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| Sunday, January 18, 2004 | PRIOR ISSUE - ARCHIVES |
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| Historic Binion's Horseshoe Closed, Mac King Breaks Record, Hilary Duff Pops By, Destruction For Tam O'Shanter, Stars Jeweler Opens Salon, Vegas Television Network (VTV) Set To Launch, Madame Tussaud's "Britney Experience" Titilates Patrons, Gateway And Wynn Partner, Comedian Wayne Cotter Brings Laughs, Super Bowl Celebrations, More... | |
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The downtown landmark Binions Horseshoe closed on Saturday, Jan. 10, and three days later Harrahs Entertainment stepped up to the plate to save the property. Being a corporation with an existing gaming license makes a sale easy and may allow the resort to open quickly.
Harrahs will retain the Binions Horseshoe name and the famous World Series of Poker which is already planned for April will be able to carry on without interruption.
Harrah's afternoon headliner magician / comedian Mac King qualified to break the world record for the longest game of telephone with 614 participants on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2004. The previous record included 564 participants and was created in March 2003 in Dublin, Ireland.
David Walch, with the Nevada Department of Weights and Measures was in attendance to verify the number of participants. The Guinness Book of World Records will certify the event as record breaking within 90 days.
Local celebrities in attendance included Penn & Teller, Clint Holmes, Lance Burton, and Sheena Easton.
Mac King's first whisper stated, "Mac King is a comedy magic genius." King predicted the final whisper that was sealed and secured in a locked briefcase prior to the event. When the game concluded, and the final whisper was told to the last participant, the initial prediction was revealed: "Macaroni cantaloupe knows the future."
Pop music's favorite girl-next-door has gone from small screen princess in her starring role in the Disney Channel's "Lizzie McGuire" series to singing sensation. She will appear on Saturday, Feb. 7, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. Tickets are $35 and $43; call Ticketmaster at 702-474-4000.
Duff's singing career exploded with her debut record release, "Metamorphosis." The album charted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in its first week of release. The record features 13 songs including the popular single "So Yesterday."
On the motion picture side, Duff is starring in "Cheaper By The Dozen" and the sequel "Agent Cody Bands 2."
In Las Vegas the story seems to be... what goes up - must come down. Progress is never ending!
After 45 years, the family-owned Tam O'Shanter has closed to make room for the Venetian's second Las Vegas resort on the Strip. The 100-room motel build in 1958 has been famous for its famous Irish Tam O'Shanter cap neon sign that will be preserved by the city's Neon Sign Museum.
The Venetian bought the 11.4-acre site and motel in October 1998 with plans to raze the Tam O-Shanter and surround buildings. Future plans call for building a new 3,000-room hotel tower that will cost about $1 billion.
Construction on the $100 million Las Vegas Renaissance Marriott is under way at a prime location adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center's South Hall on Paradise. The non-casino resort with nearly 550 rooms will provide 15 stories of amenities including 20,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space. The location will have the advantage of a monorail stop. The resort is slated to open in 2005.
The proposed Red Rock Station resort planned for the Summerlin area is getting completing negotiations with homeowners in the area. The compromise is to reduce the height of the hotel tower from 300 to 198 feet.
The debut of the World Market Center downtown has been delayed six months until July 2005, even though the first phase of the multi-showroom complex is complete. Phase one of the 7.5 million-square-foot project will have 228 tenants.
The House of Harry Winston, America's premier jeweler and one of the world's largest and most prestigious jewelry empires, will open two new salons in Las Vegas and Taipei this year. Harry Winston currently has exclusive retail salons in New York, Beverly Hills, Geneva, Paris, Tokyo and Osaka.
The 1,000-square-foot Las Vegas salon will open in Fall 2004 in the new extension of the celebrated Forum Shops at Caesars. It will feature the Harry Winston trademark arched doorways and sycamore wood panel interiors, similar to the Tokyo and New York stores.
The House of Harry Winston is the embodiment of three generations of Winston jewelers dating back 100 years. Harry Winston, the son of a New York jeweler, established the company in 1932. Ronald Winston has led the company since his father's death in 1978.
Starting this week, Fiamma Trattoria at the MGM Grand is offering lunch daily from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The eatery serves classic and contemporary Italian cuisine.
Prime Steakhouse at Bellagio has received a rare bottle of Chivas Royal Salute 50-Year-Old (50YO), one of the world's most luxurious blended Scotch whiskies. Worldwide 255 bottles were produced and 10 were made available in the United States and only one made its way to the West Coast and Prime.
Royal Salute 50YO is a blend of robust and powerful whiskies, each matured in oak casks for a minimum of 50 years. It was bottled and launched in 1953 in honor of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II. In 2003, to celebrate the coronation of the Queen and the 50th birthday of the scotch, Royal Salute introduced Royal 50YO, this extremely rare and limited edition.
Each shot of Royal Salute 50YO comes in a specially created keepsake glass and costs $1,050.
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The off-Strip Wild Sage Cafe that opened in February 2001 and won the Epicurean Award as Las Vegas' Best New Off Strip Restaurant opened a sister property last March out on West Sahara Ave. Sad to say both dining places have shut down. Ironically, right after closing, the 2004 Zagat restaurant consumer survey awarded the eateries a very high 25 out of 30 rating for its food. Chicago has a couple gigs coming up at the Stardust in the Wayne Newton Theater, Jan. 21-24 and March 10-13. Tickets are $69.95 plus tax, call 702-617-5577. The Palms has inaugurated a new weekly "Rock the Lounge" Monday night music series featuring metal stars. Jani Lane of Warrant will star tomorrow night and Gilby Clarke's Blue Mafia featuring Teddy Andreadis of Guns N' Roses and others will perform on Jan. 26. Admission for the 8 p.m. shows is $25; call Ticketmaster at 702-474-4000. The new Vegas Television Network (VTV) has plans on Jan. 19 to make an announcement at OPM, the nightclub at Caesars Palace and home base for the network until a studio is built. Details about Las Vegas' first TV network will be unveiled at the launch party. Two hours of VTV's kickoff party, scheduled from 8 p.m. to midnight, will be broadest live to more than 22 million U.S. households. Besides the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas reaping a benefit from Britney Spears short lived marriage, Madame Tussaud's wax museum at The Venetian has a hit tourist attraction. The interactive "Britney Experience" that went up last October is her wax figurine replicating a scene from the HBO concert she performed at the MGM Grand. Her wax likeness now has a veil, bouquet in her hand and garter on her left leg. Nearby is a mannequin of a minister. The spoof is attracting a lot of attention, much like Spears antics. The Silverton Showroom has Kool & The Gang booked on Jan. 30, and "Rocky Mountain High: A Tribute to John Denver" scheduled for Feb. 6 and 7. Maynard Ferguson and his Big Bop Nouveau Band will play in the La Cage Theatre at the Riviera on Jan. 27. On Jan. 24, the Nevada Ballet Theatre will honor Celine Dion as "Woman of the Year" at a Black and While Ball fundraising dinner. It will be held in the Palace Ballroom at Caesars Palace. Ticket prices range from $350 up to the Diamond Table that seats ten for $25,000, which includes a private reception with the singing queen. Park Place Entertainment Corp. has officially changed its name to Caesars Entertainment. More than half the retail stores at the new Mandalay Place are open. One of the more talked about outlets is 55 Degrees Wine + Design that has a wine tasting area. It's a retail wine store created by the same group that designed the wine program at the Aureole restaurant. Other stores that are now open at Mandalay Place include: Elton's, Bardelli and Bardelli Shoes, The Chocolate Swan, Davidoff, Forever Silver, Godt-Cleary Gallery, Le Paradis, Lunettes, MAX & Co., Musette, Oilily, The Reading Room, Samantha Chang, Sauvage, Shoe Obsession, Urban Outfitters and Vintage Ra. In what will be one of the consumer electronics industry's largest and most closely watched commercial deals for digital displays and other consumer electronics, Gateway and Wynn Resorts have struck a relationship that will establish the forthcoming Wynn Las Vegas resort as the standard setter for luxury hotel rooms outfitted with digital gear. The new relationship calls for Gateway to supply approximately 7,000 customized Gateway-branded plasma and LCD TVs as well as hundreds of DVD players and other products at Wynn Las Vegas, a $2 billion, 45-story, 2,698-room resort scheduled to open in April 2005. Gateway and Wynn Las Vegas have been collaborating for months to customize products for the rooms -- each of which is slated to be equipped with between two and four Gateway digital TVs, among other equipment. Standard rooms are planned to include a 30-inch Gateway LCD TV on a sleek, swinging arm in the living room and a 13-inch Gateway LCD TV mounted in the bathroom wall, while certain suites will include 50-inch Gateway plasma screens that appear to "float" in the living room, as well as Gateway LCD TVs in "his and her" bathrooms and Gateway DVD players in the wet bar area. In addition, Gateway will supply more than 200 digital TVs to high-traffic common areas in the resort. Finally, Gateway plans to make all of its products featured throughout the property available for purchase at the resort. Funny man Wayne Cotter, who hosted the Fox television series "Comic Strip Live" for three years, will headline the Riviera Comedy Club for seven nights beginning Jan. 26 with fellow comedian Bill Dwyer, host of Comedy Central's "Battlebots." Tickets are $17.95, call 702-794-9433. Cotter also hosted the cable series "Amazing America" for the Discovery Channel for several seasons and is a favorite of the talk shows. The Riviera's Super Bowl party is a sell out every year. It features a "Super Buffet" with open bars, wide screen TVs, autographed memorabilia, surprise commemorative gifts and drawings. Tickets are $135, call 702-794-9280. Doors open at 1:30 p.m. The lineup of former NFL greats who will be on hand this year include: Deacon Jones, an original member of the Los Angeles Rams' Fearsome Foursome and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame; Hall of Famer Jim Langer, who was an offensive guard with the Miami Dolphins; Pete Johnson, running back with the Cincinnati Bengals; and Billy Kilmer, quarterback for the Washington Redskins. Sam's Town, located on Boulder Highway, will hold its Super Bowl celebration on Feb.1, in the Ponderosa room with multiple big screen TVs. The $20 cover charge includes guarantees admission, all-you-can-eat hamburgers and hot dogs as well as your first beer. The party starts at 1 p.m. and lasts until 7 p.m. For tickets visit tickets.com or call 1-888-464-2468.
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