Legends set in stone

The 1200 block of Las Vegas Boulevard South is about as far as you can get from the glitz of the Strip while staying on the same street.

But if a group of business owners in the area near Charleston Boulevard is right, it's a prime location for a tourist attraction -- a boulevard similar to the Hollywood Walk of Fame that would celebrate Las Vegas' movers and shakers.

The first segment of Legends of Las Vegas was installed this week at 1234 Las Vegas Boulevard South.

Mayor Oscar Goodman set his footprints, handprints and signature in concrete in front of a vacant hotel next door to Talk of the Town, a combination porn store/strip club ("Home of the $10 table dance" boasts the sign outside).

The idea -- eventually -- is to have many, many plots on a walk of fame from Sahara Avenue to Fremont Street, each with handprints and footprints, a lighted memorabilia box and an audio biography playing in a continuous loop via nearby speakers.

But organizers are willing to start small.

"We want to see if this holds up for a month or so, see if anybody takes a crowbar to it," said Raymond Pistol, who owns Talk of the Town and is active in the Downtown Turnaround Organization, a loose affiliation of business owners that put the project together.

"This is just the first step," Pistol said. "It doesn't look like much, but the first Hollywood star didn't look like much either."

The idea is not new to Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Walk of Stars on the Strip honors entertainers, and Pistol maintains a Legends of Erotica walk in his Showgirl Video store.

This one, though, would include figures from all walks of Las Vegas' colorful past.

Goodman said Pistol approached him with the idea a couple of years ago.

"I thought it would be an interesting way to express the history of Las Vegas," the mayor said. "It'll be a fun place for people to walk by and see the characters of Las Vegas."

One of those characters could be the neighborhood itself, which includes not only the nudie club but three adult bookstores, a 24-hour bar and two older hotels with the classic neon signs, as well as several vacant storefronts.

In other words, not the most inviting place for a stroll.

"We're trying to make it that way. That's why you do things like this," Goodman said. "Unless you do something interesting, bring some energy, get people excited ... nothing ever changes."

Pistol said many people already walk this stretch of road.

"A lot of tourists will walk all along Las Vegas Boulevard from Fremont Street all the way back to their hotel."

While there's been progress downtown, the southern end hasn't seen the kind of excitement generated just a few blocks north with the construction of high-rises and the introduction of new nightclubs on Fremont Street.

Part of the reason for that dates to the mid-1990s, Pistol said, when several blocks were removed from the gaming overlay district. City documents say that was done to deflate "artificially high land values."

"It makes it difficult," Pistol said as he sat in his club, smoke from his pipe drifting upward while a toned young woman danced in front of him wearing only heels and knee-high stockings. "All of the hotel expansion went south, because you can't put gaming in here."

The answer is to connect to Old Vegas, said Veronika Holmes, who owns the Gypsy Caravan antiques store downtown and worked with Pistol on the Legends of Las Vegas idea.

"Downtown is getting known as the nostalgic area" and can attract people interested in history and walking tours.

"This sounds like a zany idea, but you need zany ideas," she said. "I think this will spread like wildfire.

"This is an attraction that's open 24 hours, 365 days a year. And it's free."

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.