For Galen Ward from Rain City Guide, here is a weblog post I wrote in 2003 on the idea of mass transit and private property in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Monorail was then still in construction, and I was busily demonstrating why it must fail — which it has, as the ultimate slow-motion train wreck. Much has changed since I wrote this (and the links are not warranted to work): The Mandalay Resort Group has been swallowed by MGM/Mirage, the Boardwalk is in redevelopment and the Stardust is about to be. There are semi-residential towers being built on The Strip — although there still will be no commuters living there. Most importantly, the PediCabs, the bicycle-rickshaws, have been banned. Public pretext: Safety issues. Real reason: Too effective at competing with taxicabs.
Anyway, using Las Vegas Boulevard as an example, here is a completely different way of thinking about real estate:
BetterVegas: No-train-ware…
Harkening back to this, deconstructing boneheadedness is simply a matter of determining how and why the solution deployed did nothing — or less than enough, at least — to satisfy the original objective. It is boneheaded not to connect the resort with the casino that is its reason for being. It is boneheaded to turn an entertainment venue into a regimented drill, then move the patrons though an inane non-exit. It is boneheaded to build a trolley system in Phoenix that will not empty a single car, but which will cause those cars to move slower and pollute more.
It is boneheaded to build a transit system for The Las Vegas Strip that is not on The Strip. But what’s worse, it would be boneheaded to build a rapid transit system even on The Strip.
Why is that so?
The answer comes in the form of two more questions: What is the product? And who is the client?
The Strip runs on Las Vegas Boulevard from Sahara Avenue to the north to Russell Road to the south. When we think of mass transit systems, we think of commuters. In this we are being thoughtless, because on that four-plus mile stretch of road there are Read more
It’s been a rich fully Friday in Bloodhoundville, so I have but one word for Casual Friday:
instead, which, for my money, is in the running with Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick as The Great American Novel — the work of literature that best explicates the American Experience.
There are still over 400 unanswered emails in my inbox. Plus I have a bunch of Arizona real estate news I want to talk about. Plus I have tabs and tabs of real estate weblog posts I want to link to.
I’m really not the off-topic type, but it’s Friday and I’m toast and I feel like sharing a little of the background here at Bloodhound HQ. For weeks now we’ve been listening to 
(which is very worth reading). It’s a streaming radio service — with a twist. You create your own radio station, based on your preferences, which is then streamed to you personally. You set meta-goals by working with a list of genres, sub-genres, even specifying individual artists. Then, as ‘your’ station is playing, you can rate, rave about or eliminate particular songs as they are playing. If something plays that you just have to own, you can buy it through the interface.