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https://knpr.org/desert-companion

Desert Companion, 1289 S. Torrey Pines Drive, Spring Valley, NV (2025)

12/09/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/mt5hfd86

Nevada Ballet Theatre has performed The Nutcracker for almost as long as the company has existed: For many Las Vegas families, the holiday season doesn’t begin until the curtain rises on that Victorian dollhouse set. But for 2025, the tradition will have a new twist — one with a Gatsby-esque glitter.⁠
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“The story remains the same, the intent remains the same, but we’re setting it in the 1930s, so it has an art deco feeling to it,” NBT Artistic Director Roy Kaiser says. The new production’s visual inspiration comes not just from the era’s luminously flamboyant style, but also from the graceful curves and grand staircases of The Smith Center itself, where the performances will take place.⁠
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The set and costumes are not the only part of the show that will get a bold new look. Nevada Ballet has retired the James Canfield choreography it has been using since 2012 in favor of the George Balanchine version, making NBT one of only a handful of companies the estate has approved to perform his production.⁠
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✍️ Lissa Townsend Rodgers

12/02/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/mr5ry4c3

Pop culture would have you believe that to succeed, you have to choose an identity and stick with it. You can be a jock or a nerd or a hiker or a homebody — but not a combination. Of course, in real life people are more nuanced than that.

This is certainly true of several leaders in the local sports community who champion inclusivity. In their groups, everyone is welcome, regardless of athletic ability, experience, or whether they align with the stereotype of what an athlete should look like.

All Richard Cumelis wanted to do was get outside and hike. But the hiking clubs he’d found in the valley catered to the physically fit. Cumelis’s motivation for mountaineering was “to get off the couch,” but he says he was told by one hiking group that he needed to lose weight if he wanted to hit the trails with them again.

“They were rude, actually,” he says. So Cumelis launched his own group in 2014. This one, he decided, would be open to anyone looking to get outside and be active, even if they weren’t in the greatest shape.

✍️ Reannon Muth

11/25/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/2ct3nr5s

One October day in 2017, James Trees was tromping through the desert near Kyle Canyon with a plug of sourdough starter and a five-gallon bucket of water.

He stopped to tug gray-green leaves off sage bushes here, surgically cull paddles of beavertail cactus there. The chef and owner of Esther’s Kitchen was making bread — or, more fundamentally, formulating the genetic blueprint for what would become the restaurant’s signature sourdough.

“I put the plants into the sourdough, added water to it, stirred it up, and then left it out in the desert overnight,” he says.

This bucket of slurry, impregnated with yeast-dusted valley flora, would eventually find its way to the plates of countless diners in the form of Esther’s renowned sourdough, served by the hearty, chewy half loaf with an array of spreads.

✍️ Andrew Kiraly

11/20/2025

🔗 Hear or read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/2jpx99pc

Copper is a hot commodity in the western United States. It’s used in many different materials that power our daily lives, like electrical wiring and pipes. And it’s used in solar panels and electric car batteries, which are important to transitioning society off fossil fuels to combat climate change.

President Donald Trump’s administration is not exactly jumping at green energy development, but it does want the United States to produce more copper. In July, Trump announced a 50 percent tariff on copper imports. The aim is to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign nations for this material — especially China.

Amanda Hilton, president of the Nevada Mining Association, agrees, saying, “I am growing exceedingly concerned when looking at how much mineral production is happening overseas that the United States is dependent on, and now that we are seeing impacts from China shutting down the export of certain minerals, our country is starting to feel the pain.”

✍️ Meg Bernhard

11/18/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/ye24y9kp

We’re told to enjoy the journey, but what if that journey is thrust upon you? What if it means leaving your home — all you know and cherish — behind? Would you try to save something meaningful or practical?

The Maroons did both, says Christopher Willoughby, assistant professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at UNLV. Africans in the Americas who escaped slavery and formed new communities, Maroons used creative methods to maintain their culture, such as hiding ancient rice in their braids during the harrowing transatlantic passage.

“This was an effort to preserve this life-sustaining grain that was so central to West African cuisine,” Willoughby says. “It would become central not only to plantation economies of the Americas, but also in the sustenance of Maroon societies.”

For chef Kwame Onwuachi, this legacy of adaptation and resilience provides the inspiration for his upcoming Caribbean steakhouse, Maroon, at Sahara Las Vegas. Expected to open this winter, it will be his first restaurant beyond the East Coast, where his restaurants Tatiana (New York City)and Dōgon (Washington, D.C.) have attracted serious attention.

✍️ Lorraine Blanco Moss

11/15/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/mw3mmyr8

It’s brutal out there. But it’s not that great in here, either — here in the quiet spaces of my head and home, where I try to maintain a little equilibrium amid the madly fluxing state of this union. It ain’t easy. Out there won’t let me unwind. My morning coffee ripples with the stomp of each day’s fresh tyranny: the president’s political enemies targeted, troops and agents surging through cities, the Constitution treated like a novelty placemat.

I’m not the only one who feels it, either. For many of us still loyal to the bedraggled niceties of the American Experiment — suddenly disposable concepts like the Bill of Rights, pursuit of happiness, e pluribus unum — this chaos can sink us into a kind of jellied anxiety that I, for one, find it hard to squirm out of.

This, I submit, is no way to live, even under a would-be despot. Especially under a would-be despot.

The obvious solution is a darkened room and a gonzo supply of noise-canceling gummies. But I have a household to run, so that’s out. No, perhaps what I really need is for Las Vegas, particularly at this most festive time of the year — and with fewer visitors underfoot, haha — to work its fabled magic. What can I do around here to calm my nerves for a minute?

✍️ Scott Dickensheets | Desert Companion

11/12/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/r64swtr3

For Americans who can afford it and the workers who make it possible, summer is a time for pools, beaches, lakes, and water parks — a cooling down of the Great American Machine. Unless you’re looking for the next generation of NBA stars making their professional debut. For this, one must brave the desert heat.

It’s been more than 20 years since the NBA Summer League stepped onto UNLV’s campus with six teams and a laissez-faire fantasy. Two decades later, the 11-day tournament in mid-July is the official offseason hub for all things business and basketball, injecting an estimated $280 million into the local community for 2025 alone, according to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, which we’ll get to later.

The organic success of Summer League all but paved the way for today’s Sports Mecca well before F1 ruined our morning commutes or mortgage-backed securities crashed the economy.

✍️ Chris Falite | Desert Companion

11/08/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/mr74ah4j

People are looking for more of a locals’ scene,” says Jen Taler, a partner in Dustland, one of the new bars in the Arts District. “I’ve seen a huge shift and change, especially over this past year. As more things open, more people will come down here.”

Initially known for mechanics’ garages and metal shops, the neighborhood became home to a cluster of art galleries and studio spaces in the early 2000s. More recently, those have given way to craft breweries and vintage stores. Now, a batch of cocktail bars have sprung up, creating their own community within the neighborhood as locals and industry veterans come together to build their own businesses — and support one another’s.

“I believe that Vegas is very collaborative,” Taler says. “There’s been competition, but for the most part, I feel like we’ve come together and lifted each other up.”

✍️ Lissa Townsend Rodgers

11/05/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/9ehwhtj7

Before hockey, football, UFC, and hoops, boxing was the Vegas sports champ. Can it be a contender again?

The extravagance. The skill. The hardscrabble stories that lead to iconic wins and heartbreaking losses. If there’s a sport that encapsulates Las Vegas more than boxing, you’d have to look hard to find it.

Las Vegas has been the Fight Capital of the World for generations, since the days of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Yet in 2025, boxing is no longer the only game in town. Vegas is now home to big-league basketball, football, hockey, and (soon) baseball teams, as well as the UFC headquarters. So what does this recent athletic infusion mean for the future of Vegas’ OG sport?

✍️ Anne Davis | Desert Companion

11/04/2025

Ready to sink your teeth into our annual dining collection? 🍽️

From a tally of Sin City's Tiki bars and a dive into why good bread is having a moment to an exploration of how one award-winning chef is serving up Caribbean history lessons through steak, there’s plenty to savor in this year’s dining issue. Bon appétit!

🔗 Read the published stories: https://knpr.org/the-dining-issue
📖 Pick up a print copy at participating locations under the Contact tab!

10/27/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/mr3ucf83

The white stucco building housing Brooke’s Good Deeds stands on the side of the sleepy two-lane State Route 169 in Moapa Valley, about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

Blink and you could easily miss it as you drive between Interstate 15 and Valley of Fire State Park, where the Muddy River crosses a 15-mile frontage of green farmland, modest homes, and small businesses in the coalescing small towns of Glendale, Logandale, and Overton. Other days, your eyes may be drawn to hundreds of people lined up out the front door.

A nonprofit food pantry, Brooke’s Good Deeds is a beacon of hope for those in need in the Moapa Valley community, partnering with area organizations to offer food assistance, mental health services, tax preparation, and other much-needed resources to more than 2,400 people of all ages — for free.

✍️ Aleza Freeman

10/23/2025

🔗 Read the full story: https://tinyurl.com/2mydfjsu

At the Nevada Museum of Art, everything old is new again thanks to a massive, just-opened expansion

The Nevada Museum of Art in Reno is the state’s only accredited art museum, and now there’s a lot more of it. A $60 million addition, the Charles and Stacie Mathewson Education and Research Center, opened in August. Paid for entirely with private funds, the expansion added 50,000 square feet, for a total of 120,000, including a new research library, classroom, rooftop garden, and plenty of extra gallery space.

Despite all this newness, continuity has been a top priority. “What we’ve done that I think is really incredible is that, by working with the same architect, we’ve connected a 22-year-old building with a brand-new building, and it all looks the same,” museum CEO David Walker says. “On the outside, you could see some articulation of the new with the old, but when you come in, we’ve redesigned so much of the interior that it feels like just one big museum. And we now own the whole block.”

✍️ Paul Boger

Desert Companion

12/09/2025

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11/25/2025

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11/18/2025

11/15/2025

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Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm