Tony Hsieh’s mantra is unwavering, especially when he’s addressing some 1,000 techsters who would like to do nothing more than to do what he did, and turn their app and website ideas into millions.
Tech information and life skills tips flew fast and furious at the first South By Southwest tech conference at the Cosmopolitan today. Called SXSW V2V, the conference was expected to draw about 1,500 attendees.
Next week’s convention of techies at the Cosmopolitan will be a relatively cozy affair compared to juggernaut South By Southwest, the mothership of music/tech/movie conventions based in Austin, Texas, that is bringing their brand here.
Eleven years after it opened, dozens of businesses have come and gone from Neonopolis, the cuboid mall at Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard. Lately, though, some businesses have managed to stay open long enough — Denny’s, Heart Attack Grill and Drink & Drag — and downtown is growing just enough that other entrepreneurs are starting to move in.
Two bars were closed for 24 hours, dozens were arrested, some for outstanding felony warrants, and several more were cited for underage drinking as about two dozen police, some on horseback, sifted through a massive crowd on Fremont East Friday night.
This Saturday’s Sprinkler Sprint is gaining steam, with some 1,500 runners having signed up for the 5K run/walk that includes several water zones to keep them cool.
It’s Thursday morning, and a few customers wander the aisles of the Ogden Mart, a downtown Las Vegas sub shop and convenience store that the Shabo brothers bought 13 years ago. The brothers, and the store, have struggled. Over the years, they've had to work the margins and scrimp to pay their bills. The store sits on one of the most rugged urban street corners downtown.
Burlesque performance, an art form dating to the 1940s and earlier, is about to get a computerized makeover courtesy of Darla Lush, some fairly new technology and the backdrop of retro downtown Las Vegas.
A new grocery store is heading downtown. Sources with the Downtown Project say an urban grocery store is planned for East Fremont Street in the space formerly occupied by Mamita’s Mexican restaurant and the Fremont Street Market & Deli.
Officer John Schutt Jr. sees a storm coming by way of the growth of so many taverns in the east Fremont Street area, which is drawing more underage drinkers and more problems.
Michael Cornthwaite and Joey Vanas held a press conference/community handshake Thursday evening to celebrate the 741 people who contributed $207,000 through an online fundraising campaign to resurrect the 69-year-old Huntridge Theater in downtown Las Vegas.
Downtown’s “sorceress” was busy Wednesday working in front of the camera in her store to tape 23 episodes about fashion and styling to appear on eHow.com online.
Call it the after-party. Capping a five-week, online fundraising campaign to raise $150,000 toward revival of the historic Huntridge Theater, people are invited to the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada, 401 S. Maryland Parkway, to revel in the accomplishment Thursday.
At 93, Edythe Katz gets around with the help of a wheelchair, but her memory is sharp – particularly when recalling the details of a life immersed in owning the Huntridge Theater some 40 years ago.
A downtown event that has drawn upwards of 30,000 people one night each month is changing direction in August. Organizers plan to set up a winter streetscape and either eliminate vendors in tents or shift them north to provide more visibility to local galleries and businesses.
Downtown’s recent success as a nightlife hub is ratcheting up fears that the area is becoming so awash in booze and underage drinking that violence is growing, creating an expensive need for more law enforcement.
Scott Flansburg is more than just the “Human Calculator,” as TV personality Regis Philbin dubbed him for his lightning quick knack to add numbers faster than fingers can punch them into a keyboard. He’s an author, a media personality, a Guinness record holder and an avid golfer. And soon, he will become an educator, at least in downtown Las Vegas.
Two cops rode side by side on horseback. Six officers stood in designated spots while about 18 more shifted in and out through the night. Another eight Downtown Rangers kept watch, with videotape.
Despite spending well over $100 million to purchase dozens of acres of downtown property — old motels, empty lots, empty storefronts and more empty lots — Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project isn’t the only player in downtown’s "SimCity" game to rebuild the area.
When a planned private dog park is finished on Fremont Street, it will immediately become one of the largest — if not the largest — patches of green space on one of the city’s oldest byways.
Built more than 60 years ago, the Ferguson Motel is one of the nicer-looking pieces of Vegas memorabilia still upright on Fremont Street. A fence surrounds the shuttered property at 1028 Fremont. When the fence comes down, it won’t be a motel anymore.
Sheriff Doug Gillespie faced tough questions in his appeal to county commissioners for a bump in the sales tax that could be used to hire more officers and fill potential gaps in the Metro Police budget.
Starting this week, “mystery riders,” people armed with $50 and hired by cab companies, will give an extra $50 bills to taxi drivers who provide short rides without complaint and with courtesy.
An impromptu fundraiser for the effort to save the Huntridge Theater was thrown together in three days by Shaun Swanson and others volunteering to their time to an attempt to raise $150,000 over 40 days.
Amy Jo Martin’s trip to Ethiopia in April opened her eyes to a world few Americans have seen. She returned to Las Vegas altered by the images of people competing with animals for dirty water. So Martin is doing something to help.
Sport-Social, a Las Vegas startup business that helps autistic children, won a state-sponsored contest, meaning it is now eligible for $100,000 in seed funding and support.
The guys from the local pawn shop who have become national cable TV sensations with “Pawn Stars” have come through in a big way for the Huntridge Theater.
Police will be on horseback and will more strictly enforce open-container laws, but there will be no fence around Fremont East when the overflow crowds from First Friday descend upon the area July 5.
Natalie Harper is one happy downtown restaurant owner these days. Her restaurant, Eat, has done so well, she plans to open another within the next 12 months.
The Nevada Commission for Cultural Affairs will look into the possibility the Huntridge Theater's current owners broke an agreement made several years ago in return for state funding.
Largely unnoticed Thursday during the grand reopening of The Atomic tavern, an icon in the 900 block of Fremont Street, was a man in a cherry picker tinkering with the exposed wiring of a decades-old sign for the Ambassador East motel.The Ambassador no longer exists, having been demolished in 2007. Yet with the sign in as much disrepair and disregard as the empty lots it watches over, it’s easy to drive by and barely see it.
Some surprising information came out during a meeting Thursday night of some 150 people gathered in a downtown hall to ask questions about plans to buy and revive the historic Huntridge Theater.
Wednesday night’s soft opening of The Atomic introduced the refurbished, iconic tavern to a set host of people, many of whom had never set foot on Fremont Street, let alone visited the bar. It also signaled the coming shift of the “center” of Fremont Street from its current spot near Sixth Street.
When a young man with a billion-plus-dollar company comes to town saying he wants to create "community" even as he redevelops a neighborhood infested with crime, you expect what happened to Tony Hsieh.
Four months after one of its most loyal customers died of a heart attack, the Heart Attack Grill in downtown Las Vegas hosted a media event Tuesday morning to promote cardiopulmonary resuscitation classes and compression-only CPR.
For a building that will be near the center of a 15-block festival of life’s beauty, the Western Hotel, something of an eyesore even when it was operational, seems somewhat out of place.
As a not-so-popular teenager, she took up running. When the other kids saw she was good at it, high school life became easier. Almost two decades later, Tanya Carrier is convinced running is a catalyst for positive change.
Many times over the past decade or more, taxpayers and individuals have tried to save the Huntridge Theater. Nevada has given more than $1 million to, among other repairs, fix its caved-in roof. Yet for almost a decade, the place has remained in mothballs and fallen further into disrepair. Even the most stalwart historians seemed to abandon hope of saving the building, for one, because it’s so large, and secondly because of the enormous cost to do so. But then, most historians aren’t David Anderson. Or Chris O’Connell, Nicole Sligar, Melissa Clary, Brian “Paco” Alvarez, Kathleen D’Esposito Kahr or a group of others who have thrown themselves into the thankless task of volunteering their time to bring the Huntridge back to life.
One lot closes and another one maneuvers to open. A week ago, an Arkansas physician hung no-parking signs and fenced in a gravel lot downtown that had been used for years by workers and others because it offered free parking.
Beginning July 1, the Bunkhouse Saloon will close for 60 days, giving time for Downtown Project investors who purchased the property time to refresh the space.
The llama parade is growing. Organizers of the parade, sponsored by Zappos, expect about 230 people – led by a llama – to march from Fremont Street to Cashman Field for Friday night’s game between the Las Vegas 51s and the Colorado Springs Sky Sox.
As expected on a First Friday night, the hordes descended upon eastern Fremont Street. With an added police presence though, little trouble beyond a few skirmishes occurred in the burgeoning Fremont East Entertainment District, sources said.
Parking choices in downtown Las Vegas just got a bit slimmer. The free parking lot at Ogden Avenue and Sixth Street, owned by a doctor from Arkansas, was fenced over the weekend with signs warning vehicles parking there would be towed.
A new technology has changed Craig Adkins' plans to build a shoe factory in downtown Las Vegas. Advancements in 3-D printing now have him thinking Vegas should catch the wave.