January 9, 2006 - As you have all probably heard by now, Stardust will be joining the Sands, Dunes, Landmark, Aladdin and Thunderbird. Many thanks to Carol Knoll for first bringing this to my attention. Quite frankly I'm surprised at the amount of e-mail I've received regarding this news. Most people who write in talk about Sands and Dunes but I've received many many e-mails expressing sadness over the demise of the Stardust (of course in talking about the demise of the Stardust, you are also talking about the demise of the Royal Nevada which is the left side of the resort). All are sad and most are shocked as most people expected the Tropicana or Frontier to go down, not the ever faithful Stardust. I've added the information to the Stardust's page.

The funny thing about the announcement is that back in November my daughter and I decided we definitely needed to go to Vegas and get a little recreation after the horrible year we had and was still having. Since we belong to the mailing and e-mailing lists to all the resorts we began checking to see what we could afford - none of them. No more cheap rooms. We decided to look downtown. Now I like downtown and am still working on her history book but my daughter is definitely a Strip baby after staying 2 times in downtown resorts and being able to cover downtown in a fraction of the time it would take to cover the Strip, she really wanted to stay on the Strip somewhere. As we were beginning to look downtown a flyer came in from the Stardust for rooms we could afford but a show and a buffet. We couldn't jump on the phone quick enough to make our reservations. We didn't know when we booked our stay from January 22-25, 2006, that we would be booking our last stay ever in that resort. I would want to stay at the Stardust just one more time but we have to see if my luck this year is better than last year. Anyway, ironic that the only hotel cheap enough to stay at will be closing in December.

If you going to take a trip down memory lane in honor of the Stardust, don't forget to read the Royal Nevada's page. The left side of the Stardust is really the entire Royal Nevada property. If you ever read my past trips to Vegas, you will note that I covered the entire back-left side of the Stardust outlining the property of the Royal Nevada, determining that little has been disturbed, both exterior and interior, of the original resort. So in essence, when the Stardust goes down we won't be losing another page of the old Vegas, we will be losing two pages, one of which was the 8th Lady on the Strip.

When they are gone only the Frontier, Flamingo, Sahara and Riviera will exist of the original first 10. Of those, only the Frontier has no part of the original resort contained within her. The original Riviera is entirely intact and can easily be traced back from her opening in 1955. The Flamingo and Sahara resorts' are intact if not switched around but they no longer contain any of the original rooms.

Well enough of the dreary present/future. Let's go back in time to the opening of the Sands. I found a simply delightful article written by Bill Willard about the opening of the 7th Lady on the Strip, Sands. Its nice for those of us who weren't around to get a "blow by blow" account of this historical event. It is interesting to note how Willard eloquently spoke about the show Danny Thomas didn't make and the straight-out truth that Entratter gave during an interview.

I've stuck with the Sands this time around and added additional information and pictures for 1953, 1960, 1970, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981,

January 2, 2006 - I hope your holidays were memorable!!! While we enjoyed the holidays of 2005, let us go back to 1953 and enjoy Las Vegas' holidays. First of all is Pop Squires' article (which I actually added on Christmas Day), and then proceed on to the articles and holiday greetings from 1953. In the articles you will see one from "B.B. Barton". This person is actually Etta Cortez using her maiden name of Barton. In the early years of the magazine she would write articles under this name and then eventually she would use her married name.

As we all know, Pat Morita recently passed away. What an incredible legacy he leaves! Not many artists can be recognized by four little words - "Wax on - Wax off". Pat was a friend of our friend and frequent donator Nelson Sardelli. Nelson sent us his words and a picture and gave his permission to add this to his page on my site located off of the Thunderbird's page.

If I may, I want to start the new year with a personal note that never ceases to amaze me - Y chromosones who decide they want to give me their opinion even though on my main page I say I really don't care what people have to say about this site. This is a free site, a site to learn from, and if people don't like it, don't visit it. I get nothing from the amount of hits I get and I do have a loyal following so why men feel like they need to try to bring me down and/or hurt me just keeps me in awe.

I had to get a spam filter to automatically send any e-mails with certain negative words to the bin so I don't have to be bothered with it. Well, apparently, men think their words are so important and their need to hurt me and the site so necessary that they have to sign my guestbook. I personally think its hysterical that these guys have nothing better to do than write nasty things to people, not once in an e-mail but on the guestbook as well. I hope they have the intelligence to cut and paste their comments but when the opening line is "Your site sucks" - it really doesn't give me much hope in the intelligence category.

Now don't get me wrong. I like men for the most part but before I put the filters on I've found that out of every 300 nasty e-mails I received 297 are males. Just gives me proof that most charming, David Niven-type men are for the most part extinct. Not that I don't know any - just compared to the mass, they are on the extinction list. Some men who truly are gentlemen are connected to this site that the idiot males write about - Nelson Sardelli, Stan Irwin, Sam Melchionne, Mike Christ, Dan Kubota, Howard Klein to mention a few. All contributors/donators, all I've met, and all are 100% gentlemen with charm, personality, and a wonderful sense of humor. Maybe that's the idiot mens' problem - they can't compete with the great ones so they have to downgrade others.

Hey all you males out there - first - you are not gentlemen, second - your attempts to hurt are just not working!! I am only affected by gentlemens' opinions and since you're not in that category - forgetaboutit!

Please visit my guestbook to see what type of ungrateful, idiotic men that try to contact me. They were betting I wouldn't show their entries but I do. Only if I cared would I delete them. I don't so I figured all of you should see what I deal with and maybe to give a message to the males out there since they ignore my main page - I just don't care what you have to say!! I put this statement in my response to one idiot and I will repeat it here. As Dean Martin once said while performing at the great Sands Resort "I didn't invite you here. You came of your own free will."

To put it bluntly - if you don't like the site don't visit it! I have way way too many good people who write to say they love the site, teachers write in saying they use my site for reference on history, Yahoo writing about my site, History Channel referring to my site on their website, and Jimmy Buffett who recommends my site.

As I said, I don't hate males, just the ungrateful idiots, so I do want to take this time to thank Don at DSC Consulting in San Francisco. He saw my site and sent me some documents with past events of the Strip of which I will also be adding to this site. After the two idiots that had to write in my guestbook and probably hundreds more that wrote via e-mail that my spam filters trashed, having Don see my site and part with great items so I can continue documenting the history is a breath of fresh air. Many many thanks Don and I appreciate your donation!