The Movable Buffet

Dispatches from Las Vegas
by Richard Abowitz

Category: Vegas Shopping

Bauman bets on selling rare books on the Strip

September 23, 2008 |  6:03 pm
20080922_000875 Until recently, Mandalay Bay’s eclectic Reading Room — an imitation of an independent book shop owned by a casino company — was the only full-fledged bookstore in a Las Vegas Strip resort. Though the casino has announced the Reading Room will be closing at an unspecified date, there’s a new alternative for book lovers, albeit a far more expensive one: Bauman Rare Books at the Palazzo. Here, collectors can find a $375 paperback of Ian Fleming’s “Octopussy,” one of the store’s low-priced offerings, for pool reading. Or if you hit on roulette, for $250,000, you can purchase a first edition of the account of Lewis & Clark’s expedition.

Bauman Rare Books sticks out like either a guiding light or a sore thumb amid the Palazzo’s retail shops, with their designer handbags and dresses. On the Strip, even chain stores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble have not found placing an outlet in a resort's mall worth doing. After all, people don’t generally come here to read books, nor is Vegas known for its book collectors.

The Philadelphia-headquartered store hopes to change that by catering as much to the first-time collector as the connoisseur. People who wander in on vacation very well may get caught up looking at a display of an early draft of the Constitution or old medical texts. As with any Vegas outlet, Bauman has learned to display some wow factor.

Still, the store’s interior has a conservative, plush décor that suggests timelessness outside the gaudy flash of a casino; think a 19th century adventurer’s club in England. The unmistakable smell of bound old books permeates the air. And though they admit some people are surprised to come upon them, the two Bauman managers who relocated from New York for the store — Justin McShea and Laura Minor — say that business has been great. It is the company’s third retail outlet, including the original Philly location and a New York expansion now almost 20 years old.

The move west was long in contemplation. “A number of our customers live in the Pacific Northwest and California, and Las Vegas has become a hub for them,” says McShea, who has been with the company since 2000. “And the people at the Palazzo wanted something different in their retail mix, and we are that. So it has worked out well.”

Beyond having a sympathetic landlord, the resort mall location at the Palazzo allows Bauman to benefit from foot traffic unlike that at either of their other outlets. “We are averaging 2,500-3,000 people a week who are coming into the gallery,” says Minor, a Bauman’s employee since 1991. “I think on a slow day we see 200 people through the door,” McShea says.

So the store does try to emphasize that regular people can afford to collect books and has a few that are priced barely above $100. Fittingly enough, the store also keeps a signed first edition of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in stock.

And Bauman has benefited from another sort of customer it never sees in New York: the Vegas winner.

“The first week we opened we had a gentleman come in and look around and think it was wonderful,” Minor recalls. “He then went downstairs and won $1,600 and came right back and said, ‘What can I do with this? I want to do something important before I lose it.’ ” She sold him a copy of “Thunderball.” (Fleming is always popular.)

In a land of the passing fad, Bauman hopes the timeless appeal of books can find a home. “What we sell are things that are solid and that are always going to be important,” Minor says.
Photo by Sarah Gerke

The Strip's Willy Loman dreamers

April 8, 2008 |  4:52 pm
20080403_0791_2 The Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Authority does not keep exact numbers of pedestrians but estimates that in 2007, 36% of the 39.2 million tourists in Vegas chose walking as the way to explore the Strip.
 
As I mentioned yesterday, an uncomfortable pedestrian tunnel now covers the City Center construction sidewalk on the Strip from Bellagio to Monte Carlo.

So, to avoid the construction, more pedestrians are going across to the other side of the Strip and walking the stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard between Harmon Avenue and MGM. This is an area of the Strip that is still more like old Vegas than the slick mega-resorts being built and already open that shadow and surround this oasis of small business and freelancing entrepreneurs. This extra traffic is offering a brief renaissance to this little sidewalk bazaar/bizarre on the Strip that is slated to be torn down someday for an Elvis-themed casino. But there has been no date for that project yet.

For now, walking down this stretch of the Strip, I am accosted by a group of young people who hand me a compact disc of their hip-hop group. Then the men demand a donation for the disc that I did not want. But at first they are reluctant to take the music back and aggrieved when I insist that I am not giving them a donation. After some words, I am able to return the disc. But before moving on to other tourists, they won’t answer any questions about working sales on the Strip. Many of these sales folks are the sorts who don’t want their names published.

But the customer base of pedestrians on the Strip is irresistible. There are so many people that on a recent Monday afternoon I stood still for two minutes and counted at least 220 folks walk past me. I am sure I missed some people in my count. And this is only on one side of the Strip.

Lacking the ability to provide a volcano or dancing fountain, many of the barkers, sellers and frontline folks on this tiny part of the Strip across from City Center are costumed lures for the many small kiosks, bars, travel services, ticket discounters and cheap eats that make up this stretch of the Strip.

For the past two years, Philippine native Isabelo “Billy” Fausto has worked on a pedestal, painted head to toe in silver, making mime movements to convince people to ignore the large resorts all around; and instead he coaxes them into the tiny La Salsa Cantina for drinks and slots. He works as a self-described “dynamic living statue.” Next to him works a man in a sort of smurf Elvis outfit.  “People love taking pictures with me,” Fausto says. “I am a performer and I love what I am doing. I used to be an acrobat but the group broke up. And so I developed this.”

Fausto says he has seen so much on the Strip that nothing fazes him. When the Monte Carlo’s roof caught fire across the street from where he works in January, Fausto was pleased that his show managed to distract the tourists who came to view the flames. “They started looking at the fire. But I put on the better show.”

A couple of blocks away, dressed as Elvis in his heavier Vegas guise, Shane Patterson, 43, works a few hours a day in front of the Harley Davidson Café posing for photos with tourists. The 6’ 5” New Zealand native just landed on doing the King three years ago as an idea for cash. The Harley gave him permission to hang out in front of the restaurant on the Strip. And he is simply working for any tips tourists may offer when he poses with them for photos. He estimates his income from being a street-working Elvis ranges from a few dollars to a few hundred, depending on the day. “You see crazy things out here,” he says. “You even hear crazy things. There is a homeless guy who yells an obscenity every 10 minutes as loud as he can.”

Even out-of-town visitors find the pedestrian traffic on the Strip irresistible. Dressed in conservative slacks and a button-front shirt, Stephanie Jones, 49, says she arrived a week ago in Vegas from Chicago on business to look into purchasing some homes that are in danger of foreclosure. Standing on the Strip near the smut racks offering massage parlors, escorts and private dances, she is handing out business cards of a very different sort to any passerby.

“I am passing out some cards here to see if I can make some money. I am a cash flow specialist,” Jones says. “I am just trying to hustle up some business, and with this many people walking by, I am bound to get some money.”

Shopping's No Bargain for Tourists

November 24, 2006 | 11:29 am

Black Friday means the same thing in Las Vegas as elsewhere, at least for locals. On Thursday, the newspaper was a tempting package of advertisements for all of today's sales, premiums and rebates. I've already been to Circuit City this morning and wonder if all the sale hype is working out as planned for these stores. The lines of people waiting to check out snaked through large chunks of the retail sections. Sure the sales were amazing, but even at 8 a.m., it was too crowded to browse at all. Customers seemed to just be grabbing the spectacular sale item of their choice and picking a line. I decided I didn't have that much time to save $30 after mail-in rebate and headed right home.

But this made me wonder about the tourist retail centers at resorts like Caesars, Venetian and Aladdin. No one ever says, "Let's go to Vegas for the sales." This is a slow time of year so it would sure make sense to have big sales, sales large enough to draw tourists. After all, Las Vegas tourism officials and politicians brag all the time about our world-class shopping and like to point out that shopping has become a major activity for tourists.

While I am sure individual stores have sales, there has really been no effort worth mentioning to create a special shopping day out of Black Friday with big sales and events in the major tourist retail spaces. Why is that?


Vegas Loses Neon 7-Eleven

September 26, 2006 | 10:57 am

I should have written about this earlier. I noticed it, asked others about it and then forgot. But John Katsilometes of the Las Vegas Sun didn't forget and gets credit for figuring out what happened to the best known 7-Eleven in Las Vegas: the one on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard right across from the Fremont Street Experience.

I never shopped there. I don't even know anyone who did. But everyone knew about that 7-Eleven. You see, this particular 7-Eleven had a huge neon sign that was impossible to miss: a perfect complement to Las Vegas. Katsilometes reports the store closed New Year's Eve on account of rent increases. But he offers no information on what happened to the neon 7-Eleven sign, which is not only no longer glowing there but totally gone from the location. I hope there are plans to bring it to the Neon Boneyard. After all, that is where Las Vegas' neon 7-Eleven sign should go.


Jerry Garcia Footwear

December 14, 2005 |  9:31 am
Jerrygarcia_ip6tzwknAn advertisement complete with a photo of the beaming bearded guitarist announces in today's Las Vegas Review-Journal that J. Garcia Special Edition Collection of Birkenstock sandals are now available in limited quantities for sale at a store at Sunset Station Casino.
(photo by KRISTY MCDONALD/AP)


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