Thursday, May 22, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Cover story: The natives aren't restless

Las Vegas natives are sticking around--and making a difference

By Andrew Kiraly

It was a weird cluster of coincidences, the kind that makes you peek over your shoulder and momentarily consider The Big Things like fate, destiny, whatever: I've bumped into so many damn Las Vegas natives lately. They're a stereotypically rare breed, particularly if you buy into the myth of Vegas as solely a destination for outlanders, suburban cubicle-surfers and service slaves content to live ghostlike on Vegas' spiritual and physical margins. Add to that the fact that I'm a native too (Las Vegas High School, class of '89; go Wildcats!) and this recent rash of chance meetings was extra freaky.

I wondered, what are they still doing here? In casual no-way-you're-a-native-too? conversations, the crux came out: many of them actually wanted to stick around town. Curious, I asked around to see who else knew natives; called up a few old friends and coaxed them into meeting. The more I snooped, the more common our species seemed to be. Las Vegas natives are in high places (Brian Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun); low places (Lance Malone, and, if you believe his print ads, Jim Rhodes), and everywhere in between (Mercury scribe James Reza is one; so is CityLife's Megan Capehart.)

The natives in this piece have much more in common than their Vegas-born status. Most importantly--giving the lie to the idea that Vegas is someplace to escape to or escape from--these natives are young, active and committed to making Vegas a better place to live. Whether they're painting, teaching, agitating or putting on beer-fueled rock shows, they like living here. Las Vegas--not a waystation, not a stepstone--is their home. Call this crew of Vegas-born and Vegas-bred the new natives.

Angee Jackson: Like

a rolling stone

Artist Angee Jackson recently marked an anniversary of sorts: It's been a year since she returned from L.A., one of Jackson's many moves over the years to put some distance between herself and the town she grew up both loving and hating. But her year-long stay in the Rome of the West Coast, she says, was a sort of crowning reality check in what had been a string of them. As Jackson tells it on a recent evening--chilling in the studio room of her downtown digs, lined with rock posters and pop-cult kitsch--her forays to other cities from Philadelphia to Salt Lake City revealed to her not so much what Vegas lacked as what it had.

"I was under the impression that L.A. would have such an incredible art scene, that there'd be a million people interested in what I was doing," says the 26-year-old. "But the truth is that there are a million people thinking that exact same thing. And, to be honest, I started to get lonely there after a while." After giving the city a year of her time--trying to hook up shows and sell her splashy rock posters painstakingly hand-cut from sticker vinyl--she returned to Las Vegas.

No licking of wounds, no tail between the legs. Rather, Jackson was moved by a sober realization that--gasp!--she liked living here, had roots here, was appreciated here. Most recently, that appreciation has come in the form of Jackson doing brisk business selling her pieces--brash, energetic pop-cult posters of rock phenoms such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles--at gallery shows around town. If the term "local artist" carries with it the connotation of provinciality and limited success, Jackson is handily bucking the term. She's an artist who sells a lot of art.

"The whole time, the problem wasn't where I wanted to go, but what I wanted to do," the 1993 Clark High grad says of her wanderlust. "I don't feel that need to get away as much. When I was younger, I always thought that staying in town meant, you know, you'd wind up working at Frosty Freeze for the rest of your life, and I still feel that way sometimes when I run into someone from high school who's like 300 pounds and has five kids. But that feeling came from feeling I wasn't doing as much as I could do."

By day, she's a graphic artist at Tower Records, putting together promotional posters; after hours, Jackson refines her technique of hand-cutting sticker vinyl to create heavily iconic pieces of her fave cultural figures; the latest piece from her work desk is a blithe but oddly reverent homage to pinup girl and burlesque dancer Lili St. Cyr. Jackson's influences literally pop from the walls of her work room in her downtown pad; scan the wood-paneled walls and you'll get an eyeful of rock history and pop-culture kitsch, from a Rolling Stones 40 Licks tour poster to a still-packaged pair of "Vega$" walkie-talkies. Jackson's commitment to Vegas isn't ironclad, but for now the native says the place (where the first live music she caught was Frank Sinatra at Bally's, when she was 13) feels like home.

"A lot of what I like about Vegas doesn't exist anymore," she says, invoking a stream of defunct record stores and coffee shops. "But overall, I guess I'm just fond of this place. I guess it's important for me to feel necessary to the city."

Vincent Frey: Roots

and all

The quintessential Las Vegas childhood memory to beat them all: Vincent Frey's career day at Woodbury Middle School. "The thing I love to tell people when they ask me what's it like to live in Las Vegas," he says, "is that the only difference is that your career day had bankers and lawyers come out, while ours had Wayne Newton and Lola Folana."

No kidding. And while that fateful career didn't shunt the young Frey down the career path of entertainment, he must've taken those celebs' sense of community involvement to heart. Frey grew up to be one of the valley's more prominent gay activists who also runs a successful political consulting biz, The Southwest Group. (How successful is it? Well, the real litmus test comes next month: His most high-profile client at the moment is Councilman Michael McDonald).

Frey, 34, sealed his bond with Vegas when he flew home years ago from New York University and took in a sight that usually impresses only the fannypackers from Des Moines: the Southern Nevada desertscape unfolding like a banner.

"It sounds corny, but I just saw this amazing desert landscape and knew this was where I was going to live." He's parlayed several Vegas pluses--mostly, its big-small-town vibe--into a respectable career in gay politics, having served as executive director of The Center, a gay and lesbian resource network, penning a column for The Bugle, as well as co-chairing the local branch of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a national PAC that pushes gay and lesbian political candidates.

"The gay community in Las Vegas has done a tremendous job in keeping up with growth," he says. "And I think the community is on the verge of becoming a real power structure, something on the order of L.A.'s or Seattle's. I've been involved in gay politics for a long time, and, growing up here there weren't any outreach programs or facilities for kids who are gay to go to, and I take great pride in being on the ground level of creating a lot of those services."

That lack of such groundwork in many areas is, oddly, a perk for those looking to make their mark, Frey says. "There's no other city I can think of where you can get in on the ground level of so many things, in arts, in entertainment, in politics. I mean, I've known McDonald's campaign manager [Rick Henry] since I was 5 years old. You won't find that in a lot of big metropolitan cities. There's still a small-town feel to Vegas."

It makes Frey feel his roots that much more strongly; for instance, Frey's father, Leo, is a real estate developer and former owner of the Moulin Rouge.

"It's important to have roots," says Frey. "It's important for people to feel centered, to have a place they can always go back to. Almost every person I know who has lived here and has moved away has invariably come back. It says a lot about modern Vegas that people can feel centered here."

Debbie Dedmon: Let

freedom ring

Debbie Dedmon watched one of her best friends, busted in 1995 for selling acid at a Dead show in Ohio, go to prison a grinning hippie and emerge on parole this year an embittered, volatile racist.

"He came out worse than when he went in," says the 32-year-old. "Prison didn't reform him. He came out more prone to violence, more apt to commit a crime."

Witnessing that transformation ended up transforming Dedmon herself--into an activist. She began working with various organizations, like Oregon's November Coalition, to debunk the drug war and expose the lunacy of punitive--and expensive--sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. From there she worked with Vegas' Rock the Vote street team, during which she'd hit concerts and register kids to vote. But it wasn't until Dedmon was on Jon Ralston's "Face to Face" talk show that--lightning strike--she found her true calling in political activism. On the show, Ralston characterized her as a libertarian, and while Dedmon had never formally embraced the term, she felt struck like the Liberty Bell.

"The thing about the Libertarian Party is that we're not beholden to anybody," she says. "Across the board, we're for individual freedom. If it's not hurting someone else, you should be able to do it." Not surprisingly, the Libertarian Party of Clark County was soon asking her to speak at functions; today she's the party's PR director. The native's current mission: to give the party's image a badly needed makeover.

"Our image needs an overhaul," she says. "When you mention the Libertarian Party to people, they've either never heard of us or they think we're a bunch of gun-toting rednecks. That's not the case at all." Dedmon's target for selling the image: Southern Nevada's younger demographic, who can better relate to classic causes such as decriminalizing drugs. "Younger voters have more open minds," Dedmon says. "And often when you tell them there are alternatives to Democrats and Republicans, they're surprised. They think they're boxed in with just two choices, it's either chicken or beef. It really wakes them up." The latest phase in the campaign had Dedmon manning a booth at last weekend's KXTE 107.5-FM's Our Big Concert.

At this point in the profile, it'd be fitting to say that Dedmon's solemn commitment to Southern Nevada politics is what keeps her around. But that wouldn't be completely true. Quiz Dedmon, mother of two, about why she's sticking around Vegas, and she erupts into a gleeful litany.

"I love the desert, I love the Strip, I love the neon," she says. "I love the sound of slot machines when I walk into a 7-Eleven, I love the fact that we don't have earthquakes or hurricanes. Plus, everyone I love lives here," she says, referring to her extended family, which runs a longtime pool-plastering business. "And where else can you hit a buffet in the middle of the night?"

Patricia Vazquez:

Commitment to change

It's almost alarming being handed Patricia Vazquez's business card after an hour-long interview at her office. It feels, well, reductive. The biz card says she's a professor of comparative literature at CCSN, but the interview brings to light more roles than a high school play. The resume unfurls like a blind: Vazquez is the co-chair of Equal Rights Nevada's Racial Justice Committee, a member of the People of Color Caucus, on the ACLU's gay and lesbian task force, CCSN's Latino Youth Alliance, and--her first love--a painter who's landed, among other things, a Congressional Art Award. Damn. Ain't she stressed? The contrary: The Vegas native would have problems if she didn't wear so many hats.

"I'd be paralyzed by guilt if I wasn't doing anything for the community," she says. "I definitely feel an obligation to it. I was raised here, and I'm grateful for that."

Grateful for what, exactly? A certain sensibility that creeps into the 36-year-old's artwork, an appreciation for the city's seedy side that's manifested in its various forms of excess. That sensibility resides most strongly in one of her paintings, "Girls Topless," a portrait based on an old photo of Vazquez and her mother taken downtown. The painting depicts mother crouching affectionately next to her daughter, a classic grinning family portrait, against a decidedly family-unfriendly backdrop: a downtown sprawl of adult businesses, with a "Girls Topless" sign leering sunnily over the women's shoulders.

"My mom [a Mexican immigrant] had no idea what it said," says Vazquez, laughing. It's no fiction: Growing up in various quadrants of the city, Vazquez spent some of her formative years in Naked City, just south of downtown, then later moved on East Bonanza in the shadow of Sunrise Mountain. The vast tracts of undeveloped desert were a natural playground for Vazquez and her brother, who'd build forts and make bows out of sticks and rubber bands. When time came for college, Vazquez matriculated to Arizona State University, where she attended from 1988 to 1995, but the siren call of the neon--and extended family--drew her back to her hometown.

"I'd been away from my family for so long, I wanted to get to know them again," she says. Between comfortable environs and work she saw needed done for the gay and lesbian community (she was instrumental in getting gays and lesbians included in CCSN's discrimination clause), Vazquez knew she was ultimately Vegas-bound. "People come to Las Vegas with really high expectations, and it's easy to be disappointed," she says. "But things are changing for the better. The city's not just growing. It's growing up."

James "Fuzz" Berg:

Rocking out

The Cooler Lounge is quiet as a funeral on a recent Wednesday at 8 in the morning--just about the time bartender and booking agent James Berg, better known as "Fuzz," gets off his graveyard shift. But it's easy to imagine the stuff he's talking about.

"There was this one band, Bleachmobile, these three Japanese girls who weren't more than 5 feet tall, playing this super-hardcore scream-type music, and the bass player just screams and jumps off the stage, four or five feet into the air and just lands in the middle of the floor, right on her knees, no kneepads, and just keeps playing like it's nothing. It was crazy!" Or the time the band Kung Fu Chicken--dressed as superheroes, complete with Speedos and helmets--instigated a food fight/stuffed animal war with the audience, as everything from plush bears to rotten bananas to raw hamburger zipped back and forth.

Call 'em high points in Fuzz's four-year tenure as the Cooler Lounge's booking agent, during which he's helped turn the the otherwise low-key bar at Lake Mead and Decatur into an infamous fixture in the music scene, where rock bands of every stripe have played to the club's pierced and tattooed clientele--a clientele that's as much a part of the performance as the acts that take the sticker-plastered stage.

"Yeah, a lot of people thought we'd go away, but we're like the little engine that could, giving the scene the finger," says Fuzz, who graduated from Bonanza High in 1990. The shaggy Vegas native--who loves the blank-canvas nature of this town--originally honed his schmoozing powers at his former job selling real estate. "It was a total dog-and-pony show," he says of the gig. "I mean, I could've sold ice cubes to Eskimos, but I just got tired of ass-kissing in the field and sitting behind a desk. I guess I wanted to be a rock star." He landed a chance job tending bar at the Cooler--"I never expected to become a bartender. All I knew was how to drink the drinks"--and his role as king of punk rock central soon blossomed.

With Vegas' music scene ever the topic of eternal bitching and moaning, it's a wonder Fuzz hasn't sought out more rocking pastures. "The scene is what you make it," says Fuzz, who plays bass in Jack Moses. "So many bands sit on their asses waiting for some label to come along and notice them. Naw. Put out your own stuff, do your own shows, knock on doors and get people out."

Now, about his nickname: Rewind 15-odd years to Fuzz in the full bloom of his adolescence, a budding skatepunk on the west side.

"Well, as you know, in any young skateboarder's life, there comes a time when he tries to befriend a group of skateboarders to hang out with, and that's what I was trying to do," he says. "So I was at a mini-ramp with some of my friends, and I took off my shirt, and I had a pointy thing of fuzz going on my chest. Of course, they're all, 'Nyaah! Fuzz! Nyaah! He's fuzzin'!' And the name stuck ever since."

Maryanne Salm: Working

for workers

Maryanne Salm, political director of the Service Employees International Union Local 1107, remembers well her Big Crossroads Moment when she was prepping to graduate with a master's degree in political science from Columbia University. Vegas or New York? Vegas or New York?

"I really had a chance in New York, where I was offered a job as a research assistant at a political science journal," says Salm, who graduated from Bonanza High in 1989. However, the death of her grandmother brought her back to Vegas for the funeral, and a close friend called her while she was home. "She told me about this exciting labor campaign that involved getting Valerie Wiener elected to state Senate [against then-Santa Fe hotel-casino owner Sue Lowden]. That was the big moment where I had to choose between New York and Las Vegas. And I thought, you know, Las Vegas is where it's at. It had a growing labor movement that was really starting to show its strength, and yet the city was small enough that you could make a difference."

Salm signed on to work for Wiener's campaign against Sen. Lowden, who was unseated by the Democratic challenger in 1996 by just more than 800 votes; Salm and company drew to the polls workers who were all too aware of the Santa Fe's longstanding battle with the Culinary Union.

"That was a key moment in my political development," Salm says. "It really was about the workers organizing to get rid of Sue Lowden, who had a horrible record as an employer and had completely ignored the union vote." Salm eventually became the political director of the SEIU, a union representing about 12,000 public employees and health care workers in Southern Nevada.

"You can really make a difference here. Really, anyone can go to Carson City and meet with legislators," she says. And while the city has swollen since the days when she was a bike-riding kid growing up near Alta and Rainbow--where the opening of the Albertson's was a big deal--Salm says its sprawling size hides a center worth investing in. She and her husband recently purchased a home near the Huntridge Theater, their bid for a piece of the downtown renaissance.

"What's exciting is the revitalization going on, and how people our age are excited about living here," she says. "We want to be a part of it. Your life doesn't have to center around the casinos, and it's exciting to be part of the beginning of all that."

Every once in a while she hops on her bike for a ride around her historic neighborhood, but--surprise--Salm has discovered that some things haven't changed. "I just can't believe that I used to ride my bike all day in the middle of August and never get tired, never drop dead. If there's one thing I can do without, it's the heat."