Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/555392
photography by patrick gray of kabik photo group (snow) left: With my fellow Miss Nevada judges—Tina Kunzer-Murphy, John Katsilometes, Keith Thompson, Susan Anton, Mike Miller, and Jennifer Lier—in the Smith Center's Reynolds Hall just before the pageant got under way. right: I met up with chef Curtis Stone and his brother Luke Stone at B&B Ristorante before Curtis went off to judge the UFC Ultimate Cookoff at Lagasse's Stadium. Brittany Snow graced our anniversary cover—and our anniversary party at Omnia in Caesars. Anyone who moves to LAs vegAs from another city has an occasional surreal meta moment that underscores their new life in a place that is unlike other cities. For me, there was the time Mr. Las Vegas, Wayne Newton, patiently waited 30 minutes for me to finish my conversation with Steve Wynn. It's in the Proustian response I have to Robin Leach's booming voice, unchanged since my childhood, which now emcees virtually every com- munity event. It happens each time I explain to my 6 -year-old that the beam-topped Luxor pyramid she can see from her bedroom window, despite having occupied the Vegas Strip for a mind-bending 22 years, is not actually ancient Egypt. And so on. Even Vegas natives acknowledge having grown up in unusual circumstances (usually after they leave). In her 1981 New York magazine article "Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter," Susan Berman—daughter of Bugsy Siegel's partner David Berman—recalled practicing her multiplication tables on a retired slot machine that her father set up in the Flamingo's count- ing room. And there was the time he decided to set up a synagogue, with a seder at the Last Frontier Hotel. ("Occasionally, confused guests would wander in and ask why there was no f loor show that night, and we kids would laugh hysterically at their mistake.") If the Vegas Strip is not your everyday reality, you're invited to suspend disbelief while you visit. This is why I particularly enjoy our spring and fall fashion issues, whose high concepts seem a little more attainable in a city like Vegas. Anyone who doubts the transformative power of fashion—and this town's eagerness to embrace whatever persona you're adopting during your visit—need only stand in line at Omnia on a Calvin Harris night. Thousands of tourists, bachelorettes, and conventioneers, wearing unforgiving sausage casings and seven-inch heels, are turned into what Tom Wolfe would call "gold-lamé odalisques," a phrase as relevant today as when he wrote it in 1965. You're a lot more intimi- dating than you looked in the airport arrivals area. Las Vegas being my year-round reality, I only sometimes summon the energy to shift gears from suburban mom-wear to full-on glam. But there is something empowering in knowing that no matter how criminal my fashion choices may be in another city, Vegas appreciates the effort. As we appreciate yours. It's our heritage, after all. Follow me on Twitter at @andreabennett1 and on vegasmagazine.com. andr ea bennett 34 vegasmagazine.com Letter from the editor-in-Chief