Friday, May 13, 2005 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Vegas at 100

Weekend centennial celebrations include everything from a parade to a giant cake

Jill Englestead staples an "E" on a float in preparation for Saturday's Helldorado Days Parade. Photo by Jane Kalinowsky.

A movie already used the title "Planes, Trains & Automobiles." But if all goes to plan, the weekend's centennial festivities will roll out stagecoaches, a steam locomotive, classic cars, helicopters, F-16s, a big red shoe (from McDonalds) and Elvis impersonators jumping out of airplanes with sparklers attached to their feet.

And if you don't mind seeing the backs of eight tractor-trailers in the middle of Saturday night, centennial organizers could sure use your help in unloading 130,000 pounds of cake for the world's largest birthday cake on Sunday. The Starbucks and Red Bull is on them.

A big parade, the giant cake and the climactic fireworks display are all part of the weekend's Las Vegas centennial activities downtown.

The ever-evolving nature of Las Vegas is summed up on Fremont Street. A Western village and late-1800s steam locomotive mark the revival of Helldorado Days for the first time since 1997. They sit under the canopy of the Fremont Street Experience, which hosts a new high-tech video called "Lucky Vegas" on its 500-yard screen of LED lights.

The montage of gaming footage set to classic rock is the first Fremont Street film that's entirely live-action, a major departure from the computer-animated fare of most of the "Viva Vision" shows. "This will elevate the screen to its full capacity," says filmmaker Bruce Adlhoch, of California-based Adlhoch Creative, Inc.

In terms of the projection surface, the new show is "the largest live-action film ever created," Adlhoch notes. Images were duplicated and sometimes spliced together to create the extreme widescreen view, "so large you can't encompass it with a single look," he says.

"Lucky Vegas" debuts at 8 p.m. today and repeats at 10 and 11 p.m.

Other weekend highlights:

Free concerts on Fremont Street: The two outdoor stages under the canopy host two concert choices today and Saturday, both at 9 p.m. Today, the First Street stage offers Paul Revere & The Raiders, who won't seem too out of place for those who remember Revere and Bill Medley's Kicks club in downtown Reno.

On the Third Street stage is Asleep At the Wheel, the Ray Benson-led outfit that keeps the Western swing sound of Bob Wills alive.

Saturday brings Benson's friend Pam Tillis to the Third Street stage. Still known in some circles as Mel Tillis' daughter, she's been singing in her own right since the early '80s. That's still not as long as Chubby Checker, on the First Street stage, has been doing "The Twist."

Both days feature local acts performing on both stages at 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Saturday.

Helldorado Days Parade: A whopping 214 entries will line up for the Saturday parade along Fourth Street, northbound from Gass Avenue to Ogden Avenue, starting at 10 a.m. Expect everything from a stagecoach and farm animals to a flyover by two F-16s.

"I don't think there will be anything like this again," says centennial event planner Esther Carter. There is music from 27 high school marching bands. Floats range from big ones by corporate entities such as Ethel M Chocolates down to "a lot of down-home, family-grown floats," Carter says.

City officials expect at least 50,000 people to turn out and watch, though planning and crowd calculations are more difficult than in cities where parades are annual, self-sustaining events. "This is all for the first time," Carter says. "We don't have a handbook that gives us anything to gauge this by."

The city will not monitor parking meters on Saturday morning, and parking will be free at the City Hall garage. The Fremont Street Experience garage will cap its fee at $5 for the day instead of charging by the hour.

"The Best Is Yet To Come" Gala: Chances are you wouldn't make a last-minute decision to attend this $300 per-person gala at the old downtown post office, renamed POST Modern, 301 E. Stewart Ave. But should the spirit move you, tickets for the event honoring Senior U.S. District Court Judge Lloyd D. George are still available. Call 229-1767 or 229-5902.

Andre's caters the 6:30 p.m. bash featuring music from the Count Basie Orchestra.

The post office building is open all month before it closes again for ongoing renovation. It houses the free exhibit "Vegas VIP (Viewed in Postcards)," a collection of vintage postcards that can be viewed from 1 to 3 p.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. weekdays and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays.

Re-creation of the Land Auction: It will be interesting to see who turns out on Sunday morning for this quirkiest of centennial events: A 12-page play re-enacting the land auction for the original Las Vegas town site.

Local business types, including Bob Stoldal of KLAS-TV, Channel 8 and Golden Gate casino owner Mark Brandenburg, will take on the roles of historical characters. Mayor Oscar Goodman launches the show as Sen. William Clark.

The 10 a.m. event is free on a stage near the Union Plaza. At 10:30 p.m., the first of four historical markers on Fremont Street will be unveiled.

World's Largest Birthday Cake: Your oven is safe. The Chicago-based Sara Lee Corporation is handling the heavy baking on the 91,000 pounds of cake and supplying the 39,720 pounds of icing, all to best the previous world's record for a birthday cake (That one also happened to be be constructed by Sara Lee, for Fort Payne, Ala., "The Sock Capital of the World," back in 1989).

Still, someone has to put it all together. That's why volunteers are invited to come down to Cashman Field Center at midnight Saturday and help unload the cake sections to build the 102-by-52-foot cake that took 22 days to bake.

The cake will be on view from 2-5 p.m., then will be cut by Goodman and dished out to people at 5:15 p.m.

Sunday evening festivities: The party on the city's official May 15 birthday continues in the Cashman Field baseball stadium from 6 to 10 p.m. The disco cover band Boogie Knights plays at 6:30 p.m. At 8 p.m., the Flying Elvi troupe inspired by the movie "Honeymoon in Vegas" parachutes in. The 10 jump-suited paratroopers will have comets attached to their feet that leave 30-foot streaks in the air behind them.

Kool & The Gang perform classic funk at 8:30 p.m., and the evening concludes about 10 p.m. with a six-minute fireworks show.