Hard Rock Hotel staff holding on until the big shutdown
The Kats! Bureau at this writing is a guest room at Hard Rock Hotel’s Harmon Tower. The hotel is closing Monday morning, and we’ll be on and off the property throughout that time, taking a break to watch the Super Bowl (49ers and the over) at Westgate Las Vegas.
This shut-down staycation is something of a tradition. Over the years, I have stayed through the final nights at such famous Las Vegas hotel-casinos as the Desert Inn, Frontier, Stardust and Sahara.
Comparatively, the staff at Hard Rock shows no signs of flagging in the hotel’s final days. These folks are pros. Most employees I have spoken with plan to come back to the property, wearing the new Virgin logo name tags, this fall or winter when it re-opens as Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. Hotel president and CEO Richard “Boz” Bosworth says 92 percent of the 1,850 staffers will have stayed with the company through Monday’s closing. Those employees can opt to return to their original jobs.
As we get close to the closing, I have heard from a few Hard Rock officials from years past. Sign designer and former Hard Rock Cafe creative director Warwick Stone recalls original co-owner Peter Morton asking him, “How long is this going to last?” and Stone tossing out the number, “Twenty-five years.” Stone nearly hit the number, as HRH opened in March 1995.
“Twenty-five years for one brand is damn good, especially considering the attitude of the old-schoolers on the Strip in 1995,” says Stone, who designed the Gibson guitar that stood in front of Hard Rock Cafe and is now at Neon Museum. “They thought it would fail right away because the generation we were attracting did not gamble. They were right, but nobody expected them to drop so much cash on booze that used to be free if you dropped your cash at the tables!”
Later there will be a final toast, and rock ‘n’ roll, as the hotel hits the house lights. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
Around the Rock
Restaurateur Michael Morton, brother of Hard Rock Hotel co-founder Peter Morton and a partner in MB Steak at Hard Rock Hotel, recalled how the Hard Rock Cafe was positioned near the hotel on Harmon Avenue and Paradise Road. The Hard Rock Cafe opened in 1990, and closed New Year’s Eve 2016.
Peter Morton reviewed a short list of sites for the original cafe, including the corner of Harmon Avenue and Koval Road. Morton balked at that location, moving his plans for the cafe to Harmon and Paradise, closer to McCarran International Airport. He already owned the property behind the cafe parcel, which was later home to Hard Rock Hotel.
The Harmon and Koval spot was instead developed as the site of Michael Morton’s Drink & Eat Too.
“It was the perfect location, and it was just raw dirt, undeveloped at the time,” Michael Morton says. “The Hard Rock Hotel had no nightclub at the time, and we were just a short distance away.”
The Drink opened in May 1995, and was a popular club draw for a few years despite noise complaints from the Marie Antoinette property across Harmon Avenue (the club eventually built a roof over the building’s original open courtyard).
It later was leased to the team that operated Ice nightclub, and also was the site connected to the ill-fated Las Ramblas Resort project headed up by George Clooney and Rande Gerber. After that, the land was snapped up by Starwood Hotels, which planned to develop W Hotels Las Vegas on the property. That project, too, fizzled.
Last year the entire 60-acre plot was purchased by investors out of Southern California. No activity there at the moment. The Hard Rock Cafe, of course, has been demolished. After Monday, the stretch between Koval and Paradise that once was a flourishing entertainment corridor will be mostly dark for several months — until Virgin Hotels opens.
Park MGM adds on
Park MGM is tying into the new “What Happens Here, Only Happens Here” tourism campaign with its own catch phrase, “It Could Only Happen Here.”
Directed by filmmaker Fredrik Bond and narrated by actor Jason Schwartzman, the spot premieres during the Super Bowl pre-game show between 2:58 and 3:30 p.m.
The main character, a bearded gent who seems in his mid-30s, blithely winds through the resort. He ducks into On The Record, is mistaken for a celebrity at Best Friends, takes a cocktail break at NoMad Restaurant and rolls the bones on the casino floor.
This tourist is a winner, in the commercial anyway. The whole thing looks like what you’d see if you strapped a GoPro on my forehead on any weekend night …
Prop him up
The D Las Vegas co-owner Derek Stevens is rooting against the 49ers’ Kyle Nelson or the Chiefs’ James Winchester to score the first Super Bowl LIV touchdown. A bettor has wagered $100 at 25,000-to-1 odds, on separate prop bets, on either player scoring first. Those tickets are worth $2.5 million apiece, if either player actually score that first TD.
The odds are so long because Nelson and Winchester are their teams’ respective long snappers. They would never score … right? Stevens, who always keeps it interesting, is betting they won’t.
Super return
Penn & Teller are passing a threshold this weekend as Teller returns to the stage for the first time since Thanksgiving. The silent partner in the P&T magical empire has been off the stage since undergoing his third back surgery in 18 months. As Penn Jillette tweeted Saturday, the duo performed a corporate show Thursday, ending the duo’s longest break ever. “And we’re coming back tonight with a mostly new show because we’re stupid and crazy and like being scared to death.”
John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His PodKats podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.