Autographed Copies of My New Paperbook Book Available!

So happy to announce that the Paperbook version of my popular book on the first twenty-five years of the Las Vegas Strip: Gambling on a Dream: The Classic Las Vegas Strip 1930-1955 is now available! If you go to my website, you can order a personalized autographed copy:

http://classiclasvegas.com/book-vol1-paperback/

The book covers the bar and nightclub that were located on Highway 91 before the first hotel, the El Rancho Vegas, was built. Once the dreamers came along new hotels began to take shape up and down the boulevard. The book also covers the first 10 hotels from conception to demolition (with a significant survival story included), and their neon signs that came to define the Las Vegas Strip. This is the story of how the Las Vegas Strip was born and how it grew.

You can also order the companion DVD that offers over 35 interviews with the men and women who were there and share their stories. Great story-tellers such as hotel executive Burton Cohen, Nancy Williams Baker who danced at the El Rancho Vegas in the early days of the hotel, those who knew Howard Hughes and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, performers such as Sam Butera, Claude Trenier, Pete Barbutti and Steve Rossi as well as many others. Bonus features also include a photo gallery of rarely-seen, historic images.

Gambling on a Dream paperback book and companion DVD

Gambling on a Dream paperback book and companion DVD

So get your copy today!

Lost Vegas: The Mint

It was a majestic mid-century modern piece of architecture sitting right there on Fremont Street amid the western motif of the Golden Nugget and the western flavor of Benny Binion's Horseshoe Club.

The Mint, all pink and adorned in a necklace of chaser lights and neon, is the one hotel on Fremont Street that to this day, when Hollywood set designers want to reference that era and Las Vegas, the Mint is the go-to choice. With its pylon sign and the chaser lights rising into the night sky to light the neon star at the top of the pylon, the Mint gloried in its mid-century modern finery.

Read More

Classic Saturday!

Here are some images! How many do you remember?

Honest John's Casino, the Honest John neon remind me of the Holiday Motel  

Honest John's Casino, the Honest John neon remind me of the Holiday Motel

 

 

Holiday Motel at night!

Holiday Motel at night!

J.C, Penney's on Fremont St (now the Emergency Arts bldg), catalog pick up counter was around the corner

J.C, Penney's on Fremont St (now the Emergency Arts bldg), catalog pick up counter was around the corner

lido motel
Nashville Nevada Club on Boulder Highway- my parents were regulars there

Nashville Nevada Club on Boulder Highway- my parents were regulars there

Stardust Drive In Theater sign

Stardust Drive In Theater sign

Hotel Last Frontier Texaco sign

The Neon Museum, the NY Times and Us!

 

The New York Times did a wonderful piece on the Neon Museum and the Stardust sign and included in the story is a link to our history of the Stardust Hotel!

Check it out:

We may be made of star stuff, as the astronomer Carl Sagan once said, but our imaginations contain a strong dose of “Stardust” — at least as the word appears here. The capital S, its 17-foot-tall body peppered with bulbs, is shaped like a coy lightning bolt. Its jagged strokes change thickness and meet at unexpected angles, like the stylized clothes of “The Jetsons.” The T’s are like toon sketches of rays shooting from stars.

For the rest of the article (and the link to us is in the next paragraph):

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/arts/design/the-neon-museum-in-las-vegas.html

 

Thanks, New York Times!!!!