Desert Companion

01/08/2024

Mojave desert tortoises are the state reptile of both Nevada and California. They have remained essentially unchanged for three to five million years, says wildlife biologist Kristin Berry of the U.S. Geological Survey. Their turtle ancestors date back to the late Triassic Period, some 220 million years ago, and tortoises diverged from them about 55 million years ago. In their long evolutionary history, turtles and tortoises have survived mass extinctions, the last ice age, and, most recently, desertification of the American Southwest, all by exploiting remarkable adaptations such as recycling precious water stored in their bladder.

The late expert Glenn Rogers of the Nuwuvi (Shivwits Band of Southern Paiutes) in southwestern Utah called them “warriors,” because they are such fierce survivors.

Yet in the last century, especially the last 50 years, the number of Mojave desert tortoises has dwindled by a sobering 90 percent.

How has it come to this? What is being done about it? And why should we care?

Read the feature: tinyurl.com/5enp92sn

01/03/2024

"What’s the best Southern Nevada trail to hike in winter?” seems an innocuous question, but it ended in a newsroom fight: Arizona Hot Spring versus Gass Peak.

You can see by the headline which side editor Heidi Kyser was on, and here’s why: "The last time I hiked Arizona Hot Spring, I saw tourists carrying their yard-longs and wearing flip-flops. That place has been discovered."

For something with a higher barrier of entry, head to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge (DNWR) and get the best city view of any nearby mountain peak.

Get more details: tinyurl.com/msnvuzv4

12/25/2023

Sending love to you and yours this holiday season. ❤️

12/13/2023

🎁 Still need to do some holiday shopping?

If you missed it in this month's issue, check out our guide to buying Nevada-made for this year's holiday gifts!

Find it here: tinyurl.com/3z69kxvx

12/07/2023

Head in the clouds?

The 100th anniversary of the world’s first planetarium this year offers a good excuse to discover Southern Nevada’s only public planetarium and its tight-knit community.

Humble in comparison to L.A.’s Griffith Observatory or Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, our dome has welcomed students, families, and astronomy enthusiasts since it opened in 1977, one of many that sprung up on campuses on the heels of 1960s space exploration. The 66-seat, 30-foot-domed venue with an observatory telescope outside hosts private research and space movie showings in addition to weekly public viewings and year-round astronomy events.

💫 Read more: tinyurl.com/2bhxrw9w

12/04/2023

Las Vegans who love pets probably know local animal shelters are in crisis. The problem of pet abandonment is so heartbreaking and complex — with its constellation of socioeconomic causes — that it’s hard to think about, let alone solve. One obvious solution? More shelters. And yet, not all experts agree this is the most humane option. Some believe a focus on prevention is more important.

Read the full report: tinyurl.com/2wwmx4tz

12/04/2023

The Nevada state reptile faces multiple threats, mostly man-made. Concerned scientists are racing to find a solution

11/30/2023

𝗚𝗢𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗕𝗨𝗦𝗘𝗗: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝘂𝘅𝘂𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗰𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝘀 𝗩𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘀' 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

"Having been spoiled by a six-minute driving commute, a 39-minute bus commute seems like a punishment. But that punishment is easier to swallow than $1,266 (or, using my preferred metric for conceptualizing cost, one and a half round-trip tickets to Greece), so I started commuting by RTC bus — something thousands of Las Vegans do daily, with RTC’s average number of weekday unlinked trips sitting at 100,087 in 2021 — the last week of September. ...

In a car-dependent city whose roads are dotted with personal injury law billboards, violent death seems to lurk in the back seat of every commute. In my experience — albeit as a man, albeit as a man whose workout routine is sometimes just a walk to and from the bus — I feel safer on the bus than I do driving a car on its last leg down a street with Vegas drivers."

🚌 Read more from Nicholas Barnette: tinyurl.com/yaz69rwu

11/28/2023

🏈 UNLV's football team is 6-2 and eligible for a postseason bowl game for the first time since 2013.

The program, with 10 winning seasons in 45 years, looks to be on the upswing. But is there room for major college football in a city that now boasts three major sports teams — the Raiders, Golden Knights, and Aces — and with the impending arrival of Major League Baseball's Athletics, soon to be four?

Read the full story: tinyurl.com/299uw4sm

11/11/2023

🍳 𝙎𝙘𝙧𝙖𝙢𝙗𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙀𝙜𝙜𝙨 𝙄𝙨 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙒𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙖 𝙒𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙚 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙋𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙚

AS A MARIACHI GROUP plays, a crowd spills out of UNLV Grant Hall Gallery into the space outside to enjoy the music, holding plates of food from Chef Loui. Others remain inside the gallery, looking at art and buying zines. has done it again: a unique reception to open a pop-up exhibition, this time gathering artists previously shown in solo exhibitions into one group show. It solidifes Scrambled Eggs’ status as true artist collective.

It began in March 2022 in Emmanuel “Manny” Muñoz’s 200-square-foot downtown studio, which he rented initially to work on art projects and freelance architecture gigs in his free time. Next door was a studio run by Monika Chaney, who hosted mixers where Muñoz met other artists and creative people.

“I began to think that maybe I could put together some sort of pop-up art show for them and use my space for something more than just my own projects,” Muñoz says.

After a UNLV architecture class one day, Muñoz called Brian Martinez about his idea for a pop-up exhibition of Martinez’ work in Muñoz’s studio. Martinez agreed, and the first Scrambled Eggs exhibition was born.

Read more: tinyurl.com/5n96ru46

11/07/2023

"A familiar sensation of relief welled within me: Rain, finally. I felt the urge to dart outside like I used to as a kid, when I’d play hide and seek under dripping leaves."

Hear or read the full essay: tinyurl.com/4c93h38u

11/02/2023

📚 Looking for your next read?

Post-apocalyptic Las Vegas must seem a natural setting for dystopian fiction, given the number of times it’s been used as such. Post-pandemic, with the city’s economic recovery still lagging, it’s even more believable. Take that hopeless atmosphere, add crumbling infrastructure and roving bands of displaced civilians, and you have the scene of Jarret Keene’s latest novel, Hammer of the Dogs. Out since September 12, the book is the latest in Keene’s line of Vegas-themed works, following poetry and short story anthologies, and a travel guide.

Read the full review from Anne Davis: tinyurl.com/yjyjkbwh

10/30/2023

THE POWER OF THE PEN: In Rotten Evidence, the author breaks bonds both literary and political, writes Scott Dickensheets.

"I can’t think of any literary genre that lies as habitually about its subject, or is as artistically lazy while claiming authenticity, as prison literature.” This critique of Egyptian prison memoirs is the bar Ahmed Naji sets for himself — and clears — in Rotten Evidence, his own memoir of Egyptian prison.

Now living in exile as a fellow at UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, Naji became the first writer in Egyptian history imprisoned for “offending public morality.” That is, for literary rather than political reasons, as passages in his 2014 novel Using Life were deemed too sexually provocative. Sentenced to two years, he was imprisoned for 10 months in 2016.

Rotten Evidence is anything but artistically lazy. Its timeline toggles adroitly between the ritual humiliations of captivity — petty bureaucratic sadisms, vulgar cellblock banter, revolting smells — and scenes from Naji’s life leading up to incarceration. In these, he offers brief, penetrating glimpses into Egypt’s often-surreal political, religious, intellectual, and judicial strata. Frequent excerpts from his journal add a real-time texture, and a kind of psychological shadow narrative gels as Naji recounts his sad, frightening, and hopeless dream life."

See the full review: tinyurl.com/477mkwtf

10/25/2023

FOOD WITH HEART: "Big, bright, bold flavors,” is how Ray Garcia describes his food at B.S. Taqueria. “We don’t really pull punches.” The famed eatery, which shuttered in Los Angeles and has now found a new home in Las Vegas, showcases plates that are confident and aggressive — like its chef.

Read more from Jason Harris: tinyurl.com/4nxry8xw

10/21/2023

"A mesquite tree sprawls wildly in the center of my backyard — triple the size it was when we moved in three years ago. Its unruly limbs seem to grow overnight, stretching to sway in strong desert winds. The year we bought our house, there had been zero inches of rainfall for 240 straight days, and the drip system had been off just as long. During those dry months, the mesquite was quietly sending its long, persistent roots in search of hidden water.

One summer afternoon last year, my kids and I cleaned up thousands of the mesquite’s seedpods that radiated from the center of the trunk in a creamy blanket. Lush branches formed a canopy of reprieve from the relentless summer heat. When my son asked if we could eat the pods, I assured him that if he could wait, I would do some research. Mesquites are everywhere here. They line our walking paths, shade our favorite park benches, and decorate the city. As a phreatophyte, a plant that has evolved to thrive despite long dry periods, mesquites can go months without water. Their roots defy drought, twisting and extending up to 200 feet below ground. They provide shade, fast-growing fuel, sturdy wood, and nutritious food.

Our yard, adjacent to Sunset Park, lies in the middle of what used to be an ancient mesquite bosque. Bosques exist in the arid Southwest, near streams or rivers. Here in Las Vegas, water once moved invisibly under the sandy surface. It coursed for miles in vast groundwater causeways, like veins underneath skin, bubbling from springs and extending for miles, nourishing all kinds of desert flora and fauna. While the springs are now dry, mesquites are still here, and the one in my yard must have produced thousands of pods for a reason — certainly not to die wasted, inside a trash bag in my garage."

Read more from Sarah Calvo: tinyurl.com/mupzeeem

10/17/2023

🍹 Breakfast cocktails often default to the Bloody Mary, the mimosa, or some variation thereof. Downtown’s Eureka! offers a unique take with its Morning, Peaches cocktail.

It’s a strong-willed Southern belle of a drink that blends Buffalo Trace bourbon and pureed peaches with a dash of coffee and a hint of vanilla, creating a unique libation. A pretty pansy garnish adds an aesthetic pick-me-up to the chemical ones provided by the booze and caffeine. After all, who doesn’t prefer a gentle nudge into the day rather than a swift kick?

Via Lissa Townsend Rogers: tinyurl.com/23hh5npz

10/16/2023

Look what arrived today! ❤️

10/13/2023

Warning: This story contains discussion of violence and su***de.

--

Each year an average of 24,569 Americans of all ages, including 732 children under the age of 18, die from gun su***de. This translates to 67 people dying each day. Equally as disturbing, studies show that attempts in which a gun is chosen as the su***de method are successful 90 percent of the time. Other research indicates that easy firearm access can triple the probability that someone will attempt to commit su***de.

These national numbers provided part of the rationale for legislative action close to home. Nevada, which has the 12th-highest firearm su***de rate in the nation, saw SB 294 passed in this year’s legislature. Dubbed the “Safe Firearm Storage Act,” the law makes it a misdemeanor to know that an unsecured firearm is present and accessible to a minor. Signed into law by Governor Joe Lombardo on June 14, it went into effect on July 1.

Although the bill was drafted mainly to prevent school shootings, its primary sponsor, Senator Fabian Doñate, says it potentially prevents su***de, too. Doñate says, “This can be a commonsense deterrent to buy just a few more seconds” as the person accesses their gun from a safe or removes a lock — time during which self-harming emotions can subside.

Read more: tinyurl.com/55cs2uf3

10/11/2023

Featured in the October issue: "True Crime: A Social Injustice" by Pj Perez ()

Lin ‘Spit’ Newborn and Daniel Shersty were murdered 25 years ago. Their legacies still reverberate through Las Vegas.

“To this day I’m still shocked and saddened and just still can’t believe that something like that could happen to such a small, underground portion of the world that I lived in,” says Chad Simmons, an artist and labor activist who documented the Vegas punk scene in the ’80s and ’90s on video tape. “What happened to Spit and Dan, it was a terrible thing, and we will forever mourn them.”

Read the full story: tinyurl.com/yc33effn
Warning: This story recounts a racially motivated murder.

10/09/2023

"In Maui, the effects of climate change have been exacerbated by plantation practices that push out native plant species and divert water for commercial use.

In the West, we see similar effects from mining, ranching, and restrictions against incorporating Indigenous management principles into public land use policy. The onslaught of mining that started during the Gold Rush era continues to devastate our environment at an astonishing rate in the Global South.

Moreover, the consequences of climate change-induced drought are intensified in areas previously deforested by mining. In the Great Basin, for example, our beloved pine trees are being ravaged by beetle infestations that threaten to decimate an already meager source of sustenance."

Read more from Richard Boland: tinyurl.com/537su4ve

10/05/2023

You could say the relationship between Las Vegas and Formula 1 is meant to be. You could even say this without noting that the central plot line for the 1964 Elvis Presley movie Viva Las Vegas was a fictional Grand Prix race in the city. Yet, as the world gears up for the speed and the spectacle, Las Vegas locals face a conundrum: While business leaders increasingly tailor the city to lavish events, the inhabitants who support the tourism industry that make such events possible stand to lose the affordable cost of living that drew them here to begin with.

The impending arrival of the inaugural Formula 1 Heineken Silver Las Vegas Grand Prix in November signifies a shift for the city. According to business advisory firm Applied Analysis, it’s Las Vegas’ first mega event meant to generate up to $1.3 billion in spending, double what’s expected when Las Vegas hosts the 2024 Super Bowl.

Bringing the race to Las Vegas seems like a veritable win-win. Liberty Media, the owner of Formula 1, is banking on the city’s reputation as an uber entertainment, gambling, and all-night revelry destination to increase its fan base. Local leaders expect the community to get a financial boost from hospitality-related spending. This promise of an economic windfall caused by Formula 1 and other mega-events to come sounds suspiciously like trickle-down economics.

Although the plan for the Grand Prix has been in motion since 2019, it feels very much like a recent event meant to serve corporate hotel operators. As of this writing, the price of a three-day race ticket in the Bellagio Fountain Club area is $11,247 per person — something none of my friends in the city could afford — and that’s just one piece of a larger puzzle.

Read more from Soni Brown: tinyurl.com/yms62kx5

10/02/2023

✨ Out now!

🍂 Our annual Fall Culture Guide is back with more events to experience, art to see, music and readings to hear, and festivals to revel in through the rest of the year.

🔗 Check out more: knpr.org/october-2023

09/29/2023

We LOVE to see it! ❤️ Andrea Goeglein () is a big Desert Companion fan and organizes a monthly dinner based on the winners of our annual restaurant awards. This week they stopped by . 😋

What an awesome idea! The next dining issue is out in December!

09/25/2023

09/22/2023

🍻 𝗪𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗧 𝗪𝗜𝗦𝗘: 𝗛𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻'𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻𝘁𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮 𝗳𝗲𝘄 𝗸𝗲𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀.

The early adopters of the latest redevelopment plan for Henderson’s Water Street district had one thing in common, it seems: the number of people who questioned their sanity.

“A lot,” Windom Kimsey says. “First, my wife thought I was crazy.”

“It was really sleepy, and we were told more than once that we were crazy,” Tom Wucherer says.

“What I heard about Water Street was, ‘That’s where businesses go to die,’” Juan Vazquez says.

Ah, but that was then, and this is now. Kimsey now lives on Water Street, moved his architectural firm there, and opened Public Works Coffee Bar in 2017 and the bustling Azzurra Cucina Italiana this year.

Wucherer is partnering with Jeff Cruden and Andy Belmonti to develop The Watermark, a mixed-use project from their Strada Development Group. The Watermark is nearing completion, and they have plans to break ground early next year on an even bigger project, the luxury Waterfalls.

And Vazquez’s only regret is that his Water Street restaurant, Juan’s Flaming Fajitas and Cantina, isn’t bigger.

Read more from Heidi Knapp Rinella: tinyurl.com/2fy38rmj

09/21/2023

We're tremendously honored to have won four more Nevada Press Association awards. Please join us in applauding the individuals who make this possible, and work tirelessly to bring you independent, award-winning journalism.

✨ First place for local column: Krista Diamond
✨ Second place for email newsletter: Desert Companion
✨ Second place for page 1/cover design: Scott Lien and Heidi Kyser
✨ Second place for overall design: Scott Lien, Alyssa Noji, Christopher Smith and Ryan Vellinga

09/19/2023

🥤 It might not be as ubiquitous as coffee, but a beverage hailing from Asia has been an American mainstay among youth and other communities for decades. Known by many names — boba tea on the West Coast, bubble tea on the East, or pearl tea — this classic Taiwanese drink was invented in the 1980s and brought to the U.S. in the ’90s. It’s a mixture of tea and milk with assorted additions, most significantly boba, the chewy balls made from tapioca or cassava starch.

The sensation first bubbled up in the Taiwanese immigrant communities of California, giving rise to cafés that became social hotspots, especially for Asian American youth. As of 2023, according to IBISWorld’s Industry Report, the U.S. has some 3,600 boba shops, ranging from popular chains such as Kung Fu Tea and Tiger Sugar, to family-owned shops. Most of Las Vegas’ dozens of shops are nestled in the Chinatown area, where the heart of local boba tea culture began to beat 25 years ago. They now stretch all over the city, from Henderson to North Las Vegas.

Lourdes Trimidal picked five favorites: https://rb.gy/8f6c1

09/15/2023

😷 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗧𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗬'𝗥𝗘 𝗚𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗡𝗚: 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰. 𝗜𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱?

"I couldn’t get fired right now no matter what I say,” says Luke Murray, a professional guide with Desert Adventures, when asked how secure he feels in his current job. Murray began working as a driver for the company in April 2021 and says that in his two years there, he’s seen a lot of his coworkers leave.

“When I started, the majority of my coworkers had been here 10 or more years, were in their 40s and 50s, and were very plugged into the community around the Black Canyon. That’s something I really enjoyed, the breadth of knowledge and experience that I wasn’t going to get elsewhere,” Murray says. He estimates half to three-quarters of those employees have left since he started.

The labor landscape across the country has changed considerably since the emergence of COVID, and the service industries are among the most visibly altered. As the largest city in a state that’s heavily dependent on these industries, Las Vegas saw a shocking loss of jobs at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the reopening of businesses and seismic shifts in the labor market, what does work in this hospitality-driven city look like today — and what might it look like in the future?

Read more from Sarah Rose Cadorette: tinyurl.com/emzsw3vv

09/13/2023

"On Interstate 10 in New Mexico, the yellow roadside signs become increasingly alarming. First appears the equivocal, “Dust storms may exist next 10 miles.” Then, ramping up in intensity, the poetic: In a dust storm / pull off roadway. / Turn vehicle off. / Feet off brakes. / Stay buckled. Somewhere else, either in New Mexico or Arizona, is a mandate to cut the headlights.

It’s summertime, 2020, and I’m on the road, driving from Texas to California. I’m carrying my grandfather’s ashes in the passenger’s seat. He died of COVID on July 8, at an Alzheimer’s facility near Dallas, and my brother, mother, and I had driven there to be with him as he took his last breaths. We were only allowed to see him from behind a closed window, lest we catch the virus, too. I’d never seen anyone breathe like that — each breath requiring immense effort, gulping air with the whole force of his body. I didn’t want to think about what the virus was doing to his lungs; it was clear just from watching that it was ravaging them.

I’m on the road many times that year. I lose visibility in Tennessee and Nebraska, from rain. Nearly lose it in Wyoming, from snow. In northern California, I watch lightning strikes flash and drive out before the wildfire smoke overtakes the San Francisco Bay. In Arizona, on my way east a month after my grandfather died, winds pick up, the sky darkens, and lightning stitches across bruise-colored clouds. Somewhere behind me, dust thickens into a proper storm. I drive faster and faster, and my visibility stays clear. I outrun the storm.

Later, I learn New Mexico’s Department of Transportation put up the cautionary road signs in 2017, following a 25-car pileup during a June dust storm. Six people died.

Dust kills. It can kill fast, and it can kill slow. Fast like the pileup. Slow like prolonged exposure. The body can usually stop large particles from doing too much damage, trapping them in the nose’s mucus or in the mouth. But small particles can reach the lungs, potentially inflaming them. They can reach the lungs’ terminal airways and from there enter the bloodstream. That’s where the danger lies. Over time, particulate matter can devastate the heart."

Read more from our Writer in Residence, Meg Bernhard: tinyurl.com/hjtahs23

09/12/2023

One might expect an NV Energy project designed to distribute clean energy to be greeted with praise by conservationists. Instead, some of these groups say the utility’s route for a renewable transmission line is paved with poor intentions.

NV Energy’s Greenlink West project entails a 472-mile transmission line, connecting Reno and Las Vegas, that would facilitate renewable energy development in five counties. As it winds toward Las Vegas, the line as proposed runs through a portion of the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, a route opponents say disturbs the monument, as well as land that at least three Indigenous tribes hold sacred.

Environmental groups believe the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the federal agency leading the project’s permitting process, has been too quick to discard alternate pathways for Greenlink West. They ask, why cut through a national monument?

“We’re saying there are two other alternatives that seem to be viable," says Las Vegas resident Sherri Grotheer, who directs Protectors of Tule Springs, a citizens group supporting the national monument (also known as TUSK).

Read more from Gary Dymski: tinyurl.com/yckpyfd6