Mob Museum caves in face of media brick count
Agree
with me or not about the commercial possibilities of a Michael Jackson tribute,
museum or theme resort in Vegas, at least the taxpayers are not involved with
the risk.
Not so with the Mob Museum, where at the very least our mayor, Oscar Goodman, spends a lot of his time
talking and thinking about this monument to so many clients from his former life back when he insisted that folks like Tony Spilotro were being persecuted by the government.
He actually put this project, expected to open in 2011, on a list for government stimulus funds. That irony did not work out for him. But the idea that the mob lawyer-turned-mayor is
building some grand tribute to his own ego does not seem to have occurred to his honor. Rather, speaking the mantra of the day, he now offers us the idea that his pet project will
bring tourists to Vegas. Not that there is much, if any, evidence for him to point to that is so.
I have long been on record disagreeing with the view that a mob museum will be a tourist magnet (at least off the Strip), as do
most other commentators on Vegas. I also think the museum is a bad idea that
will inevitably glorify criminals. That certainly seemed the case when the mayor
proudly announced the purchase of the first item to be displayed, mob memento mori: the wall from the St.
Valentine's massacre, complete with bullet holes.
Loved the baseball bats the mayor was carrying to the news conference, very educational for the children watching at home. And the Vegas connection to this wall is what? None that I can think.
Anyway, it now turns out the
city was not entirely honest about how much of the infamous wall it bought.
This isn't entirely a surprise, since the last tribute to history the city paid for was to display "Fun Facts" on placards about the city that were called "fun" because they were not actually true. After at first denying this was a problem, the city grudgingly made some corrections. [Updated, 10:40 a.m. Aug. 31: An earlier version of this post made mention of a photographic rendering of the wall from the St. Valentine's Day massacre. In fact, the city had not presented the rendering to the public as being an authentic photo.]
City officials also were not willing to share with the Chicago television station that exposed the
city's loose words about the wall how much was paid for the, um, partial wall.
And this is only the beginning of the scandals big and small that I am going to predict will be coming until the Mob Museum takes its place waiting for tourists the way its comrade, the near-empty mall Neonopolis, another city-promoted redevelopment project, had everything but customers and then, after waiting long enough, lacked even tenants.