Handing Out Stars

Reviews by Josh Bell, Steve Bornfeld, Scott Dickensheets, Kate Silver, Martin Stein, Stacy J. Willis and Horton Veal.

AIRPORT CONNECTOR TUNNEL (4 stars)

Is there a more appealing stretch of roadway in this Valley? Functionally, it opens the entire UNLV neighborhood to easy access from the Beltway; long overdue, that. Aesthetically, a traffic tunnel is always cool—at once futuristic (the sleek lighting, the aural hum, the smooth vehicular flow) and prehistoric (recalling our origins in caves), a symbolic passage from whatever's behind us to whatever lies ahead. Points off, however, for what too often does lie ahead: cops with radar, harshing our tunnel enjoyment by nailing us where the speed limit plunges from 55 to 35. —SD

MONORAIL (2.5 stars)

There's a Borg's voice blaring in this car: "Now arriving at the Las Vegas Hilton station," and it feels a bit like being at Epcot. "Resistance is futile," it says later. The ride departed the Sahara casino station at 8:46 a.m. and made it down to the end of the slow and bumpy 4.4 mile line to the MGM Grand by 9:04. At $3 for a one-way ticket, let's hope the tourists like it because it doesn't seem like something that will float with the locals—futile resistance aside. —KS

THE SAHARA-DECATUR INTERSECTION (1.5 stars)

The absolute nadir of the street-designer's art. Too much traffic pouring through one apex. Infuriating waits. Multitudes of jerks who run the yellow, then the red, on the theory that they're owed safe passage through the intersection, regardless of the signal, because they've stewed in their cars long enough. Only the cool oasis of Borders on the northeast corner makes this intersection bearable. —SD

REAR-ENDING A CAR ON CHARLESTON IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON ON YOUR WAY TO SOMEWHERE IMPORTANT AND WITHOUT YOUR DRIVER'S LICENSE OR INSURANCE INFORMATION HANDY (3.5 stars)

One minute you're reading the newspaper at the wheel and the next, you're bumping into your neighbor in standstill traffic. This is not good. Worse, you're not carrying the requisite information cards. How you're going to get 3.5 stars out of this isn't immediately apparent. You hop out. The driver of the Camry hops out. She's rightfully annoyed but gratefully not injured by this 3 mile-per-hour accident. She sweeps the dust off of her bumper, looking for damage. You pray a little prayer for tough paint and/or poor vision. "You got lucky this time," she says, and gets back in her car. Whew. We sit in traffic another five minutes without moving. Foot planted on brake, eyes fixed on road. —SJW

SIN CITY BEER (3 stars)

Little sweet. Nice and smooth, followed by a hint of tartness. Find it at the Icehouse or more than a dozen other locations around town; this smooth amber beer is brewed locally and tastes almost like one of those award-winning microbrews out of Colorado. —KS

BLUE HAWAIIAN AT THE PEPPERMILL (4 stars)

Light, sprightly and alcoholic, this feels a little bit Elvis, a little bit Vegas and all kinds of fruity alcohol. It's the quintessential drink at one of the cooler Las Vegas bars (well, before those flat-screened TVs anyway). —KS

JUICES WILD (3 stars)

Owned by Susan Hawk, a former truck driver made famous by Survivor, this juice bar is an unremarkable little shop on West Lake Mead. The smoothies are decent, and the place gets extra points for not being a Jamba-style chain. There are surprisingly few references to Hawk's days on Survivor, aside from the slogan "Because life's a challenge." —KS

SPAGO MENU (NOT THE FOOD, THE WRITING) (3 stars)

Some menus read like bodice-rippers, full of heaving chicken breasts straining against shredded radicchio and turgid asparagus glistening with virgin oils. The menu at Spago, in the Forum Shoppes, however, is a study in refinement and terseness, more Hemingway than Harold Robbins. "Balsamic-black pepper mignonette" evoking Tuscan spring; "crisp veal sweetbreads with eggplant Parmesiana and prosciutto" alluding to an after-opera dinner in Milan; a "panache of sorbets" a brace of cold water in a Sicilian summer; or "warm melting chocolate cake," your favorite blanket for when the winds come down from the mountains around Lake Como. But for all the menu's sensitivity and literary elan, eating is still a physical pleasure, and I wouldn't mind a bit of heaving and glistening. —MS

PICKING FRUIT IN THE DESERT (4 stars)

It's not as bad as it sounds, picking fresh, organic peaches, zucchinis, tomatoes and figs at Gilcrease Orchard (way out west on Tenaya, near Floyd Lamb State Park) while the temperature's above the century mark. There's some shade, and, if you're lucky, you brought your air-conditioned car. And the novelty and affordability of reaping fruit from the desert's belly withstands the heat. —KS

GAMBLING MUSEUM (1 star)

Collectors of matchbooks, ashtrays and other cheap-to-free souvenir knickknacks may find inspiration in the Gambling Museum (on the first floor of Neonopolis), which traces the hotels of our imploded past through such gewgaws. Others may balk at paying $2.50 to look at such things. —JB

SMELL AT TREASURE ISLAND (4 stars)

Fresh flowers, tinged with a touch of air-conditioning scent, topped with a mist of smoke, and drizzled with pancake syrup. —KS

SAM'S TOWN CARPETING (.5 stars)

What the covering on the floor lacks in cushion, it more than makes up for in its atonal color scheme, brought on by years of spilled drinks, dirty shoes and carelessly flicked ashes. At first, I honestly thought I was walking on painted concrete. At second, I was glad my shoes have thick soles. —MS

MANDALAY BAY VALET SERVICE (4 stars)

The only thing that would make this better is a lack of other cars. The valets are quick, friendly and never tell you to get your vehicle washed first. The crew here is so good, we'll park here for events at the Sahara and then walk. —MS

CONSTRUCTION AT WYNN LAS VEGAS (2 stars)

The smell starts right around Koval from the east, and the Fashion Show Mall from the west, as you travel along Spring Mountain/Sands. It's a pungent odor that indicates construction workers using portable johns all day, or maybe a busted sewage line. The construction extends even further in each direction, backing up traffic to and from the Strip. All for a copper-colored monolith that looks like a curved penny. Opening in April 2005, or so a sign proclaims. —JB

COUNTY COMMISSION CHAMBER LIGHTING (1 star)

How would you look if stricken with jaundice? Go to the County Commission chambers in the County Government Center to find out. Your skin turns yellow, your teeth yellower. It stifles creativity and logic, making one's eyes glaze over. Perhaps with better lighting, words like "Wal-Mart" would stick out more to our dear commissioners when reading future land-use agreements. —KS

MAX BUS STOP NEAR LAS VEGAS BOULEVARD AND CIVIC CENTER DRIVE (3 stars)

It looks like a wave, this sleek new bus stop, with a blue rim and metallic inside with shade and simple sandstone seats with electronic vendors selling bus tickets for the new MAX. At this stop, there's a smiling woman waiting for her ride, sitting by a nearby orange cone and a fire hydrant. It screams, "Prepared for anything!" —KS

MISCREANT-WANTED POSTERS AT THE SPEEDEE MART ON HORIZON RIDGE AND MISSION, IN HENDERSON (3.5 stars)

The images are blurry—they're stills printed from security-cam video—and their action is hard to follow. The images are posted by the Speedee Mart door, with a handwritten note saying the people depicted are wanted for stealing merchandise or destroying property. One kid is obviously stealing beer, but the others, it's hard to make out precisely what they're doing. Yet something—perhaps the graininess of the video stills, which Cops and similar shows have taught us to associate with guilt; perhaps the obvious white-trashiness of the guys on film—makes it clear they're perps of some sort. And as you gaze at the images you find yourself rooting for the store to catch the little bastards. So you're conflicted: Petty crime ought to be stopped, yes, but you've also been manipulated into adopting the point of view of the security camera—that is, omniscient authority, if you want to get all metaphorical about it.

"Hey," one teenage girl says to her boyfriend as they scan the pictures. "That one kinda looks like Tyler." Busted! —SD

"COLLEGE FULL-SERVICE PLAYMATES" ESCORT PAMPHLET (1 star)

Grab it out of a "Gentleman's Choice" box anywhere along Las Vegas Boulevard. The pamphlet promises "Hard Core Models," "Pamela Anderson" and "Lingere." (One star is automatically deducted for misspelling "Lingerie.") The layout is elementary, using a cutesy serif font, placing starbursts or hearts over nipples, and many of the photos showcase women with tousled hairdos right out of the '70s. —KS

TARGET SHOPPING CARTS (3.5 stars)

Authoritatively red, with the bull's-eye logo proudly declaring "You are shopping at a superstore slightly more upscale than Wal-Mart," the carts at Target are no grocery store-caliber wobblers. They will hold CDs, pants, food, lawn chairs and whatever else you buy in the cavernous confines of the mega-mart. Choose carefully, and you will be rewarded with an A-list cart. —JB

CAR DICE, PREFERABLY FROM THE WORLD'S GREATEST GIFT SHOP (4 stars)

We're going on record right here and now—the Legislature must, absolutely must, enact a law making it illegal to drive in Nevada without visible car dice obscuring one's view. This city's religion is gambling, dice its talisman. Take your pick—big and fuzzy, small and blocky, black with white dots, white with black, red on white, white on red, and for women, gay men or very secure straight men, black on bright pink. Where else but here is it appropriate to gamble with our lives at 75 mph? —SB

LAS VEGAS-THEMED KEYCHAIN (3 stars)

Simple and practical, this doodad will hold your keys, but it doesn't quite capture the essence of Vegas as well as it could. It declares "I Lost My A in Vegas," alongside a picture of a donkey, meant to represent an ass. The fact that this rebus would actually read "I Lost My A Ass in Vegas" notwithstanding, its monochrome color scheme and choice of representative animal (do we have donkeys wandering the Strip?) make it an amusing but inaccurate key-holding souvenir of our city. —JB

PERSONAL ADS IN LOCAL NEWSPAPERS (2 stars)

Good lord, this is sad. Maybe the era of the Internet personal ad has raised expectations unreasonably, but the sea of "classy," "fun" people who enjoy "quiet nights at home" and "the simple things in life" is enough to turn you off of the human race entirely. Not to mention that none of these ads tell you anything remotely interesting or unique about the person placing them. Even the adult ads are vague and uninspired, and in short supply for a town known for its sinful proclivities. —JB

WET 'N' WILD WEEKEND CUSTOMERS (2 stars)

People had warned me: "Imagine the guests from Jerry Springer in bikinis. Men, too." Actually no one said that, but I wish they had because it would have helped prepare me for the visual onslaught. Just the universe's way of balancing out Rehab at the Hard Rock, I guess. —MS

X SCREAM (4 stars)

If this is only the third-highest thrill ride in the world, I can only imagine what the other two are: being dangled by Michael Jackson from the roof of the Chicago Sears Tower and the planned Tilt-a-Whirl on Mount Everest. I can't comment on the ride since I was too terrified to go on it, but it made my wife scream like a girl. Both times she rode it. —MS

LA TIERRA AT THE LAKES APARTMENTS (3.5 stars)

The rent is low for the Lakes area, it's close to the 215, there isn't a gate but the neighborhood is pretty tame and maintenance is generally prompt. For some reason, a recent repainting missed seemingly random parts of certain buildings, but that's a minor oversight in an otherwise solid, if modest, housing choice in the sea of Vegas apartments. —JB

CITYLIFE'S MEDIA WATCH COLUMN (5 stars)

In just the past several weeks, this once-juvenile mishmash of media comings, goings and relevant-to-no-one brickbats at genuine news people written by genuine nobodies, has experienced a revolutionary shift. The immaturity, envy, maliciousness and awful writing that once marked this bush-league column seem to have miraculously vanished ... What's that? ... Media Watch is taking the summer off? ... Well, all we can say is: Media Watch, you're doing something right. Keep it up! —SB

"THE CHOPPER" COMMERCIALS (1 star)

There's a blue genie who humps cars. And frat-boy-like chest-thumping and fist-waving and overly testosterone-spiked enthusiasm as car salesmen yell at the main guy. The Chopper. It goes on for up to a half hour, maybe even longer. Induces hostility in its viewers. —KS

PEOPLE WHO BUY CARS FROM THE CHOPPER (0 stars)

You make this commercial possible! —KS

MR. HAPPINESS (5 stars)

Rhythm flows out of this guy faster and more smoothly than sweat as he dances at the corner of Sahara and Rampart, flailing his arms and flopping on the ground, giving a show to passing cars and whatever little voices might live in his head. His happiness spreads like the pox. Pox with soul. —KS

LINDA RONSTADT'S ALWAYS-LEAVE-'EM-WANTING-MOORE SHOW (4 stars)

The fallen pop diva's riveting up-with-Michael-Moore/down-with-Dubya/and-even-down-with-Vegas self-destruction on stage last weekend at the Aladdin resulted in her being escorted from the property by hotel security to her tour bus as patrons booed and defaced posters of her in the lobby. ... The most wildly entertaining night on the Strip in months! Taking notes, Wayne? —SB

R-J COLUMNIST VIN SUPRYNOWICZ'S BRAIN (3.5 stars)

It's dark and moist in here, fertile soil, but where is that gardener? Hello? Anyone? Anyone? Alas, there's a candle, circa 1776, lit in the corner just by the gun rack. Wait. What's that noise? Is it a band of journalists threatening to secede? Or is it a chorus of welfare recipients screaming Go away you socialist cretins! Don't force help on me! Wait—there's someone over there, under that other gun rack, just beside a gun rack, on top of this gun rack beside that gun rack. A government spy! No, it's just a shadow, a nightmare, an apparition shaped something like Janet Reno. —SJW

GARBAGE SERVICE (4.5 stars)

It's not in the ballpark with the U.S. Postal Service, which offers the best deal for 37 cents anywhere in this lifetime. But where would our throwaway culture be without somebody to drive around in a big dirty truck doing hot, hard work, fairly reliably? And how many businesses still perform house calls? You don't see the milkman anymore. But these guys—even in the summer months when the getting is stinky, the milk is sour, the flies are aggressive—show up at dawn and clean up the curbs. Sure, it costs. And once in a while they're late or you find your can down the street. But imagine if each person were responsible for hauling her own trash to the dump. We'd be living in one. —SJW

CAMPAIGN SIGNS (Negative two stars)

They've infested every road shoulder. Some have giant mugs—a smiling Ann O'Connell or Bruce Woodbury or Dr. Joe Heck—but most are simply the name of the candidate: Gallagher, Hardesty, Ashworth, Lueck, Mason, Smith, Miley. Many are truck-sized sandwich boards hosting homeless people. More than a few are crappy posterboard jobs falling from rebar sticks. At this intersection, Gibson under the I-95, Bandiero's is crooked (what does that say to voters?), Kurth has four identical placards on one frame and Lueck's sign is bent, blowing like garbage in the wind. The signs block one another, the views of traffic, the views of everything. They say nothing about the candidates—except that they're willing to slap up trashy signs all over the community. —SJW

GRAFFITI ON I-95 (1 star)

If you're going to go to all the trouble to get up to the old Volvo building and tag it, make something of yourself. Art, dear graffiti artist! Where's the art? How about some color, some design, something that speaks of the joy of vandalism or the painful disenfranchisement that leads you here. Something. —SJW

GRAFFITI ON CAMPAIGN SIGNS (4 stars)

Well done, monochromatic, artless tagger! You've found the ideal canvas for your work. It's moving, it's full of social commentary, it speaks to us. —SJW

RESTROOM STALL GRAFITTI (0 stars)

Las Vegas does a lot of things right (ultralounges, strippers, buffets), but where it fails are restrooms. Having recently lived in San Francisco, I know what real restrooms are like, and Las Vegas ones are miserable failures by comparison. There's no dirty water on the floors. There are mirrors, and they're usually clean. The plumbing works. The locks work. There's room to get in and out without rubbing against the other patrons. They don't even smell half the time. And the guy who's in there hanging out isn't any homeless junkie—he's an attendent, for crying out loud! As for grafitti promising a fun time with Suzy or proclaiming Jeff is gay, fuhgedabouit! —MS

BUNKER EDEN VALE CEMETERY (4 stars)

Here in the Garden of Good, under the gaze of back windows in the five-story Grant Sawyer government building, beside the parked trucks at the Anderson Dairy plant, sprinklers are shooting across the unevenly mowed graveyard grass. Flowers are set lovingly on nearly every grave marker. Several small, red and purple pinwheels are stuck by some graves, and they blow in the wind. Little U.S. flags get wet with each metronomic rotation of the sprinklers. A bird flutters by, singing. A green garden hose is stretched across the narrow paved loop, left. There's a thrift store nearby, a fair clip of foot traffic on the street, a sturdy metal gate enclosing the cemetery. It has character. Not everyone gets to be laid to rest on Las Vegas Boulevard. —SJW

BACA'S AUTO'S JUNK AS ART (3 stars)

Tucked off of Charleston in a meager lot behind chain-linked, barbed-wire fence and a Guard Dog On Duty sign are stacks of car bones. Axles. Differentials. Twenty feet high, some. Hanging from hooks, others. It smells like oil and rust and dirt and is reminiscent of the hundreds of cars to which these parts once belonged, and the thousands of lives to which those cars bore witness or starring roles. You wish it were bigger. You wish it were a huge park of relics that you could roam around in. And you're disappointed when you see the shiny late-model pick-up just inside the gates, flaunting its youth. —SJW

VACANT LOT NEAR FREMONT AND EASTERN (2.5 stars)

Vacant lots are tricky to read. They can be optimistic, their emptiness construed as pure potential waiting to be filled with something new and cool. Or they can symbolize despair, the physical embodiment of why bother trying anymore? This one seems poised between the two, though listing toward the latter. Note the snarl of the sign—the owner doesn't even care enough to spell "trespass" properly. And the blank land is more desolate than hopeful. But an optimistic urban planner might say that that's a good starting point for reversing course—build something new and cool there and see if it ripples outward, tidying up the properties around it. So two stars for its latent potential and another half-star because it looks like a good place to play kickball. —SD

SUN SPIDER (5 stars)

I've seen a lot of frightening things in my life: car-accident victims, people shot dead or with their throats cut, photos of myself from the '70s. But none gave me the heebie-jeebies like this creature when it turned up in my garage. It didn't help any that my wife had told me they're also called wind scorpions because of their speed. Unlike real scorpions, though, Raid kills 'em dead. —MS

SUNSET, FRIDAY, JULY 16 (2.5 stars)

Thanks to a late-afternoon rain, this promised to be a primo sundown. After all, the key to a good, sky-filling sunset is cloud cover. It has to be just right—thick enough to texture large swatches of the sky, giving the golden rays something to set aglow, but not thick enough to muffle the light. Alas, this dusk was too heavy. There was a patch of satsifying thermonuclear orange low on the horizon, but it couldn't otherwise penetrate the gray blanket the weather threw over the Valley. —SD

LAS VEGAS' MOUNTAINS (5 stars)

Sunrise Mountain to the east, consistently voted to have the Valley's best view, and to be the best place to watch the sunset, and not surprisingly, best place to make out. At 11,918 feet, Mount Charleston, offering camping, hiking and cool, cool air. Black Mountain, overlooking ritzy Seven Hills, with rumors of a secret flying saucer base at its crown. OK, so it's a pair of FM/television tower "farms," but doesn't the UFO story sound way cooler? Not counting the rest of the smog-catchers, what more could a Vegan want? —MS

SMOG (2.5 stars)

Viewed from the suburbs, it looks bad—like dirty airborne cotton, wrapping the resort corridor in an unappealing haze. It definitely needs to be cleaned up. But at least you can't see it when you breathe it. Residents of Mexico City would pronounce our air pure, only they'd say it in Spanish. —SD

THE WEEKLY REVIEW ISSUE (5 stars)

Great beat, easy to dance to. Best review issue of the year!—SD

REVIEW OF THE WEEKLY REVIEW ISSUE REVIEW (1.5 stars)

Too generous. Too many cliches. —HV