Columnist Susan Snyder: Marketers reach for Neon sky

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at [email protected] or 259-4082.

The Neonflopolis Magnificent Marketeers have reached far enough to pull a muscle.

It seems everyone except those paid to promote the 'Flopolis know what a boondoggle it is, or rather, would be if it existed.

But you have to admire these people's imaginations -- or their nerve.

They created a splashy nine-page, 9-by-13-inch brochure that seeks to lure shopkeepers to the proposed $100 million Mall-Nobody-Loves by hanging onto the thready coattails of the Fremont Street Experience.

Under "An anchor like no other" printed in bold purple letters, these marvelous Marketeers tout the Misfit Mall concept by praising Fremont Street for winning awards in Newspaper X's annual Readers' Pick contest three years in a row.

Forget that you can't swing a cheap T-shirt without hitting a local business sporting one of those banners. Just for grins, let's see what those awards were actually for.

In 1998 readers named the Fremont Street Experience "Worst Use of Public Money."

In 1999 they called it "Biggest Tourist Trap."

This year readers chose it as the "Best Place to Go On A Budget."

Holy trilogy! That'll make a shopkeeper drool.

Come to the Mall of Nowhere -- praised by locals as a waste of old ladies' taxes, a trap for the unknowing and a top attraction to those who don't want to spend any money.

Good thing Neonflopolis doesn't have any tenants yet. Means there's plenty of room for the droves of shrewd entrepreneurs who are just waiting in the wings for the right time to pounce.

Well, maybe they're waiting. Maybe they're just asleep. Hard to tell.

The brochure includes a full-page, color photo of a gleeful family of five yukking it up on Fremont Street.

It's a heartwarming scene that ignores the fact that three of the five people are children too young to gamble. It ignores a major move statewide to make sure slot machines and other gambling hall themes don't entice youngsters.

And it ignores all the other real-life images of Fremont Street and the Strip of parents dragging exhausted, bored, bleary-eyed, whimpering children up and down a thoroughfare that, despite pirate ships, giant neon cowboys and $100-a-head tiger shows, isn't for them.

The brochure also sings -- cripes, it bellows -- the praises of Loony Town, saying 72 percent of visitors are married (many even before they come here) and 70.1 percent of residents have attended college (although 65 percent of our high school seniors can't pass a math proficiency test).

Of course "have attended college" could be based on attendance for UNLV basketball games.

It also crows about the 31.5 percent job growth. Never mind that Las Vegas ranks dead last nationally when it comes to defining those jobs as technologically skilled.

Fremont Street is a fun, kitschy place to hang out. Was better before the roof, but it's still cool. But Misfit Mall Marketeers sought to make it out as something else.

But give them credit. Evel Knievel never leaped so far. The Russian government should have hired them. Chernobyl would have been a water leak.

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