Word: decorative
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Japanese bargain shoppers increasingly covet neglected American gambling casinos. Last April, Ginji Yasuda, a Korean-born Japanese, reopened the 1,100- room Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas after buying the ailing complex for $54 million and spending $30 million more to restore its glitzy decor. He plans to shuttle customers from Japan in a posh jet equipped with sleeping cabins. Says Yasuda: "You have a lot of dreams still available in this country that you don't have in Japan...
...restaurateurs are playing to the enduring dream of an island paradise that has beguiled such disparate spirits as Gauguin and Gilligan. The idea is to create a Caribbean state of mind, drawing inspiration from Key West to Trinidad, with occasional wide detours to Brazil and Mexico, and stressing decor and drinks. The palette runs to hot pink, orange and turquoise that sparkles even in drinks made with blue curacao -- concoctions that may look suspiciously like Windex to the uninitiated. Frozen in slush machines, the rainbow drinks of tropical fruits and assorted rums, vodkas and liqueurs sport such names as Bora...
...historical awareness tempered by regional shop practice and local material. Thus they invented forms peculiar to America, like the deeply carved blockfront desk with shell motifs made by Townsend and Goddard in Newport, R.I. But American neoclassical "constitutional" furniture radiates a sense of lightness and straightforwardness; it rejects excess decor as a sign of cultural effeminacy. The rococo did not suit the democratic, mercantile temper. It spoke of royal courts. The desire for a general style that asserted first principles, tended toward abstraction and worshiped antiquity -- this mattered greatly to the young Republic in the 1780s...
...trader. Or almost. The guests were transported by boat to Alcatraz, the inactive island penitentiary in San Francisco Bay. There, while 25 actors dressed as convicts and jail guards capered around them, the temporary inmates supped on roast quail with lime sauce and admired the concrete and steel-bar decor. Estimated cost of the bash: about $100,000. To many, that seemed like something of a crime itself...
...snobs whose palates can differentiate wine bouquets at fifty paces. The overall impression of the Casa Portugal is being set down to Thanksgiving dinner in a Portuguese household--affirmed by my Portuguese expert Ted Silva. Big helpings, a friendly husband and wife team running the show, and decidedly unpretentious decor all combine to make you feel like you're visiting an Old World friend...