Hopefully the magazine you hold in your hands (or reading online) is giving you something. Maybe just something to do this weekend, maybe an important update that impacts this community, or maybe it gives you an idea of how you can impact Las Vegas.
This magazine has given me everything: an undeserved crack at the only job I ever wanted; a deep connection to the people and pulse of this fabulously multidimensional city; a cover model wife (just keep reading); and a never-ending series of experiences that has shaped an anxious existence into a meaningful life. I’m not sure what other things I want to be, but Las Vegas Weekly gave me the best platform to be the only thing I know I am—a writer.
This magazine is officially 25 years old and we figured the best way to celebrate is to express our gratitude.It’s not just a magazine, it’s a reflection, and a resource, and so many other things to the people who live and work and make awesome stuff in Southern Nevada.
I’ve asked staff members past and present to share some of their favorite Weekly moments and memories, and it’s no surprise that gratitude is the common theme. We are forever thankful for the chance to communicate, connect and collaborate with Las Vegas, where the last 25 years is always the best 25 years. You can’t say that about every place. –Brock Radke
Working at the Weekly was like being handed an all-access pass to Las Vegas, a license to call up its most fascinating characters or sit down with anyone in town. A Weekly assignment was an excuse to ask one of Caesars’ Caesars what it’s like to wear the armor (“you’re like a turtle”) or ponder the spiritual power of mold with a Certified Cheese Professional. It was an excuse to hang with day laborers along Pebble Road or ask competitive eating champ Miki Sudo how it feels to down 44 hot dogs in 10 minutes (“It sucks.”). It was a reason to spend a morning in the snow with the king of Lee Canyon and hear from a professional bull rider how it feels to straddle a ton of angry beef (“like there’s a bomb going off underneath you”). And it was a chance to stammer into a cell phone, “Hi, uh, Sugar … Ray … Mr. Leonard? It’s Sarah from the Weekly,” and ask the welterweight great if he misses the adrenaline of stepping into the ring. “I don’t miss boxing,” he told me. “I miss the camaraderie. I miss that motion of having your hands raised.” –Sarah Feldberg
Before Vegas had immensely funded, sponsored and gated festivals, we had Neon Reverb. The four night, $50 (could you imagine?!) indie music festival spanned venues from the Bunkhouse Saloon to the Beauty Bar and functioned in bar crawl fashion. The beloved hipster extravaganza took a three-year hiatus and was revived in 2016 with 90+ local and out-of-state acts like Ty Segall, Neon Indian and Melvins. The Las Vegas Weekly showcased the comeback with a cover feature and five-page spread. Snappy guides schooled readers, short Q&As highlighted bigger acts and there was even a reflection section for memories of festivals past. The coverage is a time capsule to a time where local indie music was not only fueled by Pabst Blue Ribbon and American Spirits, but also our willingness to just get out there. –Gabriela Rodriguez
One of my favorite LVW covers of all time, by far, featured Avenue Q character Lucy the Slut. This was back in 2005 and the Weekly was a different animal. Avenue Q was a huge hit in New York and it made its way to the Wynn, a Broadway musical with Sesame Street-styled puppets and adult content. The show was hilarious and is still, to this day, one of the best I have ever seen.
The Weekly art director at the time thought up this concept, and his sketches alone had me rolling on the ground. I remember being in our photo studio when Lucy the Slut arrived with her creator. Watching a puppet being undressed stitch by stitch and posed provocatively with a fan blowing her hair is something that really can’t be painted with words, but to this day I can still see it vividly—and when I do, I just smile and giggle to myself. –Wesley Gatbonton
Set the wayback machine to 2004. I was a couple years into editing this paper, and for whatever reason, I took a random 400-level English class at UNLV. During our final projects, a young dude got up to read a short story. It vibed Faulkner pretty hard, but it was well-structured and nicely paced. “Hey,” I asked after class, “you wanna freelance for the Weekly?”
Jump cut to the issue of January 27, 2005, when I ran, no kidding, 11,000 words of Joshua Longobardy’s sweeping story about a local child who’d been stabbed in the chest (famous case back then). It vibed Faulkner pretty hard, but it was epic, too. Joshua even flew to upstate New York on his own dime to report it. I later hired him.
About the same time, an artist sent me a statement about her upcoming exhibit. Unlike most of those things, hers was readable. “Have you ever tried art reviewing?” I asked. And Danielle Kelly quickly established herself as one of the best critics this valley has had.
Now, the point here isn’t—or isn’t entirely (wink, wink)—about my mad skills as a talent scout. It’s about the Weekly being a place where emerging writers could think big, take chances, find a voice. Where established writers could stretch their talent. (Google pretty much any Weekly story by Stacy J. Willis.)
Media is a product of its time, of course, and times change, so the Weekly has gone through its iterations. (Me, too!) But it’s still filled with strong, writerly voices taking readers for a ride, so here’s a grateful hat-tip from a ghost of the Weekly’s past. –Scott Dickensheets
I vividly remember being floored when the pitch for a video game feature, let alone a cover, was green-lit by the Weekly. A college professor once told me video game writing had no place in a city magazine—it just wouldn’t fly. So to write my first cover story on one of my most cherished pastimes, to interview the Vegas-based creators of Command & Conquer and Insert Coin(s) video game bar pioneer Christopher LaPorte, felt restorative. It also showed me that I worked somewhere where passion took precedence. Our designer Ian Racoma went the extra mile with it, crafting a hand-drawn, brilliantly shaded cover of some of the most memorable characters in video game history. To this day, I still have it hanging up in my home. –Amber Sampson
When I think of my time at the Weekly, two things stand out: One, the stunning variety of ridiculous stories my editors let me pursue, and two, an incomparable office camaraderie I have never again experienced.
My first month on the job, I got to live in Tony Hsieh’s Airstream park for a week, immersed in his world of never-ending soup and late-night parties. For our buffet issue, I shared my theory of “buffetiquette,” laying out the rules for all-you-can-eat dining (high-ticket proteins first and never, under any circumstances, should you choose a banana). I even exposed myself as a Star Wars virgin, inviting an onslaught of criticism and a couple of memorable insults.
But the thing that really stands out to me, the thing I miss most, are my friends. We established the Beagle Scouts, complete with iron-on patches for questionable “achievements.” We went to shows together and crafternooned on weekends with no sense of obligation. We wore capes and masks while writing and sought to create the elusive $40 Whole Foods salad-bar salad. To this day, it’s the only job I’ve had that felt more like hanging out than work. But we did work— we told fun, important, offbeat stories, documenting the weird and wonderful aspects of our beloved city.
Looking back, it’s hard to believe it’s been eight years since I worked there, and 25 since the magazine’s inception. I’m lucky to have been a part of Weekly history, and I’m honored to be back on its pages. –Kristy Totten
Had the younger me known I could have a job that would encourage me to play with food extensively, I may have never developed the angst that ultimately became instrumental in fueling my desire to make art in the first place. At the intersection of a full circle and a catch-22—a scenario best described in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure as an Eddie Van Halen video conundrum—the journey thus far has been nothing short of an excellent adventure of my own. Recreating Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights album cover with shaving cream, empty nightclubs in the daytime, being sprayed by a lion, glowpaint, pool floaties, ghostbusters, Criss Angel, fire and water ... the possibilities were endless, unstoppable! This city is unstoppable. The Weekly has long been the glue holding this wild city together ... and glue, well, we’re best friends now. Thanks, Las Vegas Weekly! –Corlene Byrd
It dawned on me one year that, given the flood of news we get in a typical 12-month period, some stories are either quickly forgotten or missed entirely. I decided to do a year-end collection of all the stories our readers might have missed. Turns out there were plenty of them, and it became an annual tradition until my departure in 2015. –Ken Miller
Over five years and 263 issues with Las Vegas Weekly, I taught people how to feed scorpions and become Dino’s Drunk of the Month. I explored the microbiome on casino chips and the kinship of fake grass and fake boobs. I ate doughnuts in the tub with a magic dragon, shared a cabana with Yeah-Yeah from The Sandlot, and briefly left the planet in a nitrous-injected Mazda Miata. There were embeds with geeks and chefs, b-boys and lounge singers. And laments about what we lost (Trifecta, Coachman’s Inn, the original O’Sheas, free parking across the Strip).
One of the only things I didn’t do was make waffles with Flavor Flav, a regret that will haunt me just as my Google search is haunted by the photo of me spraying Champagne on a club with the blessing of Sex Panther (RIP). There was just too much going on. There’s always too much going on in Vegas, yet this magazine has covered almost all of it since the year Sinatra died.
I can’t really pick a favorite child. Again, there’s just too much. But going through the LVW stacks that live in my garage, I kept coming back to this little story. Not some 4,000-word cover, but this quickie on the very first Life is Sh*t festival.
It was 2013, and Life is Beautiful was … beautiful-ing. The fest’s debut caused Sphere-level frenzy, subsuming local culture. So local culture came with a puff-painted toilet seat. With punk music, schlock art and a sh*tty car show. This was beauty, laughing hard at itself and the machine. I sat there in the darkness of the Dive, feeling like part of something, and this guy broke my reverie with the greatest line I’ve ever been served.
“You look familiar,” he said. “Aren’t you that pregnant chick from the Slayer blood drive?” –Erin Ryan
During my five-and-a-half years at Las Vegas Weekly, nothing I wrote about was as saucy or fun—or as well-read—as lifestyle organization Menage Life’s attempt to stage the world’s biggest orgy at its 2018 Sin City 8 event. It became my unofficial beat after Stephen Colbert picked up our story and mocked the planned pleasurama during his late-night program. Menage Life would subsequently be forced to move it not once, but twice before falling 126 participants short of the record at the actual bacchanalia. The organization continues to struggle in Las Vegas—its planned fall 2023 Vegas weekender was canceled altogether. –Mike Prevatt
I was a regular contributor to Weekly in the early 2000s as a writer and editor and a fixture on its covers and inside pages. It started when a cover model canceled at the last minute, and art director Benjamen Purvis asked if I would be willing to step in. From there, I became his go-to person when someone canceled or a design came together or changed drastically at the last minute, and the experience gave me a window to the world of concept and design I never would have gotten otherwise. Occasionally we would actually use the photo studio and real props to get an image, but more often we would create an impromptu shoot wherever we could, perhaps in our cubicles or in the parking lot. Ben always had strong ideas about just how the finished product would look, which I usually couldn’t envision while posing in a hallway holding a cardboard box over my head (which would become a TV set). But it always came together. It was a thrill to pick up the magazine during those years and see myself, whether in a recreation of an iconic album cover, or as a radio-obsessed zombie. One of the things that has always made Las Vegas Weekly’s staff so special is their ability to marry words and images in a way that elevates both, and I’ll always be thankful I had the unexpected opportunity to play such a unique role in that process. –Maria Phelan
I loved the freedom on the page at Weekly. But the coolest thing was actually the diversity of people I met while writing Las Vegas stories. We followed the stories wherever they took us, and often they took me to people I would have never otherwise met.
One example of that was Connie. I set off to write a profile about a homeless woman and follow her through the system as she tried to get an apartment. She was short and stout, big blue eyes, no teeth, and a little developmentally challenged. She had a lot of physical ailments stemming from Type 1 Diabetes. But her steadfast motivation to keep going? A rabid obsession with Barry Manilow, whom she had bussed from Michigan to see at the Las Vegas Hilton.
Her life on the streets was brutal—and I wrote about that, and about that Vegas dream that lures both the wealthy and downtrodden to this magical, cruel place. Eventually she did get an apartment, and my piece published. But I kept in touch with Connie. I took her to Blueberry Hill and Burger King and Walmart. Once I took her to the tobacco store on the Paiute reservation because she liked to get big bags and roll her own.
When Connie died, I spoke at the vigil. Had I crossed the professional boundaries between reporter and subject? Sure. But I wouldn’t change it. She was a wild, weird, wonderful spirit. She was one of so many fascinating people I met while working for Weekly—and that ability to dive into others’ worlds is always what stands out as the true reward for the work. –Stacy J. Willis
I’m not a sports guy at all, but the concept of major sports teams planting their feet in the previously major-less city was a game changer. I drew this mashup when the Raiders announced their move to Las Vegas and VGK had not even played their first game yet. It was the first time I ever saw anything that I made go “viral”, which was flattering to say the least. –Ian Racoma
A few months after I joined the Weekly, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Communities across the nation were still reacting to the news when a debate was announced between pro-life Republican gubernatorial candidates Adam Laxalt and then-LVMPD Sheriff Joe Lombardo on the Las Vegas Strip. The debate was a focus in news reports. But our magazine always tries to find unique angles for deeper, more interesting coverage. So rather than going to the debate, I spoke with people rallying at a Bans Off Our Bodies demonstration happening simultaneously just blocks away. Three generations of a family, a local doctor who decided to attend the rally with friends, survivors of trauma and activists all spoke with me about what the news meant to them and for their lives. I was proud to write a story that focused on the voices of the community rather than just the politicians. I’m always proud to offer perspectives that no other publication has. –Shannon Miller
Las Vegas Weekly has a significant place in my heart and my journey to Las Vegas.
In 2005, I visited a friend in Las Vegas to revel in the madness of March. Upon my arrival my local resident friend picked me up at the airport and we stopped at a convenience store to pick up a few things. Once back in the car, he placed the Las Vegas Weekly in my lap and said, “Here, take this, and let me know what you want to do this weekend.”
I thought it was greatest thing, in the greatest place, I’d ever been. I visited a few times more, using the Weekly to navigate my visit until I decided to make Las Vegas my home, and eventually, becoming proud publisher of the magazine that invited me to town. –Mark De Pooter
On Cinco De Mayo 2019, I went to the Plaza to get a taste of Las Vegas’ underground professional wrestling scene for a cover story (and a promising second date). What began with tequila shots and pile drivers ended with my now-boyfriend and I moving to Chicago, where we still live four years later ... All thanks to lucha libre. –Leslie Ventura
The Daft Punk pyramid had just gone dark to end Vegoose 2007 Day 1 when I started searching for the four passengers I’d be driving Downtown. One of them I knew—writer Annie Zaleski, a regular Las Vegas Weekly freelancer who’d flown in for the weekend to help cover the festival. The others I knew only by face and reputation—members of New York punk band Gogol Bordello, which had performed at Vegoose earlier in the day.
Eventually we found each other, made quick intros, loaded into my SUV and began heading from Sam Boyd Stadium toward Beauty Bar, where the Gogol guys’ frontman, Eugene Hutz, was scheduled to cap off the Weekly’s “Big Honkin’ After-Goose” party with one of his trademark genre-obliterating DJ sets. Wild as those early-a.m. festivities might be, however, for me they couldn’t live up to the ride over, which still ranks among the most memorable drives of my entire life.
No sooner had the three musicians packed into my backseat than they began … I guess you could call it performing for us right there in the car. They sang bits from Stooges songs (Iggy had led that band through a full Fun House set earlier in the night), they copped Borat accents and reenacted moments from the then-recent Sacha Baron Cohen film, and they laughed about what time Hutz might actually show up to begin his performance that “night.”
He ultimately went on after 3 a.m., and though the Beauty Bar’s back patio had semi cleared out by that point, it couldn’t put a damper on a great night. Three of the Weekly’s favorite local bands from the era—Sparkler Dims, A Crowd of Small Adventures and The Skooners—performed. Attendees caught the whole thing cover-free. And two lucky music writers with heads still swimming from the sounds of French robots found something even more indelible waiting for them in the back of a Mitsubishi Endeavor. –Spencer Patterson
The Weekly was born from the remains of Scope magazine, a Vegas cultural monthly (later biweekly) that debuted in 1992. Its editor and co-founder, James Reza, found me working the counter of a Record City location in 1994 and took me on as a writer despite my relative inexperience, lack ofjournalism schooling and penchant for vests.
In 1996, Greenspun Media Group brought SCOPE into its family of publications. They hired me as a staff writer for Vegas.com, but nevertheless, you’ll find my byline in the Weekly’s first-ever issue (July 15, 1998), and many others that followed. I left GMG in 2002 to work for the Seattle Times, but continued to freelance for Weekly whenever I could. Finally, Spencer Patterson brought me into the fold as a full-time Weekly staffer in August 2016.
Funny thing is, despite having a small role in the birth of this publication, and bylines in these pages that span almost 20 years, I believe I joined the Weekly exactly when I was supposed to. I come to work, greet Amber, Brian, Brock, Corlene, Gabriela, Ian, Shannon and Wade, open my laptop and try to do better by Las Vegas than I did the day before, and the week before that, and the years before that. This publication has been my pride, my school, my life. And I’m just now beginning to get good at it. –Geoff Carter
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