Entries from September 28, 2008 - October 4, 2008
OJ Simpson Guilty in Las Vegas
On the 13th anniversary of his acquittal in the murder case of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, a Las Vegas jury found OJ Simpson guilty on all 12 charges from the break-in at the Palace Station last year.
The kidnapping charge alone should send him away for at least ten years.
There will, of course, be appeals on these charges but for the time being both OJ Simpson and his co-defendant, Clarence Stewart, have both been found guilty of all charges.
LasVegasLynn
The jury deliberated yesterday for 13 hours before returning to the courtroom late last night with their verdicts. The kidnapping guilty verdict carries a minimum of 15 years with parole eligibility after 5 years.
Compared to his demeanor 13 years ago when he was acquitted of murder charges, OJ Simpson, last night, looked like a man who suddenly realized that he was not above the law after all.
Immediately after the verdicts were read, both Simpson and his co-defendant, Clarence Stewart, were handcuffed and taken back to jail. The judge denied allowing them to go free or even out on bail until the penalty hearing.
Sentencing for both will be on December 5th.
LasVegasLynn
The night before the jury found him guilty on all twelve charges, OJ Simpson had a quiet evening with friends. He dined with a few friends at Rosemary's Restaurant on West Sahara. He ordered a Johnny Walker Black and Coke.
Twenty-four hours later a jury would find him and his co-defendant, Clarence Stewart, guilty of all charges.
From the Las Vegas Sun:
The cold beige cinderblock walls of Simpson’s tiny cell are a bleak contrast from the warm and welcoming surrounds of the restaurant where Simpson had been the night before the jury returned their verdict.
There is no ambient lighting, attentive serving staff or full-service bar at the Clark County Detention Center. Simpson spends most of his time there in a 12 by 14-foot cell, away from the rest of the prison population.
He gets three meals a day, but they’re hardly gourmet. While Simpson often enjoyed meticulously prepared meals at Vegas’ finest tables during the trial, a typical meal for him now is a far cry from the beef or foie gras that he enjoyed, with a nice glass of Californian chardonnay, after the first week of proceedings.
“He had our beef carpacio, which is thinly sliced beef with blue cheese in the middle, and he had foie gras,” Rosemary’s front of house manager, James Repman, said.
“That was with an orange brioche bread and a Nevada nectarine coulis,” he explained, noting, “It was good, for one of his last meals.”
“He’s come in a couple of other times to just have cocktails at the bar but that was the first time he was in for dinner,” he said.
Repman said Simpson dined alongside his attorneys, Yale Galanter and Gabriel Grasso, and a few close friends who are regulars to the popular restaurant.
“He was a really nice guy, for what that’s worth,” Repman said.
Unlike many of Simpson’s former associates, who have pitched book deals and sold everything from autographs to damning audio tapes, Rosemary’s is not advertising or flaunting their affiliation with Simpson. Repman answered questions about Simpson’s patronage when contacted on Tuesday by the Sun, but made it clear that the owners and staff both did not want to capitalize on their recent guest’s patronage. The bartender who served Simpson his last Johnny Walker Black and Coke declined to be interviewed.
There is no Johnny Walker or Californian chardonnay at the Clark County Detention Center.
“Dinner is served (at) about 4 p.m. and a typical dinner would be an enchilada casserole, Spanish rice, garden salad with dressing, two slices of bread, a cube of margarine, marble cake, and a fruit drink,” Metro Police public information officer, Ramon Denby, said.
“It’s not fancy,” he said.
Breakfast – fruit, toasted oats, sausage hash and a slice of bread – is served at 4 a.m. and lunch is served at 10 a.m.
“A typical lunch would include spaghetti with sauce, a meat patty, green beans, two slices of bread, one cookie and a fruit drink,” Denby said.
Simpson eats his meals alone, either in his cell or in what’s called the detention center’s outer day room. He’s classified as a “protective custody – isolation” inmate, meaning he is kept in strict solitary confinement.
Even his cell is closed off from the rest of the detention center’s 3,000 other inmates. Simpson spends most of his time within those four cinderblock walls with the door locked shut.
“He remains in his room for the majority of the day while the other inmates are out on their free time,” Denby said.
Inside his cell is what Denby describes as a “wooden bunk with a little mattress” and a sink/toilet combination unit.
“He’s allowed two books or magazines in his room and up to five religious books or articles,” Denby said, but nothing else.
The former All-Star running back gets three to four hours of free time a day to eat meals, shower, shave or watch TV.
Denby said Simpson gets one hour in the detention center’s recreation room every day, where there are a few tables, a shower and a TV.
During the trial, Simpson said that he hoped to stay in shape during proceedings by working in training sessions at the Las Vegas Athletic Club. He’ll have to be creative with his work-out regime until his Dec. 5 sentencing, however, as there is no athletic equipment for the 61-year-old to use at the detention center.
“He can walk, do push-ups, jumping jacks,” Denby said, but there are no weights or cardio equipment for him to use.
He also gets 30 minutes of visitation privileges twice a week, but Simpson essentially watches his visitors on TV when they come to see him: they are kept on a different floor of the detention center and communicate through a video telephone.
Attorney visits are allowed in addition to his hour a week of family visitation.
Simpson is allowed outside once a week, but that, too, falls short of the five-star amenities the football legend has grown accustomed to over the years, and is done in solitary confinement.
“It’s basically four concrete walls with a mesh cage on top,” Denby said. “He’s afforded this once a week for an hour.”
Simpson will be sentenced on Dec. 5 and will likely be transferred to a state prison afterward. Simpson’s lawyers have indicated they will appeal the case, as will Stewart’s.
Clark County Museum: Saving Historical Buildings
From our good pal Kristen Peterson at the Las Vegas Sun:
In the Las Vegas Valley, saving historic buildings and artifacts often involves moving them
Tiffany Brown
Motor Court Cabin, left, originally in Las Vegas, is now on Heritage Street at the Clark County Museum, which features rescued historic houses from throughout the area.
Thu, Oct 2, 2008 (2 a.m.)
Las Vegas is always about the next big thing — and a move-it-or-lose-it attitude that pummels the city’s past.
Sometimes we move it. Sometimes we lose it. What’s interesting is when “moving it” means creating another themed attraction by extracting our past from the present and sequestering it.
If preservationists had any sense, they would require developers to replicate today’s buildings and place the doppelganger on the outskirts of town, saving time and money on future historical rescue operations.
A lot of money has been spent on saving the significant works sitting in the popular Neon Boneyard. The rescue of the Stardust sign cost $200,000. Moving the La Concha lobby, one of Las Vegas’ most famous pieces of Googie architecture, from the Strip cost $1.4 million.
Then there is Heritage Street, a tidy tree-lined stretch of gravel road outside the Clark County Museum on Boulder Highway that includes houses and notable buildings from the Las Vegas Valley’s past. Rescued by groups desperate to save Southern Nevada’s disappearing history, the buildings were plunked down in Henderson, restored, decorated and opened to the public. Moving and restoring the homes has come at a hefty price.
The permanent exhibit is a brilliant slice of 20th-century American life, a nice getaway for anyone lamenting the Mediterranean-themed, master-planned communities sprawling across the valley. You can sit on a bench outside the print shop or on the front porch of the Beckley House, a California bungalow built in 1912 for the Beckley family, which owned a clothing store in downtown Las Vegas.
These aren’t replicas. They’re the real deal — filled with authentic furniture, dishes, wall hangings, knickknacks, historical tidbits and recorded music. Each is its own period piece. There is a motor court cabin from the 1930s and the Boulder City Railroad Depot.
Call it a nod to creative preservation in a progressive area.
Themed attractions have made Las Vegas famous. Just when we wondered what would be next, MGM Mirage decides to build the biggest “theme” of all: an urban core on the Strip, an attraction you might say only simulates high-rise living with grocery stores within walking distanced. Eventually, we might tear down CityCenter and replace it with something else, leaving only a whisper of the Stripside urban condo community.
Heritage Street, by comparison, has no such glamour. It doesn’t even have a casino. But it’s a collection that shows where we were and how far we’ve come.
The Neon Boneyard has international fame, but visitors still drive down East Fremont Street to look at the dilapidated auto court motels, many of which have been pillaged.
We lost one of our legendary wedding chapels on the Strip, but the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is helping fund the restoration, along with the State Cultural Commission. Next year is Clark County’s centennial. The chapel and the Railroad Cottage, both on the county museum property, are expected to be restored and displayed by the end of the year.
The Townsite homes, built in the 1940s in Henderson, were meant as temporary housing for war workers. On the other hand, Myron Martin, president of the Las Vegas Performing Arts Center Foundation, says the Smith Center for the Performing Arts is being designed and built to last 300 years. Whew. That’s something, at least.
In 20 years preservationists might be concerned with the Eiffel Tower that stood outside Paris Las Vegas during the heyday of hyperthemed casinos.
Preservationist and historian Bob Stoldal says he’s stood before the Bellagio and asked himself, “What is this going to be in 50 years?”
LasVegasLynn
in Cultural Tourism, Current Day, Historic Homes, Historical
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Las Vegas Mob Museum Update
From our friends at the Las Vegas Review Journal comes this update on the Mob Museum:
The first rule of the Mob Museum is do not talk about the Mob Museum.
In fact, you must deny the Mob Museum exists.
Technically, of course, it doesn't. The museum -- formally called the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement -- starts construction in the fall and has a planned opening date in 2010.
But the city of Las Vegas is now ready with a branding strategy and marketing plan that turns a federal penchant for redacting interesting information into an advertising hook.
("Redacting" is Washington-speak for "crossing out." Pass it on.)
So the logo has the words "The Mob Museum" with the word "mob" almost completely blacked out. The formal name is surrounded by thick black lines, and the museum's Web site catchphrase is, "The only museum where you can say you didn't see anything."
On Wednesday, City Council members also received T-shirts that said, "There is no such thing as a Mob Museum nor have I ever been there."
A Pittsburgh firm called Wall-to-Wall Studios came up with the plan. Company founder James Nesbitt said it is "a good balance between law enforcement and organized crime, and injects a sense of wit."
"Only in Las Vegas do you have the gumption to mark out the main name of the museum," Nesbitt said.
The museum will be in the historic post office building on Stewart Avenue next to City Hall. The building was also Las Vegas' first federal courthouse and the site of a hearing on organized crime in 1950 held by U.S. Sen. C. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.
Planned exhibits include Las Vegas' development during the days of Prohibition and bootlegging, the influx of organized crime and how organized crime operations across the country were connected.
The FBI has promised to lend archived evidence and artifacts for the displays, and the search is on for other memorabilia, said Bob Stoldal, who's working with 300 Stewart Avenue Corp., the nonprofit that will operate the museum for the city.
"Organized crime was not known for keeping good records, but I'm sure there's still something out there," he said.
The $50 million project has long been championed by Mayor Oscar Goodman, who was an attorney for many organized crime figures in his pre-mayoral career and even played himself in the mob epic "Casino."
Stoldal revealed that Goodman has a collection of courtroom drawings from his trials, and the mayor confirmed that he has other material that will be part of the museum's exhibits.
"I can promise you there will be some personal memorabilia in the museum," he said. "I didn't realize how much I really had. It's stacked up in a warehouse."
His past led to some cracks at the mayor's expense.
When mob memorabilia came up, Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian said, "Does that mean the mayor's going to clean out his garage?"
Councilman Larry Brown chimed in: "Why don't you just do an illegal search and seizure?"
For his part, Goodman played the good lawyer and maintained deniability.
"For 35 years, I was representing 'reputed' people," said Goodman, pretending to be grouchy. "There is no such thing as 'the mob.' "
The museum is being paid for with $7 million in local, state and federal grants, $8 million in city funds and $35 million in bonds from the city's Redevelopment Agency. The goal is to time the museum's opening with the reopening of the Lady Luck next door.
LasVegasLynn
in Cultural Tourism, Current Day, Las Vegas History
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FIRST HISTORIC MODERN HOME TOUR IN LAS VEGAS
Fom our friends at the
Atomic Age Alliance:
We encourage all of our readers to attend!
Celebrating Mid-Century Design and Architecture
FIRST HISTORIC MODERN HOME TOUR IN LAS VEGAS
Paradise Palms is the Undiscovered Treasure of Clark County
Atomic Age Alliance is proud to present the first tour of its kind in Las Vegas, the self-driving tour “Paradise Palms Open House Day,” on Sunday, October 5, 2008.
Paradise Palms is a historic Mid Century Modern neighborhood built by Irwin Molasky Homes and the architectural team of Daniel Palmer and William (Bill) Krisel of Palmer & Krisel from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. This particular tract was the first planned community in Las Vegas. It won the American Builder Magazine Award for being one of the best planned communities in the U.S. The neighborhood is growing as a Mid-Mod preservationist Mecca in terms of restorable P&K homes still at relatively affordable prices. While other communities such as Scottsdale, AZ and Los Angeles and the Bay Area, CA, have embrace Modernism and make money from it, Las Vegas has been slow to catch on. Ten years ago in Palm Springs, CA, Palmer & Krisel homes went for 100-200k. Now properly restored MidMod “P&K” homes sell from 400-800k and more... A brand new custom Mod home by Bill Krisel recently sold for over one million. The tour hopes to open eyes to this undiscovered treasure that lies right in the heart of Las Vegas.
The Atomic Age Alliance is a 501(c)3 non profit organization dedicated to celebrating historic Mid Century Modernism and Atomic Age design, signage, architecture, culture and business through ongoing community advocacy, activism and educational programs.
Mid-Century Modern (MCM) is a period in the middle of the 20th Century where architectural design reached a peak in terms of aesthetics, engineering and exuberance. The dates are 1945 to 1965, although the era is sometimes extended to the 1930s through the 1970s. Because it centers on the period after World War II it is also known as Post War. The term may also be shortened as Mid-Mod.
The homes of Paradise Palms feature unique Modern rooflines, floating cantilevered fireplaces, open floor plans, sunken tubs, decorative stone screens, post and beam construction, two-tone paint, idiosyncratic decorative elements, spun fiberglass panels, walls of glass, clerestory windows, and quintessential desert indoor/outdoor living.
Paradise Palms began in 1961 as the neighborhood surrounding the Las Vegas National Golf Club. The course has enjoyed an illustrious past beginning as the Stardust Country Club designed by Bert Stamps in 1961. Arnold Palmer set the course record of 63 in 1967 and held that record for 28 years. Over the years it has hosted LPGA Championship Events and PGA Tournament of Champions. However the current owners have announced plans to replace the course with hundred of homes despite their claim on their own website (www.lasvegasnational.com), “The Las Vegas National Golf Club is a true Las Vegas landmark... Steeped in a rich history and tradition.” It now has community wide support of keeping the course as a course. (www.savethecourse.com)
Fifteen homes are shown as examples of original or restorable condition and five private homes are open to tour attendees. Additionally some real estate agents with homes for sale in the neighborhood will have open houses this same day. The tour is free and open to the public, but onsite registration is required at the first stop of the day.
Please check in at 1536 Commanche Drive just off Spencer drive in the heart of Paradise Palms between 11AM and 1PM. Last house closes at 2PM.
WHEN: OCTOBER 5, 2008
Sunday
CHECK-IN 11AM to 1PM
MORE INFO: info@atomicage.org
www.atomicage.org
###
LasVegasLynn
in Cultural Tourism, Current Day, Historic Homes, Historical
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The History of Mt. Charleston
From
the beginning of Las Vegas, Mt. Charleston has played an important role
in the history of the town. Located (now) only 40 minutes away, Mt.
Charleston has been a get-away for families hoping to escape the heat
of the summer before air-conditioning was invented, has played host to
Summer Camps for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, provided wood and timber
for many a building in young Las Vegas and a winter wonderland for
those of us who want to enjoy the snow but not live in the snow. In
addition, for almost 50 years people have lived on the mountain. We will also talk about the Cold War and the secret mission that crashed on the mountain.
This Thursday evening, Oct. 2nd, we will explore the history, the romance and the beauty of the mountain as part of our "Untold Stories" series at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve.
Joining us will be:
Richard Taylor, long time resident of Mt. Charleston and its local historian
Thalia Dondero, long time resident of both Mt. Charleston and Las Vegas as well as past president of the Girl Scouts of America when they had a lodge and summer camp on the mountain.
Don Payne, long time resident of Las Vegas and former manager of the Las Vegas News Bureau.
Join us Thursday, Oct. 2nd
7:00 pm
Las Vegas Springs Preserve
and learn more about this natural wonder and its relationship with Las Vegas.
Admission is $12LasVegasLynn
in Cultural Tourism, Current Day, Historical, Las Vegas History
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