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P UBL ISHERMichael Skenandore

EDI T ORI A LEDITOR Matt Jacob

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SENIOR WRITERS Steve Bornfeld, Geoff Carter, Lissa Townsend Rodgers

CALENDAR COORDINATOR Ian Caramanzana

SENIOR CON T RIBU T ING EDI T ORMelinda Sheckells (style)

CON T RIBU T ING EDI T ORSMichael Green (politics), Al Mancini (dining),

David G. Schwartz (gaming/hospitality)

A R TCREATIVE DIRECTOR Ryan Olbrysh

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STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Anthony Mair

V EGASSE V EN.COMDIRECTOR OF DIGITAL MEDIA Nicole Ely

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S A L ESBUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Christy Corda

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ACCOUNT MANAGER Brittany Quintana

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Alyse Britt, Robyn Weiss

IN T ERNS

James Cale, Aric Lairmore, Angeline Ramirez, Danny Webster

Ryan T. Doherty | Justin Weniger

PRESIDENT Michael Skenandore

VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING AND EVENTS Kyle Markman

DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS Michael Uriarte

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Sherwin Yumul

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LAS VEGAS’ WEEKLY CITY MAGAZINE | FOUNDED FEBRUARY 2010

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RACE FOR THE CUREPink was the color of choice for the more than

10,000 people, including many breast cancer

survivors, who packed Downtown on May 2 for the

20th annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

The 5K walk/run—along with affiliated donations

and sponsorships—raised an estimated $500,000

for breast cancer awareness and research. Mayor

Carolyn Goodman spoke at the event, which

featured performances by singer Matt Goss and

the Jabbawockeez, while Chippendales handled

the awards ceremony. SlotZilla also got in on the

action, donating 100 percent of its zipline revenue

generated from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

UPCOMING EVENTS • May 8 Boys & Girls Clubs’ Sneaker Ball [BGCLV.org] • May 16 Desert Gray Matters 5K Walk/Run [Wizathon.com/WalkToEndBrainTumors-NV]

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★★★★★

liberace looks remarkably demure: He wears a white tux and tails (no se-quins in sight), his black grand piano graced with a modest fve-branched candelabra. Earlier in the day, he’d cut the ribbon and offcially opened the Strip’s newest resort. The Clover Room, the new casino’s showroom, is flled to capacity. Liberace’s piano theatrics—ac-companied by an orchestra conducted by his violinist brother George—bring down the house. And yet he still takes the time to thank and kiss his mother, dutifully sitting in the front row.

The April 20, 1955, opening of the Riviera—though it came a mere day

after the opening of the Royal Nevada during a two-month stretch that saw fve new resorts debut—was hailed as a giant step forward for Las Vegas. Sam Cohen and his group of Miami inves-tors—along with, if you believed the whispers, the Chicago Outft—had bet big on the new hotel. At nine stories, the 221-room Riviera was the city’s frst high-rise; it gave some local kids their frst chance to ride an elevator. It her-alded a building boom that would rede-fne the city. Already, Las Vegas Sun pub-lisher Hank Greenspun wrote, the new hotel had made a “drab little motel” of the Desert Inn, then the Strip’s reign-ing hot spot. The transformation might take a decade or two, but this was the

start of something new for Las Vegas.Still, beneath the adulation was a

hint of the storm to come, warning signs that the future the Riviera deliv-ered might not be the one expected. The hotel’s construction cost had bal-looned from $7.5 million to $8.5 mil-lion before opening, and its operat-ing costs were higher than projected: Back in December 1954, a fnancial report prepared for general man-ager Marshall Wright penciled in a $25,000-per-week maximum budget for headliners. Liberace, though, was fetching $50,000 a week, a portent of the “headliner war” that would break out that summer, pushing some of the city’s newest casinos to the brink. 23

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up on the roof of the riviera hotel, the sun beats down on gray concrete and a small put-ting green. A few chairs are huddled as if seeking shelter in one another’s shadows. The swim-

ming pool is empty, its tiles cracked, its plaster marked with a jaunty “R.” ¶ The mind searches for words and fnds instead only a feeling: This is beyond dated, beyond derelict; it’s depressing. But look out beyond the rooftop, and you see something even worse—not a has-been, but a never-was: the unfnished, probably un-fnishable, hulk of the Fontainebleau. With the Harmon coming down and Echelon on its way to becoming Resorts World, the Fontainebleau is the last major monument to the Great Recession in Las Vegas. The Riv-iera—which closed May 4—had a lot of things going against it over the past decade; it was an older property in a city that doesn’t exactly cherish older properties. And for the past seven years, it was haunted by its un-completed neighbor, an inescapable reminder that sometimes even the house doesn’t win. ¶ But the Riviera, unlike the Fontainebleau, won’t go down in Las Vegas history as a failure. It was, after all, a Strip hotel that kept its doors open for 60 years. And in Las Vegas, that’s about as unlikely a winning streak as you’ll ever see.

The curious endurance and final bow of the Strip’s first high-riseB Y D A V I D G . S C H W A R T Z

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a few weeks before the scheduled closing, the Riviera is packed. The Amer-ican Poolplayers Association meeting in the hotel’s convention center is letting out for the day. Billiards enthusiasts are slowly spilling out of the meeting rooms, chatting and laughing, draw-ing out their time together. Families are lugging their bags through the rear lobby; groups are forming and splitting. People are happy.

You can see why they’d be having fun: “THE PARTY STARTS NOW” a display declares; mixed drinks are $2, beer is $3. If you’ve forgotten your sunglasses or want a liter of water (for just $1), the ABC store is there for you. Plenty of entertainment: Crazy Girls, almost 30 years on, still has no ifs, ands, or … and if you feel the hankering for something with a little more testosterone, Men: The Experience is running two nights a week.

Business in the casino is brisk. The place is smaller than it used to be, with a few former slot sections behind con-struction walls, and there are fewer tables. But each of the open tables is packed. Still, there are some signs that all is not well: A notice advises that the weekly slot tournament has been can-celed, and, a little off the casino foor, nobody’s playing the two dozen pinball machines that represent a nice selec-tion of arcade history.

And, if you’re aware of what’s hap-pening, there are other portents of the end. The employees seem to be laugh-ing a little too hard, smiling a little too broadly; are they worried about where they’ll be next month? It’s a little diff-cult to make eye contact, knowing that you’re talking to hard-working Las Veg-ans who, through no fault of their own, are losing their jobs.

Over the years, the Riviera had been through bankruptcy after bankruptcy, costs had been cut, but the employees never really worried; after all, someone else was sure to come along. And, for six decades, they did.

Then, because of bigger economic and behavioral shifts that nobody who makes the beds or grills the steaks can do anything about, it’s over. Ru-mors turn into fears turn into a tersely worded memo and less-than-assuring words from management.

It’s a terrible to thing to see a thou-sand of our neighbors lose their jobs. But the worse thing might be that no one can imagine how it could’ve been avoided, and no one, outside of those who are losing their livelihoods and the most devout Vegas nostalgia buffs, would go out of their way to keep the Riviera open. The same logic that built the Riviera is tearing it down; for six decades, it had the potential to make money as a casino-hotel. Now, as the city grows, the property’s top bidder—the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority—thinks its best use is as an ex-pansion of the city’s convention base. If the LVCVA’s grand plans reach fruition, it is very diffcult to argue that, 10 years from now, Las Vegas won’t be better off.

So there is sadness and regret, but the prevailing emotion is one of nostalgia for what we’re leaving behind.

In Las Vegas terms, the Riviera wasn’t taken before its time; it fnally gave up the ghost to old age.

★★★★★

the riviera, royal nevada, moulin Rouge, Dunes and New Frontier were bringing the future; opening within weeks of each other, they would lift Las Vegas to new heights. At least that’s what everyone said in April 1955, and there were more than a few takers. But still, there were doubts. When Las Ve-gas fnally made the cover of Life maga-zine on June 20, 1955, with a picture of two Moulin Rouge showgirls in mid-twirl, the headline wasn’t the one any-one here wanted:

“LAS VEGAS—IS BOOM OVEREX-TENDED?”

By the following month, the Moulin Rouge—the frst racially integrated ho-tel-casino in post-war Las Vegas—had slumped into reorganization. It would soon close, ending an optimistic chap-ter of the city’s history.

Meanwhile, the Riviera was report-edly being shopped for a mere million dollars, about the cost of its dining facilities alone. The hotel was run-ning as if all was normal, with Harry Belafonte now performing nightly in the Clover Room, but insiders knew it was doomed.

“The situation is urgent,” part-owner Harry Silbert explained to the Clark County Commission in late July. “We have very, very bad management.”

But, as always in Las Vegas, there was someone willing to fade the Riviera’s losing bet. Gus Greenbaum, who had just sold his interest in the Flamingo to the Parvin-Dohrmann Company, led a group of investors who were willing

to take on the struggling hotel. Green-baum lent the current owners a half-million dollars, and by the end of July he received permission to take over management of the Riviera, pending its ultimate sale.

Of course, it might have been that the real owners—guys in Chicago whose names didn’t appear on li-censes or in the papers—never re-ally changed. Whatever the real story, Greenbaum was successful in reviving the casino’s fortunes, at least until he and his wife were brutally murdered in their Phoenix home three years lat-er, allegedly because of Greenbaum’s habit of skimming from the skim. The case was never solved.

The Greenbaum murder wasn’t as big a news story in Las Vegas as you’d think it would be. The Riviera contin-ued with another boss, just like every Las Vegas casino keeps on moving af-ter a regime change. The doors never closed, and it’s doubtful that the dice

stopped rolling for even a second. That daily rhythm—check guests out, check guests in, take a name off the marquee, announce the new headlin-er on the marquee, shuffe the cards, drop cash in the boxes—had taken on, it seemed, a life of its own.

The high Riviera rooftop, mean-while, became the premier spot for watching atomic blasts at the Nevada Test Site. That particular party end-ed on Halloween 1958, when Presi-dent Dwight Eisenhower declared a moratorium on testing. (More lim-ited aboveground tests would resume from 1961-63 before the Limited Test Ban Treaty stopped them for good.) Along the way, the Riviera survived and soldiered on. The 1960s even end-ed with a bit of swagger: Dean Martin had become a licensed owner, as well as a featured performer. What better Vegas royalty to tell the world that the Riviera was here to stay?

★★★★★

forty-one million people came to Las Vegas in 2014, and this year’s num-bers are looking even better. Casinos on the Strip are making more money than they ever have, so visitors are clearly fnding plenty of things to do that they don’t mind paying for. Nev-ertheless, Web denizens posting on Las Vegas-oriented message boards and comment sections tend to speak (at least when they aren’t raging about politics) with one voice: Casinos, they declare, need to charge less and respect their history more.

Maybe. But the numbers tell a differ-ent story. At the end, the Riviera had bargain-priced rooms, $4 Crown Royal double shots and even $1 blackjack; it’s tough to get cheaper than that. Sure, you can fnd a less expensive burger off the Strip, but for Las Vegas Boulevard, the Riv’s prices were more than com-petitive. Besides, you don’t come to Las Vegas to scrounge for deals.

Appreciation of history? Search for another casino wall in Las Vegas—or anywhere, for that matter—with pic-tures of Milton Berle, Liza Minnelli and Jack Benny. You won’t fnd one. That means something. A few years ago, you couldn’t drive past McCarran without seeing billboards for Deadmau5 and LMFAO. They made a lot of money for the casinos they performed in, but is there any record that they were ever here? If they had played the Riviera, there would have been: They would have gone on the wall with Patience and Prudence, Gabe Kaplan and Pavarotti.

And yet it’s the Riviera that’s going out of business, while the $850 bottles of Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque Brut are still popping at Light.

People say they want “classic Vegas” and value pricing, but judging by the Trip Advisor reviews, most of them don’t really want the balancing side of that equation: older, more cramped rooms and fewer amenities. Saving a few bucks and enjoying the charms of yesteryear sounds great from a dis-tance, but the actual reality of faded bedding, tiny showers and cross-your-fngers elevators isn’t so appealing.

The past few weeks, though, saw a turn. When the Riviera was a going con-cern and its managers were trying their best to fll rooms, the online review-ers were merciless, picking apart every structural faw and customer-service lapse. Once the closing was announced, though, another story emerged:

“It is a real shame that a hotel with great history has to close.”

“Saying goodbye to an old friend.” “I am sad to see it go.”We can’t have it both ways. Old casi-

nos get demolished because they don’t make as much money as new ones (or new convention centers). If people re-ally did want classic Vegas, it wouldn’t be classic; it would just be Las Vegas. The culprit in the Riviera closure isn’t the old management or the new buy-ers, but the very American, very Vegas cult of the New. We spend on what’s 24

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The culprit in the Riviera closure isn’t the old management or the

new buyers, but the very American, very Vegas cult of the New. We spend on what’s shiny.

Sentiment rarely pays the bills.

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shiny. Sentiment rarely pays the bills. One reviewer offered what should be

the hotel’s epitaph: “Your comfortable rooms will be missed. Sure, you were getting a bit tired, but your location and rates served the budget traveler well. Goodbye.”

★★★★★

now it’s 1984, and the mob ties are long gone. So are Dean Martin and most of the high-rollers who had stuck with the Riviera. The year before, the casino slid into bankruptcy, with chair-man Meshulam Riklis putting $1 mil-lion of his own money into the opera-tion to keep it open.

This time, it won’t be goodfella know-how that turns the place around, nor will opening the checkbook for Liberace and Harry Belafonte do the trick. Instead, Riklis hires casino turn-around specialist Jeff Silver, who, see-ing the runaway success at cross-Strip neighbor Circus Circus, decides to bet on quarter-slot players with a taste for fast food. He also notices that a McDon-ald’s adjacent to the Circus is doing, as he puts it, “a land offce business.”

So Silver, over the objections of sev-eral board members and county com-

missioners, brings Burger King to the house that Liberace opened. It’s the frst fast-food restaurant to open in a casino, and it’s soon the most proftable fran-chise in Burger King’s stable. As always, the Riviera goes on, adjusting with the times. With fewer high-rollers, Middle America will be the Strip’s salvation.

By February 1985, the Riviera is out of bankruptcy and, bolstered by its new player base, looking up. Four months later, Don King stages a spectacle that celebrates the 41st anniversary of D-Day, gets his Michael Spinks/Jim MacDonald light-heavyweight championship bout some column inches and shows off the new mass appeal of the Riviera. He do-nates 2,000 tickets to Marines stationed in California at Twentynine Palms, El Toro and Camp Pendleton.

As only he can, King describes the 43-vehicle convoy as “an invasion of Las Vegas.” True to the Riviera’s new style, this incursion will be catered by Burger King, with 4,000 Whoppers and plenty of Pepsi waiting for the hungry Marines. The un-defeated Spinks retains his crown, and it looks like the Riviera will, too.

★★★★★

like the riviera’s latter-years ex-

pansions, the Culinary Union Hall an-nex wasn’t built with luxury in mind. Still, the pictures of demonstrations and picket lines going back to the 1980s give a sense of the pride that members feel in working together. In the main build-ing, bar backs and housekeepers come and go through the warren of hallways. It’s a little quieter here, removed from the action, a good place to refect.

Susana Loli, start date April 23, 1996, was having trouble fnding a job in Las Vegas after moving from New Jersey. She accompanied a friend to an ap-pointment at the hiring hall and decid-ed to submit an application. That day, she got three job offers. She chose a position at the Riviera as a guest-room attendant, and has no regrets.

“It was one of the best hotels in the city,” she says. “We were a family; we had a lot of fun together and liked our jobs.” Once there, she decided she pre-ferred being a house-person runner, bringing blankets, pillows and other necessities to the guest rooms, and she easily made the switch.

That was a time in Las Vegas when construction crews were working over-time and there were, it seemed, more jobs than applicants.

Three years later, when Ruby Lee Taylor started at the Riviera, the future

seemed just as bright. For Taylor, a casi-no porter, it wasn’t just a place to punch the clock and count the hours. “We had so much fun just coming in and enjoy-ing ourselves,” she says. “You’d wake up and want to go to work.”

Talking with the two women, both of whom became union-shop stew-ards, you get the sense of the Riviera not as a place where people gamble and spend the night, but as an extend-ed family, an improbable village in the middle of the Strip.

“We were all family people,” Taylor says. “We’d have conversations about the job, what we’d do after work. So we’d socialize on our days off. Lots of times,” she adds, laughing, “we’d come right back to the Riviera.” With workers that much in love with the place, it’s no surprise the Riviera had its best year ever in 2007. Then came some rough times, but nothing the casino couldn’t handle. Or so they thought.

In fact, the Riviera made it through the Great Recession, only to fall victim to the rebound. With the possibility of more business coming to town, a teardown and rebuild into something else pen-ciled out again. When we look back at the Riviera in a few years, it will be obvious that the hotel was living on borrowed time. But for Riviera employees, who 26

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had been through bankruptcies be-fore, the sudden end came as a shock.

Taylor was sleeping at home when a co-worker shared a rumor she’d picked up online. At frst she wasn’t worried. “There were lots of rumors that day, but we’d been hearing rumors for years.”

After a few more days of rumors and silence from management, Loli came to work to fnd a WARN notice posted on the bulletin board.

“Then the company had a meeting with us,” she says, “and said now ev-erything is through, and we have to be prepared.”

Even though, to the last, workers put on a brave face, it wasn’t easy.

“I’ve watched some of the cocktail servers just break down and cry,” Tay-lor says. “When we frst heard, we all just hugged and shared numbers so we can stay in touch.

“You come to work, you think that in a few weeks you won’t have a job any-more, it’s a horrible feeling. It leaves an empty hole in your stomach.”

Both Taylor and Loli are facing, after nearly two decades at the Riviera, the prospect of looking for a job in a Las Vegas where applicants are lucky to get one offer, let alone three. Taylor’s planning to go back to school so that she can go into nursing or counseling, helping others just as she’s done as a shop steward with her Riviera family for years. Loli is considering learning to be a baker’s assistant at the Culi-nary Training Academy.

The future is uncertain, and not in a good way.

“It’s scary,” Loli says, no longer smil-ing and reminiscing about the good years, but thinking of what lies ahead for her and her Riviera family. “We’re not young like before. We have to start from zero again. If I’m lucky, I can get something. Who knows?”

★★★★★

meshulam riklis has a vision: a naked woman swimming in an over-size Champagne glass. And Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning choreog-rapher Jeff Kutash is inspired. Kutash

spends $20,000 of his own money on a presentation to the Riviera board. They agree to stage the show, even though there isn’t a Champagne glass in sight.

Instead, Kutash serves up a dance spectacle for the rock era, with cho-reography that owes more to MTV than French burlesque. He’s able to take that uniquely Vegas institu-tion (the showgirl), swap sequins for street and score a hit. It’s not just the 19,000-gallon water tank or the lasers that make Splash so different; it’s the breakdancing, the energy.

That’s in line with what Kutash thinks Vegas is for, with room for inspiration. “People come to Vegas to go crazy, get drunk and see a naked woman,” he tells the Los Angeles Times the year after Splash makes its debut in 1985. “I try to give them a little bit of Vegas and a little bit of individuality in the dancing.”

Splash will help the Riviera main-tain an identity in the post-headliner, post-high-roller era—so much so that within a few years the casino will re-make its Strip frontage with a neon tribute to the show, whose street-wise spunk has proven that a Vegas spectacular doesn’t need sequins and feathers to succeed.

Kutash knows that people don’t come to the frst generation of Pari-sian-inspired revues—which are in their fourth decade and showing it by this time—for their specifc style or design sense; it’s the underlying idea that attracts them. Las Vegas, he un-derstands, can survive and grow by throwing everything out and build-ing again from the kernel of that idea: People visit Las Vegas to have fun and do and see things they can’t at home.

But Splash’s energy doesn’t translate to the rest of the property so easily. A late-1980s plan to expand to 4,000 rooms falls through, leaving it with about 2,000, and, by the time Splash ends its run in 2006, the casino has been through yet another bankruptcy and is on its way to its fnal reorga-nization. In the end, it can’t compete with the newer buildings and newer energy that are sweeping the Strip—a transformation that it helped start 20 years earlier.

★★★★★

the bartenders at the riviera have poured their last drink. The last couple has been joined in holy mat-rimony in the wedding chapel. The last blackjack’s been paid, the last los-ing chips swept from the felt, the last guest room turned over.

Soon they’ll start tearing down the Riviera. The towers will probably be imploded, maybe with fanfare, maybe not; other parts of that cob-bled-together, ungainly masterpiece will be ripped to pieces and smashed into rubble. In a few months, per-haps, there will be a hole in Las Vegas where the Riviera used to be. In a few years, there will be new, functional, vibrant buildings there, and in a de-cade, we might not be able to imag-ine Las Vegas without them—just like the Bellagio, Venetian, Mandalay Bay or even that parking lot across the street from the Convention Center that was once the Landmark.

But does that mean the Riviera is gone?No.Because the Riviera was never really

the food court or the comedy club or the San Remo tower. It wasn’t the pool and it wasn’t the Versailles Room and it wasn’t the Royale Pavilion. It wasn’t even the casino, built layer upon layer over the decades.

Oh, those were parts of a place called the Riviera, and that place is no more. After 60 years, though, the Riviera wasn’t just a building; in fact, once the novelty of nine sto-ries wore off, the building was the most unremarkable thing about the place. Long before the closure was announced, the Riviera had evolved into something more signifcant than an address: It was a web of memories and experiences and rela-tionships. It was a family.

That family spent the last six de-cades together, one shift at a time. It had its own inside jokes, its own ur-ban legends (Frank Sinatra’s ghost in suite 901), its own traditions. It had quiet years and years when it broad-ened our sense of what Las Vegas could mean. While we were rubbing the Crazy Girls statue for luck and laughing at the comedy club, that family celebrated and grieved and coped together through birthdays, weddings, funerals, divorces. It lost members and gained new ones. It made history.

Contrary to what you’ve been told, you can’t implode history. Buildings fall every day. History endures as long as we remember.

And just because those buildings we called the Rivera won’t be there, and 2901 Las Vegas Boulevard South is going to mean someplace else—well, that doesn’t destroy the his-tory, that won’t destroy the memo-ries, and it certainly can’t destroy the family.

For a digital journey through the Riviera’s 60 years, visit VegasSeven.com/Riviera. 27

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One Final Piece of Business …

After a 60-year run on the Strip, the Riviera closed its doors forever May 4. But if you want to buy one of those doors—or any other tangible reminder of the Riv—the official liquidation sale begins May 14. It’s an everything-must-go deal, too—from chips to chande-liers to walk-in-coolers.

“Anytime you have a casino this large, it’s a chal-lenge,” says Don Hayes, president of National Con-tent Liquidators, which will oversee the sale. NCL also cleared out a number of other Las Vegas casinos, including the Landmark, the Dunes, the Aladdin and, most recently, the Sahara.

Among the items up for grabs: full guest-room bedroom sets, casino signs, restaurant refrigerators/equipment, even showroom curtains. If you attend the sale and find that special something, grab it, because everything is first-come, first-serve. Two more important rules to note: Everything will be sold as-is, and purchasers are responsible for item re-moval—so before you buy that blackjack table, make sure you can transport it home.

The Riviera’s casino floor alone features more than 150,000 square feet of mer-chandise, and Hayes notes that these sales draw a wide variety of buyers. “You can buy one Riviera glass or 1,000 glasses,” he explains. “Or if you’re just looking for a souvenir, we also have that.” Does he have any words of advice for those wanting to procure a last piece of the Riviera? “Be prepared for a long day.”

– Lissa Townsend Rodgers

The Riviera’s liquidation sale

is from 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon-

Sat and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun-

day until everything is gone.

Admission is $10 from May

14-17, and free thereafter.

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ence is Linkin Park. “They were a huge inspiration for us in our early teens and helped shape the music we write today,” Yasmine says. “As half-Pakistani girls raised in a post-modern world, it’s inherent that we fuse different worlds.”

The sisters are the frst to admit they would be nowhere without the Internet and social media. “If we were trying to have the same career that we have today even 10 years ago, it’d be nearly impos-sible,” Yasmine says. “So much of how we’ve grown is through blogs, word of mouth and our fans sharing our music on social media. We never want people to think that we’re unreachable or untouchable, so we’re always on Twitter talking to our ‘Krew.’” Now the girls, with their trade-mark long, dark locks and edgy style, play shows all around the world, from their hometown of Chicago to Sweden, India and South America. But it’s music festivals and the Vegas residency that will be keeping them busy throughout spring and summer.

“Our sound is a culmination of all of our years on this earth—what we grew up on as children, what got

us through our most difficult teen years and what moves us in the

electronic world currently. . . . Music should be the bridge

between people and offer a better understanding from human to human.

We hope our music can facilitate that for anyone who listens.”

While in Vegas—often for just 12 hours—they enjoy dinner at “all-time favorite” Cleo, stay up all night ordering room service or “eating everything in sight” at Nobu and Searsucker. And while music is their life, the girls have recently been busy with another important project: raising a one-and-half-year old brindle Pitbull and Cattle mix shelter dog named Scarlett—Scar for short—at the apartment they share in Chicago.

“She makes me so happy,” Yas-mine says. “She’s changed our lives for the better.” But don’t expect canine parenthood to have an effect on the spectacular shows Krewella plan for their fans. “Despite whatev-er state of exhaustion we might be in, the second we hit the stage and start DJing our favorite tunes, we wake the fuck up,” Jahan says. “Our shows in Vegas are a hub for people celebrating life, and we strive to make it their best night ever.”

See Krewella at Omnia in Caesars Palace on April 21 and May 17; OmniaNightclub.com.

See more photos from this gallery at SPYONvegas.com

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[ UPCOMING ]

May 8 EDX spins

May 9 Steve Angello spins

May 10 Stafford Brothers spin

INSOMNIAC PARTNERS WITH LOCAL CHARITY FOR EDC AUCTIONInsomniac Events, the powerhouse behind Electric Daisy Carnival, has partnered with local nonprofit, Culture Shock Las Vegas, on a charitable venture ahead of this year’s festival June 19-21. A 10-day online-only auction will be held via eBay (eBay.com/Insomniac) and will feature EDC-specific experiences and items that a true EDM fan could only dream of until now.

Hardcore EDC-ers (“Headlin-ers”) can bid on 54 imaginative and extravagant experiences. One package includes dinner for two at Caesars’ new Sear-sucker restaurant before a visit to Omnia’s DJ booth, a meeting with superstar Martin Garrix and a VIP table to enjoy with friends. A pre-EDC makeover package lets festivalgoers get their hair and makeup done in true over-the-top festival fash-ion, complete with a costume for the night. And a sushi-making lesson at Nobu with Krewella is also on the table for bidders who care to enjoy famous Japanese cuisine with famous DJs. Backstage passes, artist hangout sessions and exclusive VIP experiences also make the list.

Proceeds will benefit Culture Shock Las Vegas, a nonprofit that uses art and dance to keep Vegas youth from engaging in poor behavior. By teaching hip-hop and street dance routines to young people, Culture Shock helps keep young people off drugs and away from violence. Jennifer Forkish, the vice president of communications and public affairs for Insomniac, says the EDC crew is very happy with their decision to partner with the local charity. “What we really liked best about Culture Shock is their focus on culture, dance and their enthusiasm for the arts and giving back to the community.”

The auction opens May 6 at 9 a.m. and closes May 15 at 9 a.m. Bidding begins at 99 cents for each experience. – Kat Boehrer

PARTIES

See more photos from this gallery at SPYONvegas.com

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Restaurant reviews, news and the right wine for all your modes of travel

“Years ago, nobody really cared about the food

[at concerts]. People used to get stoned and drunk.

But now all of a sudden, people say, ‘We want good

food, too!’” {PAGE 64}

Paella Valenciana at Tapas by Alex Stratta.

Try, Try Again

Alex Stratta ventures out

of his comfort zone—

with mixed results

By Al Mancini

SOME CHEFS SPEND THEIR ENTIRE CAREERS creating a single style of food. Others pre-fer to challenge themselves. Alex Stratta falls into the latter category. He made his Las Vegas reputation creating award-win-ning French haute cuisine, frst at Renoir in The Mirage, and later at Alex in Wynn. Stratta then embraced his Italian heritage to create mouth-watering delicacies at his second mononymous Wynn restaurant, Stratta. When he decided to open a subur-ban restaurant in Tivoli Village, he once again chose to try something new: tapas.

The opening of Tapas by Alex Stratta endured several delays, not only because of a change of partner and locale, but also the chef’s desire to educate himself on proper Spanish cooking techniques and ingredients. While the restaurant is still new, and some of the chef’s recipes need to be refned a bit, some excellent dishes are already on the menu.

Tapas by Alex Stratta occupies the space that was home to Angelo Sosa’s Poppy Den, and before that, an abysmal Greek restaurant, Petra. It’s two stories with wonderful outdoor patios both upstairs and downstairs, although the chef is re-serving the second foor for special events and private parties. Quite a bit of the colorful artwork on the walls was painted by Stratta himself. The menu includes traditional small plates, as well as larger daily specials and four varieties of paella.

Paella is where the chef really shines. It’s cooked to order in shallow pans on which Stratta and his crew concentrate on creating socarrat, a crisp bottom crust that needs to be scraped from the metal. That crust is certainly this dish’s signa-ture, and it’s much heartier than what you’ll fnd at other paella spots in town. I’ve actually heard of some people com-plaining their rice is burned, but for me it’s perfect. So far, I’ve only sampled the Valenciana version, made with thick bites

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HOLLYWOOD LONG AGO CEDED “LOVE THAT stands the test of time” to the realm of science fction and fantasy, so The Age of Adaline falls neatly into a genre that includes The Time Traveler’s Wife, About Time and even Somewhere in Time.

But building this flm around all the willowy, world-weary grace that Blake Gossip Girl Lively can muster pays off. As a twenty-something who stopped aging 80 years ago, Lively suggests several lifetimes of experience in a love story that ranges from wistful to hopeful, a romance whose female half understands its consequences.

A pedantic narrator introduces Adaline under “her current alias,” Jenny, on New Year’s Eve 2014, then backtracks to give a quasi-scientifc explanation to the aging that stopped after an icy car wreck in the early 1930s. We meet her child, see the frst attentions her agelessness draws from law enforcement (in the para-noid McCarthy era) and watch her go underground: changing names, changing jobs, investing her money in long-shot stocks so that she’s never pressed for cash.

Now she works in the San Fran-

cisco city archives, and she and her retirement-age daughter (a sparkling Ellen Burstyn) are the only ones who know her secret.

Then a rich do-gooder of a suitor, Ellis (Dutch actor Michiel Huisman of TV’s Game of Thrones), fxes his eye on her. And her many polite rebuffs fail to deter him. Reluctantly, she falls for him.

The script cleverly has Adaline/Jenny catch herself, blowing off a come-on as something she frst heard “from a young Bing Crosby … type.” Give Ellis

a line that works. He quotes Leigh Hunt’s poem “Jenny Kiss’d Me.”

“Say I’m weary, say I’m sad. Say that health and wealth have miss’d me.

“Say I’m growing old, but add, Jenny kiss’d me.”

And for an hour, Adaline is warm and charming, with a somber edge. She’s buried generations of spaniels. She can’t bear to bury another lover.

Then Harrison Ford shows up for the third act, as he and the ageless Kathy Baker play Ellis’ parents. And Ford, in

a performance as affecting as any he’s ever given, lifts this romance in ways we never see coming.

But it’s Lively’s show, and she wears the period clothes and formal wear as easily as Adaline wears the burden of a body that never ages, even as the memory never forgets history learned, a language mastered or what love felt like when you last let yourself experi-ence it.

The Age of Adaline (PG-13) ★★★★✩

SHORT REVIEWS By Tribune Media Services

ETERNAL APPEALBlake Lively shines

as a lovelorn woman

who never ages

By Roger Moore Tribune Media Services

A&E

Little Boy (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩When the father (Michael Rapaport) of a

bullied lad named Pepper (Jakob Salvati)

heads to war, life stumbles along for the

boy. Pepper finds a friend in Mr. Hashimoto

(Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the town’s most

conspicuous (or only?) Japanese-American

resident. This friendship is regarded poorly

by Pepper’s unhappy older brother (David

Henrie). Pepper’s mother (Emily Watson)

shares a more tolerant viewpoint with the lo-

cal Catholic priest, the latter instilling in Pep-

per the notion that hope, even the size of a

mustard seed, is enough to move mountains.

The Water Diviner (R) ★★✩✩✩Russell Crowe’s feature directorial debut

stems from an honest impulse to dramatize

ordinary people who honor their dead. Yet

the results are narratively dishonest. In the

wake of Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, an Austra-

lian farmer traveled to the Turkish battlefield

searching for the remains of his sons. Crowe

plays the title character, whose three sons

head off to fight and apparently die at Gal-

lipoli. Fulfilling a promise made to his wife,

farmer Joshua travels to Constantinople.

With the aid of a mournful Turkish major,

Joshua finds his way to Gallipoli.

Adult Beginners (R) ★★✩✩✩The story is that of Jake, a self-centered

Manhattan entrepreneur played by Nick

Kroll. Jake’s latest startup company flames

out, leading to a move back to New Rochelle

into the house where he grew up. Broke and

bored, he becomes his 3-year-old nephew’s

deeply unqualified but increasingly game

caregiver. With a second child on the way,

Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale’s charac-

ters, Justine and Danny, have begun to seek

romantic attention outside their marriage.

Jake falls into bed with another caregiver,

while building a bridge back to Justine.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron (PG-13) ★★★✩✩Action, relentless and assaultive. Wise-

cracks, numerous, pretty sharp and evenly

parceled out among Robert Downey Jr. (Iron

Man), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruf-

falo (Hulk), Chris Evans (Captain America),

Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Jeremy

Renner (Hawkeye) and so on. Entertain-

ing as much of Avengers 2 is, especially

when it’s just hanging out with the gang

in between scuffles (the Guardians of the

Galaxy lesson, learned), this picture meets

expectations without exceeding them.

MOVIES

Huisman and Lively ask that age-old question: Can love

bridge the generations?

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How do you know when you’ve got a

great shot at a concert?

Sometimes you know when you click it. You’re hoping that when you clicked, the light was the same then as it was the second before you clicked, because the lights are always changing. You’re looking, and you’re going, “Oh, this is perfect!” but right after [that] the lights could go dark or change colors. With concerts, it’s always a challenge and it’s always messing with you, because everything is shifting rapidly. You just shoot away and try to get the best moments that you can. I’m always looking for some kind of emotion from these people onstage.

Who has been the most challenging

act to photograph?

Tool. I’ve tried to photograph them a number of times, but they traditionally play in very dark lighting. The lead singer stands behind the band, in the dark, purposefully. When you shoot a band like that, you have to get creative.

Nine Inch Nails a couple of years ago at The Joint was challenging because of the strobe lights. The lights are fashing rapidly, so you have to fre rapidly to capture something and hope there’s an interesting image in there. That was like opening a box of chocolates after that show. I shot so much that I went home and I was like, “OK, what do I have?” Every 10 frames of blackness, there was one good one.

In addition to concerts, you shoot celebrity

portraits. How do you prepare for those?

It’s nice to know something about the subject beforehand. I recently [photographed] chef Kerry Simon. Just knowing him from many years of shooting him around red carpets, that was helpful. I worked with Carlos Santana in that capacity, and knowing his music was helpful.

As a photojournalist, I like to be a fy on the wall. I don’t really like to direct people when I’m shooting them. When you’re in a portrait session, you have to. I still like to have them do their thing, though. I like to capture them rather than a moment that I’m creating for them.

Nowadays everyone wants to share

a photographer’s work on social media.

Does that ever get annoying?

No, not when they respect the copy-

right and the crediting. Social media is this new territory that we’re all getting used to. I fnd it supportive of everything that we go through as photographers more than anything. I’m not crazy about when people take your work and throw weird flters all over it. That can be a little annoying. You intend for it to look a certain way and then it shows up with some weird sepia tone applied. Other than that, fans sharing photos on social media with credits is a good thing.

Whom do you still want to photograph

professionally?

Bob Dylan would actually make me shake a little bit. He’s the top of the mountain for me. I’ve never profes-sionally been able to photograph him. I’ve had my cellphone at shows and gotten a couple [of photos], but it’s never been a professional situation.

I can’t even imagine doing a portrait session with him. That would be the ultimate experience for me.

After almost 20 years in the business,

what gives you the most satisfaction?

I enjoy creating or capturing these moments that are not memories just for me, but for everybody. Recently, I shot that Brandon Flowers show [at the Bunkhouse, March 21]. There was such a response to [my] photos from fans who were getting so much enjoyment out of them. I grew up looking at rock magazines, being a music fan and being loyal to the artists I was into. To give that back, that’s probably the best part. Even if they’re not my favorite artist, I know I’m giving their fans something that they’re going to really cherish and might be lasting 20 years to come. It’s a cool way to be part of the process.

How do you feel about getting your

own photo taken?

I’m not that great with it. [Laughs.] I’m never that comfortable. I’m al-ways telling people, “Oh, don’t worry, you look great!” And they’re like, “I don’t know.” As soon I’m on the other side, I become that person. “Can you do it a little higher? Can you make me look skinnier?”

How has digital technology affected

Kabik’s work? Read the full

interview at VegasSeven.com/ErikKabik.

Erik KabikThe city’s preeminent concert photographer on the

perfect shot, the artist on top of his wish list and

being on the other side of the lens

By Camille Cannon