Spawning a Downtown empire—a Weekly exclusive
Downtown Cocktail Room’s Michael Cornthwaite has been a busy little bee, laboring away secretively these last six months on a new bar project. But don’t expect a Downtown Cocktail Room II to be appearing any time soon. The Black Sheep, very much a neighborhood bar, will open in just 4-6 weeks at Lamb and Lake Mead in northeast Las Vegas. With a rustic, Old World, Spanish-colonial feel, the small bar will be “a little piece of Mexico right in the middle of Vegas.” Cornthwaite’s first foray into gaming will feature “the usual accoutrements”: pool table, juke box, cigarette machine, snack machine and up to six beers on tap for around $2. The blue-collar Black Sheep will keep regular hours in the range of 11 a.m.-2 a.m.
Once the Sheep is under control, Cornthwaite will indeed be turning his attention back to Downtown Las Vegas and the Fremont East area. “This is where the passion is,” says the natural born operator, who adds, tantalizingly, that his next two projects there will be side-by-side, ideally on Fremont East. In the mean time, the Downtown Cocktail Room has added to its roster a new Tuesday night affair, an industry party aimed at luring nightlife-industry folk Downtown to hear DJs Jason Lema and Carlos Sanchez.
Scratch your itch—exclusive first communiqués from CatHouse Loungerie
Inspired by the rich opulence of a 19th-century European bordello, CatHouse Loungerie at the Luxor will intertwine sophisticated dining (“American tapas”) provided by Chef Kerry Simon with provocative nightlife created by a team of jet-setters, operators, celebrities and theatrical producers. And all in just 8,000 square feet. Guests enter via a hallway of bordello doors, each peephole showing vintage European erotica films. The Loungerie entrance is adorned with vintage hand mirrors, while beyond, hundreds of personal effects from fin de siecle bordellos romanticize the industry’s history—think daggers, metal bed-warmers and plenty of vintage photographs. Guests will have an opportunity to take their own photo at CatHouse’s custom vintage photo booth. Throughout the night, what looks like a painting will come to life as a CatHouse “kitten” primps at her vanity. Bottle-service tables possess a custom feature that allows the table to remain free for dancing while additional platforms host choreographed dance performances. “It’ll definitely have a little bit of an edge to it,” says managing partner Nick Landazuri.
“The name spells out what we are; we’re not hiding behind it,” says partner Bill Cross, one of Australia’s top club owners and promoters. “There’s nothing traditional about us; it’s not a forced experience. We’re tapping into the openness of celebrating sexiness in a way that is empowering for all participants.” CatHouse’s restaurant opens December 26; the Loungerie joins it on December 28.
The Bank readies for business
The Bank—formerly Light nightclub at the Bellagio—is nearing completion and preparing for a New Year’s Eve opening with a celebrity grand opening planned for January. Meanwhile, we’re hearing all kinds of whispers through the grapevine about the 8,000-square-foot nightclub’s particulars, the most intriguing of which involves a $50 cover, a bottle list starting in the $475 range and a guest list as tight as the cocktail-server uniforms most assuredly will be. The one-level club, with its sunken focal-point dance floor, is holding an open casting call for marketing VIP hosts, VIP table hosts, marketing bar hosts, bus persons, apprentice bartenders, promoters and security on Monday, November 5 from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and Tuesday, November 6 from noon-2 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. at Jet.
Put your balls on the line
Calling all athletes! (Well, lazy, wrist-flicking athletes.) Signups have begun for the World Series of Beer Pong III. The event, which will take place at the South Point in January, boasts a $50,000 grand prize—the largest prize in the history of beer pong. The extravaganza is expected to bring more than 500 competitors from around the country, and since any player can substitute water for beer, you can play even if you’re on the wagon. Player packages start at $450, and anyone interested in registering must do so online at www.bpong.com before December 3.
Was it something we said?
In one year, Las Vegas has fallen from first to fifth place in Maxim magazine’s annual party city rankings. But why? How is it that our party-goer’s mecca has fallen so far from grace? Maxim’s latest issue included the formula used for determining the rankings, a complex algorithm including square roots and cube roots and square roots of cube roots. There were 13 factors, including “Days/month without sleep” and “% change in Trojan sales,” all of which were arbitrarily divided by the number 1.7.
Well, Las Vegas Weekly has developed its own formula. First, open a copy of Maxim. Then, add the number of beer ads to the even greater number of beer articles. Multiply that number by the number of times the word “sex” is followed by an exclamation point. Add that to the square root of the number of airbrushed bimbo photos and multiply it by pi, rounded to five digits. Finally, subtract the completely random number 14,007.15, and you’ll have the star rating the Weekly gives Maxim’s pseudoscientific party formula: zero.