This weekend, we explored some real gems that in 12 years living in Las Vegas, we somehow didn’t know existed. (Until this weekend.) Oh, and we watched sports, of course! Duh!
THIS WEEKEND
- Go there within this page: The Beach Hut Deli | Or go to their site: beachhutdeli.com | 9500 S Eastern Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89123
- Nielsens Frozen Custard | nielsensfrozencustard.net | 9480 S. Eastern Ave #100, Las Vegas, NV 89123
- Grouchy John’s Coffee Shop | grouchyjohns.com | 8520 S Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, Nevada 89123
- Capo’s Restaurant & Speakeasy | www.caposrestaurant.com | 5675 W. Sahara Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89146
- Onyx Theater | onyxtheatre.com | 953-16B E Sahara Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89104
- The Golden Tiki | www.thegoldentiki.com | 3939 Spring Mountain Rd, Las Vegas NV 89102
- South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa | southpointcasino.com | 9777 Las Vegas Blvd South, Las Vegas, NV 89183
- Fireside Restaurant & Tavern | orbtaverns.com/fireside | 1785 E. Cactus Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89183
- For ALL the places we’ve gone in 2016, click here!
But first, on Saturday, we took Miles Davis out on some errands and to some old favorites. He got to go to The Beach Hut Deli (a great place to sit outside and eat an over-stuffed deli sandwich made california style. And they beer and live music on the weekends!), Nielsens Frozen Custard (it’s like ice cream but tastier and healthier! Seriously, this place is adorable and you should try it.) and Grouchy John’s Coffee Shop. Grouchy John’s is the best coffee shop in town.
Grouchy John’s Coffee Shop!
Dogs are welcome at Grouchy John’s
Not because their coffee is amazing (it is), or because their beans are locally sourced (they are – they’re such huge promoters of small local business that they promote other local coffee shops on their website), or because they love Star Wars so much (um, they do, and you’ll know why when you go there), or because they started as a truck, and have since grown into a location, then a larger location, but maybe because a coffee shop is about more than coffee.
It’s also about atmosphere. It’s about whether or not you wanna sit down at the place and spend a couple of hours there. (I’m looking at you, cold-ass Starbucks at Eastern & Sunridge.) A coffee shop should be slightly more comfortable than your own living room.
To some, coffee shops may be about showing off your Macbook now. And I do a fair bit of that, on accident. But to me, they’ve always been about this balance of solitude and congregation. Having a place where you feel comfortable doing your thing, whatever that may be. You’re political? Come here and discuss it with some friends. You like checkers? We have those. Tell your poetry. Play your guitar. Or just sit and drink coffee.
Coffee shops are like bars, but instead of drinking something that makes you dumber, you drink something that makes you smarter. The result is coffee shops are where so many important things happened over the past 500 years; so many revolts were started in coffee shops; so many lovers had their first great conversation; auction houses like Sotheby’s got their start there; it’s where the Freemasons were founded; where the first political caucuses gathered; where Voltaire discussed his views; and you know, other stuff happened there, too.
Look, I’m not saying any of that’s happening at Grouchy’s. But I’m just saying if it were happening at Grouchy’s, you probably wouldn’t know it until after the fact. So you’d better get your ass down there, just in case.
Capo’s Restaurant & Speakeasy
The Lucky table
That night, we had dinner at Capo’s Restaurant & Speakeasy. If you haven’t been, go. It’s an over-the-top tribute to a very special time in Las Vegas history.
You enter through this inconspicuous back door and ring a bell. The maitre d’ peeks his head through a trick hole in the wall, and if he likes the looks of you, lets you in through a hidden door. Welcome to Capo’s, a mob-themed, old-school Vegas, speakeasy style Italian steakhouse.
Expect fake leather booths, a constant stream of entertainment, The Godfather on loop above the bar, and really great Italian food. 
Sordid Lives
After dinner, we went back to the Onyx Theater for another awesome production in the theater’s 10th anniversary season – this time, Del Shores’ Sordid Lives.
Billed as “a black comedy about white trash” this production lived up to its name. Mostly, it was funny. There was drinking and gun toting and cursing, and lots of big, southern decolletage.
Shifting to comedies was apparently a direction the Onyx took this year under the leadership of Troy Heard, the new director of their resident production group, in an effort to keep the stage alive.
But Sordid Lives was a few other things, too. Namely, it served as a stark reminder of what it was like to be homosexual in America in 1998. And that’s pretty refreshing in 2016, in light of a recent Supreme Court decision to put the gavel down on the nationwide gay marriage debate.
The two kings!
It’s a reality that has changed so much in other, more subtle ways too, and over such a short period. It feels like the national conversation around homosexuality as recent as 1998 USED to be “you should be brave and ‘come out of the closet’ – we know it’s hard because you’re different, but hey, we’ll try to accept you” to, in 2016: “You don’t have to ‘come out’ of anywhere. That’s damn silly. You’re who you are just like I am who I am. Are we still talking about this?” Which is great.
Given this, and a general laissez faire about a great many topics that The Great Generation would’ve considered ‘hot button,’ I have a great respect and admiration for the Millennial Generation. Bravo to today’s youth for choosing love over violence more than ever in recent history. Choosing acceptance over prejudice. And not because it’s the right thing to do. But because it’s just part of their DNA. I feel like we’re finally working toward a world we can all be proud of, and that’s really beautiful.
Caveat: Despite that, I recognize that it’s still so hard for so many minorities in so many pockets of this country. I recognize we have a long way to go.
The Golden Tiki
Polynesia is close to China, right?
Speaking of minorities, after the show, we went to The Golden Tiki in China Town. This place is crazy. Remember what I said about cool a few weeks ago? About there being a version of cool that’s all about not caring? Well, bars usually fit into that category. The less you care, the cooler you are.
Not this place. They care a great deal. And that seems to have made them uber cool. It’s the Jackrabbit Slims effect. Over-the-top decor, over-the-top drinks, over-the-top entertainment. The Golden Tiki left no stone unturned. (er, tree uncarved?) And all that caring makes a bold statement: we’re confident that if you don’t like us, make some room, because someone else will. It felt like the kind of place that only cocaine could complete.
And this place was packed. Jackie thinks it was some kind of UNLV thing, because they were mostly pretty young. Although, we’re getting old, so everyone’s starting to look young…
I had the namesake drink, which turned out to be stronger than it looked, and we shared a shot of Appleton 12, just for taste. Strong, smooth going down, and tasted like an ashtray. But as I say that, I’m not sure if I mean it as a compliment or an insult.
SPORTS!
On Sunday, I tried to watch sports. Okay, I really did. And shit, March Madness is sports on steroids, riding a motocross bike over a volcano. If there’s any sport I can get into, it’s the ADHD-inducing, whiplash, 87-games-in-one-day, dribble-fest known as March Madness. (ahem, “March to the Championship” at the casino we went to. Thanks, NCAA for being dicks, apparently.)
Excuse me, we’re looking for the basketball show?
We met Chris and Allison at the South Point because they were having a party in the ballroom with $16 buckets, but it turned out to only be on Saturday. So we watched from the sports book lounge.
The South Point is my old stomping ground. I used to live right down the street, and have spent many evenings there bowling, catching a movie, or getting drunk to Spazmatics.
I love South Point because it’s so comfortable with who and what it is. It’s got an equestrian center in the back, and as a result, draws a lot of cowboys. And that sort of dictates the personality of the place. It’s low key, cheap, and is just enough quality for you to hopefully not notice its low quality.
The gaudy yet still approachable: South Point
But the place kills it. I’ve never been in this place when it wasn’t packed. They opened a Steak N’ Shake inside, and it had a line every hour of the day for weeks. One time, I’m walking through the casino floor at like 2am, and there’s a hot dog cart – yes, they have a mobile hot dog cart in the middle of their casino floor – and there’s like 15 people in line. That’s just the kinda place this place is. The it’s-2am-and-there’s-15-people-in-line-for-a-hot-dog kinda place.
That probably has to do with its history. This place opened as South Coast – another installment of the Coast franchise.
Michael Gaughan, former man-in-charge at Coast Casinos, began his long run in the casino business with the opening of the Barbary Coast in 1979. In 2004, after opening the 5th Coast-branded slot joint in town, he announced he was cashing in and selling the whole lot to Boyd. In exchange, he’d keep just one property – the South Coast – a property for which he held a certain affinity, because of his wife’s interest in the equestrian center. (Okay, in the name of full disclosure, he also made like a half-a-billion dollars from the transaction.)
A condition of the trade: a name change to South Point. Oh, and one other condition: Michael gets to keep his namesake restaurant. Probably one of the nicest, most expensive restaurants in town. Put it on your bucket list or whatever.
Anyway, when you get a guy who’s proven he can create such remarkable success in the space, a guy who’s got the formula down, and you focus his ‘retirement’ energy on making just ONE property happen, what you get is the smash hit, South Point.
No tables left 🙁
There wasn’t one single table available in the lounge. We literally had to cobble together 4 seats – and no table. But our one sports bet (on Hawaii, I know…) earned us a drink ticket, so what choice did we have?!
Yeah, so you can bet on sports in Las Vegas. How cool is that? It doesn’t sound that special, but the current estimate of how much money is bet on sporting events each year in this country is $400 billion. Just stop and take the number in. $400 billion. This country WANTS sports betting, and will do it, legal or not. It just so happens to be legal here.
Anyway, Sports!
A great way to convert $20 into useless paper.
Now I COULD use this opportunity to talk about how sports are dumb. And you would probably agree that they are. Or I could try to convince you that the world is better off without sports all together, and I have a pretty compelling case. But you’re probably too emotionally attached to some team that I would fail to convince you.
Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing—but none of them serious.
Alan Minter
I could talk about how arbitrary it is that you root for some team from your hometown, just because some owner brought them there. (Or in the case of college sports, because you got a bachelor’s in the History of Toothpicks or something there.) Or about how it’s even MORE arbitrary if you’re rooting for them AND YOU’VE NEVER LIVED THERE. I don’t know what to make of those people. I could talk about how you’re falling victim to a trigger in your reptilian brain to create concentric circles of loyalty.
Anything I do is normal, as long as it’s done in the name of my fandom.
No, instead, I’m going to use this time to talk about something else.
Sports in Las Vegas
I didn’t grow up here, but I am proud of Las Vegas, and what it’s become. Las Vegas does have heritage; Las Vegas does have culture. But all too often, I listen to Vegas residents tell me otherwise. Or about how it’s better in Chicago for this reason or that. The weather is better in LA. The food scene is better in New York. People were more friendly with their neighbors back in the Midwest. Gee, I miss that. The city I grew up in had an identity. Or it was better for raising kids. Or “I belonged.”
You know who you are. Stop it.
Nearly 80% of Vegas residents are transplants – they moved here at some point in their lives; that’s far more than every other city in our country. And it’s thanks to our relentless, hyper growth over the past few decades. We are a victim of our own success. Here are a few examples:
And many of Vegas’s transplants have physically moved here, but emotionally never left their hometown. And it turns out that feeling has a lot to do with a natural attachment to where you grew up. 
March Madness has become quite a spectacle in Las Vegas lately. As has the superbowl. All the casinos throw big parties and the sports books are packed.
I don’t know what a professional sports team does for most cities. I reckon not very much. But I know what it would do for Las Vegas. And I’m a fan. Not necessarily a fan of some future team we may have one day, but a fan of the idea.
“C’moooonnn, don’t you wanna move your team to Vegas???”
Oscar Goodman knew this and spent many years trying to wrangle a professional sports team for Las Vegas.
You may hear people say that even if Las Vegas had one, they would probably still be fans of the Chicago Cubs, or the LA Kings, or the New England whatevers.
But just wait. How can you not love the team and still love the city? And how can you live in the city without loving it? It’s cognitive dissonance. You would be angry every day of your life.
And if you’re not convinced, you just wait until that new LV pro sports team (The Las Vegas Stripper Poles?) wins their first big Whatever. We’ll see if you start donning the right jersey then.
Well, we’re closer than ever. MGM’s new arena opens in April, and is regulation for an NBA or NHL team. And Bill Foley is remarkably close to making that team a hockey team. Add to that it’s starting to feel like the Raiders are getting really close to moving here as well.
The fact is, as silly as it seems, people do rally around a team. It does bring people together. And in the case where it does – for those people, it might just make a collection of 2 million people living in the desert feel a little bit more like home.
It’s Voting Time!!!
Fireside
After a successful SP trip, we made our way to another old local watering hole from my days living in Silverado Ranch: Fireside. I used to go there all the time when I would get off shift at 10pm or midnight.
That’s another one of those hidden little gems about living in a 3-shift town – you can do just about anything any time of the day. Sure, you can find late-night restaurant-quality eating and drinking and you can gamble. But you can also grocery shop. Pump gas. Pick up your dry cleaning. Go bowling or play mini golf. Get married.
Yum… My Tripel Karmeliet is wearing a Sunday hat!
I just can’t tell you enough how amazing this place is. It’s everything I want when I drink: good beers, generous jager pours, super dark lighting so you don’t have to talk to people if you don’t want to, bar crack machine with naked photo hunt, and the best bar staff in Las Vegas.
Oh, and really, really great bar food. I mean, don’t get me wrong – it’s bar food. But they take the time to do it well. Their chicken fingers are perfectly breaded. Their nachos are individually dressed. If you have the stomach for it, try the pepperstrami.
Oh, and they play sports on the TVs there!
I have so many great memories here; and so many other moments that I don’t remember on account of the drinks, but I’m sure they were amazing as well.
What makes a community great? You do. Now go get started.
For all weekend recaps, visit maketheweekend.com.
