A golden-age goddess deserves better, wouldn't you think?
Better than boxed rows of raunch-for-rent photos—immodestly posed, nearly disrobed pros come-hithering beneath promises of GOOD TIMES, COLLEGE GIRLS, ASIANS, BLONDES or, for those who prefer to mix and match, ASIAN BLONDES.
Debbie Reynolds Does Dallas.
Weep for the Singin' in the Rain pixie, for the kindest description we can muster for Debbie Reynolds Drive is Chez Dump.
But who are we to critique? The only things named after most of us workaday gnomes are birth certificates.
Once upon a bygone time, you had to bump into a new world, harness electricity or birth a country to earn your own street—one of those rare honors in which people demonstrate respect and affection by walking all over you. Today, you're as likely to qualify by topping the charts, blitzing the box office or ruling the ratings, either recently or even dating back to the prE!-historic mid-20th century. Cropping up in Billboard, Variety, People, TV Guide or Entertainment Weekly, the reigning barometers of cultural gravitas, boosts your odds even higher.
Especially in Las Vegas, Master of the Celebri-Tease, which built its modern-day fortunes less on scientific achievement and social progress than fame and infamy—and the outsized characters who trade on it.
As new-home developments breed like Kelly Ripa on fertility drugs, spinning dense webs of crisscrossing communities with reams of roadways demanding postal identities, the City of Entertainment is increasingly defining itself by its entertainers—with token nods toward mobsters, artists, philosophers, composers, astronauts, fashioner designers and fictional captains of make-believe starships in far-away centuries.
It's a people-vs.-places equation: Las Vegas implodes places but relishes people, notably ones with personality to burn.
Want the Cliffs Notes take on modern American sensibilities? Prowl the bowels of suburban Las Vegas. And read the signs. They're as plain as the poles at your place.
As documentary evidence, we submit … the Las Vegas phone book (Sprint, January 2004). Behold Las Vegas street life:
Where to Go When She Tells You to Hit the Road, Jack: Ray Charles Lane
Where They Found Mrs. Calabash, Whoever She Was: Jimmy Durante Boulevard
Where They Finally Found That Lost Shaker of Salt: Jimmy Buffet Street
"We do this for the same reason we're the only city in America with schools named after living people," says Las Vegas' historical/sociological library on legs, author Hal Rothman, who also chairs UNLV's history department. "Schools, streets, there's so many new anythings here that it's an outgrowth of that. Can you imagine what the city commission meetings would be like if they had to name every street? It would take forever. So they let the developers name them, and people name streets after recognizable phenomena. Celebrities at this moment are the single most recognizable phenomenon. So you have a constellation of things that wind together and become this trend."
Frank nailed a Drive of his own. Sammy scored a Festival Plaza. Sir Duke's suave ways earned him a Way. The Wayner won a boulevard down at the airport. Martin Luther King claimed one on the west side. And the list just gets funkier. Funnier. Sexier. Sillier.
Street That's Thoroughly Rapped Up in Itself: Tupac Lane
Their Street's Named After a Washed-Up Comic and Your Street Isn't: Chevy Chase Avenue
Street Where Brits Get Frenched: Madonna Drive
"If you're talking about any street named after a celebrity, those are reviewed by the county's current planning division and the fire department to ensure that such names do not already exist or are so similar to other streets that they would cause confusion for emergency-response personnel," says Bobby Shelton, spokesman for the Clark County Department of Public Works, explaining the fine art of crafting street sobriquets.
Developers may have come of age worshipping National Lampoon Vacation movies and fetishizing the Material Mama's prenatal bustiers, but the county is less star-struck. Excepting streets originally built bearing celeb designations—such as Wayne Newton Boulevard and the new Frank Sinatra Drive—Clark County acknowledges only one of what Shelton calls a "special recognition" street—a chunk of Koval Lane sandwiched between Sands Avenue and Flamingo Road, saluting Siegfried & Roy and approved by the County Commission.
"This is an honorary designation with no official change in the street name or mailing addresses," Shelton says. "These brown and white street signs were placed on top of the Koval Lane street signs in special recognition of these local entertainers, who have been instrumental in the history of Las Vegas. But these honors don't change the 'official' status of the street."
Street of Beans: Blazing Saddles Avenue
Free Tub of Red Roses with Every Home (Blonde Jailbait Sold Separately): American Beauty Avenue
Raindrops Are Fallin' On Their Beds: Butch Cassidy Lane, Sundance Avenue
You Wanna Move Here? Snap Out of It! Moonstruck Avenue
Unlike Siegfried & Roy's street salute, in which the honor is superimposed over a portion of an existing roadway, the new Frank Sinatra Drive was constructed by the county specifically to honor the town's tuxedoed icon, but carries no mailing addresses on its back-of-the-Strip stretch from Industrial Road (behind Caesars Palace) to Russell Road. "It's a two-lane road in each direction," Shelton says, "an alternate route to go to and from work, for people who live here on a day-to-day basis."
A local service, not a tourist curiosity.
Location of Hammy Old Actors Home: Poseidon Street
Breeding Ground for Hammy Young Actors: Captain Kirk Court
Street Honoring a Guy Who Rated Better Than to Have His Name Botched After Inventing Las Vegas, Killing Lots of People and Boffing Annette Bening: Bugsy Siegal Circle
Approaching exit 36 off I-15 northbound, Frank Sinatra Drive appears impressive. Shove your Oscars and your Grammys, pallie. You know you've had a hell of a career when you're accessible from the interstate.
Veteran Russell Road off-ramp to the left, virginal Frank Sinatra Drive to the right, green and white sign already smeared with graffiti—the unmistakable mark of a maturing metropolis. Coasting off I-15, the golden reflections of Mandalay Bay glimmer in the distance, as if the Chairman's bestowing his blessing on a Vegas he never knew but still hovers over like some singin', swingin', screwin' saint.
Street with an Infestation of Dirty Rats: Cagney Court
Street You'll Regret Living On—Maybe Not Today, Maybe Not Tomorrow, But Soon, and For the Rest of Your Life: Bogart Court
Street That Looks Great in a Tux: Astaire Drive
We'd love to wax poetic here—if Frank wasn't Vegas' George Washington, he was certainly its Patrick Henry ("Give me debauchery or give me death!")—but Frank Sinatra Drive is, aesthetically, a big back road: service lanes separating the interstate from the Strip's backside.
Streets Distributing "Most Wanted" Posters with Michael Moore's Face and an NRA Hotline Number: Gunsmoke Circle, High Noon Lane, Annie Oakley Drive, Calamity Jane Lane
Neighborhood That Will Be Thrown Out of Vegas If We Hear Even a Rumor of a Jar Jar Binks Junction: Skywalker Avenue, Leia Street, Vader Avenue, Kinobe Avenue, Lucas Avenue
Palm-tree-lined curves loop around and empty out under an overpass and onto a parallel track with I-15 as Frank Sinatra Drive ambles past the Mandalay Bay Convention Center at a nice-and-easy-does-it-every-time, 25-mph clip. Then it moseys past a cluster of parking garages and billboards for Strip attractions and under the backlot archway of Mandalay, past the Luxor, north behind Excalibur and the Monte Carlo and—finally, SINATRA SYMBOLISM!—the faux-towers of New York-New York. Once safely beyond Bellagio, Frank Sinatra Drive bumps up against Industrial Road, a rather inglorious end to a gloriously-named thoroughfare.
Street Where Everyone Has Breakfast at Denny's Because Tiffany's Doesn't Serve Hash Browns: Audrey Hepburn Street
Street Haunted by the Ghosts of the Kennedy Brothers: Marilyn Monroe Avenue
Street Haunted by Elton John, Who Shows Up Every Night Warbling "Candle in the Wind" and Annoying the Neighbors: Norma Jean Lane
Loneliest Street in Town: Greta Garbo Street
What a Dump! (And Beware the Potholes, It's Going to Be a Bumpy Drive): Betty Davis Street
Suave, Elegant Street Anchored By School of Remedial Celebrity Spelling: Carry Grant Street (with an adjunct campus on Betty Davis Street)
"I would assume someone would be embarrassed by the misspellings," Shelton says—for you sticklers, that's "Bette" with an "e" and "Cary" minus an "r"—"but when someone submits an application, we don't check it for misspellings. Maybe they even want it misspelled. But we would like to think people would want it right."
No 7-Elevens, But Sam Drucker's General Store Sells Arnold's Prize-Winning Bacon: Green Acres Avenue
And That's Uncle Joe, He's Movin' Kinda Slow at This Junction: Shady Rest Drive
Street with People Who Can Tell You How to Get, How to Get To Sesame Street: Big Bird Court
Street Containing the Only Remaining Roy Rogers Restaurant in America: Dale Evans Drive
Streets Barring Brunettes, Redheads and Bottle Blondes: Jean Harlow Court, Barbie Avenue
"In a certain way, these streets help us," says UNLV's Rothman. "We are the first city of the consumption of entertainment, so why wouldn't you expect us to have streets named after entertainers and famous people? Las Vegas is a canvas for American neuroses, so people paint on it what they already see and feel. Las Vegas is the one American city that doesn't take itself seriously. Every other American city has some kind of pretension about its identity. But I don't think there's anybody out there wishing we were Berkeley, California or Boston, Massachusetts. We know what we are and we laugh about it."
Street Whose Cineplex Forbides Movies by Disney, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks: Paramount Street
Street with a Wild Bunch of Party-Hearty Animals: William Holden Court
Street with the Only Blockbuster in Town That Rents Olivia Newton-John's Overlooked, Oscar-worthy Masterpiece: Xanadu Drive
Street Banning CBS Execs: Reagan Drive
Street of Dreams: Martin Luther King Boulevard
Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Wendell Williams Avenue
Can't hop the A train to Duke Ellington Way, but the street named for the world's classiest jazz cat and hippest hepcat may be the most geographically appropriate locale for an entertainer extraordinaire in Vegas.
Heading west on Tropicana, just past Koval, a small left-turn-lane—not quite up to Sinatra specs along the interstate, but modestly dignified—deposits drivers on Duke Ellington Way, paralleling the Hotel San Remo. A clean but unspectacular side street—dotted by parking lots, the rear end of the Tropicana Inn (Daily! Weekly! Kitchenettes!) and the quietly stylish Hawthorn Suites, connecting eastbound Tropicana Avenue to West Reno Avenue—it's blemished by the ubiquitous rent-a-date lures and seedy satin dolls leering out of stained, orange boxes, but still looks out toward the majestic, royal-green behemoths of the MGM Grand and onto the bustling south end of the Strip.
Sir Duke's dignity endures.
Streets with Houses Painted Lime Green, Sunstreak Yellow and Citrus Orange, With Little Alligators on the Mailbox: Arnold Palmer Way, Ben Hogan Drive, Sam Snead Way, Bogey Way
Streets with Space to Spare: Alan Shepard Street, Walter Schirra Circle, John Glenn Circle, Edwin Aldrin Circle, Neil Armstrong Avenue, Neil Armstrong Circle
Streets for Avid Readers Who—All Evidence to the Contrary Notwithstanding—Refuse to Concede That Literature Began with John Grisham: Voltaire Avenue, Balzac Avenue
Ever parked at McCarran Airport?
Then you've seen Wayne Newton Boulevard, christened on behalf of Vegas' helmet-haired hero. Ever dropped anyone off at the departure terminals? Then you've even experienced the Wayne Newton Loop.
"It happened in 1985, as part of the McCarran 2000 rebuilding and expansion project," says Mark Hall-Patton, administrator of the Clark County Aviation Museum, by way of explanation.
"His place there on Sunset Road [Casa de Shenandoah] has long been one of things people noticed from early on, telling them they were getting close to the airport."
And so concludes our tour of the Wayne Newton family of aviation-themed arteries.
Danke Schoen.
Streets with Homes That Could Use a New Coat of Paint—Off-White, and Don't Forget the Bathrooms, Fellas: Michaelangelo Court, Rembrandt Drive, Van Gogh Drive, Picasso Circle
It is the Best of Streets, It is the Worst of Streets: Dickens Drive
Ye Street Everyone Respects but Few Comprehend: Shakespeare Road
Street Where You Get Moor for Your Money: Othello Drive
So it remains, dingy and downtrodden, a hotel side street pining for its hotel.
Doing sentry duty beside the Greek Isles hotel-casino where the pixie's palace of movie memories once stood, Debbie Reynolds Drive, just off Convention Center Drive between Paradise Road and the Strip, slumps forlornly between the Isles and the Marriott Suites. Strewn with dusty parking lots and bookended by modest apartments and a motel's musty rump, it peters out into westbound Desert Inn Road.
Final count: 18 boxes of carnal come-ons. PLEASURE GUIDE. SATISFACTION. TRUE MATCH. DREAM GIRLS.
Despair not, Debbie Dearest. Neither Eddie Fisher nor Liz Taylor have their names affixed to as much as a bus stop or a park bench. Debbie Reynolds remains Debbie Reynolds—Debbie Reynolds Drive notwithstanding.
Wider Than a Mile, Which is Why the Traffic Lights Are So Friggin' Long: Moon River Street
Where All Your Troubles Seem So Far Away: Yesterday Street
We All Live in a Yellow Sublet: McCartney Court
Red Hot Real Estate: Chili Pepper Street
Only Street in Town with Four Seasons: Vivaldi Drive
Streets for Musicians Ignored by VH1: Chopin Court, Bach Way, Debussy Way
Street Where There's Always Someone to Watch Over You: Gershwin Drive
Street of Cool Nerds: Buddy Holly Court
No map of Las Vegas we found reveals any streets, circles, courts, ways, avenues, drives, lanes, groves, parkways, junctions, boulevards or back alleys named for a couple of guys named Elvis and Liberace.
We stand amazed, appalled and ashamed.
Street Haunted by the Restless, Homeless Spirits of Elvis and Liberace: Lost Soul Avenue