Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Dodge the blues with a Coney

Editor’s Note: The Sun has poached the editor of its sister publication, Las Vegas Weekly, to serve in a post we have long wanted to fill, a roaming observer and commenter known in the industry as the metro columnist. Scott Dickensheets, virtually a Las Vegas native (here 40 of his 48 years), has been committing journalism in this valley for 25 years — including a previous stint at the Sun from 1991-1999.

Let’s start small. I’ll have plenty of time to ladle some outrage, put a face on the city’s problems, share funky Vegas stories, introduce odd characters and offer life lessons and style tips. Believe me, I’ll bring it.

But right now I just want to sit back and look at this valley. Also, I want a chili dog.

So I’ve come to Detroit Motor City Coney Island Hot Dogs, on Henderson’s slowly redeveloping Water Street. Out in the real world there’s a slam-dance of grim headlines: a savage Senate race in which dire issues — jobs, health care — are merely weaponized instead of addressed. A state economy that Reuters reassured us last week is the worst in the nation, with little hope of getting better. A widespread mood of petulant libertarianism that will cloud problem-solving efforts (again). Planes falling into neighborhoods. Attempted juice deals. The venerable Liberace Museum closing. A guy with a phony bomb (“I have a device,” he claimed) trying to rob … Arizona Charlie’s?

It’s enough to make you reach for a news-sickness bag.

But in here, things are OK, even if I’m the only customer right now. “This last year has been our best,” says Patty (“just Patty”), the thin, spry gal working the counter. Her son, Manny Sanchez, started the place four years ago. I stopped in on a whim and promptly put down two Coneys.

Never mind that it’s hung with Detroit sports memorabilia, T-shirts and laminated news pages celebrating that distant city — this is still a fine vantage point from which to contemplate the distressed state of Las Vegas, the new Detroit. Brutal unemployment, a lot of people wishing they could leave. Two hard-hit cities, joined at the hot dog.

The walls around Patty are veneered with four years’ worth of customers’ scrawled names, messages and attempts at nasty drawings. It’s a handy reminder that Motor City’s gotten by with a little help from its friends. “Detroit people, Midwestern people, they support us,” says Patty, who can remember the early days, when the store was lucky to make $40, $50 a day. “Even if they live out in Summerlin. They might not come as often, but they always come back.”

I began the day in a similar place, a coffee shop in downtown Las Vegas, The Beat, part of an arts complex that’s been reclaimed from an old medical building.

There’s a nice crossroads feel there, from the alt chicks on the couch, loud of voice and weird of hair, to the suburban white bread ordering his latte at the counter. The usual morning zombies stalked the streets outside as I ate a croissant and looked over a copy of “Introduction to Philosophical Inquiry” that someone had left there. On Page 783, Aristotle busts out with this:

“Legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator.”

Aristotle, meet Sen. John Ensign, whose idea of forming good habits in his citizens was to vote against the extension of unemployment benefits for them.

What this is really all about is that moment the other night when my wife looked at me as we discussed the future and said, “I’m really worried.”

Well, that’s going around. So I look for little comfort zones like The Beat and Motor City Dogs, where people have wrestled cool and useful things from what was there before. Sympathetic spaces where you can, if not hide from the worrisome news — Patty reads the papers every day, she knows what’s going on — at least keep it at bay long enough to enjoy a chili dog.

Which I heartily recommend, by the way.

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