Unfortunately, in Nevada – and more specifically, in Las Vegas and Reno – we’ve experienced incidents of human trafficking. In Las Vegas, the average trafficking victim is as young as 14. We must act to prevent this disturbing criminal activity from occurring in our communities.
I come home every weekend and I still can’t believe I represent Las Vegas in Congress. It’s such a kick.
My first paycheck came from HobbyTown USA in Las Vegas. They had like planes and trains and RC cars, things like that.
Five or 10 years from now, people are going to be sitting around going, ‘Wasn’t there a show about four fat guys in a pawn shop?’ And I am sitting on this really nice piece of property on Las Vegas Boulevard. Why not?
I was in Las Vegas when the Nogueira brothers first touched down in America. There was a bus – this is a true story. There was a bus that pulled up to a red light, and Little Nog tried to feed it a carrot while Big Nog was petting it. He thought it was a horse. This really happened.
I’ve been a little bit Las Vegas and casino-obsessed. So, I love some trashy glamour… and I think nothing’s trashier or more glamorous than a bit of a sheer number!
One day, I saw a magic show, and I was like, ‘I have to learn how to do this!’ Every time I went to Las Vegas, I had to get at least two or three tricks from the magic shops.
I love performing in Las Vegas.
I love Las Vegas in a way separate from my love of any other American city. For me, growing up, it was a town of many firsts and where I enjoy a level of anonymity.
Training in Las Vegas at Xtreme Couture was awesome and I was there for almost two years.
The big advantage to playing the Venetian in Las Vegas – where it’s a beautiful theater – is that unlike other places, even many other nice venues, I can do a set and lighting cues, I can put on a real show. I can dress up, wear a tux.
I worked with so many comedians who became big names – so many, I can’t even remember some of their names. John Byner, Totie Fields, Joan Rivers. Shecky Green at the MGM. When I started my career, my first hotel in Las Vegas was at the old Flamingo. My opening act was Bill Cosby.
Las Vegas is a very strange place. It’s a place of broken dreams.
We were going to do ‘Reno 911!: New York, New York, Las Vegas,’ which was like a ‘Die Hard’ set not in New York, but in the New York, New York casino in Las Vegas. We were really excited about being locked into the one casino and doing a bad action movie.
There is absolutely nothing you can’t do, see, eat or buy in Las Vegas. It is a magical wonderland where everything is possible – especially in the world of showbiz where everything feels so big, bright and spectacular.
But I’ll never forget my trip to Las Vegas. I’m a huge rollercoaster fan and we did the one at the Stratosphere, which curls around the hotel, and there’s one that dips out from the roof then comes back in. That was intense.
Almost six years ago, before I was given the incredible opportunity to be in ‘Leaving Las Vegas,’ I was going through a long period of artistic confusion. I’d spent years doing work that hadn’t pushed me enough, and I was beginning to wonder if I had any talent.
I figured, maybe one in five, one in 10 people would recognize me. But no, it’s everywhere, especially in Las Vegas. I think the city’s kind of embraced me which is good.
We love to visit Las Vegas. It is so much fun, so iconic; it is always a pleasure.
While we know gambling is part of the industry in Las Vegas, we’re not going to make it all that easy for you to pick up a ticket, a gambling ticket, on your way into the arena.
A Las Vegas show is all-round entertainment. Which means there’s some singing, some dancing, some magic, some drama – everything is rolled into that one performance.
I can be much more creative with my menus in the casino cities. In New York, there are certain things I can’t make. In Las Vegas, they’re much more receptive. Rabbit, some seafoods – they won’t necessarily do well in New York, but I’ll try them in Las Vegas, and they’ll be a success.
‘Leaving Las Vegas’ is a relationship; ‘Dead Man Walking’ is a relationship, and they’re very contained movies. They’re compressed and not in wide open spaces all over the place.
Las Vegas without Wayne Newton is like Disneyland without Mickey Mouse.
Pompeii was an incredibly corrupt city. Pompeii was the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire.
‘Behind The Candelabra’ is an HBO movie. It’s the Liberace story. Michael Douglass and Matt Damon. I play a small part in it. I play a choreographer who introduces, brings Matt Damon to Las Vegas for the first time.
If you were black, you experienced prejudice. It wasn’t a real horrible thing for us; we went through it. We noticed it mostly in the South and in Las Vegas, where we couldn’t stay in the hotels where we entertained. But that began to change.
The good news for us is the NHL has never been stronger, never been more popular, and that, I guess, has led to a lot of interest being expressed from a number of places, an interest in getting an expansion team, and Las Vegas happens to be one of those places.
I was a cop in the Las Vegas Police Department in 1957. I was very young when I joined. But then I became a federal narcotics agent after that, in Vegas, and that propelled me into my future to fight the drug traffickers.
My sister, who is a wonderful and beautiful actress now, when she was 11 or 12, she would go out and take pictures of the punk parties in the desert. She used to have blue hair, and she got kicked out of Las Vegas Day School for having blue hair.
The pride I feel in representing my people, no matter where I am, is never going to diminish. I could be in Hong Kong, Singapore, Egypt or even Las Vegas, I’ll always be representing my people.
I don’t think anyone leaves Las Vegas rejuvenated, their skin shining, their bank accounts glowing. No one leaves Vegas, like, ‘I didn’t make one mistake. That felt great. Back to work.’
I could never leave Las Vegas. I can’t really afford New York or Los Angeles. I love this town. We don’t have that much. We have the Runnin’ Rebels and boxer Floyd Mayweather. When Mayweather fights, it’s good for the whole city. It’s like the Super Bowl out here.
In all my years in show business – on stage, clubs and TV shows – my audience has been 75 percent white. In Las Vegas and Atlantic City I look out at the crowd and only see a few black faces here and there. But I can’t allow myself to be conscious of the race factor. I couldn’t perform my best under those conditions.
I could’ve always worked shows, clubs, Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but I was successful in business ventures, and things weren’t happening in show business, so I said, ‘Let me see what I can do.’
In the late 1960s, Ontario Airport was a throwback to a bygone era. Located 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, the airport served only two carriers, Western and Bonanza. Passengers could catch regional flights to San Francisco, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and that was about it.
If you don’t have a pool in Las Vegas, you have to put your children in the icebox.
All my memories of being in Las Vegas with Bobby were great. Frank Sinatra brought us to the Sands Hotel in 1965. When we worked that lounge, it was a great lounge. I think it was bigger than the showroom. We were two 25-year-old dumb kids from Orange County in Las Vegas with The Rat Pack.
Nevada Energy doesn’t lose money. The gaming industry loses money. It employs all the people. It pays all the taxes. And if you take the P&L, the profit and loss, of the hotels in Las Vegas and Reno, it is a number that is minus, not plus, minus.
With everything it has to offer, Las Vegas is an obvious destination for tourists, as proven by the over 40 million visitors the city welcomes per year.
I grew up born and raised in Las Vegas and actually grew up skiing. You know, we’ve got some ski resorts close to Las Vegas, up in Mount Charleston or Brian Head, so I grew up skiing and snowboarding.
I compete with the ‘Welcome To Las Vegas’ sign for the number one non-gaming tourist attraction in Las Vegas. I get more visitors than the Hoover Dam.
