Downtown

Southwest resident Brian Kitchen, 32, and several other local firefighters recently returned from the cluster of fires in Arizona that broke state records and made national headlines. Other notable blazes he’s helped fight include that state’s once largest Rodeo-Chediski fire in 2002 and San Diego’s 2003 Cedar fire.

Find out what’s going on downtown, from Lied Discovery Children’s Museum, 833 Las Vegas Blvd. North, being named one of 500 finalists in Toyota’s 100 Cars for Good program to the Hispanic Museum of Nevada’s day camp program.

According to the National Weather Service, July 2010 was the hottest month ever recorded in Las Vegas since record keeping began in 1937. The high reached triple digits every day that month, with a sweltering average temperature of 96.2 degrees. That’s what happens when you plop down civilization in the middle of a 25,000-square-mile desert. Thanks, Mojave. But there are ways to cope with the oven-esque atmosphere.

While it’s easy to say that the answer to summer workouts in Las Vegas is a simple “no,” the fact is that with a little caution and preparation, you can keep fit and tone up while avoiding heat stroke.
The most obvious rule of thumb for summer workouts is to avoid the hottest parts of the day. Your best bet is the early morning hours. During the day buildings absorb heat and release it when the sun goes down. If you must work out outside in the early evening, you can save yourself a few degrees by keeping away from buildings.

Thousands of the Las Vegas employed call the great outdoors their workplace — and a treacherous one at that. The maximum average for June is 98.9 degrees, July is 104.4 degrees and August is 101.8 degrees, according to the National Weather Service in Las Vegas.

All it takes is one summer of triple-digit temperatures for those new to the valley to learn the dos and don’ts of dealing with the heat.

Sheldon Sid Brodkin’s “Boro Park, Vegas and All the In-Betweens” began as a biography detailing his friend’s life as one of the early “movers and shakers in Las Vegas.”