Archive for December, 2008

Skipco, represent!

On the corner of Charleston and Jones boulevards is a 34,000-square-foot eyesore that was once the toast of the local business services community. For approximately 287 years now*, this prime chunk of real estate in the central southwest part of Las Vegas has been available for ANYONE to lease, buy, babysit, etc. Once upon a time, back when I had considerably more hair on my head and less on my body, this was the home of Skipco, a copying/printing/etc. company that once provided real competition for the 500-pound gorilla that was then Kinko’s.

In 2001, the long-time business expanded its headquarters at 6029 W. Charleston Blvd. to the behemoth pictured above, lauded both in the business press and by the City of Las Vegas, whose mayor Oscar Goodman declared April 11 “Skipco Day” (also the birthday of a high school girlfriend — why I remember this but not today’s grocery list I don’t know). At the time, the company was a $22 million a year operation, mainly helped by its status as a showroom for copiers and printers manufactured by Toshiba, who bought the previously family-owned Skipco in 1996.

Why does no one want to buy Baltic Avenue?!

But within a few years — and man, don’t ask me when exactly — the business, by then renamed Toshiba Business Systems, closed. From what little Google-fied research I did in preparation for this story, it seems Skipco’s former president, Gary Harouff, got caught with his hands in the cookie jar, at least allegedly, and Skipco was later in some other legal trouble over contract issues with clients.

Either way, that building has been up for lease or sale for as long as I can remember (which, again, is questionable in my advancing years). If anyone thinks this economic crisis of ours is new, well, I offer for evidence Exhibit A, Toshiba Business Solutions.

Now, I’m in no position to drop however many greenbacks it would take to lease or buy this space, but I do have some suggestions to potential investors for the types of businesses that could make best use of a 34,000-square-foot building in Las Vegas:

• Roller skating rink. Hey, why should Crystal Palace hold the monopoly on that in Sin City?
• A strip club for suburbanites. Really, should we have to trek to unsavory, industrial areas when you could bring the T&A to a location that’s less than a mile from about a half-dozen schools, churches and fast-food joints?
• Copy shop-themed nightclub. You know, go-go dancers in nothing but aprons atop copy machines, drinks served from behind a Formica counter, DJ requests sent via fax machines on the dance floor, etc.
• Whole Foods. Um, just because it’s like a five-minute drive from my house, and I’d like it there. Thanks.

* Maybe it wasn’t 287 years. Who’s counting?

The REAL Weapon X

Just stopped by Capriotti’s to grab a tasty veggie turkey hoagie (yeah I wrote hoagie) and a copy of last week’s Las Vegas Weekly, the few-months-late-but-who-cares 10th anniversary issue. I don’t read either of the local weeklies on a regular basis, mainly because I don’t usually remember to pick them up when I’m out and I have too short an attention span to read them online. But as I’ve been a regular contributor to both the Weekly and CityLife for long periods over the last decade, I have a lot of friends/collagues/former and potential employers at both publications and really, guys and gals, I have nothing but love for you. (Except for you and you know who you are.)

So when I opened this latest free celebration of glossy nightclub advertisements broken up by smudgy newsprint journalism, I was pleasantly surprised to see my band, As Yet Unbroken, featured as the top MP3 download last week on page 16. That got things off to a good start.

After reading Scott Dickensheets’ editorial (nice pic, Scott), I perused the “Ten Years That Shook the World!” roundup of the last ten years’ Weekly highlights. Strip clubs, Searchlight, Playboy models, date rape, OK, got it … WAIT:

“The Weekly has the first published interview with The Killers, anywhere…”

Uh, sorry kids, but NO.

That would have been the CityLife, on August 8, 2002, almost two months before your Sept. 26 article. How do I know that so well? I wrote the damn thing.

I know there’s a friendly (sometimes ugly at certain points in history) competition between the CityLife and Weekly, but give credit where its due, kids — or at least do some fact-checking before you make proclamations such as that.*

Otherwise, kudos to surviving in these trying times, Weekly Magazine That Scope Birthed. You don’t look a day over 5, really.

*Update: Weekly Editor Scott Dickensheets contacted me after reading this and noted it was just a fact-checking slip. Look for a correction in the next issue, kids. No hard, feelings, right, Scott? Scott? What are you doing with that axe? Scott … AAAGGGHH!

Two kids wearing a lot of black

Through the magic of the internets, a friend recently posted some old photos of an early performance from one of my first bands, an electro-goth-rock project called Rahne. I knew these photos existed, but I never knew what became of them. Ah, Facebook, you’re a bastard, aren’t you?

Rahne started off as an outlet for the bad poetry which I’d been writing and reading at open mics since age 16. If you check out the photo to the right, that’s me on the right being all emo with the guitar, and Jason Feinberg on the left, looking like he’s intensely working the pitch wheel on the keyboard. We’d been writing and performing music together since high school, but it was mostly Jason jamming out on the guitar and me crooning over it. I didn’t really play any instrument, fancying myself more a Jim Morrison type of poet-singer.

Well, my predisposition to doing everything myself started early, and when it came to music, that was no different. At about 18, I started tinkering around in my bedroom with an old-school Casio keyboard, dubbing rough melodies and sounds over pre-programmed rhythm patterns to create nascent songs to which I could custom-fit my angst-filled, teenage lyrics.
Eventually, Jason and I got an apartment together, and with that came his MIDI-capable keyboard connected to a Macintosh computer with sequencing software. Even for 1995, this was a dream set-up. It was like a whole new world opened up to me. I re-recorded some of those early demos, and started writing new songs quite prolifically. I also had access to one of Jason’s guitars, and painfully at first, taught myself enough guitar to record some rudimentary two-string chords on the new songs. The sound went from New Order-ish to Nine Inch Nails-ish, and I was cocky enough to think the songs were good enough to take to the streets, and so I made up a few demo tapes and went about recruiting a live band.

Jason reluctantly agreed to play guitar, as I was not skilled enough to do so myself, let alone play AND sing at the same time. I ran into an old friend during a show at the Huntridge Theater one night, Phoenix Ladd, who played drums in the all-girl punk band Jenn’s Cancer. I gave her a copy of the demo, and surprisingly, she was willing to pound the skins. Additionally, she had a friend, Jane Pastor, who could come in on bass. I thought it was a pretty good lineup, if it worked — two girls, two guys, a lot of attitude.

Jason and I grabbed our equipment and drove out to the northern edge of the Las Vegas Valley, where Phoenix lived with her family. It was a sprawling ranch house, perfect for late-night rocking. We met Jane, we hung out, smoked cigarettes, whatever, and eventually got around to trying to “jam.” Of course, I was providing the songs in full — all the drums, guitars and bass had already been worked out — the band just had to follow. I remember how awesome it was to hear Phoenix — who, at the time, was a pretty rudimentary punk drummer — bring the digitally sequenced drums to life, and how good it felt just to be performing, even in her makeshift practice space.

However, Jane disappeared and Phoenix decided to move to Seattle or Portland to attend school. Rahne was falling apart before it even started. But did that matter to me? Of course not. I booked a gig with a few other friends at a Cafe Espresso Roma in the middle of December 1995. It took some arm-twisting, but I managed to convince Jason to play guitar along with me. However, he didn’t have time to learn the songs (silly college finals!) and showed up to the gig with a brand-new guitar that kept slipping out of tune, so Rahne’s debut appearance was pretty much me poorly playing and singing five or six moody gothic rock songs while Jason noodled out of key on his metal guitar.

But glutton for punishment that I am, I persevered.

Jason and Pj get gothy on your ass.

We regrouped. I got better at guitar, even beginning to make regular appearances at open-mic acoustic nights. Jason switched from guitar to keyboards. A lot of goth acts at the time (and historically) were two- or three-person deals, often backed by a drum machine or other sequenced tracks. We went the lo-tech route. I dumped all of our drums, bass and effects for performance onto a cassette tape, and we’d run the tape player through the P.A., while Jason played the keyboard parts live and I played guitar and sang. And when we reappeared at Enigma Garden Cafe the following March, it clicked. We played two sets with something like 16 songs and managed to stimulate the packed venue.

By the time we played our third gig, a bass player in attendance named Sterling offered to join the band, and by the next gig, Jason had bowed out to work on his own project, Wail of Sumer, and it was just Sterling and I (along with our magical tape deck) for the rest of the summer, until we recruited a new drummer, Brian Pfeifer, and a second guitarist, my high school pal Ryan Couevas.

That new incarnation of Rahne afforded me the freedom to expand our musical oeuvre a bit, going a little more mainstream rock, and even a bit funky (I was on a Prince kick at the time). It alienated the goth fan base somewhat, but also allowed us to move from the Vegas cafe scene to the bar scene … before imploding for a variety of reasons in April 1997.

When all was said and done, in its 16-month existence, Rahne produced two “studio” cassettes, one live tape, a few singles, nabbed some college radio airplay and goth club spins, and among some better press coverage, was named “Worst Rock Act in Vegas” by Andrew Kiraly at the CityLife (tying with Bangkok Shock). That’s not a bad run for something that started as me tinkering with a Nintendo-sounding toy on the floor of my bedroom.

A little bit of Sol in the mail

Swinging by the ol’ P.O. box the other day, I was pleasantly surprised to receive the above gem among the barrage of CES promotional materials I’ve been receiving the last month or so. It’s a postcard promoting artist Amy Sol’s current solo exhibit at Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Rome, “Smoke & Water.” The image featured on the front is “Speak to Me,” the original of which is a 14.5″ by 12″ gouache and graphite work on cotton.

Amy is something of a homegrown hero. Just five years ago, she was part of the then-underground “lowbrow” art scene in Las Vegas, doing group shows with the likes of Mark T. Zeilman* at venues such as Gallery Au Go-Go. Then she seemed to disappear for a while from the local art scene. You know why? Because she was BLOWING UP outside the city. Next thing you know, she’s being featured in art mags such as Juxtapoz and doing shows all across the globe.

We featured Amy in Racket magazine’s art issue, which also happened to be the last issue of the magazine. But it was great to feature her alongside other internationally renowned artists such as Naoto Hattori (whose art he donated graciously for the cover of that issue). I’ll bust out scans and more information on that issue for you later, if there’s any cries for such things.

The other nifty thing about that mailing: The envelope is from Direktrecycling, a company that reuses materials such as maps to create new products — a more efficient method of recycling than having to re-pulp and re-manufacture used paper goods. Pretty cool.

*Full disclosure: Mark plays bass in my band. So yeah, I just promoted his art. I do not receive a cut of his sales. Really. Even though I’ve asked.

In the midst of trying (no, really!) to complete a freelance assignment for a client whose unstated deadline is surely approaching, I’m also feverishly customizing holiday cards (yes, way too late to arrive by Christmas but hopefully early enough to arrive before 2009) and … well, apparently being reminded As Yet Unbroken’s website needs updating.

At least this weekend hasn’t been a total wash. On Friday, I snuck away for a few hours to my nearby Starbucks and forced out four pages of layouts/script for this comic book project about which I am telling you nothing. I swear, I got something else done, though I’m not sure what, aside from waiting for the HVAC guy to get our heat working again. Today, one half of the band came over. We recorded bass and guitars for two new songs, and I tricked the guys into helping move furniture (they are easily bribed with liquor), so there’s that.

Frosty, you look so warm. Don't melt!

Friday night, the girlfriend and I went with a few friends to Opportunity Village’s Magical Forest. It’s a completely rad holiday set-up, with dazzling lighting displays donated, and created, by local businesses, a surprisingly sprawling and fun train ride, the requisite Santa photo opp, holiday gift shop and much more. The weather was quite chilly (for Vegas), but it was silly amounts of fun, and it was all for a good cause. And that good cause was me playing target practice with the unfortunate family who didn’t clear the lane on the giant slide upon which I was blazing Earthward like an ICBM. Hey, it was all in good fun, right? Right.

So while I’m possessed by the holiday spirit and whatnot, I figured I’d be nice and bring you some presents early. I’ve rounded up a few of the more eclectic holiday-themed songs I have sitting on my vast hard drive, and I’m presenting them here for your enjoyment and perusal. These links will surely expire within 30 days or self-destruct or something, so get ‘em while they’re hot. Or before the RIAA eviscerates their presence.

• Sufjan Stevens – “Get Behind Me Santa”
• Richard Cheese – “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
• Radiohead – “Winter Wonderland”

That’s all for now. I’ll save you the pain of recounting last night’s douchebaggery at McFadden’s inside the Rio. Let it just be said that if there is a hell, and I go there, it’s going to look a lot like McFadden’s on a Saturday night.

Alas, Mervyn's, we shopped you well

When I was a younger lad — and by younger I mean living at a time when a Reagan was president and a Jackson ruled the charts — my mother would take my brother and me to Mervyn’s when back-to-school shopping season rolled around. Actually, I’m not sure if that kid got to buy anything, because if I recall correctly, he pretty much wore my hand-me-downs until he hit his pre-teens. OK, that’s probably a gross exaggeration, but either way, I’m getting way off topic here.

So yeah, a lot of my back-to-school shopping for clothing was done at Mervyn’s because, well, my parents weren’t made of platinum credit cards, and really, I was so much of a dork back then it’s not like I would have known the difference. Actually, that’s a lie: I did know the difference. While the “cool” kids were wearing Z. Cavaricci, Guess? and Mossimo, I was rocking the Bugle Boy cargo pants and nameless pastel T-shirts.

Thus, it’s with mixed feelings that I offer up the latest casualty of the funtastic recession plaguing our land. Mervyn’s closed 12 “underperforming” stores in early 2007, bringing its national count down to 177 locations. By July of this year, the Hayward, Calif.-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and by October, it filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and began to shutter all of its stores, including the one pictured at Meadows Lane and Decatur Boulevard in Las Vegas — yes, just a hop, skip and closing-sale jump from Steve & Barry’s. As a matter of fact, I noticed another store next to Steve & Barry’s having an “everything must go” 50 percent off sale, so check back soon to see if that entire corner is coming to a crashing economic halt.

Get those cheap threads while you can!

Steve & Barry’s, the retail chain that sells casual sportswear and celebrity-endorsed clothing lines for not more than $10 a pop, opened its first Las Vegas location early this summer. It’s also Steve & Barry’s last Las Vegas location, as the Port Washington, N.Y.-based company filed for bankruptcy in July, not a month after the Vegas location opened just west of the Meadows Mall on Meadows Lane near Decatur Boulevard.

Not surprisingly, most experts blamed rapid expansion for Steve & Barry’s epic failure. Now the company is in the process of liquidating its assets and closing all of its stores.

Stay tuned to Bleeding Neon for more Moments of Zen as we watch the House That Deregulation and Sleeping at the Wheel Built crumble down all around us. Happy Friday!