"When I first started I didn't know the difference between a hump and a bump. But a hump is more mellow."
If celebrity chefs can open food shacks in the megaresorts, why not celebrity singers? Next summer will see the opening of I Love This Bar and Grill, a $9 million project featuring a restaurant, bar, stage, dance floor, recording studio and retail outlet, backed by country music superstar Toby Keith.
Built on the promenade between Harrah's and the Las Vegas Monorail station, the facility will work cowhide, denim, tin, barbed wire and fencepost into the decor to reflect an "all-Toby, all-the-time concept." Guess there'll be a lot of pickin' (of teeth) and grinnin' goin' on.
Seems Atlantic City is having some Vegas-like union problems. In a September 15 letter to employees of the Tropicana in AC, Dennis Gomes, president of resort operations for Aztar Corp., which owns the Tropicana there and in Vegas, and Pamela Popielarski, president of the AC Tropicana, claim that Local 54 is targeting the casino over subcontracting, and taking direction from unionistas in Sin City.
"You should be concerned as we are about how much control Las Vegas is taking in these negotiations in Atlantic City, especially on the subject of subcontracting," the letter reads. "The fact that there are more subcontracted restaurants in Las Vegas than there can ever be in Atlantic City should make you question why you are being used. The new Tropicana in Las Vegas has a contract with the Las Vegas local of your union allowing the new Tropicana to have an unlimited number of subcontracted restaurants. Why then are the Atlantic City Tropicana and its employees made to be targets? It makes no sense."
Once again, the National Arbor Day Foundation named Las Vegas a "Tree City, USA," and once again we're left to ponder if those dim-witted earth lovers have ever summered in Vegas, when it's so hot the trees look for shade.