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/94837
POWER DUO continued from page 68 but "These signs are so Vegas," she says. "They are fine art and even high art, they are also architecture. They're elegantly designed, they're commercial, and they're blue-collar, too: They are just doing their jobs." Kelly says she cried while touring the attraction in the weeks leading to its opening. "There is something about the nostalgia that is really meaningful," she says. "The signs are not perfect, but they are perfectly flawed." Senior tour guide and programs administrator Justin Favela writes the scripts and leads a team in giving those tours, including the one that made Kelly tear up. His passion for Strip history is long in the making: He was in the crowd when the Dunes was felled by a series of theatrical cannon shots from Treasure Island on October 27, 1993. "I was traumatized," says Favela, who was eight years old that fateful night. "I couldn't watch another implosion until the Frontier, the last one, in 2007." was as To Favela, watching the Dunes fall if he were witnessing the destruction of his own home. His grandmother and aunt were maids for years at the Dunes until it closed six months before imploded. Sahara shut its doors just last year. Frontier was imploded in 2007. the hotel was (Favela's aunt still works on the Strip, at Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon, formerly Barbary Coast.) Favela's familial connection to the signs he describes during tours—and to the hotel-casino industry in general—runs deep. His father worked at Binion's Gambling Hall & Hotel (formerly the Horseshoe Club) before Favela was born; his stepfather, who raised him, has worked at Luxor since it opened; and his mother worked at the café at Circus Circus and today is at the Palms. His grandfather and an uncle worked at La Concha as dishwashers—and when Favela goes to work each day, he now walks in through the old La Concha lobby, as it has been reconverted into the Neon Museum's visitors' center. "Almost every family member of mine works at a casino," he says, laughing. "Point to any casino on the Strip, and I have a cousin who works there, basically." The former arts student at UNLV found out about the Neon Boneyard " The signs are so Vegas—they are not perfect, but they are perfectly flawed. "— DANIELLE KELLY after hearing it houses the old Stardust sign. "I wanted to see it up close and personal," he says. He took one of the private tours of the old facility, which covered two lots before the collection was consolidated to a single parcel, and asked if he could volunteer. That was in 2007. "I started doing tours, and eventually they just hired me because I wouldn't leave them alone," he says. "Then I started the volunteer program that we're using now." "My family always makes fun of me for being nostalgic," Favela says. "Here, I get to live in the good old days." 770 Las Vegas Blvd. N., 702-387- 6366; neonmuseum.org V 70 VEGASMAGAZINE.COM The Las Vegas Club is still open—but its old signs live in the Boneyard.