REPORTERS’ NOTEBOOK

“Because it stinks,” he said Thursday at his weekly news conference. “Come in the basement like I do every morning. You have a terrible smell and I’m sick and tired of it.”

Then, mercurially, the mayor waxed nostalgic about the 35-year-old building.

“I love this building. It’s where I’ve had eight wonderful years,” he said.

Then he turned a scornful tongue on those who criticize the plans for a new, $150 million City Hall that would be part of a huge office and retail development in a downtrodden part of downtown.

“If anybody had a brain before they shot off their big mouths, they would know what the facts are,” he said. “If all the pieces fit together, it’s going to revitalize a whole area.

“Those who criticize it, they don’t know what it’s all about.”

ALAN CHOATE

NORTH LAS VEGAS CITY COUNCILMAN WILLIAM ROBINSON on Wednesday used his own marital experiences as examples of situations in which it may be OK to break contracts. Robinson was one of two council members who voted against a site plan review for a controversial 340-unit apartment complex in the city’s Eldorado master-planned community. Robinson’s vote came despite the fact North Las Vegas 20 years ago signed a contract with developers that allowed such use of the land.

“I made two marriage agreements, and they both been broke,” Robinson said.

LYNNETTE CURTIS

IT APPEARS A GROUP OF GOLFERS VISITING LAS VEGAS RECENTLY might have spent too much time around the old beverage cart. Golf with Shanks, a TravelGolf.com blogger, recently traveled to played a few rounds here.

“Every time my group takes a trip, we find out some nuances of the destination the hard way — through experience,” he wrote.

Among the lessons learned in Las Vegas: “Every putt on every green is influenced by the Stratosphere in the middle of the Strip. … Putts will either break that way or be offset to some degree if breaking away from it. Putts are speedier than normal heading in that direction and slower than normal going the opposite direction.”

Yeah, that’s it. It’s that tall building a mile or two away that’s making your golf shot go awry.

LAS VEGAS CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS KNEW THEY WERE IN FOR A LONG HEARING on the city’s budget last week when finance director Mark Vincent came to the podium carrying two bottles of water.

“Uh-oh,” Mayor Oscar Goodman said. “This is a two-bottle speech.”

“And I won’t even tell you what’s in them,” Vincent responded.

Perhaps he should’ve gone with something caffeinated instead, as the city’s budget crisis is apparently taking a personal toll. About halfway through the three-hour report, Vincent unintentionally added some zeroes to the city’s senior meal program, which according to him had revenues of $20 million and expenditures of $50 million.

“That’s a net loss of about $30 million,” he said, which would be a heckuva lot of Hamburger Tuesdays.

Then nearby city staff whispered that he meant to say thousands, not millions.

“Sorry,” Vincent said. “I’m exhausted.”

ALAN CHOATE

DISTRICT COURT PROVIDES JURORS WITH MEALS under certain circumstances. During the two-week trial of a pair of murder suspects last week, District Judge Valerie Adair joked that Clark County, like the rest of America, is facing financial problems and jurors wouldn’t be dining on the finest cuisine.

On the menu for that day? Microwaved White Castle hamburgers, the jurors were told.

It was, however, all in good fun. They were served pizza and wings.

DAVID KIHARA

BUDGET TRAVEL BLOG

Travel editor has no love for Las Vegas

Maybe it’s the city’s ongoing transformation into a high-end destination that doesn’t sit well with the editor of a publication for penny-pinching tourists.

Whatever the reason, Budget Travel Editor Erik Torkells declared last week: “I hate Las Vegas.”

“As the editor of a travel magazine, I’m not supposed to hate any place, or so I’ve always assumed,” he wrote on his blog. “If nothing else, it seems unkind to slag on a place that obviously other people enjoy.”

But while thumbing through Bon Appetit, Torkells saw ads for restaurants at Wynn Las Vegas and thought they “just seemed so awful.”

“At this point, it’s old hat to complain about Vegas being fake,” Torkells went on, “but I looked at the photos in the ad, and I just thought, ‘They look like they’re from a computer game — maybe Grand Theft Auto: Country Club. I don’t want to be anywhere near these places.’ And I realized that if I never went to Vegas again, I’d be just fine.”

The editor regrets that because as a boy he loved the town.

“We’d drive there in our RV from Southern California, getting up very early in the morning, and we’d watch the city lights from across the desert floor. There was just nothing — nothing! — quite so amazing as pulling into town and seeing the lights of Las Vegas.”