Word: casino
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Following Morton's lead, the owners of Palms Casino Resort, which opened at the end of 2001, decided to aim even younger. The Maloof brothers, who own the Sacramento Kings basketball team, sold their local casino and built the Palms off-Strip and gave it no particular theme, figuring Vegas visitors would find out which hotel fit their demographic. (Wynn will also be unthemed, as will the Palazzo. The MGM Grand and the Mandalay Bay have almost entirely shed their film and Asian themes.) "I wanted to build the ultimate party place," says George Maloof, 40, the brother who runs...
...just lost in blackjack; a singer who wants Maloof to hear his act; a scary-looking guy who needs to borrow $500 for 24 hours. Not only does the guy not pay him back the next day but he also pops up on FOX's The Casino the following week. His name is Ernie, and he got kicked out of the Golden Nugget after convincing a young blond to work with him entertaining a high roller. Everybody in Vegas, Maloof explains, is looking out for only themselves. "You can't have a real relationship here," he says. "Not just romantically...
Maloof made the Palms--whose casino floor is full of the older locals who played in his previous hotel--into a hipster draw by housing the 2002 MTV's Real World inside a suite in the hotel, a risky move the rest of Vegas thought was suicide (having cameras inside a hotel was believed to be like asking the gaming commission to shut you down). But the Real World scheme worked better than expected. It made the hotel and its steak house, nightclubs and tattoo parlor the hottest spots for the barely legal. It is Britney Spears' home away from...
With the Palms' success, the once secretive Vegas is courting the media. The Golden Nugget is the focus of The Casino; the Discovery Channel's American Casino follows the Green Valley Ranch hotel; Extra has regular Vegas segments. Vegas even has its own impressively attended comedy and film festivals. "The whole entertainment industry is looking to Las Vegas," says Trevor Groth, the director of programming of CineVegas, who persuaded Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn and Dennis Hopper to show up for last month's sixth annual festival. "It's a suburb of Los Angeles...
...only part of the action that casinos don't control are the strip clubs, and they're trying to change that. Last year, a few hotel-casino owners quietly started a conversation about getting the gaming commission to allow them to put in strip joints. It didn't go well. So for now, they're compromising with burlesque, which is the kind of stripping Janet Jackson was supposed to do. Burlesque dancers do shows at Tangerine at TI, which opened over the July 4 weekend, and 40 Deuce, which opens at the Mandalay Bay this fall...