Go: Where to Go, What to Do & Why

By James P. Reza

Perhaps you are just joining us, and, feeling as though a longer-than-necessary summer has just bitch-slapped you into the kind of submission some fellas pay good American dollars (or, if they are lucky, Euros) to experience. Yeah, even us old-timers aren't exactly sure where the lingering heat came from.

But that, my friends, is more last week than "Queer Eye," as fall is (seriously) just around the calendar's corner. And what does fall mean in Las Vegas? It's...Culture Time! Street fairs and festivals and art shows pop up all around the valley, UNLV reawakens its cultural programming department and, before you know it, we're all Shakespeared in the Park and Vegas Valley Book Faired and Boulder City Art Faired and Renaissance Festivaled until someone jumps up and says, "Hey! Get your damn leather mug out of my face and let me play my video poker, freak!" Ah, Vegas. We love the smell of broken dreams in the morning.

Heed our advice on this: The next few months are going to be chock-full of the kinds of things newcomers whine about having back in their Supremely Hip Places of Origin--hell, even First Friday is celebrating an anniversary soon--so the time is here to put up or shut up. This week, for instance, two of Southern Nevada's longest-running food-focused festivals overlap each other, presenting a great opportunity for all of us to gain a few pounds in all the right places.

Continuing from last week is the 25th annual San Gennaro Feast (through Sept. 19; 286-4944), a celebration of Italian-American food, music and culture, plus a raging carnival midway that we can only imagine eventually gets soaked in regurgitated sausage and peppers by the end of every night. We love the festival, but we groan at the way it's been moved from the city center to a dusty commercial lot in Summerlin. Hey, Mr. Palmisano, how you doin'? Perhaps you could be persuaded to move the party downtown in the coming years.

Not going anywhere soon is the city's Greek Food Festival, which is tied to the hosting St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church that created the event 32 years ago (Sept. 16-19; 221-8245). Like San Gennaro, this is a true family event, featuring what seems like tons of delish baklava, dolmas and other Greek specialties, Greek music and dancing, and a huge shopping bazaar. Unlike San Gennaro, this event is held in a neighborhood church, so parking is always a challenge. At either festival, don comfortable shoes and take enough cash to eat yourself silly.

And finally this week comes a fall tradition with a decidedly playful adult flair, when AFAN's 18th annual Black & White Party rushes brashly into the Palms' Skin Pool Lounge on Saturday (Sept. 18; 382-2326). What was once a small, insular fundraising event focusing primarily on the gay community has in recent years broadened itself as the community at large reached toward it. Today, it is one of the premier events bridging the gap between the two, an energetic outdoor party where creativity and philanthropy meet. A dozen local restaurants provide delicious, freshly cooked food all night long, and the $40 admission also includes two drinks. The party attracts plenty of show people, and the dress ranges from Saturday simple to sexy and outrageous.

Fearing the reaper

Back in the day, local post-punk band Samson's Army had a popular (well, locally anyway) song juxtaposing the mindset of the young man and the old man, titled, appropriately (if not creatively), "Young Man, Old Man." At least I think that's what the song was about; I'm too bloody old to recall. But the point is, new waver Billy Idol is 49, and back when he and Todd Sampson were doing their respective things, that age seemed incomprehensibly ancient. Let's just say that, at this point, you go on with your bad self, Mr. Idol...out there on the Mandalay Bay Beach stage...decades past any hope of a white wedding...this Friday night (Sept. 17; 632-7777). Oil those pants, daddy-o.

The difference between the audience for Billy Idol and the one for Saturday's Blue …yster Cult show at Boulder Station (Sept. 18; 547-5300) is about 15 years, or about $6,000 in Viagra, if you are counting. Thoughtful, rolling, atmospheric heavy metal, that's what these guys did--and they did it well. B…C is kind of lucky, in a way; it must be easier to loll around the stage in a faux-stoner Brit-stupor while droning out "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" than it is to repeatedly jam your fist into the air and sneer, "More! More! More!"

Young, or young at heart

Oh, we remember those happy days, way back in the mid-'90s. The future was sporting sideburns, a zoot suit and the kind of shit-eating grin that said, "I'm learning how to swing dance so I can get laid." Then, The Gap started to jump, jive and wail and everybody went off and got married, leaving retro-gangsta-boppers like the Royal Crown Revue to shake their heads and wonder why every fun subculture gets sucked up and spit out by Joe Americano. Enough time has passed now so that the Palms Lounge will either be empty on Friday night (Sept. 17; 942-7777), or (more likely) it will be packed with real-deal swing and rockabilly aficionados.

Of course, the '90s are passé with the kids now, who are so ohmigodilovethe'80s that they'll bounce around mindlessly to Nena's "99 Luftballoons" without realizing that Germany has reunited and the song now has only a historical relevance that they likely don't even recognize. Seriously, if I hear one more person say, "I love the '80s!" and then spit out a list that invariably includes leg warmers, Dirty Dancing, Rubik's cubes and whatever other forgettable, embarrassing cultural artifact they can dig up from my high school time capsule, I'm going to just give the hell in and buy a Buick. If you all want to see and hear the '80s many of us who lived them cared about, go see Vegas-boys-go-big The Killers, who will be warmed up by The Walkmen, Sunday at the House of Blues (Sept. 19; 632-7600). The Killers, formed in Vegas in 2002, reportedly took their name from a New Order video. You know, New Order? They wrote that one song for Orgy?

Native Las Vegan James P. Reza would love it if Todd Sampson (or Lance Gilman, even) would e-mail him an MP3 of "Let It Rain." Oh, and Gigli could fire off some classic Herd of Lemmings tracks too. That would be great, thanks. E-mail the author at jpreza@cox.net.