Escape from Douchebaggery, Part 34: Backstage Bar and Billiards Opens

The Fremont East block in Downtown Las Vegas continues to add idiosyncratic watering holes, eateries, and businesses. In addition to the promising spots opening in the near future as well as the recently birthed and totally awesome Commonwealth, the 'hood now boasts a rock bar meets pool hall meets sports bar hybrid, The Backstage Bar and Billiards (or The Triple B as locals have already taken to calling it).

Owners of the bar include DJs who spun for House of Pain and Limp Bizkit, and while a connection to Fred Durst's vile 90's rap rock atrocity is enough to make anyone wary, they've pulled off something pretty cool here and filled in a niche that the neighborhood sorely needed.

If you're looking to catch some games or shoot some pool, now Downtown has a high quality option for partaking in such dude-friendly activities that's far enough away from The Strip that you'll most likely be able to avoid the frattier elements who will probably stick to the big sports bars in New York New York and The Palazzo. The Triple B also does a great job setting itself apart from the more corporate mega-sports bars because of its rock 'n' roll attitude.

The place has an admirably and intentionally scuzzy partied out rock star vibe to it, helped along greatly by the fact that the bar, the tables, and the stools you sit on are made from re-purposed Anvil Cases, those durable boxes that bands use to haul their gear around the country. The place is decorated with blacklight concert posters that lend the place a very 70's vibe, as well as bookcases stacked with vinyl behind the DJ booth. DJ's are often on hand to spin hard-rock hits for an energetic crowd on the dance floor, and even though one of those DJ's was in the worst band ever in history, he was actually spinning some good stuff when I was there.

Prices aren't too bad, and the beer list is decent, with a few tasty Craft and Imported options available on tap. Their mixed drinks seemed to be a little cheaper than the ones they pour at Commonwealth and The Downtown Cocktail Room, but this is not a fancy-pants craft-Cocktail place so that makes sense (the extra few bucks at those places is worth it for the crazy concoctions that the mixologists put into them).

The other thing that excites me about The Triple B is the live music venue attached to the place set to open sometime next year, The Fremont Country Club. A decadent rock club that promises to offer great acts playing in a space that co-owner Carlos "Big Daddy" Adley described as decked out with "30-foot tall diamond tucked silver lame' walls with chariot wagons in the sky, bejewled merry-go-round ponies on the bar, and horseshow VIP booths elevated six feet in the air." Sounds appropriately over the top (especially for a place co-owned by a dude with the nickname "Big Daddy), but the reason it most excites me is that it's a medium sized venue in Downtown, which means that some good but not MGM Grand or even Cosmopolitan pool level bands can be booked to play there. Vegas could use more cool venues for up and coming yet worthy bands that are not yet (and may never become) superstars to play, and The Fremont Country Club sounds like a great option for that. With bejeweled merry-go round ponies.

Until the place opens, I'm content to shoot some pool and drink some hard beer while watching a football game as good rock songs play at The Triple B. For anyone allergic to sports, there's always Insert Coins down the street (and hang out for a bit, cause I'll probably meet you there when I'm done at The Triple B).
 
But for everyone else, The Triple B and the still in the works Fremont Country Club are bringing a much needed dose of rock 'n' roll attitude to Fremont East. The place is cool enough that I'm almost willing to overlook the fact that one of the co-owners committed nearly unforgivable crimes against music and good taste as a member of Limp Bizkit.

Almost.

The Continued Evolution of Downtown Las Vegas

Apologies for the slightly supremely pretentious title, but sometimes excitement for cool new things is a valid excuse for pretentiousness.Or so I tell myself.

I've spent many, many reams of digital ink typing up my praises to Downtown Las Vegas as the neighborhood continues to grow from an empty lot filled mugging-zone where one would not dare spend time after dark away from the single large street of cheesy low stakes gambling parlors into the vibrant and interesting area filled with unique and cool local businesses its quickly becoming. Places like The Downtown Cocktail Room and The Griffin and events like First Fridays have thrived and encouraged the openings of distinct watering holes like Insert Coins, The Lady Silva,  Bar+Bistro, Artifice, Commonwealth, and resurrected classic Atomic Liquors, as well as hipster brunch spot Eat, quirky museums that illuminate the history of the Mob and Atomic Testing in Las Vegas, the soon to open (and surprisingly cool sounding) Shipping Container Park, coffee/vinyl/zine merchants The Beat Coffeehouse, world class cultural showcase The Smith Center... you get the idea. Basically, I'm trying to say that Downtown is pretty cool.

Clearly, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and Downtown Cocktail Room proprietor Michael Cornthwaite's masterplan to convert Downtown Las Vegas into a world-class neighborhood that will attract creative and artistic young people and innovative start-ups (as well as tourists looking for a more off-beat experience than The Strip can offer) to the area is already paying off, and will continue to do so. (Let's just pray that they're not trying to gather all of those people into one Downtown neighborhood in a relatively small city so that they can use their brains to power their brain-powered giant robots. I know this fear is far fetched, but we can't rule it out as a possibility, especially since Hsieh's massive investment of his own money is so generous that some sort of unseen ulterior motive may as yet be revealed.)

Downtown's evolution continues to roll on (to mix metaphors), as list of new businesses and projects are set to debut on or near Fremont Street in the next year or so. Below is a list of just a few #DTV coming attractions I'm most excited about.

The Velveteen Rabbit
Local sisters Pam and Christina Dylag are set to open their dream bar in Downtown as soon as construction finishes, and these crushable alt-chicks have a vision. Named after their favorite children's story, set to serve craft brews and cocktails, and promising to feature an imaginative and whimsical design inspired by its imaginative name (and teased on the bar's Facebook page), the place will most likely become an essential hipster mecca, frequented by Vegan-riding bicycle riders and haunted by food trucks just outside its doors, once it opens officially in 2013.


The Life is Beautiful Festival
No, it's not a weekend devoted to the Oscar-winning Robert Benigni concentration camp set tragi-comedy, but rather a music food and wine festival that promises to bring "arena sized acts" to Downtown in an event that's being organized by a powerful coalition, including the people behind San Francisco's popular answer to Coachella, Outside Lands, the marketing group behind First Fridays, and the guy who served as The Cosmopolitan's music director. Despite the terrible name and even though they have promised "arena-sized" artists, Life is Beautiful has the lot of potential to bring back a full-on music festival that's a little less corporate-driven than iHeart Radio to Las Vegas and features acts a little more interesting and outside-the-box than Lady Gaga or Usher (and which will hopefully be organized in a way that will lead to less diva-like onstage tantrums from mega-selling pop-stars who petulantly insist they're not Justin Bieber).

Bolt Barbers
The irreverent and dude-friendly barbershop, which gained some notoriety by promoting their bad reviews with a "people hate us on Yelp" flag that became so popular that they turned it into book form. Now the cutting-edge hair-cutters are moving to the Shipping Container Park in Las Vegas, in a converted train caboose. Obviously, this place could not be cooler, so get on the crazy train and score yourself a great new cut before you hit the bars on your next Vegas adventure.

Escape from Douchebaggery, Part 29: Don't Tell Mama

Perhaps this is not something I should be admitting, but I really enjoy piano bars.

Maybe it's my love for Piano rock (I'm a not so secret Billy Joel lover), but I love me a smokey bar with a Piano player pounding out covers of the hits. Las Vegas has no shortage of such places, with dueling piano bars Harrah's, New York New York, and Paris, but those joints are generally packed to the gills with a more broish element screaming for Don't Stop Believin' (not that there's anything wrong with that wonderful song, but it's sorta been done to death of late). Don't Tell Mama in Downtown is a different story entirely.

DTM, located right on Fremont Street near a bunch of other cool bars, is a bit small, so try to get there on the early side of the evening if you want to grab a table for you and your peeps. The bartenders take turns belting out tunes played by the energetic and hilarious piano player when they're not serving you strong yet admittedly slightly pricy cocktails. The girls are surprisingly talented, especially singer/ drink-slinger Dre, who has become somewhat of a local celebrity. Throw a few bucks into the tip jar and ask for a request and you can get up and sing your heart out or let the super talented do it for you.

In addition to a Billy Joel rarity (this is not a place to beg for the overplayed yet still wonderful Piano Man, but they conceded my deep cut request), I got them to play some Beatles and Kinks tunes that brought down the house. And even though I didn't have anything to do with the performances beyond requesting the songs, I felt that I had proven something (you'll never accuse me of having anything less than a healthy ego).

But as much as I like to take credit for my piano bar curatorial skills (an extension of my X-Men like abilities to choose the best Jukebox tracks every time I go to The Drawing Room in Los Feliz), the piano player himself really blew me away with the selection of tunes he selected off the top of his head. Radiohead played at a Vegas piano bar? Yes, please!  He did also play a Muse song, but let's not hold that against him.

The place is right in the heart of the "cool part" of Fremont Street, located just a couple doors away from The Griffin, and very close to Insert Coins and Beauty Bar. The crowd is a nice mix of locals, adventurous tourists who have heard the place offers something more off-beat, hipsters, and gays (which made one less than open-minded Yelper so uncomfortable that she rated this awesome place only three stars. Plus she was mad that there weren't "endless drunk renditions of Journey and Billy Joel," so the fact that they play more eclectic music is now apparently a bad thing.  There's no accounting for stupid, I guess).

 Don't Tell Mama is pure fun-time, and just another example of why Downtown is the place to be if you're looking for an offbeat party night  in Vegas.

Escape from Douchery, Part 16: The Cabana Suites at El Cortez

As often as I sing the praises of Downtown Las Vegas, I had never stayed in a hotel on Fremont Street before my last Sin City excursion. I might slag off on the legendary D-Bag element that populates most of the popular spots on The Strip, but the main drag of Las Vegas Boulevard is where most of the action is. Plus, since the economy tanked, you can get really nice rooms at multi-bazillion dollar mega resorts super low rates... compare that to most Downtown lodging options and it's hard to turn down a $150 a night room at The Wynn (when you can find a miraculous deals every once in awhile) compared to a $90 room at one of the outdated Hotels on The Fremont Street Experience that are haunted by the permanent stench of stale cigarettes, sour booze, the perfume (and tears) of cheap hookers, and general desperation. You might not think desperation has a smell, but walk through The Las Vegas Club at 3 in the morning and you'll see what I mean.

But I finally bit the bullet on my last trip when I stayed a night at The El Cortez Hotel's semi-new Cabana Suites. Yes, I hedged my bets by booking a room at Aria on my second night (because they had a great deal that weekend and I was anxious to see what their almost completely automated future rooms were like) just in case staying Downtown turned out to be a tiny-huge mistake. The only mistake, it turned out, was not staying at the super cool suites for the entire weekend.

The El Cortez (double "thes" in the name for those who failed Spanish in high school) bought out The Ogden House Motel, a truly revolting old cheapskate fleabag relic, and smartly tapped into the growing hipster sensibility of the neighborhood by transforming the place into a uniquely designed 64 room non-gaming, smoke-free boutique hotel with style to burn. Suddenly, a hotel that had been open since the 40's and was once the property of Bugsy Segal was connected to one of the hippest spots to lay your head in Las Vegas.


The hotel's first smart move was to team up with The Las Vegas Design Center where they created a competition in which four winners were chosen and given free reign to "design a suite." These rooms are some of the most unique in Vegas, infused with the creative energy of young and hungry designers eager to share their vision with the world for the first time. These distinct suites range in their influences from retro 1950's hepcat cool to clean modernism, but they are united in the fact that they were designed with singular visions in mind. Very cool stuff.

Unfortunately, all of the Design-a-Suite rooms were booked solid on the Friday night in question (because I always have been and always will terrible at planning ahead for anything ever), but I was able to book one of their Junior Suites on the hotel's semi-frustrating website  (and while booking the room was a pain in the ass, the super cheap nightly rate more than made up for it). Once I checked in, I discovered that even the lobby was cool, with  a an art-deco design that was weaved throughout the entire property (including the hallways, with their funky carpeting and funkier wall art), that lent the place a coherent vibe.

 My Junior suite was not massive (as the term "Junior Suite" might indeed imply), but it was more than big enough for myself and my small band of merry travelers. The design was funky-fresh, with a that art-deco look subtly weaved throughout the room. We scored a flat screen television (which one of my suite-mates immediately turned on to flip through premium channels in search of any flashes of nudity), an iPod doc to curate our own pretentious playlist while we pre-gamed before hitting the bars on Fremont Street, and couches on which to chill out after tiring from one of our legendary in-room dance parties (to which you can only hope to one day be invited). Even the bathrooms were tastefully cool, with colorful walls and unique, raised sinks. I'm sorry, but a cool sink will always impress me. It's the little things in life, you know?

I stayed at The Cabana Suites before they opened their brand new pool area, which is set to start operating before summer. I'm sure that they've done just as nice a job on the renovated pool area as they have with the rest of the Boutique (after all, they did call it The Cabana Suites) and I'm secretly hoping it becomes the Vegas version of The Ace Hotel in Palm Springs' totally bitchin' Swim Club. 

While the small boutique hotel doesn't have its own bar or gaming floor (which is actually nice when you get back to your room late at night and you don't have to stumble through the haunting site of desperate souls losing their money at 4 in the morning), you can walk across the street to the El Cortez's main tower and enjoy a drink at the old-timey Parlour Bar, a reasonably priced yet delicious meal at The Flame Steakhouse, and some low-stakes gambling in one of the longest operating Casinos in town. And The Cabana Suites are conveniently located in walking distance to all of the great stuff Fremont Street has to offer, as the place is an extremely short walk from quirky Downtown hotspots like Insert Coins, The Griffin, The Downtown Cocktail Room, The Drink and Drag, and The Beat Coffeehouse.

While a hotel in Vegas is really just a place to do a few shots before spending a wild adventure on the streets of the city until the wee hours only to stumble back into for a few short and fitfully drunken hours of shut-eye, I will definitely be staying at the hip boutique in the near future. With its location in the heart of Downtown and super cool retro-modern design, The Cabana Suites at The El Cortez is the closest thing Vegas has to a truly hipster-approved hotel (at least until they get their act together and open an Ace in Downtown).

Tony Hsieh's Plan to Ressurect Downtown Las Vegas

I don't care about shoes.

My Converse All Stars are are basically a mess of ripped canvas, rubber, and duct tape that are an epic daily struggle to pull on before I stumble out the door in a caffeine-deprived fugue-state every morning. My philosophy on replacing shoes basically boils down to: I'll get new ones when my current pair no longer adequately protect my feet from hot asphalt, rocks, and used needles.

Though I could care less about footwear, I am a fan of Zappos.Com. The extremely successful web-shoe store (okay I know they sell more than shoes now, but it's what they're primarily known for) has an exceptionally creative and charismatic CEO in Tony Hsieh (whose youthful mega-success makes me feel insecure about my own life and accomplishments, but that's nothing new) who emphasizes transparency (offering tours of the company's offices to anybody who cares to take them) and employee happiness (as he strives to make his campus a fun, creative and vibrant place to work, complete with personally and elaborately themed cubicles, a nap room, and a closet filled with Razor Scooters).


But the most awesome thing about Hsieh and his Zappos team is their plan to turn Downtown Las Vegas into a vital metropolitan center where smart tech companies operate during the day and cool bars, restaurants, and music venues are filled with people night after night.

It's an ambitious goal. While The Strip is one of the most jam packed avenues in the world, Downtown is still largely a ghost-town. I have written extensively on this blog about the DTLV haunts that I love, like The Griffin, Beauty Bar, and Insert Coins. I've talked about the First Fridays Art Festival and how it's brings out the artsy types once a month. I've declared (and we all know how much weight and influence my declarations carry) that Downtown Las Vegas is essentially becoming the center of the young, urban, artistic, crowd, the hipster mecca of one of the most overly commercialized and gaudy cities ever built by man (don't take that as a criticism; you know I love you Sin City). So sure, there are many disparate hipster elements that have come together in Downtown to make it a neighborhood of growing coolness, but what the area really needs is a creative visionary who believes in the potential of the district to pull everything together in a coherent way and really help it reach its full potential. And it seems like that visionary just might be Tony Hsieh.

Hsieh and a few other investors bought the rights to the First Fridays event from non-profit group Whirlygig for $2 million. The move was a surprise to gallery owners and artists, but the biggest shock is that nobody has protested. While corporate interests taking over an art festival from a non-profit group would often be criticized as dangerously close to selling out, it's a credit to the goodwill that Hsieh and his company have built up in the Las Vegas community that people were excited about the change and the infusion of ideas (and cash) that it would bring. Hsieh has also moved Zappos HQ into the old City Hall building, a very cool historic structure that would probably have been demolished eventually otherwise. The influx of young employees is directly responsible for the existence of The Beat Coffeehouse, a super cool venue that hosts local bands and sells great beer, vinyl records, and excellent coffee.

The inventive CEO and his merry band of followers have bigger plans to continue investing in Downtown's revitalization, with the hope that more forward thinking companies who want to a taste of that Zappos magic (and lax Nevada tax codes), cool bars, restaurants, music venues, comedy clubs, record stores, movie theaters, and interesting hotels (Ace Hotel DTLV! Do it!) will take an interest in setting up shop there. It's a big dream that will take years to come to fruition, but Tony Hsieh seems like the type of guy who has the creative vision and resources (he's invested a bunch of his own money into the idea and claims he's as motivated by the desire to live in a cool neighborhood and support his city as much as he's doing for business reasons) to really transform Downtown into a special place.

And if it will help his plan at all, I might just order myself a new pair of Chuck's from Zappos. I'll call it my contribution to the cause.

Escape From Douchery, Part 7: Insert Coins

Insert Coins is a brand new Vegas concept, catering to a different kind of gamer than the town is historically known for attracting. While Las Vegas hosts the Pinball Hall of Fame and features a Gameworks arcade, the ultimate gamblers paradise is not particularly known as a video game haven, but all that may change now that Insert Coins has opened in Downtown Las Vegas in The Fremont Street district.

Insert Coins is a gamer's dream come true, featuring an impressive collection of classic, coin-operated standup arcade cabinets and nearly every console ever produced which you can play on big screen TVs while you lounge on on ultra comfy couches. The ultra-lounge/ arcade offers the same kind of bottle service you'd find at the trendiest Vegas clubs, at prices far below what you'd pay at those same trendy clubs... plus you get to play an Atari 2600 or a Dreamcast while you're treated like a VIP, instead of trying to look cool in a place that's packed to the gills because they club has advertised that Rhianna is supposed to show up for a guest appearance that never actually happens.

I'm normally against bottle service because it just seems like the only reason to spend the ridiculous amount of money that bottle service costs is to show off that you have enough money to afford bottle service, but when I found out it could be done for $100 in a "videolounge and gamebar," my buddies and I decided we had to give it a shot. We ordered a bottle of their finest whiskey (that we could afford at our price point), rented an Atari 2600, and got started trash-talking at each other as we played old-timey favorites like Missile Command, Dig Dug, and Joust (a game for which I have unmatchable skills in my group of friends), feeling confident that our alpha male command of 80's console classics would surely attract the ladies to our couch. No such luck, as the unattached women mostly stayed on the dance floor (and those that did watch us play for a few moments walked away because we all became too paralyzed with fear to turn around and say hello), where a DJ spun a more eclectic mix of music (read: heavy on Daft Punk, light on Ke$ha), reflecting the more eclectic (for Vegas) crowd that frequents the place. While my friend thought the reason none of the hotties joined our couch was because of Insert Coin's "appalling" omission of the historically terrible ET game, whose mythological badness he believed would be a sure conversation starter, I convinced my bros to get over their wallflower ways and to hit the dance floor... because I explained to them that while, yes the girls at the place were geeky-cool enough to frequent a place that calls itself a gamebar, we still had the responsibility to meet them at least halfway.

After downing a few more shots of liquid courage and berating each other through a few more rounds of Joust, I rallied my boys and got them dancin'. One of my normally-much-more awkward buddies met a very cute-glasses-wearing girl from Brooklyn and made out with her to the pulse of actually good dance music while they were lit by a very cool light show, and I swear I wasn't all that jealous even though she had that sexy librarian thing going for her that I love so dearly.

It was around 2 AM when I decided that Insert Coins was kind of my new favorite place in the world, or at least in Las Vegas, a hipster's dream come true that draws geeky cool folks (whom I started referring to as "my people" in a drunk and sentimental haze late into the night) with a perfectly mixed cocktail of good dance music, affordable drinks and a whole lot of classic video games. It's just another example of how Fremont Street is quickly becoming the Las Vegas equivalent of Los Feliz or Brooklyn, a neighborhood that draws the geeky, the artsy, the curious, the cultured and the strange... or in other words: my people.