Photo Essay: The (Temporary) View from Above Vegas

[Last updated 11/5/19 7:42 PM PT]

My first Vegas trip was in the early '00s I think, when you could still ride a mechanical bull in the Strip and several vintage casinos hadn't been torn down yet.

That trip haunts me, because there's so much more I could've seen then, when I was visiting on vacation from New York. Subsequent trips were monopolized by conferences and meetings. And by the time I started to understand Vegas and have the time to see the sites that interested me, they were already gone.

On tat first trip, my friend Tony had booked us at the Stratosphere Casino & Hotel because it was cheap. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was also relatively new.

And despite the fact that I was interested in its tower and rooftop rollercoaster, I didn't go exploring past the buffet and casino floor because I was saddled with one of the worst bouts of influenza of my life. I mostly stayed in my room shivering under the covers. I ventured out to win $90 on a Press Your Luck-themed slot machine. I let Tony drag me to the Valley of Fire and Studio 54 at the MGM Grand.

I didn't do much else on that trip, and that's been hanging over my head for over a decade.

So, on this return trip to Vegas, it was time to return to the Stratosphere [Ed: rebranded "The STRAT" in 2019].

I suppose by now it's considered a bit passé. It doesn't have the cache of being vintage, but it's not a new luxury high-rise, either. But it's still the tallest free-standing observation tower in the U.S.—and that still counts for something.



Near the top of the tower, 800 feet above the end of the Las Vegas Strip, you can dine at the Top of the World Restaurant...



...which, like the Bona Vista Lounge at the Bonaventure Hotel in Downtown LA and The View at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, rotates to give a 360-degree view of the city below.



It makes a full rotation every 80 minutes—so if you don't rush, you might catch the shadow of the tower and spire cast on the sun drenched city below.



You might even get to see someone bungee-jumping from the observation deck above you.

Getting a meal at the restaurant gets you onto the observation deck for free—though lots of people spring for the thrill rides up there or for some drinks at the bar. It is Vegas, after all.



I, however, wasn't interested in getting drunk or motion sick—so even though I was free of the flu this time, I abstained from everything but the breathtaking view.



While the top of the Stratosphere was probably about as high as I could get in Vegas while remaining sober...



...I left relatively quickly to move on to yet another aerial amusement that would take me above the Strip.

circa 2017

The High Roller holds its own distinction as the world's tallest ferris wheel—and since I hadn't been in Vegas since its 2014 opening, this was my first chance to ride it.



I still haven't had the chance to ride the London Eye, even though I was actually in London 10 years after it was first erected.



I guess I'm always making up for something.



The High Roller is a little farther down the Strip from the Stratosphere, across the street from Caesar's and just behind the Flamingo...



...so it has a bit of a different view.



But the real attraction is the wheel itself, with its retro-futuristic spherical pods evoking something you might ride at a World's Fair in the 1960s.



Unlike most ferris wheels, on the High Roller you're completely encapsulated, so you can move freely about the pod.



And the thing moves so slowly that you barely feel any torque. It takes 30 minutes for the wheel to make a complete revolution.



With open bar packages available, the High Roller is a popular nighttime attraction, but I wanted to actually see what was below me—and not just the lights.



I managed to squeeze in right before the end of the "daytime" hours and catch the beginnings of the sun as it set behind The Linq Hotel & Casino. By the time I was driving away, night had fallen and the High Roller had been lit up in hues of hot pink and orange.

I'm sure someday it'll be torn down, too—just like the rest of Vegas has been. I'm sure the Strip is completely unrecognizable to someone who knew the prior version of Vegas from the 1950s or even the 1970s. Vegas is almost unrecognizable to me now, just over a decade since my first visit.

It's the kind of place you just can't grow too attached to. Of all the hotels and casinos I've stayed in—the Stratosphere, Caesar's, the Wynn, the Flamingo, Hooter's, The Palms, Rio, Riviera—one has already been imploded.

Maybe it's just better to try to experience as many of them as possible, and not to play favorites with any of them.

Because how quickly will that view from above the Strip change?

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Photo Essay: A Day-Glo Desert Detour [Updated for 2026]

[Last updated 5/21/26 10:37 AM PT—According to KTNV, artist Ugo Rondinone has decided not to relocate Seven Magic Mountains to Washoe County, despite the $500,000 budget approval for the expense . The current lease with the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the land it stands on, is valid through December 31, 2026. No word yet on what will happen to the artwork after the lease expires.]

[Updated 8/22/24 11:18 AM PT—The lease for Seven Magic Mountains expires at the end of 2026 in order to make room for the expansion of Harry Reid International Airport (formerly known as McCarran International Airport). 

It's been announced that funds have been approved to relocate the art installation from the Las Vegas area to somewhere in Washoe County, which includes the city of Reno and part of the Black Rock Desert area where Burning Man takes place.

Seven Magic Mountains was actually always intended to be temporary—and initially was scheduled to be installed only through 2018.

Ultimately, the decision to move it is up to the artist, Ugo Rondinone, who has not yet made a statement.]

There's something about piles of rocks that make the desert seem a little more inhabitable. You can find small piles of them, often called cairns, along pretty much any desert trail—which is a good thing, since everything looks like a trail in the desert, making it hard to know if you're going the right way.

People who drive everywhere don't know what that's like.

But maybe they do now, because there are some brightly-colored rocks piled up off the I-15 just outside of Vegas that have been drawing accidental tourists out into the middle of the Nevada desert to have a look.



When I first heard about "Seven Magic Mountains," I thought for sure it was some unauthorized desert art project. I loved the idea of someone turning this common symbol of desert hiking into a larger-than-life, open air public art exhibition.

Rising Above It

It had been three years since I'd been anywhere near the Valley of Fire, about 70 miles north of Vegas. I'd tried to get back to Nevada, but I had to stay away longer than I wanted because I was working too little to afford any trips outside of LA.



Last year, I was invited to join some friends on a road trip to the RiSE Festival—kind of a Western take on the traditional Chinese lantern festival—but I just couldn't make the investment in the trip. Over the years, I've missed out on a lot of opportunities because of lack of money.



But this year was another story, and this year they were going back and invited me once again to join them. And this time I could accept.



I'd seen the photos and videos from last year, but I still didn't really know what to expect. Everyone there seemed to have come just to get their photo taken with the sign.



Sitting in the middle of the Mojave Desert—or was it the Moapa Valley?—I watched the red and purple sky as the sun set. I was trying to absorb everything that was happening around me, yet, at the same time, drown it all out.

I didn't want to hear music, or see camera flashes, or feel the food in my stomach or the rocks on the ground I was sitting on. I didn't know really what brought me to the RISE Festival, where people send their hopes and dreams out into the Universe, stowed away on a paper lantern that flies way. After all, I'd give up hope a long time ago.



I wasn't going to wish for money or success or fame or even romance, because I don't think I really want any of it. I'm never happy when I get what I supposedly want. The Universe never gets it quite right—or I'm always wishing for the wrong things.



So as I lit my own lantern to launch out into the dark sky, I was hoping for nothing—literally, for no things. All I wanted was peace—and satisfaction, if I could ever get it.



After all, I feel most peaceful when I'm not trying to do anything or trying to go anywhere—those rare times when I can just be. And since that only seems to be able to happen in the desert, I hoped for nothing more than I already had in that moment, there, in that desert.



The first launch was difficult, because I had some sense that we were supposed to raise the lanterns up high and kind of push them into the wind—but actually, the opposite turned out to be true. If you held them too high, and you tried to release them before they were ready, they would just sail straight ahead, right into the back of someone standing in front of you.



The trick is actually to get the fuel cell lit, and then hold the lantern down low—just pinching the corners of the paper shade with two fingers at waist height. When there's enough hot air inside of it from the flame, the lantern will start to tug, like a fish on a line. It tells you when it's ready. And all you can do is wait.



So once I got the hang of it—realizing all I had to do was less and not more, and just stop trying so hard—I was able to really release those lanterns, and let them fly away on their own. And when they finally did, I couldn't stop saying, "Look at them go!"



I kept wondering where they'd end up. I guess I felt guilty and selfish for littering this vast open space for something that seemed so superficially spiritual—as beautiful and moving as it was, and as choked up as I became.



Instead of trying to get something, I tried to give something.



I wrote on both lanterns, knowing—and hoping—that someone out there might scoop up its charred remains and take more than a cursory glance at what was on it, noting that it wasn't all hearts and stars and dollar signs.

I've risen above a lot in my life. And maybe my experience will help someone else do the same thing.

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[Last updated 2/25/23 11:03 PM PT—The Chase Bank was demolished in April 2021.]

Paradise was already paved once. And they're trying to do doing it again.


Circa 1927 (Photo: Los Angeles Public Library Images)

At the intersection of Sunset and Crescent Heights, there once stood the 1913 estate formerly known as Hayvenhurst (named after real estate developer William H. Hay), later renamed the Garden of Alla for actress Alla Nazimova, and finally known as the Garden of Allah Hotel, the so-called "playground to the stars."


Photo: Julius Shulman, 1960 (© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10))

That is, until banker Bart Lytton bought the place, and demolished the Old Hollywood estate in 1959 to build the flagship branch of his Lytton Savings & Loan in its place.

Photo Essay: Naples, the Dreamland of Southern California

Having moved to LA for a job located in Venice, CA (formerly known as "Venice of America"), I was familiar with Southern California canals.

The canals of Venice, of course, have famously been paved over, and those that remain are flanked by million-dollar bungalows.

But I only recently found out that there are other canals in the Southland region—in a tiny area of Long Beach, known as Naples.



I've been obsessed with going there—mostly because they offer gondola rides. So imagine my excitement when the mystery excursion on my birthday this year turned out to be sailing with the folks from Gondola Getaway at Alamitos Bay!



As we pulled up and parked the car, I gasped and said, "I see gondolas..." And that's not something you see—or say—every day in LA.



We arrived to their dock during the honey glow of a late September Magic Hour...



...while a wedding party was busily gathering to set adrift for a couple's impending Neopolitan nuptials.



The sky and water were still blue at that point, and the palm tree fronds green against a darkening backdrop.



Some of the more modern, American-made gondolas in the fleet can hold up to 14 people...



...but we cozied up in a vintage gondola from Venezia, built for two passengers.



Our gondolier, Giuseppe (real name: Joseph), promised to give us as much alone time as we wanted while he rowed from the back. Of course, as always I had so many questions to ask, so I didn't exactly let him off the hook.



Traditional Venetian gondolas are almost 40 feet long and built asymmetrically, so they can be rowed with a single oar and fórcola, which acts as a fulcrum.



But in these canals, the newer gondoliers start off by rowing one of the custom-built vessels—at 25 feet in length, they're shorter, symmetrical, and are rowed with an oar in each hand.



When I asked Giuseppe if he could sing, he obliged with a stirring rendition of "O Sole Mio" under one of the many concrete bridges designed by the partnership of structural engineer Edward Leodore Mayberry Jr. and architect Llewellyn Adelbert Parker (who also designed some LA theatres, including the building that became the recently renovated Teragram Ballroom).



Although people do live along the Naples and Rivo Alto canals upon three distinct islands, and their docks, boat launches, and boats are privately owned, the water here is actually public.



That means technically you could swim in it—though it's only ankle-deep in some parts of the bay. Other areas of the canals can go as deep as 25 feet.



This little-known area was completed in the 1920s—and rebuilt after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake—by developer Arthur Parson as the "Dreamland of Southern California," though its Mayberry & Parker design is primarily Italianate.



Arthur Parson was to Naples in 1903 what Abbott Kinney was to Venice in 1905—but the gondolas have gone from Venice (save for the sculpture at Windward Circle and the one hanging from the ceiling in Danny's).



The Long Beach version of Napoli may not be as authentic as actually being in Italia; but true to its name, it sure is dreamy.



And as the sun sets into a pink horizon, the palm trees flutter in black silhouette. The gondola skims silently along a rippling course, propelled by one paddle that breaks the water surface but never touches the bottom.



Gaze forth, the gondolier behind you and out of sight, it seems that all you really need is a dream—and the wind—to carry you all the way to serenity.

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Photo Essay: Upon the 75th Anniversary of the Ghost Town at Knott's Berry Farm

It's kind of hard to believe that another amusement park has managed to thrive in more or less the next town over from Disneyland. I mean, Disney is Disney, after all. It's the happiest place on earth!

But Disneyland has been evolving and modernizing. It's been shifting its focus away from Frontierland in favor of Tomorrowland. And that means Knott's Berry Farm will soon have the market cornered on amusement park depictions of American pioneers and frontier life in the Old American West.



Yes, Knott's has a water park and some roller coasters in its main park. But for me, the main attraction is its Ghost Town.