Go: Where to Go, What to Do & Why

By James P. Reza

After three weeks of solid holiday partying, Las Vegas is finally showing signs of being ready to take its winter breather. It all started the Monday before Christmas and extended through the Monday after New Year's Day. The result? 2004-2005 was, perhaps thanks to the luck of the calendar, one of the city's busiest holiday seasons in memory in regard to nightlife. If you found yourself sitting at home, it was lack of will, not lack of options, that kept you there.

You know party fever has struck when even a biting-cold drizzle on First Friday still pulls the punters to the soulful Get Back at downtown's Ice House Lounge. Even the outskirts were getting in on the action, with Green Valley's Table 34 (a welcome rebirth of departed fave Wild Sage) and Summerlin's Agave (the stylish new 24-hour Mexicantina from the Roadrunner Saloon folks) sucking in both restless natives who prefer to party close to the pad as well as downtown denizens who are suburb-slumming for a night.

Proof of the city's lengthy libertine streak could be found--or, rather, not be found--last weekend, when the expected rush of CES attendees was paltry compared with what had transpired throughout the city's restaurants, bars and nightclubs during the preceding period. "This is the quietest night in three weeks, and we're thankful," said one exhausted mixologist at Simon Kitchen & Bar last Saturday. "This has been killing us." While it's expected that Convention Corridor joints like Firefly Bistro would stay steady throughout the winter, even off-Strip locals haunts like the Hookah Lounge have been boasting waiting lists on Thursdays. Nobody in the industry is complaining, of course, but it will be nice to have a few weeks of locals-friendly nightlife (read: no lines) before the Spring Break crowd arrives to--ho, hum--show us their tits.

State of comedy

Fame is a funny thing. It used to be that you couldn't fling around a James Mason impression on a primetime variety show without Rich Little doing a better one over your shoulder. And if you remember any of those cultural artifacts, then you may be the demographic that Summerlin's Suncoast is after when it books its entertainment (the Smothers Brothers, Vicki Lawrence and the Osmond Brothers are all slated in 2005). That said, just because Little has been relegated to the B-list doesn't mean the impressionist's skilz have dropped; he even does a Britney Spears. Check out Rich Little at the Suncoast Friday through Sunday (636-7111).

Ah, the red states. How they loves them some good old-fashioned funny stuff. "You don't have to work blue," they say, not even realizing the subtle irony of that sentiment. Then again, "subtlety" and "irony" were never things the red states were very good at. But boy, how they loves them some Jay Leno. Until last week, that is, when the recently reunited Motley CrŸe dropped an F-bomb on "The Tonight Show." A reunited Motley CrŸe on television? Where's the FCC when you need 'em? Probably glued to the set waiting for Kelly Ripa to burst through a halter while fawning over Regis Philbin. You, on the other hand, can see Leno and Philbin this week live in Vegas, likely sans F-bombs; Leno is at the Mirage (Jan. 14-15; 791-7111), Philbin at the Golden Nugget (Jan. 14-15; 385-7111).

After we drop mom off at one of these shows, we'll trip over to the House of Blues for a return engagement of "Daily Show" regular Lewis Black (joined by John Bowman), who is far more likely to burst a vein than a halter. You can be sure that rampaging ranter Black, considered the libertarian's replacement for turncoat Dennis Miller, will be talking smack about the Mississippi library district's banning--then backpedaling--of Jon Stewart's best-selling America (The Book). Lewis performs Friday and Saturday (Jan. 14-15; 632-7600).

That '70s show

Most of the 1970s that wasn't spent flying high at Studio 54 and groping each other in a strobe-lit frenzy of Sister Sledge and the Bee Gees was instead enjoyed moisturizing mullets and rocking out to some serious Midwestern arena-jams. Chicago was a hotbed of such acts, including, creatively enough, Chicago, a jazzy rock outfit that penned numerous, still-popular horn-driven power ballads (see: the soundtrack to the Darryl Hannah/Peter Gallagher fling-flick Summer Lovers). Add to that mix Styx, which, as much as we hate to admit it, captured our "Chariots of the Gods"-fueled adolescent dreams with its hit "Come Sail Away." You know, if we weren't such stuck-up hipsters, we might just head to the Aladdin Theatre for Styx and Gregg Rolie (Jan. 16; 785-5555), or to the Stardust for Chicago (Jan. 19-22; 732-6325).

But seeing as how we are stuck-up hipsters, instead we'll just don our vintage Ric Ocasek suit and spend our valet money at the Hard Rock Hotel on Saturday (Jan. 13; 693-5000), just so we can bitch about how the Hives really suck, and how they are just garage rock bandwagoneers (even though they formed in 1992), and how the Swedes haven't done anything of note since Abba.

And we'll say all of that with perfectly practiced irony, because deep down we know we absolutely hated Abba when our big sister was listening to them, but to admit we actually like the Hives means we lose every ounce of hipster cred we ever thought we may have had. It's a hard-knock life, this hipster charade. At least the drinks in The Joint are cheap. Hey, wait a minute...

Native Las Vegan James P. Reza admits he owned--and rocked out to--Pieces of Eight before he started walking the hipster tightrope. E-mail the author at jpreza@cox.net.