The mention of that name, in the right circles, brings back a flood of associations.
Among them: a famous cabaret in Gay Paree, a Nicole Kidman movie rich in costume and set design and...well, a movie, anyway; or, if you really know your films, perhaps the association is with the 1952 John Huston "biography" film of the same name.
The one association that might not quickly come to mind, even though it should: ground zero in a battle that led to the desegregation of Las Vegas.
Today's story will fill in the blanks that you might have regarding that association-and by the time we're done, we'll have covered, just as we promised last time, the 55-year history of a place that began in 1955, lasted for not quite six months, and ended just last week...maybe.
It's another one of those American history stories you never heard before, and it's well worth the telling...so let's get right to it.
There may be no more recognizable icon of "Retro-Cool" than that photograph of the Rat Pack standing in front of the marquee at The Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.
They're right there, lined up in front of their own giant names on the marquee: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop.
Night after night they would gather with friends such as Shirley MacLaine, Angie Dickinson, and Johnny Carson, to deliver some of the greatest nightclub performances in entertainment history.
Today's story, however, focuses on what happened after the show: when four of those five could leave the showroom, drink at the bar, gamble at the casino, and go upstairs to their rooms.
In a town sometimes known as the "Mississippi of the West", however, one of those five performers could not do any of those things.
Our Journey In Two Parts literally crosses over to the "wrong side of the tracks", tells a story of segregation overcome, and recounts the six-month history of a Las Vegas hotel that has a 55-year history: the Moulin Rouge.
I have now lost two posts about the Las Vegas caucus to my evil browser, so this one is going to be a picture tour. I'll just say, for all the whining about caucuses - and they are problematic in many ways - the ones in Las Vegas were just awesome. Cocktail waitresses, cooks, maids, nightclub PR flacks, pipe fitters, random Las Vegans all came together in the Wynn casino on the strip in a gaudy ballroom to pick a President, and it was... exactly like Iowa. It was raucous, cheerful, and exciting, as that video above shows. People are all the same, and when they are empowered it's just wonderful to observe.
These two guys are holding signs that say 'I support the union I support Hillary', the union being the Culinary Workers whose leadership endorsed Obama. The signs were paid for by the Clinton campaign, which outworked and out-organized Obama.
My full picture set is here, or you can follow me on the flip for a guided tour.
One thing you wouldn't necessarily realize about Nevada if you aren't from here is that it can get pretty cold. It's a desert, I know deserts get cold, yada yada, but it's not something you think of as part of the typical stereotypical Las Vegas image. I have no idea how this will affect the caucuses. And frankly neither does anyone else. These aren't just the first caucuses for Nevada; Nevada is an incredibly new state, population wise, having been the fastest growing state for 20 years in a row until overtaken by Arizona in 2006. Much of that new population is centered in Las Vegas, and a good amount is Hispanic.
Traditionally, Hispanics don't participate much in politics, and caucuses are even more complicated than straight up voting, which should accentuate this tradition. That said, there has been incredibly sophisticated outreach from the campaigns, so who knows. The Culinary union is the giant unknown, as an organized and significant force in the state.
If you have some time, you should check out dday, who has some terrific insights and observations about campaign coverage in general. He and Todd Beeton covered the same event Judith and I went to from a different angle. Says Todd, after rejecting the notion that anyone can predict anything:
I can't shake the feeling, just sort of taking the three events we attended yesterday, that the Clinton camp is preparing for a win and the Obama camp, not.
If you want more Nevada, the bloggers at Calitics are volunteering and blogging about it, and desmoulins at MyDD has a good mood piece.
More cowbell! I'm going to guess that Clinton will take this one. Edwards isn't even in the state, and Clinton is up by 9 in the polls. Local news is flooded with commercials, and at least anecdotally on the news I'm seeing a lot more Obama TV than Clinton TV.
Ok, so it's surreal to be in Las Vegas, as always. You step off the plane and you are immediately in an airport arrival terminal crossed with an intense slot machine lounge, replete with depressed people throwing away their life savings and plasma TVs blaring at you about shows with fire, tigers, dancers, dangers, and more tigers. Southwest lost my luggage (I hate them a lot at this point), and Dollar Rent-a-Car took about an hour and a half, and then traffic into the city was horrific. Billboards along the drive into town displayed ads for depression, foreclosure, Sebastian the Madman Magician, and Carrot Top. Epcot style giant castles, pyramids, strip clubs, and signs advertising huge plots of land to add your own hotel dot the roads. And then listening to Mitt Romney's radio commercials telling me about how he supports a marriage between a man and a woman just kind of sat on top of this heap of tackiness.
This place that has grown way too quickly way too fast.
I'm doing my first caption contest for OpenLeft.
Here's my entry for the pic: "Las Vegas, where it's always 1988'
I'm going to Nevada to cover the caucus and the whole circus. In the meantime, here's the view from my window. It's snowing in DC, and it's particularly beautiful.
If you don't follow the daily happenings in Sacramento, you can easily be confused about four ballot initiatives slated for the February 5th Presidential Primary Elections. In four separate propositions, voters will be asked to approve state gaming compacts with four individual tribes looking to expand their casino fortunes. If approved, worker rights will continue to be non-existent at the Las Vegas-styled resorts.
STATE BLOGS
