This weekend was Memorial Day Weekend, which on the Las Vegas Strip has come to mean Aoki and Guetta will be playing at the pools and cabanas start at $5K.
Off the strip, Las Vegas locals are doing what folks do all around the country on MDW – eating meat outside and getting in some pool time. This weekend, I’ll be doing my own flavor of both of those. My “pool time” will be billiards, and I’ll leave the outside-meat-eating to the stars of the show at The Lion Habitat.
Memorial Day is about remembering those soldiers who died protecting our freedoms. This weekend, it will be all about redefining ‘Freedom’ for the American in all of us. Stay tuned; it could be a bumpy ride.
THIS WEEKEND
- Kneaders Bakery | kneaders.com | 11271 S Eastern Ave, Henderson, NV 89052
- The Lion Habitat | lionhabitatranch.com | 382 Bruner Ave, Henderson, NV 89044
- The Landings | thelandingshnd.com | 3500 Executive Terminal Dr, Henderson, NV 89052
- Brews & Blues | www.springspreserve.org
- Springs Preserve | www.springspreserve.org | 333 S Valley View Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89107
- VNEA World Pool Championships | www.vnea.com
- Bally’s Las Vegas | www.caesars.com/ballys-las-vegas | 3645 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89109
- Naked City Pizza | www.nakedcitylv.com | 4608 Paradise Road, Las Vegas, NV 89169
Kneaders Bakery
Jackie and I started the weekend off at Kneaders Bakery. A location just opened up on Eastern like 3 feet from our house, so it was inevitable that we try it.
Holy shit, it was packed. They’re a chain. That always tends to make everything look a little too well done in my opinion. Like, too many marketers have had their grubby hands all over the menu, the layout, the logo, etc. Then eventually some marketer comes along and says “hey, let’s have them hand-write this shit so it doesn’t look too well done” …and the Starbucks secondary menus are born. (I can say that because I’m a marketer.)
Anyway, Kneaders does your typical counter-order, breakfast and lunch cafe/bakery kind of fare. We might have mis-ordered, because we were somewhere between breakfast and lunch. I had a chocolate croissant and Jackie had a coconut cream pie. I know. At 11am.
Everyone else seemed really happy though with their piles of pancakes and clever little muffins.
The Lion Habitat
The Lion Habitat could only exist in Las Vegas.
When the MGM Grand decided renovate and put in, I don’t know, a million more square feet of Hakkasan, something had to go.
And that was that.
The four-legged, once-great Las Vegas Strip entertainers that iconified the MGM Grand and MGM Studios for decades were left in the dust – literally; the Lion Habitat off St. Rose Parkway is a retirement-home-in-the-desert for the hairy, 500-pound kings of the green felt jungle. From the ashes of the Lion Exhibit rose the Lion Habitat.
In truth, these lions lived here anyway. They worked at MGM’s lion exhibit in 6-hour shifts, commuting back and forth to work like so many human workers. I hope they got holidays off and decent health care. An all-meat diet can be trying on the heart.
They’ve been here forever. You know the lion that roars at the beginning on MGM movies? His grandchildren still live here at the Lion Habitat.
People have told me I’m a control freak. I correct them. Freedom and control are two sides of the same coin, and it’s freedom I’m interested in.
So when the plug was pulled at MGM, this became their full-time job, and their private home became a non-profit, accepting visitors daily for $25.
We watched a lion cub feeding. The cubs get fed by hand, to teach them manners. That in and of itself is pretty cool.
A fully-grown male lion eats up to 15 pounds of meat a day. The Lion Habitat spends over $20,000 a month in food.
For some reason, The Lion Habitat also has some ostriches and a giraffe named Ozzie. (Sorry ostriches, I didn’t catch your names.)
Ostriches are hilarious. They’re nature’s example of when you take a joke a little too far. Evolution got to the end of the branch on that one, and was like, “I guess we’re done here.” Next branch! I mean, where do you go from Ostrich?
Ozzie is even better. He’s not just cute – he’s talented! They taught Ozzie how to paint. Artistically, of course. He would make a terrible house painter. He does mostly abstract expressionism, but I think he’d be more into impressionism if he had an opposable thumb.
The Lion Habitat also lets visitors feed Ozzie some romaine lettuce. He eats like 35 pounds of hay a day, so romaine is just a snack. He was super friendly and probably my new best friend.
Freedom
Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Parts of the visit to the Lion Habitat were so sad. It was a particularly hot day, which didn’t help. But to see all those lions – dozens of them – laying around, chin on paws, looking all spirit-broken. Okay, maybe I’m projecting a little.
Disclaimer: A trainer reassured us that lions basically lay around all day in the wild anyway. Besides, here at the Lion Habitat, they get all the food they want, whenever they want it. What a life, right? Also, the owner of the Lion Habitat lives right next door, always has, and based on her pictures on their website, she really loves these cats.
Even with all that being the case, there’s something about animals in captivity that doesn’t feel right. Their figurative ‘fin’ always seems down.
These animals were at the top of their food chain in their natural habitat. And at the top of the food chain, they had the most freedom. Or at least until the humans came along and mucked everything up.
People have told me I’m a control freak. I correct them. Freedom and control are two sides of the same coin, and it’s freedom I’m interested in.
Of course, not just civil freedoms. When you redefine freedom as control, the definition expands. All of a sudden, there can be all kinds of freedom.
I want financial freedom. I want the freedom to not have to worry so much about my bank account all the time. I want the freedom to make decisions based on more important things. Based on what I want. I want the freedom to be exactly who and what I want to be.
So with opening up the definition, we realize that there’s more than one definition of freedom. We can then posit that we all sit along a spectrum of freedom. Or maybe it’s a pyramid. Yeah, let’s do a pyramid!
In true Maslovian form, we seek the base of the pyramid before working our way up.
What encourages me is that as a society, we’ve been working our way up! So many classes of society today have a pretty decent base of the pyramid. Women can vote. Gays can marry. 99.9% of us aren’t legally enslaved in America.
If you want to go out and be a lion trainer at Lion Habitat, you can.
We may not be all the way there, but we’ve come so far. So many of us are moving up the pyramid.
If you’re looking for evidence, just pay attention to where the bulk of society is complaining. We’re complaining the most about the middle of the pyramid. Economic injustices. Gender wage disparities. Micro-aggression. My dream is that one day we’re all complaining about the top of the pyramid.
So you see, it’s not just the civil & basic freedom that’s taken when the lions are put into a cage. It’s also the freedom that comes with purpose. But I’ll come back to that point later on and explain it a bunch more, I promise.
The Landings
Since we were so close to the Henderson Executive Airport, we had lunch at The Landings, the restaurant there – something we’ve been wanting to do for a while!
The food was decent. Sandwiches and stuff. There was a patio with a great view of the tarmac, and of course, little model airplanes hanging from the ceiling.
We bumped into the restaurant’s proprietor out on the patio smoking a cigar. It turns out he owns a few other private airport restaurants as well. It’s sorta his thing. He told us all about it while he took us through a tour of the pictures of famous pilots and airplane engineers lining the walls of the restaurant.
He just loves airplanes, he said. He called them “the most amazing invention in man’s history” because they gave the world a freedom we couldn’t have had otherwise. We can travel from New York to London in 7 hours. The world is so much smaller thanks to flight.
And I agree with him. I love planes. I love flying. Flying is my only recurring dream, you know. It always happens the same way.
This could’ve been me. When I was graduating high school and it was crunch time and the world was asking me what I wanted to do for a living – me, a kid, who only just recently lost his virginity, needed to give an answer right away, my whole life path would move one direction or another, and it needs to get decided right now by some kid that hasn’t paid a real bill in his life, a kid that just a few years ago, thought Full House was a good TV show, go ahead, the entire course of the rest of your short time here on Earth is at stake… Anyway, I gave aviation a serious thought or two. It seemed like it was gonna take too long to get to the good stuff. And there it went. A life I wouldn’t lead, forever up into the clouds.
Brews & Blues
On Saturday, we went to the Brews & Blues Festival at the Springs Preserve. Tons of beer vendors and a handful of bands all getting together to support Keep Memory Alive, an organization headquartered in Las Vegas and dedicated to fighting brain diseases. (I won’t bring up the irony.)
That could be me, too. Up there on stage. I was a drummer at a very early age. I played in bands. We gigged out. I spent thousands of hours behind the kit. I learned hundreds and hundreds of songs. I went on to major in music. I learned dozens of instruments. I learned to read music. To write it. I learned its history.
Music became an inseparable part of me. I still believe it plays a much greater role in my life than it plays in most people’s. I think of it in a way most people don’t. It’s a ghost career in that way.
When you show just a little interest in someone else’s passion, amazing things happen.
At one point in my life, I wanted to see where that path led. Go out on tour with my band with nothing but an RV and a few t-shirts. Find odd jobs in each city to keep us alive. Fly by the seat of our pants. Or maybe just be a studio musician. Or maybe play in a symphony orchestra.
The event is sponsored by Southern Wine & Spirits, which should come as no surprise, since Larry Ruvo is both GM of SWS and the founder of KMA. 
The Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health opened in 2007, and has quietly become a national bastion for outpatient treatment and research to fight Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s Diseases, Multiple Sclerosis and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).
We’re lucky to have it here in Las Vegas, and in such an amazing Frank Gehry-designed building. What a beacon of pride in the heart of Symphony Park downtown.
Disease is a particularly nasty thief of freedom. It seldom shows mercy or offers recourse.
I hope I live long enough to see the day when we’ve all but eradicated the world of this terrible master that goes around inflicting fear and pain, or worse, ending lives prematurely. We’re so close to having control over that. So close to breaking those chains.
Springs Preserve
Right off the I-95 at Valley View, the Springs Preserve is this neat little place full of gardens and museum exhibits and history. (Well actually, it’s not that little.) It’s cultural and educational and beautiful and neat.
The Springs Preserve sits on the land once inhabited by Las Vegas’s first settlers; a part of the valley that was always rich in vegetation, and gave Las Vegas its name in Spanish, ‘the meadows’.
The Springs Preserve is home to the Nevada State Museum, the Origen Museum, and the Butterfly Habitat. (Yay, two habitats in one day!)
It teaches our valley the important lesson of sustainability in the desert. There are live classes, and historical and art exhibits on constant rotation.
And of course, there are extensive desert gardens.
VNEA World Pool Championships
This weekend brought the VNEA World Pool Championships to town, occupying both of the ballrooms at Bally’s Las Vegas, dozens of vendors, hundreds of pool tables, and thousands of challengers. I popped in to satisfy my curiosity.
When I was a kid, my parents bought a pool table for our basement. I spent a LOT of hours on that table. This could’ve been me. I could’ve been on Team America in the World Pool Championships this weekend.
So when I watch someone else play, I get it. I know why he’s using english. I can see his next shot. I watched this guy from Team New Zealand run the table. I watched a few guys run the table, actually.
These guys aren’t awesome athletes. They’re awesome billiards players. They learned this in college. At a dive bar. In their parents’ basement. They got good on accident. Until it wasn’t an accident.
It was 10am and Team Finland already had a second round of beers on the table.
And when you win, you get these awesome trophies (pictured, above). Which of course, is a statue of what I’m assuming can only be Bildergan, the famous pool-playing warlock, morphologically banished to captivity as a rabid half-bear, half-lion for hustling the Great Wizard of Poldermore in an otherwise friendly game of 8-ball, which is all stuff that I just made up.
So it’s not for the trophy.
It’s for the passion. This is what they do. And that’s why they do it. I asked a guy that works for VNEA about it and he ended up chatting with me for like 15 minutes. When you show just a little interest in someone else’s passion, amazing things happen.
Passion/pursuit is the final thief of freedom. Through opportunity cost, we all build our own prisons. The house you buy, the vocation you go into, that job you take, what kind of clothes you choose to wear, the company you keep, when you decide to go back for your master’s degree, your karaoke hobby.
The decisions we make in our lives define us – either for good or bad (which is perhaps for each of us to decide). One thing is certain: choosing what we choose is tantamount to saying no to an infinite number of other possibilities.
As a result, making that choice limits our freedom.
This is what binds us all together. This pursuit of control over these choices. Looking for the ones that DON’T feel like an infringement on this freedom. This type of freedom is the one that we’ll probably all be chasing forever. No one catches this rabbit.
And which path we choose is what makes us different. The limitation in our freedom – our prison – defines us. Some choose pilot. Some airport restaurant owner. Some lion trainer at the Lion Habitat. Some musician. Some billiard hall of famer.
Some break free. Some don’t. I call that self-typecasting. Sometimes, once we’ve told the world that we’re an, I don’t know, pool-playing warlock, the world just keeps reflecting that image back at us. Until eventually, we’re really, really convinced that’s us. Even if along the way, we’ve changed and it’s not us anymore. Or maybe never was.
So we keep putzing along. Oh, the world already thinks I’m a loser. They already know I’m an asshole when I drink. I’m supposed to be “the funny guy.” I started in music, so if I don’t continue, then I’ve gone off course.
Don’t be the prisoner. Careful following your own rules. Sometimes it’s a trap.
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
Nelson Mandela
Bally’s
So yeah, this championship was at Bally’s Las Vegas. It may not be the oldest property on the strip, but I give this property most resilient award. I don’t think I’ve been inside Bally’s in… a long time. I kinda forgot about it.
Did you know this place used to be called MGM Grand? Built in 1973. It caught fire in 1980. 85 people died. It sent shockwaves, driving safety improvements worldwide.
In 1985, it was sold to a slot maker named Bally and consequently took that name. (The MGM name moved down the street to a hotel that used to be called the Marina Hotel.) In the coming decades, it would change hands like 17 more times in Las Vegas’s real-life game of Monopoly.
You may have forgotten that Bally’s is there, as I did. It seems like we’re not alone. You can snatch up a room at Bally’s for like $30 – that’s like the Resort Fee at Aria.
Did you know they have this pretty kick-ass (albeit dated) sports book. Look at this thing! It’s not a sports book, it’s a whole encyclopedia!
Even their owner might have been a little negligent as well. Okay granted, they renovated their rooms a few years back, and just last year, they completely gutted that weird stretched-slinky thing they had as a porte-cochère and replaced it with a strip mall that they’re calling the Grand Bazaar Shops. (Hey, at least they didn’t spell ‘shops’ with a ‘P-P-E-S’.) Goodbye scary hypnotic slinky thing, hello Swatch store.
That said, check out the side of this building that’s obviously needed a paint job for a long time. This place doesn’t really even have a place to put your car. And apparently their corporate parent decided that the best use of Bally’s property space is to host the corporate-wide employment center.
And the little stuff. Forever, Bally’s held the longest running Las Vegas show, Jubilee. That show ended a few months ago, but I definitely found a large poster for Jubilee still hanging prominently in a hallway. Maybe I’m missing something?
Don’t be the prisoner. Careful following your own rules. Sometimes it’s a trap.
I see big things in your future, Bally’s.
Naked City Pizza
Okay, last one, then I really gotta let you go. We had dinner at Naked City Pizza (finally!), and it was AMAZING.
Naked City Pizza a little pizza-plus joint that gets its name for that famous part of town where we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. In the meantime, enjoy the bread-and-cheese greatness that Naked City birthed.
Oh man. You HAVE to go here. There’s two locations now, and a third opening soon. We went to the one in the Fruit Loop.
We took all of our server’s advice, including the garlic rolls, which were a spin on a traditional garlic knot. Instead of knotting the dough, they roll it like a cinnamon roll, so after baking, the insides are SUPER gooey with dough and melty with cheese and make you food orgasm.
Unfortunately, they were out of their signature bacon candle dish. Dammit, we’ll have to get there earlier next time.
Where are you on the pyramid? What freedoms remain elusive? Go find them, because our most noble goal in life should be to get to the top of that pyramid. And if the world is standing in your way, go fucking fight the world. Is there anything else more worthy of fighting for?
For all weekend recaps, visit maketheweekend.com.
