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Jennifer Grafiada

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  • Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008

    “If you’re deranged enough to kill yourself, you come here to do it,” remarks Jac, the top hat wearing tour guide for the Vegas Haunted Tour. “Las Vegas is the suicide capital of America.”

  • Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008

    Inside The Rox this Saturday night a crowd gathered that was not of the Strip, not even of our time. Most of the audience looked as if they had stepped out of the 1940s and ‘50s. Real live Marilyns stood next to Bettie Pages, James Deans and Buddy Hollys. The place was packed for the 2nd annual All Tease, No Sleaze Burlesque Pageant.

  • Culture

    Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008

    On a sunny afternoon, stroll down the dusty aisles filled with puppies and parrots and boots and bikes and soccer balls and strawberries, feel the reggaeton music pounding out of huge speakers and, when the sun gets strong, buy a freshly cut coconut.

  • Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008

    A lime green low-rider pulled up to me in a Green Valley parking lot, and the young Mexican driver informed me that I was in the wrong Las Vegas neighborhood. “In North Las Vegas, hay mucho más diversión” (it’s much more fun). He listed street racing, dance clubs and pick-up soccer games as some of the diversión in a community that has been developing over the past few years into a Little Mexico, or at least a Little Tijuana.

  • Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008

    It wasn’t too long ago that Garrett Bauman was entrenched in real estate, constantly thinking up entrepreneurial ideas, but “too busy” to make them happen. Now, he and his fiancé, Annie, are living a far more stylish life, selling clothes to the likes of Nicky Hilton, as owners of the Palazzo's high-end vintage boutique Annie Creamcheese.

  • Saturday, Sept. 6, 2008

    If you’ve been feeling deprived of lively local music and cool downtown culture, Neon Reverb is arriving to inject you with a vital dose.

  • Monday, Sept. 1, 2008

    If Saturday night was any indication, Vegas' collective taste is becoming a bit more European. Inside the Orleans Arena were a head-countable handful of women in nipple tape and platform boots, men in faux-fur top hats and fake bling, clusters of pretty, petite Asians in pin and, surprisingly, quite a few over-the-hill couples (Swingers? Retired porn stars? A creative Saturday night date?). I had expected hordes of nearly naked sex goddesses, booths and entertainment like at the AVN convention, but what I'd found was a tad lackluster. Maybe the real strippers and hustlers didn't feel like dressing up. Maybe they went to the Palms.

  • A&E

    Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008

    Baby-faced Michito Sanchez gives it to them good and long, just how they like it. The Cuban bandleader of the 11-piece salsa orchestra has a way with the Thursday-night crowds at the South Point, especially the women.

  • Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008

    "Who that dude sleeping with your girlfriend? Getting nude and rude in your bed? Same dude that your sister like. Mickey Avalon, call me Mr. Right."

    Who is Mickey Avalon? He has been, at various times of his life, a drug-using kid with drug-addicted parents, a young husband and father, a prostitute in Portland trying to fund his heroin habit and a hot hip-hop star living the Hollywood highlife.

  • Criss Angel

    Monday, Aug. 18, 2008

    Everyone loves a carnival – the bright lights, the clang of laughter and shrill music, the smell of gummy sweetness rising from roasting nuts, frying mounds of dough and Hudson Valley foie gras mousse on duck confit with a cardamom apple glaze. Um, what?

  • Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008

  • Monday, July 28, 2008

  • Monday, July 28, 2008

  • Thursday, June 19, 2008

  • Monday, June 16, 2008

  • Friday, June 13, 2008

  • Thursday, June 12, 2008

  • Tuesday, June 10, 2008

  • A&E

    Thursday, June 5, 2008

    In an estrogen-rich room, I am full of testosterone. I want to ace this course. I want to prove my sexual prowess, assert my feminine power. However, I soon learn that lap dancing and pole dancing are more about mastering technique than shedding inhibitions.

  • A&E

    Thursday, June 5, 2008

    This is my first visit to Luv-It Frozen Custard, a bastion of Las Vegas decadence, and I have a blast treating myself to a tasty slice of the Vegas demographic. It’s been in the same spot and run by the same family since 1973. It’s a tiny shack adjacent to a Mighty Mart and Olympic Garden Strip Club on Oakey off of Las Vegas Boulevard, and many of its customers have been coming for decades.

  • Wednesday, June 4, 2008