua Smith. It’s no surprise to
fine plate of calories indeed, but hardly
learn that he’s a veteran of Seablue and
the best expression of Mina’s talents as a
Estiatorio Milos after sampling his blue
chef and restaurateur.
crab crepe; it’s the best of the three
Bardot Brasserie, now open inside Aria, starters we tried. A buckwheat envelope,
is a step back in the right direction. For
filled with generous amounts of crab
$3 million in renovations, every trace of
meat and wood ear mushrooms, is given
its former incarnation (Mina’s Ameri- a tableside bath of buerre blanc before
can Fish) was wiped clean. The new vibe
the diner is instructed to dive-bomb her
is decidedly Parisian. Glossy, dark lac- fork into a raw egg yolk in the center.
quered walls, marble accents, and dim
This being a French experience, the
lighting oozes sex appeal, and
yolks just keep on coming.
Bardot
a bustling bar — which glows
A well-seasoned prime
Brasserie
softly from very de rigueur
steak tartare arrives with
Aria hotel-casino
polished brass fixtures — is a
its own wobbling sphere of
702-590-8638,
dream first-date destination.
organic orange cholesterol,
michaelmina.net
With names like the Voland wood-grilled “duck a
taire (vodka, housemade ginger
l’orange” — Bardot’s verHOURS
French twists: Left,
Bardot's prime steak
tartare; below, crab
crepe with wood ear
mushrooms; opposite,
Parisian gnocchi
sion of Buffalo wings — is served with
an ethereal sauce Maltaise, or orange-infused Hollandaise. Both are good but not
particularly memorable. Perhaps I just
had egg fatigue. For something more approachable, there is always the French
onion soup, but that comes with a gently
poached egg, too.
I found respite in my entrée. Parisian
gnocchi, made with semolina instead of
potatoes, is a visual stunner: the dumplings, seared on the surface and bearing
Daily 5-10:30p
50
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
P h oto g r a p h y S ABIN O RR
SIX INSPIRING
RESTAURANTS.
ONE EXCEPTIONAL
INGREDIENT.
a faint resemblance to bay scallops, are
carefully arranged with hand-trimmed
celery, earthy wild mushrooms, and
fresh goat cheese. Again, a server naps
your plate with sauce — this time made
with roasted garlic and cream. It’s like a
walk in the woods on your plate.
An order of sautéed skate wing stood
in sharp contrast. Did it come from the
same kitchen? Served on a puddle of
cauliflower puree with a few shards
of kale on the side, it was uninspired.
There were also bones still in the flesh.
Whales, ballers and hardcore Francophiles can splurge on traditional côte
de bœuf or lobster Thermidor for two;
for those who are satisfied with simpler pleasures, there is “Le Steakburger.” Ain’t no Skippy on this patty: Comté
cheese, garlic aioli and Bordelaise onions give it a French slant. Supplement
the hand-cut fries with a separate order
of chickpea frites, or panisse, to take it
over the top. Smoky eggplant dip, sweet
pickled peppers and bright pistou make
a great improvised substitute for the
usual burger condiments.
Desserts are an unfussy finish to the
meal. Of the five French classics on offer, we enjoyed a caramelized tarte tatin,
deeply flavorful and large enough for
two. But a starkly presented mille feuille,
constructed only of puff pastry wafers
and crème patissiere, is a must-experience exercise in minimalism. The delicate flavor of rum, paired with the contrast of crunchy and creamy textures,
was a memorable finish —neither highfalutin nor lowbrow, but just right.
SPAGO american | the forum shops
CUT steak | the palazzo
POSTRIO american | the venetian
LUPO italian | mandalay bay
WOLFGANG PUCK BAR & GRILL american | mgm grand
WOLFGANG PUCK PIZZERIA & CUCINA italian | the shops at crystals
WOLFGANGPUCK.COM
March 2015
DesertCompanion.com
51
Rock climbers around the world
flock to Southern Nevada for
its legendary climbing. many
settle here to pursue a life
among the rocks — a life of
hunger, danger and ecstasy
stor y by
Heidi K yser
52
MARCH 2015
DesertCompanion.com
p hoto grap hy by
A ARON MAYES
T
Think back to the first time
you went all the way west of
town, to where Charleston
Boulevard disappears into State Route
159, city giving way to wilderness, and
you saw the rusty cliffs of Red Rock
rising 3,000 feet over the vast expanse
of beige scrub. To you, to me, to most
of us, the curiosity about striped hills
was probably satisfied motoring nearby,
or maybe strolling casually into, the
canyons; mostly, we take in the splendor
at camera’s-length. From time to time,
we may put a hand on a wall to sample
its texture or secure our footing as we
ascend a slot, mindful of the teetering
stones under our feet. Eventually,
though, we take the geology for granted.
It becomes scenery for a tourist trip
around the loop, backdrop to a musical at
Spring Mountain Ranch.
But we’re not rock climbers.
To these tribal adventurers, the Aztec
sandstone of Red Rock is rare magic. Its
densely compressed flanks are mounds of
sediment heaved up from the primordial
sea, sculpted by shifting winds and
cemented over hundreds of millions
of years. Red Rock’s many faces are
distinguished by features climbers crave:
gritty bumps and knobs good for hanging
or tiptoeing onto; jutting overhangs called
“roofs” that offer an inverted, gymnastic
MARCH 2015
DesertCompanion.com
53
challenge; infinite vertical cracks of
varying widths, from narrow enough for
cramming, twisting and locking fingers
into, to wide enough for shimmying up
like a chimney sweep. Even better, over
time, the whipping rain and snow lightly
shellacked the tall, north-facing crags,
turning them into dark, softly dimpled
hands that reach down from the heavens,
an open invitation skyward to anyone
who can bushwhack his way through the
sand and mesquite and find the seams
between fingers, where the journey
begins.
We laypeople barely scratch the
surface of Red Rock. Its 10 west-east
canyons hold a wonderland of formations
to ascend. More than a thousand rockclimbing routes have been logged there
over the last four decades, and a thousand
more probably remain to be discovered.
Generations of colorful pioneers have
documented their first ascents, attracting
ever-bigger waves of climbers to scour
the sandstone in search of a virgin wall.
You may have seen these cliff-clinging
acrobats while wandering the Calico
hills. They sprawl on the escarpment,
gecko-like, or hold the lifesaving rope
below, craning their necks and shouting
skyward in a dialect all their own. “On
belay!” “Nice dyno!” We paint them
with simplistic labels — hippie, rebel,
adrenaline junkie — and stick to our path,
passing them by like a pack of coyotes, a
little too wild to be trusted.
Rock climbers are, indeed, a breed
apart. And within their ranks are sects and
subspecies distinguished by convictions
and techniques that have as much to
tell us about humans’ relationship
with nature as any philosophy book.
Nothing could be more different from
your average couch potato than a rock
climber; yet, enter their world, and you
find nothing could be more different
from the monastic trad climber, who
patiently wedges protective gear into and
out of cracks, than the shirtless, technoblaring sport climber, who works out in a
gym to train for a route, or the fun-loving
boulderer, who ditches gear altogether to
grapple with the rocks bare-handed. And
between these personalities are endless
variations that, nevertheless, have one
thing in common: a climber is never as
alive as he is on the rocks, and that life is
one of danger, hunger and ecstasy.
54
MARCH 2015
DesertCompanion.com
Euphoria
I was on Mt. Wilson, the highest in Red Rock, climbing a route
called Gwondonnaland Boogie. That’s a really long route — I
want to say 25 pitches (vertical sections a rope’s length in
distance). I was leading the top pitch. We’d done a lot of climbing
under a lot of pressure, going very fast, pushing ourselves to do it
in one day. I was taking the last pitch, because it was my turn to
lead. I looked up and saw a corner, and it appeared to get steep
and blank out. It looked ominous and menacing, but I went up
anyway. I went up to the corner, and where it started to peter out,
the whole thing became rotten. And a person-sized piece of rotten
rock started to tip off the corner. It might have only moved a
millimeter, and when I touched it, it stabilized, but I knew it was
just beginning to teeter, and that it would drop down and chop my
rope and kill my belayer (climbing partner who controls the rope
while another climbs). Then, all of a sudden the climbing became
5.10 — tiny little hand-holds. So, I was facing a death fall. On
rotten rock.
And I just went, “Pop!” into an altered state. It was as if I
was being guided by someone who was not me. I just floated
across the rock, and then I got onto easier ground, established
a belay at a tree and went into the most amazing euphoria of
my life. (laughs) No, I can’t say, “my life,” because there have
been other moments — like childbirth — but this was amazing.
It seemed I wasn’t me anymore. It was as if something else
was guiding my body, because it wasn’t shaking. I wasn’t
afraid.
– Joanne Urioste, grand dame of Red Rock
Circle of friends
Vegas wasn’t Joanne
Urioste’s idea. In 1974,
having just finished her
bachelor’s degree in life
science at Cornell, she
married her rock-climbing mentor, Jorge
Urioste, a Bolivian Jesuit linguist 15 years
her senior, and followed him to a job
offer he’d gotten at UNLV. Joanne’s one
condition for the move: They had to go
someplace with hills.
She smiles remembering the first time
she and Jorge drove out to Red Rock.
“We expected it to be much smaller than
it really is. We thought it was just a pile of
rubble. As we saw the profile of Rainbow
Mountain — the solar slab, from base to
top is more than 1,500 feet of rock, and
V
then it breaks up a little bit and goes to
the summit — we were amazed. It looked
like a slab you could run up.”
In their enthusiasm, the pair broke out
across a field and into a gully of scrub oak
under the midday June sun. At the base of
the formidable wall, drenched in sweat,
legs covered in bloody scratches, the pale,
soft-skinned 22-year-old realized how
unprepared she was for the desert. Like
many transplants from moister climates,
Joanne Urioste initially disliked the
parched, prickly Mojave landscape. But
the sandstone eventually won her over. In
her seminal story about Red Rock climbing
for a 2009 edition of Alpinist magazine,
she reflected on the gradual process of
getting hooked on the “flying buttresses”
of this “vertical wilderness”: “Shady walls
gave us refuge from the summer heat. The
sun warmed frozen fingers in
wintertime. Quite simple, once
you got the hang of it. Complex
approaches, route finding and
descents felt almost alpine at
times. And the climbing here
was just so good: sustained
and airy, requiring problemsolving at every move and
every moment.”
When the she arrived,
the rock climbing scene was
still in its infancy. Passersthrough stumbled on it almost by
accident, and resident climbers such as
Joe Herbst and John Williamson were
few and far between. The Uriostes,
curious intellectuals who loved to
entertain, embraced route development
as a way to make their home city more
inviting to other like-minded folks. When
a climber charts a vertical path and makes
the first ascent, he gets naming rights;
optionally, he may place permanent
anchors for protective gear along the
way to make the route accessible to
future climbers (a practice that’s been
the source of disagreement throughout
rock climbing’s history). Joanne Urioste
remembers little frogs croaking at the
bottom of Black Velvet Canyon where
she dubbed the 770-foot climb Frogland
in 1978. Six years later — and four months
pregnant — she made the first ascent of
Prince of Darkness, so named not only
for its flat, black surface, but also because
it was the site of conflict, right next to
Rock Warrior, a climb developed by
rivals who believed that installing too
much protection opened up their hills to
debutantes.
Philosophical disagreements notwithstanding, the work of prolific routesetters — from the Uriostes in the ’70s
and ’80s to Tom Moulin, Chad Umbel and
Ben Williams in the 2000s — has made
Las Vegas what it is: the top — some say
only — U.S. metropolitan area with highquality rock-climbing a half-hour’s drive
from Downtown. Everyone interviewed
for this story except the natives moved
here because of the proximity
of Red Rock, as well as Mount
Charleston, Mount Potosi and
the crags of Northern Arizona
and Southern Utah.
“The first time I came to
Las Vegas, it was for a winter
sports show. I stayed on the
Strip, and I wasn’t impressed,”
says Stephanie Forte, a PR and
marketing executive who has
lived here since 1998. “Then, I
came to Vegas for a (Grateful)
Dead concert, and during that trip, I saw
Red Rock for the first time. Everything
changed. … Still, every time I drive out
there, I feel that connection, that energy
in the canyons.”
Rock climbers’ compulsion to be
near crags, in part, gave rise to “dirtbag”
culture, describing the nomads who
dwell in campgrounds or vehicles they
can park near routes, and who spend all
their time either climbing or preparing
for their next climb. Plenty of locals have
had their dirtbag days, but, by and large,
Las Vegas is different from other climbing
destinations in this regard: You can climb
all day or all weekend, and still be home in
time to sleep in your own bed and make
it to work in the morning. It’s allowed
some climbers to get jobs in fields such as
Since the
‘70s, Joanne
and Jorge
Urioste have
been among
Southern
Nevada’s most
prolific route
developers.
MARCH 2015
DesertCompanion.com
55
Paul Van
Betten (pictured
in both shots)
and his fellow
Adventure Punks
established
hundreds of
routes in Red
Rock during
the ‘80s.
theatrical rigging and search and rescue,
making money off their alpinist skills.
Others are weekend warriors, earning
their living as blackjack dealers, engineers
and real estate agents, and spending every
spare moment in the mountains. These
locals play host to a constant stream of
climbers parading through Las Vegas for a
week or a winter, when it’s too cold or too
wet to climb in other places.
World-class climber Jonathan Siegrist
recently wrote on his blog, “Five years
ago, when I first checked out Las Vegas,
I was astonished by how relatively quiet
the scene was here. There was clearly
a solid, motivated crew of locals, and
even more clearly there was a wealth of
incredible sport and traditional climbing
nearby and a rapidly emerging bouldering
contingent. … That year, I intended to
stay in Las Vegas for two weeks, but
ended up here for nearly three months.
I’ve been back every winter since.”
Climbers can be an insular bunch,
dating, marrying and even procreating
within the pack. Because it demands both
mental acuity and physical prowess, the
sport attracts smart, healthy people who
share a common love of adventure and
the outdoors. And, it’s the epitome of
teamwork: High above the ground, relying
on each other in moments of fatigue,
frustration and peril, they forge strong
bonds. Not only are they friends for life, but
they also may have a hard time relating to
people who haven’t had this experience.
“Jorge and I have an unbelievable
social life,” Joanne Urioste says. “Our
house is known as the bunk house,
where we have this ongoing party, but
it’s not the climbing dirt-baggers that
just overwhelm us, because we put limits
on it. Usually we have small groups of
1975
climbers, so we have a lot of connection
— never more than six or eight people at
our dinner table at once.”
Unlike the infamous dirt-baggers
of Camp 4 at Yosemite National Park
in California, Urioste says, those in
her circle have led rich, diverse lives.
They’ve held jobs, raised children and
enjoyed endless evenings of good food,
wine and conversation with others who
love climbing as much as they do. “So, in
a sense,” she adds, “we could never really
compete with the cutting-edge climbers
in Yosemite and Joshua Tree, the Stone
Masters. They always looked down on us,
because we weren’t as bold or as good,
but we were weekend climbers, mostly,
and we really, really enjoy life.”
Love and war
In 1971, Royal Robbins
struck out for Early
Morning
Light
at
Yosemite's
famous
El Capitan rock with
the intention of cutting all the bolts
his archrival Warren Harding had left
there the previous year. Philosophical
enemies since the 1960s, the soft-spoken,
clean-climbing Robbins and whiskeyswilling, bolt-happy Harding set the
tone for generations of rock climbing
spats to come. Tellingly, Robbins
would eventually abandon his mission,
admitting that the climb was harder than
he thought and that Harding deserved
credit for completing it.
Gear, along with codes of conduct
governing its use, has been a driving
factor in rock climbing’s evolution. It
falls into a few main categories: things to
put in the rock, such as bolts and pitons
(metal spikes hammered into seams and
I
1980
1985
cracks); things to put on the
climber, such as harnesses and
ropes; and things to link the
climber to the rock, such as
carabiners. The 1970s and ’80s
saw technological advances
in the first category, called
“protection” or “pro,” producing passive
gear like spring-locking cams that could
be wedged into cracks as needed and
then removed. More invasive are bolts,
circular protuberances screwed directly
into the rock. The advent of the cordless
rotary hammer in the mid-’80s made bolt
placement much quicker and safer, but
it’s easy to see how it displeased purists
in the Robbins tradition.
Local legend Joe Herbst was such a
climber. In her Alpinist story, Joanne
Urioste writes, “The convergence
between the hammerless ethics of the
time (the 1970s) and the artistry of Joe’s
climbing gave a unique form to Red
Rock’s history. In many other areas, early
pioneers tried to bag summits by the
easier routes or by any means possible.
Joe went directly for both the hardest,
1990
May 1 9 8 1
Ma r c h 1 975
Joe Herbst and
Larry Hamilton
make the first
ascent of the
1,800-foot Aeolian
Wall on Mt. Wilson.
Hamilton’s article
on the climb in
Ascent magazine
raises Red Rock’s
national profile.
Joanne Urioste
conquers
Levitation 29
with Stone
Masters Lynn
Hill and John
Long, while
Jorge Urioste
photographs. It
epitomizes the
new style of fun,
well-protected
route.
April 1991
December
1990
1984
First publication of
Joanne Urioste’s
The Red Rocks of
Southern Nevada,
the area’s original
climbing guide.
Mike and
Tim Ward
open
Desert
Rock
Sports.
Richard
Harrison,
Sal Mamusia
and Paul Van
Betten, aka
Adventure
Punks, bag
Buffalo Wall
using minimal
gear.
Sources: MountainProject.com; “Red Rock: Voices in the Desert,” by Joanne
Urioste (Alpinist, Vol. 28); Red Rocks: A Climber’s Guide, by Jerry Handren.
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Lifeline
Wendell Broussard saved my life when I was 19 years old. We
were climbing on Mt. Wilson back in ’82, and we were doing
two days. There was a crew of five: Richard Harrison, Nick
Nordblom, Wendell, a climbing ranger and me. The morning of
the second day, it was super socked in with clouds and drizzling
rain, and I didn’t have any rain gear. I had a couple long-sleeve
flannel shirts and knew nothing — I was a brand-new rock
climber, basically. So, I’m thinking, “OK, we’re going to start
bailing out of here,” but Richard takes off and starts leading
this climb — you know, like, “The clouds are gonna break.” We
got dumped on all day. At the end of that day, it was just clouds
up against the mountain, pure white, soaked, hypothermia,
uncontrollable shaking. When we got close to the top, it broke up
a little, so we coiled up the ropes, and the five of us were kind of
scrambling up over the top. Richard and Wendell and the ranger
had gone ahead, and I was moving across this rock with my pack
and a wet rope coiled up over my shoulder. There was a bush
with about a 60-pound flat block on a ledge in front of it, and I
grabbed the block and it just slid off and landed on my chest. So,
I was cantilevered, holding onto the bush, with this rock leaning
on my chest, and it’s pushing me off. There was nowhere I could
put my feet, nothing I could do. So, Nick yells up, “Wendell!
Wendell!” and Wendell comes back, 30 feet above me on this
ledge, and he looks down and sees me, this 19-year-old kid — and
he’s got kids my age — and he’s like, “Hold on, buddy.” He uncoils
this rope and drops it down, and it’s flipping around in front of
me, and I can’t let go to grab it with my hand, so the only thing
I can do is, I catch it in my teeth. And then I was like, “Whap!” I
grabbed the rope with one hand, and then the other hand and did
a little heel hook and let that giant block fall down between my
legs. And Wendell pulled me up onto the ledge holding onto the
rope. – Paul Van Betten
biggest lines and the purest, simplest
methods he could envision.”
Following in Herbst’s path was Richard
Harrison, a handsome, charismatic Stone
Master from Southern California. Arriving
in Las Vegas in 1981, Harrison quickly
attracted a group of ambitious local
climbers who would come to be known
as the Adventure Punks. Among them
was Paul Van Betten, a blond, green-eyed
native who’d been inducted into the world
of climbing while skipping school to horse
around with friends at Red Rock. The
Adventure Punks liked their music loud
and their climbing hard. They adhered
to a strict set of rules, such as no “hangdogging,” or resting with one’s weight on
a rope. (Translation: If you fell, you started
over.) Above all, they believed routes
should be established from the ground up.
2000
2005
2 0 01
The BLM
begins
enforcing
its 2-yearold ban on
bolting in
Red Rock,
threatening
Mark
Limage and
others with
prosecution.
2000
Jared
McMillen
puts Calico
Basin
bouldering
on the map
with routes
such as
Fear of a
Black Hat.
2010
2015
May 2 0 07
Wellknown
climbing
guide
Randall
Grandstaff
falls to his
death at
the Great
Red Book,
a route he’d
done many
times.
Tom Moulin is
the first to free
climb the Great
Red Roof, a local
brass ring.
Local rock
climbers mourn
the deaths of
three pioneers,
Richard Harrison,
Brian McCray and
Tim Ward, in the
same year.
2 01 4
J une 2002
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57
Clockwise from
upper left:
Marketing and
PR executive
Stephanie Forte
and UNLV Philosophy Professor Bill Ramsey
were among
the transplants
of the ‘90s and
2000s who
came for the
climbing. Las
Vegas Climbing
Council President,
Xavier Wasiak
(pictured with
family and
friends) fosters
the community.
58
“We didn’t even wear harnesses,”
Van Betten says, “we wore swami belts
— webbing tied around your waist —
because it’s super-lightweight and didn’t
promote hanging on the rope. It made us
better climbers.”
The Adventure Punks’ hard-core
approach occasionally pitted them against
other climbers. Route developers like
the Uriostes — ever the good hosts — saw
no harm in bolting crackless sections of
otherwise continuous lines if it made
routes more accessible to more people. And
those turned on by the sheer athleticism of
the sport figured out that resting on ropes
and gear after falling off a face would allow
them to repeat difficult moves over and
over. From this practice, sport climbing
evolved. Unlike the traditional (or “trad”)
climbing style of Royal Robbins, sport
climbing tolerated more active reliance on
equipment. With the green light to place
bolts, developers began establishing routes
on formations such as overhangs that
would otherwise have been inaccessible
to all but an elite few. It allowed sport
climbers to focus more on technique than
on equipment management.
But what really outraged the Adventure
Punks was the practice of rappel bolting.
“There was an influx of people — usually
from out of town — who would start at
the top and rappel down, leaving bolts
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for sport routes as they went,” Van
Betten recalls. “We were doing it from
the ground up and it would take two or
three of us all day to finish a 1-pitch route.
We’d come back the next day and there’d
be bolts everywhere, from the top to the
bottom of a route right next to the one
we’d been working on. It was like the
surfers back in the day who said, ‘Hey!
This is our beach.’ This was our rock,
there’s a finite amount of it, and we were
trying to develop it our way.”
Territorial bandits would cut the
offending usurpers’ bolts. Arguments
broke out in the canyons. Van Betten says
he barely avoided fistfights on a couple
occasions. Some in the rock-climbing
world branded Las Vegas as an unfriendly
place to climb.
Eventually, Van Betten concedes with
a sigh, he and his compatriots lost the
battle. As the ’90s rolled around, sport
climbing exploded, and rock alteration
moved from mainstream to extreme.
Particularly at Mount Charleston and
Mount Potosi, whose jagged limestone is
more challenging to climb than sandstone,
route developers began chiseling holds,
ESCAPE
Early on in my climbing, I’d met up with a guy named Mike
Harris who had been a climber for a long time, and we went
to do the Moon Goddess Arete in the Sierra Nevada. It was
very beautiful backcountry, so we had to hike into a camp,
get up the next day and hike across an ice field to get to the
toe of this Arete. About halfway up the route, a storm came
over the top of the mountains, and it started raining really
heavily. After a while, we could see the storm wasn’t going
to get better, and there was a lot of lightning — we had to
escape. So, we moved into a gully to the right of the route
and started to rappel down. The gully, as it rained, became
a stream. We were putting gear in wet cracks, sometimes
underneath the water, leaving all kinds of gear to make sure
we could come down OK. That morning, we had started
around 4 a.m., and when we started retreating, it was early
afternoon. By the time we got back to our camp, it was
about midnight. So, we’d been up 20 hours, in the dark, cold,
wet, and we were so exhausted and dehydrated that we
hardly said a word to each other. I remember, I just kind of
motioned for him to lie down, and I went and got water to
make soup. But it was a great feeling to share with someone
else: We were fine. The next day, we would hike out and go
home. I’ve always felt just as grateful for my failures as I
have for my successes. – Xavier Wasiak, president of
the Las Vegas Climbers Liaison Council
drilling finger pockets — creating gymlike routes in nature. Las Vegas had
never been considered particularly ecoconscious by outsiders to begin with,
notes Jackson Hole Mountain Guides’
Las Vegas Director Mark Limage. Now,
some climbing magazine writers openly
mocked the area as the epicenter of route
manufacturing, coining the term “Mount
Chiselton.”
“It actually got to be an art work,”
Limage says. “They’d use epoxy and
spray paint and you couldn’t tell it wasn’t
natural rock. But it doesn’t matter,
because traditionalists are still going to
feel like you’re altering the rock to dumb
it down to your level. For them, it’s a
blatant aberration.”
In the January 2011 issue of Rock
and Ice magazine, Bill Ramsey — a
philosophy professor who left a position
at Notre Dame for one at UNLV and the
abundant nearby rock climbing — penned
a controversial article calling attention
to the hypocrisy inherent in criticism of
route manufacturing. “Consider this:” he
wrote, “If you are a serious climber who
climbs relatively hard sport routes, there is
a good chance that you have done a route
with at least a few manufactured holds.
Moreover, there is also a good chance
that, despite the manufacturing, climbing
the route was gratifying and rewarding.
Now what should the appropriate attitude
be toward the route preparer who spent
time, money and energy so you could have
that experience?”
Over time, Stephanie Forte says,
manufacturers backed off their extreme
practices and the community found
balance on the issue. “In the ’90s, things
got out of hand,” she says. “But I think
that every climber would agree that you’d
always rather be climbing a natural route.
It’s more beautiful, more pure.”
Making a plan
Traditional
climbers
aren’t the only ones
who frown on route
manufacturing; so does
the Bureau of Land
Management, which is responsible for
Red Rock.
“Both drilling holds (aka chipping)
and drilling holes for anchors is
prohibited in the 2005 Red Rock Canyon
National Conservation Area Resource
Management Plan,” BLM spokeswoman
Kirsten Cannon says. She adds that the
bureau is in the process of amending the
plan to address permanent fixed anchors
in Red Rock’s congressionally designated
wilderness areas, Rainbow Mountain
and La Madre Mountain. The plan is
expected to undergo public review this
spring and summer and be finalized
in 2016. Then, the BLM will create a
timeline for implementing a climbing
management plan.
Local climbing veterans are skeptical
this will happen as outlined. They say
they agreed to the moratorium on bolt
drilling a decade ago with the expectation
that a climbing management plan would
be done soon after. When one failed
to materialize, route developers began
drilling anew — on the down-low.
Behind the bureaucratic waiting game
is a more widespread conflict between
climbers, who view bolts as critical to their
wilderness experience, and wilderness
advocacy groups, which define fixed
anchors as prohibited “installations.”
Each side points to the 1964 Wilderness
Act as support for its stance. And then
there are those who consider themselves
both climbers and conservationists; they
simply wish the BLM would do more to
discourage civilization’s encroachment
on Red Rock.
But Xavier Wasiak isn’t letting politics
hold him back. As current president of
the Las Vegas Climbers Liaison Council,
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59
World-class
professional
climbers like
Alex Johnson,
who moved
here in 2014,
show increased
interest in
Vegas.
60
an affiliate of the national climbing
nonprofit Access Fund, one of his
responsibilities is to inform the BLM,
National Park Service and other public
agencies how the climbing community
benefits the economy and what tools
it needs to make the activity safe and
enjoyable for the public. Wasiak says he
has a great working relationship with the
BLM, and he’s hopeful the management
plan will get done.
A more urgent task for the climbers
council, he says, is educating climbers and
the public on responsible stewardship of
natural resources. Popularity of outdoor
activities is a double-edged sword for
recreational groups: They want people
to get out and enjoy nature. But the more
people there are on a rock, the greater its
chances of getting damaged.
And rock climbing’s popularity is
exploding. The BLM gives five fulltime special recreation permits for
commercial guided rock-climbing tour
operators (Limage’s Jackson Hole
Mountain Guides is one example).
Cannon says these five average a total
of 5,000 user days per year for climbing
today, compared with 3,500 in 2010. And
this represents a fraction of all climbers,
since most will go out on their own, not
in organized excursions. That’s a lot of
hands and feet on the red rock walls.
“I can stand outside and see the big
picture,” Wasiak says. “When people
walk past a cliff and see chalk on it, they
might think it’s not very pretty. We have
to talk to people and let them know what
our culture is about. Education, signage
around sensitive areas — those are going
to be good issues for us to work on for
the next five to 10 years. And, of course,
waste disposal is never going to go away.”
“Waste disposal” is a polite euphemism
for an unpleasant reality. About five years
ago, Climbers Liaison Council members
began to notice a sewage-like smell
around areas where popular climbs start.
Since climbers may spend many hours on
the same remote route, they are unlikely
to hike back to trailhead restrooms every
time they need to relieve themselves.
Etiquette dictates that they take compact
shovels to dig holes and bury their
excrement, but Wasiak acknowledges
that many people simply won’t do that.
So, the council came up with “potty
bags.” Volunteers built six large brown
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boxes mounted on poles, labeled with
instructions and filled with bags for
human waste disposal, and then placed
them in popular areas for rock climbing.
The biodegradable bags are to be brought
back to dispenser stations and left in the
trash. The council maintains the stations,
restocking bags and emptying trash.
The council’s dedication to this task
reflects its devotion to the Leave No Trace
ethic. But fortunately for volunteers,
the council’s not all dirty work and no
play. The Access Fund sponsors the Red
Rock Rendezvous, billed by organizers as
“the country’s largest outdoor climbing
festival,” and council members will be
there March 27-29 teaching attendees
not only how to climb, but also how to
watch where they climb and pick up after
themselves when they’re done.
The way up
When Alex Johnson
was a tiny, blond thing
in Hudson, Wisconsin,
the managers of her
daycare center would
occasionally call Mr. and Mrs. Johnson
and threaten to ban their daughter. It
seems she wouldn’t stop climbing on top
of the swing set and scaring the bejeezus
out of staff.
“I was kind of a terror,” the 25-yearold Johnson says today. “I’d climb
anything — trees, ladders, buildings …”
She can laugh now. Sponsored by North
Face, she’s one of the country’s top three
female climbers.
Since moving here a year ago,
Johnson has had the occasional shock of
witnessing environmental degradation
firsthand. In the last few years, more
professional boulderers have been doing
first ascents at Red Rock, inspiring
outsiders to come and experience those
routes for themselves. Many of them
don’t know the rock, which is fragile,
especially 2-3 days after a rain.
“We’ve had people break off holds on
a couple classic climbs,” Johnson says,
frowning. “The Kraft Boulders (at Calico
Basin) have taken a huge beating. People
who climb during the week at the gym
go out there to climb on the weekend
and just throw their gear everywhere
and step on the plants. They treat it like
a gym. The Access Fund is working to
educate people, and I hope it helps. It’s
W
not your bedroom!”
Bouldering has had a lot to do with
rock climbing’s recent spike in popularity.
Requiring only a chalk bag and crash pad,
it has a lower barrier of entry than the gearheavy trad and sport climbing. Also, it’s
fun — acrobatic, fast-paced and often quite
social.
Gyms have also played a role in the
rock-climbing boom. Last October, Jeff
and Beth Clapp opened a boulderingonly gym, Refuge Climbing & Fitness,
where Johnson works out during the
week. Andy Raether, a rising star in rock
climbing, plans to open another, Origin
Climbing and Fitness, in Henderson this
spring. It will be two-and-a-half times
larger than Refuge, the valley’s largest
existing facility, and offer the full gamut
of styles — bouldering, sport, trad — as
well as weights and fitness equipment.
The community has also developed
an insatiable appetite for social media,
especially videos and alerts about daring
ascents. Potential sponsors see a gold mine
in the hours climbers spend on YouTube,
Twitter and online forums. Clothing and
gear manufacturers plaster their young,
attractive spokes-climbers in branded
gear and fly them off to exotic destinations
to shoot slick movies that, some say, are
little more than commercials.
The pressure to perform has its
Challenge
downside. World-class climbers push
the envelope, taking risks that may look
brasher to the uninitiated than they
actually are, such as Alex Honnold’s
ascent of huge walls free-solo style — that
is, with no safety gear at all. (Insiders say
Honnold practices his climbs extensively
with protection before free-soloing them.)
And the lighter a climber's body, the better
he climbs, which has led to rampant eating
disorders in the sport’s top echelons.
Johnson says heavy competition
has created a lack of cohesion among
the few females who climb at the elite
level, too. Because climbers have a short
window — their youth, basically — to win
competitions and land sponsors, they
have to work extremely hard during that
time and are loath to give any secrets
away. Men, on the other hand, have
the luxury of numerous peers in their
class, so there are plenty outside their
competitive sphere with whom they can
collaborate on challenging projects.
Generally, today, climbing is seen as
equal-opportunity, but one nasty vestige
of sexism remains: males’ tendency
to downgrade climbs after females do
them. Both Johnson and Forte have
experienced the bitter let-down of
completing an extremely challenging
climb one day and, the next day, reading
comments posted on forums such as
MountainProject.com suggesting the
climbs’ ratings should be lowered.
“People get ultra-competitive over it,
which I don’t understand,” Forte says.
“It’s not like I was going to do that (climb)
and then come home and get a six-figure
deal from Cover Girl. It took me six weeks,
and it came down to one move that I had
practiced over and over. So, when I was
finally able to do it, it felt really good. It’s
devastating to have that taken away, just
because you’re a woman.”
Bouts of testosterone may be nothing
new to rock climbing, but traditionalists
say they’re also easy to circumvent. The
sport has diversified so much that, unless
you’re a professional, it’s just as easy to
have a spiritual experience in nature as
it is to have a heated duel in front of an
electrified crowd. Record numbers of
people may be introduced to climbing
through bouldering and at gyms, but
those who stick with it are likely to
at least try sport and trad climbing,
too. Professionals integrate a little of
everything into their training.
But those professionals — with their
sponsorships and competitions and
professional pressures — never forget the
essence of the rock-climbing experience.
At 8 a.m. on a Tuesday, Johnson pulls on
her stretchy clothes, zips up her puffy
North Face jacket and steers her Toyota
It’s only recently we’ve seen all
this competitiveness, and it’s
because climbing is growing. It’s
heading in the direction of having
money involved, and everyone is
going that direction, and maybe
losing sight of why climbing is
awesome. You go outside, hang
out with your friends, do
something fun and athletic that’s
mentally challenging, work on
a problem that’s rewarding, and
then you go grab a burger and a
beer. You get to be outside in the
most gorgeous places on Earth –
Zion, Yosemite, Colorado, here.
I don’t know why anyone
wouldn’t want this lifestyle.
– Alex Johnson,
competitive rock climber
toward the 159. Afternoons, she’s at the
gym, and weekends often feature a quick
trip to California or Utah. But weekday
mornings are reserved for the solitary
work of practicing difficult moves on
familiar faces. Parked at the end of
Calico Basin Road, she pulls a crash pad,
folded backpack-style, out of the trunk
and heads into the foothills of Kraft
Mountain. With the pad placed carefully
on the ground below, she claps chalk
between her palms and steps onto the
rock. By 1 p.m., having done a full circuit
of boulders with the rising sun, she’ll be
meeting friends for lunch at Sambalatte.
“When I tell people where I live,”
she says, “I get a lot of wrinkled noses,
‘Vegas? Really?’ And I tell them it’s not
what they think. … Since I became a
professional climber, I haven’t stayed
anywhere more than a year. You just
travel and live in a van. It’s nice to have a
home base in a place that’s so much less
expensive than Boulder or Tahoe. And
the climbing here is endless. Amazing
and endless.”
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61
What
Is There
to Do
Outdoors?
(shoot hoops!)
(paddle! stargaze!)
(fishing! volleyball!)
It’s a great big world out there,
and these people make the
most of it
Photographs by
AARO N M AY ES & S h a n t i C o l a n g e l o - C u r r a n
62
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◆ Kayaking
Mike Smalls’ paddle digs softly into
the water, propelling him quietly
along as ducks forage and fish
take f light here and there. This is
his first time in a kayak, but you
wouldn’t know it. It’s almost as
though the serene surroundings
bring out a natural confidence.
Smalls joins the group brought here
to Lake Mead by Boulder Citybased Desert Adventures (kayaklasvegas.com) to enjoy the water
on a perfect February day, proof
that kayaking in Southern Nevada
is popular all year long — and that
popularity is growing. Last year,
Black Canyon became a National
Water Trail, the first such Department of Interior designation.
Paddle sports continue to evolve,
and Desert Adventures owner Izzy
Collett notes the emergence of all
sorts of water sports, including
stand-up paddling, kayak fishing,
and riverboarding.
“When I first moved here in 1996,
there were no paddle shops around,
and no retail stores anywhere that
carried kayaking gear,” Collett
says. “Now the Vegas Valley has
several big-name sporting goods
stores that carry entry-level paddling gear, and multiple outfitters
and rental shops near the water
that carry specialty kayaks, paddles and gear. Our local paddling
Meetup group has more than 1,000
members.” Proof that in the desert,
fun on the water is an all-season
sport. A.M.
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63
◆ flag football
◆ bird watching
Jim Boone keeps a sharp eye out for
birds at The Clark County Wetlands
Park; it’s a hobby he shares with
his wife Liz. “Birding is something
you can do anywhere in the world,
and spend as much or as little time
doing it as you want,” says Liz. Jim
adds, “You can do it in a downtown
environment, or a natural environment.” He should know. Jim runs
an authoritative and extensive website on birding and hiking called,
fittingly, birdandhike.com. S.C.
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BSB, in blue jerseys, squares off
against War Machine at All American Park. If you thought f lag football was just a quaint relic of high
school P.E. classes, think again. It
has become a popular pastime for
adults, too. For eight years, Las
Vegas Sports League President T.J.
Love has been organizing games for
men, women and kids. They get all
the gridiron thrills — without the
concussions and injuries traditional
football is becoming known for. “I
love what I do,” says Love. “Who
wouldn’t love coming to the football
field as their job? It’s just much
better than sitting inside behind a
desk.” S.C.
◆ tai chi
◆ basketball
It’s an unusually warm January
evening on the Sunset Park
basketball courts. As last light fades,
Abraham, Jelani, Leopoldo and
Michael play a warm-up game of
two-on-two. Wilt, LeBron, Jordan
and Dr. J they are not. But, oh, are
they dedicated. You’ll find them here
pounding it out every Saturday amid
the rumble and roar of planes flying
in and out of McCarran. They’ve
been coming to Sunset for years for
casual pick-up games. Sure, there’s
the occasional hothead or court beef,
but the competition is generally as
friendly as it is plentiful.
Tai chi practitioner and health educator Tamalyn Taylor leads a class
at The Gardens Park and Community Center in Summerlin. Taylor
has been practicing tai chi for 12
years now, but her enthusiasm for it
is as strong as when she began the
practice. “I found that the slow and
rhythmic pace of the movements
helped me to increase my muscular
control, coordination, and balance,” she says. “Being mindful of
the present moment brought more
self-awareness and led me to giving
up negative thought patterns that
were interfering with my peace of
mind. I found that as I progressed
further into my tai chi practice, I
was able to tone down my reactions
to stressful events in my life. Best
of all, I now have a practice that is
gentle yet challenging enough that
I can continue it for the rest of my
life.” S.C.
“There are always a lot of new guys
who come in, so you get to play with
and meet different people every
week,” says Michael Savage. “Then
you get the same people (who)
become your little rivals out here.
It’s fun when you get to beat them.”
When you ask them if this is a hobby,
a pastime, a passion, the group answers in unison: “Ball is life.” A.M.
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◆ Cycling
Alain Quesnel, right, rides with
friends at Red Rock National Conservation Area. He fell in love with
cycling in 2005, and would come to
Southern Nevada every winter to
ride, finally moving here in 2012.
“I love all the outdoor possibilities
that Vegas has to offer. Whether
nearby like Red Rock, or a couple
of hours away like Death Valley,
Valley of Fire or Zion.” Now he’s
even sharing the love, organizing
regional bike tours in his spare
time. S.C.
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◆ larping
Spear at the ready, Murphy, aka
Bobby Parker, battles his foe Acrid
the Scarecrow, aka Dustin Macari.
During the week they’re normal
guys, but come Saturdays at Desert
Breeze Park, they’re fierce warriors.
They’re members of the local group
Barad’Dun that plays Dagorhir, a
full-contact medieval-themed combat
sport — think men and a few women
beating each other with foam swords,
shields, arrows and spears. Barad’Dun
is just one of many LARP (live-action
role-playing) groups that congregate
locally, bringing a little old-school
chivalry — and wild battles — to the
valley.
On this day, 20 players — some
in full medieval outfits, others in
shorts and T-shirts — fight for
glory. Amid a pitched battle, one
player holds her ground and pays
the price. “Dead!” she yells, putting
an arm above her head indicating
she’s out this round. “Nice chest
stab, bro,” she says to the victor. “I
felt my soul shake.” A.M.
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◆ star gazing
Rob Lambert, president of Las
Vegas Astronomical Society, greets
people to his station with a “Step
right up!” shtick as he points out
the Great Orion Nebula. A young
girl looks on as Lambert explains
that the nebula, seen on a small
screen showing a live view from his
telescope, is part of the Orion constellation. The nebula, he continues,
holds a cluster of stars that were
born out of hydrogen gas, and is
1,500 light years away from us. He
knows he’s lost her, and pulls out
his green laser pointer to show her
where they are looking in the sky.
She’s back.
The light-drenched Neon Museum
might not seem to an ideal place
for stargazing, but the 1,300-plus
people who came out to the Jan.
24 “Stars & Stardust” event didn’t
mind a little terrestrial f licker and
glow. The plentiful powerful telescopes helped them enjoy a glimpse
of celestial bodies that are otherwise drowned out in a town where
dark skies are a rarity. AM.
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◆ trail running
The Southwest Ridge area near
Blue Diamond Road and Hualapai
Way is wildly popular with trail
runners for its panoramic views
and challenging terrain. Here, Kara
Nassoiy hits the trail with some
friends. “I ran cross-country in
high school but never ran track,”
she says. “I wasn’t really interested in doing laps on a track when I
could be running through fields,
mountains and sometimes cow pastures with the cross-country team.”
That translated into a lifelong love
of running in the natural environment. “There’s just something so
amazing about being alone in the
mountains with no sound other
than your breathing, your footsteps
hitting the earth below your feet,
and the sound of the wind. It is
absolutely inspiring.” S.C.
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◆ volleyball
Sand f lies from the feet of 702 Volleyball athletes as coach Jennifer
Richards shouts encouragement to
her team of high school girls. They
bump, set, spike and dig in the pits
at Sunset Park, a local hub for all
things sand. The beach volleyball
scene at the park “has exploded
over the past couple of years,”
Richards says. And while it’s a little
harder these days to find an open
court, the sandy scene still has
a laid-back beach vibe. “It’s just
really turned into a great relaxing
scene with chairs and coolers and
just a bunch of people and great
socialization and great activity and
great atmosphere.” A.M.
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◆ fly fishing
Water ripples with a soft breeze
upon the Tule Springs reservoir
as Randy Upton casts his line near
a stand of cattails. For Upton,
president of the Las Vegas Fly
Fishing Club, f ly fishing is a sport,
yes, but it’s also a form of meditation, requiring stillness, focus and
patience. “You become a little more
disconnected from the world around
you,” he says. “It’s in that state
where you are no longer worried
about anything else around except
for that one little thing in front of
you.” A.M.
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◆ parkour
Parkour enthusiast Perris Aquino practices moves on the UNLV
campus. Aquino has been practicing parkour — and its f lashier,
exuberant cousin, freerunning —
for almost 10 years. The sport has
grown in popularity in recent years,
with specialized gyms, parks and
even classes dedicated to the craze,
but Aquino prefers to leap off the
beaten path. “Me, personally, I never took any formal classes. It was
kind of me just training by myself.
And that’s kind of the route I took
progressing in it.” S.C.
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5
e
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03
15
your Arts+Entertainment calendar for march
10
17
21
Momix
Spying on
Antiquity
Bishr
Hijazi and
the Arab
Ensemble
Reynolds Hall,
the Smith Center
This troupe’s show
Alchemia looks like a cross
between ballet and Cirque
du Soleil, with props,
outlandish costumes,
dramatic lighting effects,
visual dreaminess and
glowing items onstage.
As you gather from the
title, Alchemia is themed
after the four main
elements: earth, air, fire
and water. 7:30p, $19-$69,
thesmithcenter.com
16
Justin
Favela
& Sean
Slattery
Clark County
Government Center
Rotunda
Picture the glorious
incongruity: the stately
bureaucratic precincts of the
county government center
given riotous life by several
piñatas in the shape of
Chicano lowriders. Because
that’s how Favela and
Slattery plan to roll. Through
May 8, opening reception 6p
March 20
Barrick Museum, UNLV
19
Jamaica
Kincaid
& Caryl
Phillips
If you attend just one lecture
about the applications of
declassified U.S. intelligencesatellite imagery to Near
Eastern archaeology this
year, make it this one. It’s
presented by Jason Ur, a
professor at Harvard and
director of the Center for
Geographic Analysis. 7:30p,
free, unlv.edu
Winchester Cultural
Center
A quartet of musicians,
playing the oud, electric
guitar, violin and
percussion, and fronted
by an Egyptian-style
dancer, perform classical
Arabian numbers. 7p, $10
advance, $12 door, 702455-7340
Student Union, UNLV
In the panel talk “Crossing
the Black Atlantic,”
the award-winning
writers — both born in
the Caribbean — will
discuss how they explore
themes of race, identity
and the heritage of the
slave trade in their work.
Sponsored by the Black
Mountain Institute. 7p, free,
blackmountaininstitute.org
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THE GUIDE
ART
PREFAB
THROUGH MARCH 6
Italian artist Giorgio Guidi’s new sculpture
is a design similar to Roman basilicas.
The structure’s interior will be decorated
with graffiti provided by volunteers from
local institutions. The goal of the sculpture
is to make the viewer rethink accepted
assumptions and open a discussion about
the future of the community by forcing
communication between young and old.
Free. Clark County Government Center
Rotunda Gallery, clarkcountynv.gov
SANTA CONFESSIONAL
Cancer:
The Emperor of All Maladies
• Monday, March 30 at 9 p.m. • Tuesday, March 31 at 9 p.m.
• Wednesday, April 1 at 9 p.m.
THROUGH MARCH 8
Artist David Colman invites guests to enter
a two-person confessional booth to have a
talk with him, dressed as Santa, through a
perforated privacy screen. Unlike a typical
confessional, this one is open air, putting
the confessional process on display and
likening it to the department-store Santa
installations of youth. Guests without the
time or inclination to confess can participate by eavesdropping on the confessions
of others. Free. The Cosmopolitan, cosmopolitanlasvegas.com
DK SOLE
The Texas Tenors:
You Should Dream
Wednesday, March 4 at 7:30 p.m.
180 Days:
Hartsville
Tuesday, March 17 at 8 p.m.
The Jewish Journey:
America
Tuesday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m.
James Baker:
The Man Who Made
Washington Work
Tuesday, March 24 at 8:30 p.m.
Visit VegasPBS.org today to see the complete schedule.
3050 E. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, NV 89121 • 702-799-1010
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THROUGH MARCH 13
Sole creates small sculptures from discarded items she finds along the streets.
More than one hundred of her assemblage
sculptures will be displayed along the walls
in clusters or “islands,” linked by threads.
The artist hopes to mirror the interplay
of human connections in the community
and to prompt viewers to pay attention to
these broken street-scraps as they might
pay attention to a crowd of faces. Free.
Winchester Cultural Center Gallery, clarkcountynv.gov
LINE IN THE SAND: THE
PEOPLE, POWER AND
PROGRESS OF THE CULINARY UNION
THROUGH APRIL 1
This dynamic exhibit explores the tenacious and determined history between the
Culinary Workers Union, Local 226 and the
City of Las Vegas. Free. First floor gallery
at UNLV’s Lied Library, library.unlv.edu
CHOCOLATE:
THE EXHIBITION
THROUGH MAY 3
Interactive exhibits reveal the plant,
products and mystique of chocolate
throughout the ages in science, history and
popular culture. Enter a tropical rainforest
to learn how cacao is grown and how it is
processed to fulfill today’s global demand.
Examine chocolate’s role throughout history and how mass production of chocolate
bars fueled the Industrial Revolution. Free
with general admission. Springs Preserve
ROCK STARS: STONE
SCULPTURE
THROUGH MAY 5, MON-THU 7A-5P
This exhibit includes various genres of
stone sculpture created by artists who
have studied stone-carving techniques at
Gainsburg Studio, taught by owner and
artist Sharon Gainsburg. Free. Las Vegas
City Hall Grand Gallery, 495 S. Main St.,
first floor, 702-229-1012
IN HONOR OF AFRICAN
AMERICAN HERITAGE
2015 EXHIBIT
THROUGH MAY 14, MON-THU
7A-5:30P
Artwork in various media celebrates African American Month and beyond. Free.
Las Vegas City Hall Chamber Gallery,
702-229-1012
COLLABORATION/
EXCHANGE
MARCH 11-APRIL 12
Artist Lucky DeBellevue will use non-traditional materials to make an experimental wedge-shaped sculpture and an
evolving wall print, encouraging guests
to expand their perception of sculpture
and creative thought around everyday
objects. Guests can join DeBellevue in
constructing one of his signature Chenille
stem sculptures by weaving stems into
pattern overlay that will be added to the
sculptural form. Free. The Cosmopolitan,
cosmopolitanlasvegas.com
SPRINGS PRESERVE PHOTO CONTEST EXHIBITION
MARCH 12-JUNE 21, 10A-6P
This year’s theme was “Celebrations and
Traditions” when the challenge went out to
professional, amateur and youth photographers throughout the valley. Come see
the results of the sixth-annual juried photo
contest. Free with regular admission. Big
Springs Gallery at Springs Preserve
CAR SHOW
MARCH 16-MAY 8. ARTIST RECEPTION MARCH 20, 6P
Artists Justin Favela and Sean Slattery will
collaborate to create an indoor car show
featuring three new, life-size recreations, including one built piñata-style. Free. Clark
County Government Center Rotunda
Gallery, clarkcountynv.gov
ALLISON STREATER
MARCH 24-MAY 15. RECEPTION
MARCH 27, 5:30P
Streater’s mixed media collage series
features females from fashion catalogs
wearing material possessions the artist desires, but cannot afford. The models’ vision
is blocked, representing how we all may be
blinded by the countless things in life that
restrict us from reaching our full potential.
Free. Winchester Cultural Center Gallery,
clarkcountynv.gov
DANCE
SHEN YUN 2015
MARCH 2-4, 7:30P
Take a journey through 5,000 years of
Chinese culture via the universal languages
of music and dance. $54-$204. Reynolds
Hall at The Smith Center
SIMPLY BALLROOM
MARCH 8, 7P
Enjoy breathtaking lifts, beautiful costumes
and a variety of ballroom dances including
the exciting Latin Samba of Brazil, the majestic Slow Waltz of Austria, the rhythmical
Cha-Cha from Cuba, the elegant American Foxtrot and the intense Spanish Paso
Doble from the award-winning Southern
Utah University Ballroom Dance Company. Free. Main Theater at Clark County
Library, lvccld.org
Your
smart
wants
to
party.
BALLET FOLKORICO
DANCE SHOWCASE
MARCH 13, 7P
Journey through Mexican history as Clark
County School District student dance
groups perform popular folkloric dances
from various regions and time periods.
Expect a celebration rich in culture, music
and tradition that will leave you with an appreciation for the arts. Free. Main Theater
at Clark County Library, lvccld.org
MUSIC
HAPA
MARCH 6-7, 7P
The group is known as the “Sound of
Maui” with its hypnotic, liquid guitar runs
woven around clear, tenor Hawaiian vocals and immaculate harmonies driven by
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THE GUIDE
poetic lyrics exulting the rapture of the
Hawaiian landscape. $35-$45. Cabaret
Jazz at The Smith Center
TROUBLE IN TAHITI
MARCH 6-15, FRI-SAT 7P; SUN 2P
Sin City Opera presents Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera that tells the candid
story of the troubled marriage of a 1950s
suburban couple. $10 in advance, $15 at
the door. Winchester Cultural Center,
clarkcountynv.gov
MASTERWORKS IV:
CABRERA CONDUCTS
MENDELSSOHN AND
SCHUMANN
MARCH 7, 7:30P
Music Director Donato Cabrera leads the
orchestra in its first-ever performance of
Mendelssohn’s joyous Fourth Symphony,
known as the “Italian” symphony, inspired
by the composer’s travels to Italy. $26-$94.
Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center
2CELLOS
MARCH 7, 8P
Breaking down boundaries between classi-
cal and popular music, Croatians Luka Sulic
and Stjepan Hauser are equally impressive
performing Bach and Vivaldi or rocking
out to AC/DC. $25-$75. UNLV Performing
Arts Center, unlv.edu/pac
under-the-radar instrument, been declared
a musical “hero” by Rolling Stone, wowed
audiences on TV and even performed for
the Queen of England. $39-$59. Cabaret
Jazz at The Smith Center
BARBARA COOK
ORQUESTA SINFÓNICA
DEL ESTADO DE MÉXICO
MARCH 13-14, 7P; MARCH 15, 2P
Cook will demonstrate her vocal prowess,
bringing back music from her runs in The
Music Man, Oklahoma! and Carousel. The
first female pop singer ever to perform a
solo concert at the Metropolitan Opera,
this soprano will blow you away. $37-$59.
Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center
FRANKIE MORENO:
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
MARCH 17, 24 AND 31, 8P
Mixing Rat Pack glam with classic hits,
vintage funk-infused sounds and some
original works, Moreno is a staple on the
Strip. $20-$25. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith
Center
JAKE SHIMABUKURO
MARCH 20-21, 7P
In his young career, ukulele wizard Shimabukuro has already redefined a heretofore
W ION
E
N AT
C
LO
MARCH 20, 8P
The State Symphony Orchestra of Mexico
brings a program including Turina’s Danzas
fantasticas, Mexican composer Manuel
Ponce’s guitar concerto and Brahms’
Symphony No. 1 in C Minor. $25-$75. UNLV
Performing Arts Center, unlv.edu/pac
THE CRYSTAL TRIO
MARCH 22, 2P
Igor Sklyarov, Sergey Brodsky and Vladimir
Popras, all from Russia, play only with
crystal glass. The vibration makes a pure,
delicate, singing sound unlike any other
instruments. Included will be Adagio C-dur
for Glass Armonika by Mozart, written
specifically for glass instruments. $10 in
advance, $12 concert day. Winchester
Cultural Center, clarkcountynv.gov
THE STARS OF COUNTRY
MARCH 28, 7P
Peter Pavone and the Hole in the Wall
Band present a blockbuster tribute to
Johnny Cash, Reba McEntire, George Strait
and Dolly Parton. This high-energy showcase featuring the best of legendary stars
by top tribute artists is sure to fill you with
that happy country spirit. $18. Starbright
Theater at Sun City Summerlin, suncity-summerlin.com/starbrighttheatre.htm
POPS IV: SYMPHONIC
SPECTACULAR
MARCH 28, 7:30P
Classical showpieces famously quoted
in pop-culture are instantly recognizable
as Music Director Donato Cabrera delves
into this fiery, fast-paced repertoire that
promises to deliver a memorable night at
the symphony. $26-$94. Reynolds Hall at
The Smith Center
MARCH 14, 2015
9:30 A.M. AT STAR NURSERY
Fun with spring planting! Join us as horticulturist expert
Norm Schilling shares his tips on seasonal
gardening, yard care and how to prune like a pro.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT US ONLINE AT
DESERTCOMPANION.COM/EVENTS
STAR NURSERY SOUTHWEST LOCATION 9480 W. Tropicana Ave., Las Vegas, NV 89147
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LONDON SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA & MICHAEL
TILSON THOMAS WITH
YUJA WANG
MARCH 30, 7:30P
Making a special appearance, one of the
world’s leading orchestras brings together
the greatest players from across the
globe. $29-$149. Reynolds Hall at The
Smith Center
THEATER
WELCOME, BOILS AND
GHOULS!
THROUGH MARCH 7, THU-SAT 7:30P;
SUN 2P
A tongue-in-cheek homage to the old Tales
from the Crypt comic books, the performance consists of six short plays hosted
by M.T. Graves, a ridiculous blend of the
Cryptkeeper and Paul Lynde. $20. Onyx
Theatre, onyxtheatre.com
E
M
A
G
ON!
YO U N G
IO N A L S
PROFESS
IG H T &
T R IV IA N
K IN G
R
O
NETW
STAGE KISS
THROUGH MARCH 15, FRI-SAT 8P;
SUN 2P
What really happens when two actors
kiss onstage? The newest work from
award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl explores the chemistry, the construction and
the sometimes ridiculous consequences of
a staged kiss. $16-$20. Cockroach Theatre,
cockroachtheatre.com
FAMILY & FESTIVALS
BARK IN THE PARK
MARCH 7, 10A-2P
A celebration for dog lovers and their canine friends, this event features entertainment, contests, vendors and pet adoptions.
Free. Cornerstone Park, 1600 Wigwam
Parkway, cityofhenderson.com
SPRING FLING BOOKFAIR
MARCH 14, 10:30A-4P
Whether you’re an avid reader or an
aspiring writer, this is your opportunity to
get to know local writers and their work.
Meet more than 50 Las Vegas authors of
thrillers, romance, short stories, fiction,
poetry, self-help, nonfiction and more.
Connect with our literary community or
participate in one of the many workshops
for writers. Free. Main Theater at Clark
County Library, lvccld.org
TUESDAY
MCMULLAN’S
IRISH PUB
19
Join Nevada Public Radio and United Way’s
Fundraisers
RUN AWAY WITH CIRQUE
DU SOLEIL
MARCH 28, 7A
Join dozens of artists from Cirque du
Soleil’s Las Vegas shows and more than
1,000 community members for a 5K run
or 1-mile fun walk. Enjoy photo ops with
costumed characters, face painting, a
children’s play area and more! All proceeds support the Cirque du Soleil and
Springs Preserve Foundations. $27-$40,
Springs Preserve
Young Philanthropists Society for a fun night of
trivia, drinks, food and great company!
Space is limited, please RSVP by March 16. Visit
desertcompanion.com for more details.
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END NOTE
urban hiking
doodleQuest!
By scott dickensheets
Awe-inspiring formations like Slotzilla fill
you with hope for a better world …
On second thought, it’s probably
not a good idea to drink from
the giant novelty fire hydrant on
Fremont and Ninth.
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Nature: very nice, but also full of bugs. And
kinda far away. And shot through with quiet,
contemplative moments when you can truly
get a bead on your position in the universe
and ponder what's important in life. Totally
not my style. Instead, why not hike closer
to home? Here are a few sights from recent
rambles around Fremont Street.
Behold, the gravity-defying stride of the flatbilled Touristus inebriatus, the only creature
that can simultaneously snap a selfie, drink a
mile-long margarita and gargle, “Vegas, baby!”
Your urban hike will be full of socially
instructive juxtapositions …
The urban hiker must be a hardy and
survival-oriented, ready to forage in
the wild for what he needs.