Top Posts of 2025

Boy, it's been a rough year. Between writing my first book, struggling to manage my celiac disease, and losing my sense of smell and trying to conquer long Covid—all with no health insurance—it's been a lot. 

I tend to thrive in chaos, but at some point I just shut down. And that's what happened after I finished writing my manuscript (while I was sick with Covid, might I add). I just couldn't do anything else.

I've slowly tried to put my apartment back together after two years of neglect. I cleaned under the bed (where my cat hides and sometimes pukes) for the first time in I don't know how long. I still have to change my windshield wipers and put a cover on my car backseat and figure out why my turntable doesn't work and sand down my built-in cutting board. 

Oh and now that I'm 50, I've got to get a pneumonia vaccine and a mammogram. And a follow-up colonoscopy. 

And a permanent job that provides benefits.

With all of this going on, I've managed to blog a little this year—much less than I'd like, and much less than what I have to blog about. Funnily enough, this year also brought some of the highest traffic I've ever had—and, for the first time, to posts that aren't solely about Southern California. 

It's nice to see my Nevada and Northern California posts getting some well-deserved attention!

In case you missed any of them, here are my top posts of 2025—featuring a little architecture, a lot of adventure, and a bit of personal sadness, too.

1. Photo Essay: Wallace Neff's Once-Affordable Bubble House Hits An Inflated Real Estate Market

 

Photo Essay: The Wizard of Oz Gets Weird at the Sphere Vegas

Speaking of The Wizard of Oz, the classic movie offered the perfect opportunity to return to the Sphere in Las Vegas. 

Because after dozens of times seeing it on television and home video (and most recently catching it on the big screen in 3D at Gardena Cinema), why not also experience it on the world's largest spherical structure with the world's largest screen?

It seemed like the perfect thing to do on Thanksgiving night—though not a holiday movie per se, but associated with the holidays after decades of TV broadcasts around the end of the year.

 

Photo Essay: Holiday Bells and Whistles at the Bellagio Conservatory

This was my fourth time spending Thanksgiving in Las Vegas on a solo trip—and after taking myself out to dinner, I decided to head to the Bellagio for the Christmas display in its Conservatory & Botanical Garden.

I'd never seen the Conservatory displays at night—and I thought it might be a little less crowded, since Vegas itself is pretty quiet on Thanksgiving. 

Photo Essay: Nevada's Home of the 'Miracle Metal' That Helped the Allied Forces Win World War II

For as many times as I've visited Las Vegas, I still have a lot to learn about the Las Vegas Valley—and Southern Nevada as a whole. 

That's one of the reasons I like traveling for the annual "Home + History" weekend sponsored by Nevada Preservation Foundation—whose events have taken me to unexpected places on the Strip, just off the Strip, on Fremont Street, and even to nearby Boulder City. 

This year, the one big draw for me was the historic bus tour of Henderson, now Nevada's second-largest city. 

While Boulder City had the Hoover Dam to thank for its founding, Henderson had something completely different: magnesium.

In fact, although Henderson wasn't incorporated until 1953—named after Nevada Senator Charles Belknap Henderson—it began over a decade before that as the "Basic Townsite," home of Basic Magnesium, Inc. (BMI).

And the bus tour I'd driven five and a half hours for, which was co-presented by Nevada Preservation Foundation and Henderson Historical Society, took us through the old BMI plant.

 

Photo Essay: No Better Place to 'B' in Vegas Than the Bellagio Conservatory in Spring

People always ask me, "What is there good to do in Las Vegas?"

 

And the first thing I always tell them is the Bellagio Conservatory. "It's different every time!" I say. 

Photo Essay: Kustomized Cars in Vegas, Courtesy of "The Count"

Every time I visit Vegas, I never have enough time to do all the things I want to do. 

And during this last visit, I wasn't feeling well and it was raining—so that really curtailed the amount of adventures I could have. 

But it gave me the opportunity to do an indoor activity that wouldn't require much energy on my part: take the free tour at Count's Kustoms car shop. 

Photo Essay: May Showers Bring Cactus Flowers

"The cacti are probably in bloom around now," my friend said. And until then, it had never really occurred to me to go to the Ethel M. Chocolates Factory Cactus Garden in Henderson, Nevada during the day.

After all, it's so magical at night during the holiday season. What else could there be?

 

But after taking a morning bus tour of Henderson and an afternoon walking tour of the Hoover Dam, I was looking for a little zen on my way back to Vegas. 

Photo Essay: Cruising Lake Mead on the Desert Princess to the Hoover Dam

Nevada's Lake Mead has been a source of much fascination for me—from the construction of the Hoover Dam (which formed the lake out of the waters of the Colorado River) to the flooding of nearby towns (like St. Thomas).

But while I'd spent some time around the lake—peering at it from a zipline at Bootleg Canyon, hiking around it through decommissioned railroad tunnels, even looking down at it from the dam itself—I hadn't yet had the chance to explore the lake from the lake itself.

Photo Essay: Christmas Spirit Has Taken Over the Bellagio Conservatory in Vegas

I was feeling pretty grumpy this past week and doing my best to embrace Thanksgiving. I wasn't ready for Christmas yet. 

 

And then I arrived in Vegas, legs stiff from a four-hour drive, already weary from the holiday festivities that had not yet come, and swung by the Bellagio to see what they'd done at the Conservatory this season. 

Photo Essay: The Mirage Disappears from the Las Vegas Strip, Where a Giant Guitar Will Replace the Erupting Volcano

There's only one Vegas hotel I've liked enough to stay at more than once—or, unlike the Riviera, that stuck around long enough for me to stay at more than once.

 

circa 2022

That's The Mirage—which just closed in July 2024 to begin its conversion into the Hard Rock Las Vegas. 

Photo Essay: The Museum Preserving Showgirl History in Post-Jubilee Las Vegas

What is Las Vegas without its showgirls?

 

Well, that's Vegas right now—because since the "Jubilee!" show at Bally's closed in 2016, there's no longer a showgirl show.

Just the girls wearing feathered headpieces standing outside the Flamingo or the Venetian, or on Fremont Street, trying to get cash for photos. 

Well, except the 50-foot ones that were installed on the North Strip section of Las Vegas Boulevard. 

   

Since October 2023, the closest thing the city has had to a good old fashioned showgirl spectacular is Dita Von Teese's DITA LAS VEGAS: A Jubilant Revue in the Jubilee Theater at Bally's (which was rebranded as Horseshoe Las Vegas in December 2022). Unfortunately, that closed this weekend—but the good news is, I made it back to Vegas in time to see a performance of it on its second-to-last weekend.  

 

But this post isn't about Dita—and, as I learned at the Las Vegas Showgirl Museum, neither Dita nor her production qualifies as a showgirl show, even though it used some of the Jubilee sets and original costumes designed by Bob Mackie.

Photo Essay: The Sphere Has Landed in Vegas—And What An Experience It is

Las Vegas may have changed a lot since my first visit in the 1990s—and I may feel nostalgic for a version of Vegas I never actually got to experience—but I still love to visit the place, as ever-changing as it may be, even just to admire its audacity. 

 

The latest addition to the Vegas skyline is the Sphere—the world's largest spherical structure with the world's largest screen, which opened in September 2023 after five years of construction. 

Photo Essay: Chasing Down Elvis in Vegas

It didn't really occur to me when I visited the then-Las Vegas Hilton back in the late 1990s (for Star Trek: The Experience, which ran there 1998 to 2008) that I so close to the legacy left by Elvis Presley at the former International Hotel.

 

Photo Essay: The Bellagio's Italian Garden of Love Brings A Touch of Romance to Spring

The Bellagio Hotel & Casino was added to the Las Vegas Strip in 1998...

 

...built by hotelier Steve Wynn to evoke the Mediterranean area of Lake Como, Italy. 

While the Bellagio may be best known for its fountain show, I'm drawn to its 14,000-square-foot Conservatory, where immersive, botanical experiences are installed for each season.

Photo Essay: The Most Vegas-y Football Stadium Ever Is Now Home to the Raiders (And the 2024 Super Bowl)

Once again, football season has rolled around—and although I took the tour of Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas back in May 2022, I waited until now to post about it.

 

It was purpose-built (on land that's always been a vacant lot, according to HistoricAerials.com) as the National Football League stadium of the Las Vegas Raiders—formerly the Oakland Raiders (1960–1981 and 1995–2019) and, when I was growing up and watching American football with my dad, the LA Raiders (1982–1994). They relocated to Vegas in 2020, although that year they played to an empty stadium because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photo Essay: The Only Surviving Home from the Demolished Desert Inn Country Club Estates, Vegas

I'd been waiting since 2019 to return to Nevada Preservation Foundation's annual Home + History tour—and one of my top destinations this year was the nationally-landmarked Morelli House by architect Hugh E. Taylor.  

   

Photo Essay: The Oldest Hotel in Vegas, Golden Gate Hotel & Casino at 1 Fremont Street

I've been feeling a sense of urgency to visit all the Vegas hotels and casinos I can before they get imploded. I've seen too many disappear already—some devastatingly before I ever had the chance to visit. 

I still rack my brain trying to remember what the Strip was like when I first stayed there, at the Stratosphere, when I was too sick with the flu to really explore or appreciate it. That was before I knew everything would go away one day. 

Now I know. And it tortures me. 

 

Photo Essay: The Historic Railroad Attraction Along the Tracks That Helped Build the Hoover Dam

One thing I'd wanted to do in Boulder City, Nevada since I first visited there in 2011 was to ride the Nevada Southern Railway at the southern outpost of the Nevada State Railroad Museum (its main outpost being in the state capital of Carson City, and the Nevada Northern Railway being in Ely). 

 

 

Photo Essay: Meow Wolf's Omega Mart in Las Vegas Claws at Modern Consumerism

One of the new arrivals to Vegas since my last visit in 2019 was Area 15...

 

...with its outdoor event space and sculpture garden and multiple immersive, interactive attractions indoors.

 

Its centerpiece is the Las Vegas installment of Meow Wolf—an expansion of the Santa Fe immersive art collective founded by Emily Montoya and Benji Geary.

Photo Essay: A Special Makeup Effects Creator's Own Museum of Monsters

Most of the times I've been to Boulder City, Nevada, it's been for ziplining or something related to the Hoover Dam. 

 

But this time around, I managed an early morning visit to the railroad museum (photo essay forthcoming)—with just enough time to visit Tom Devlin's Monster Museum before returning to Vegas.