City Cast Las Vegas

Like many Las Vegans, the beloved sandwich shop Capriotti’s wasn’t born in this town — but they made Las Vegas their home. Since moving their headquarters to Las Vegas, Capriotti’s has integrated themselves into the community so much so that some think they did start here! Today, co-host Dayvid Figler chats with Chief Operating Officer David Bloom about their famous “Thanksgiving in a Sandwich,” w...

It’s not the weekend, but it’s also kinda the weekend — so we’ve got a special roundup episode of our short but not uneventful week! Today, Sonja, Layla and Dayvid look back at a pivotal moment in Vegas history, when the Mirage opened 33 years ago this week, a massive gamble as the Strip’s first mega-resort. Plus: What’s going to happen to the Mirage’s volcano — and would we get to keep it if they...

On Thanksgiving in 1966, Howard Hughes arrived in Las Vegas in the dead of night on a secret train from Boston. The billionaire businessman, aviator, and movie producer was highly eccentric and at this point in his life had little to no communication with the outside world. As he secluded himself on the 9th floor of the Desert Inn hotel, he began to reshape the future of Las Vegas by buying up cas...

Las Vegas is a food town. From the high-end restaurants to the gas station taco stands, there are almost too many places to explore and take your family and friends when they visit for the holidays. To make it a little easier for you, co-host Vogue Robinson sits down with artist and food critic Brent Holmes to get the best spots that might get overshadowed by the glitz and glam of fine dining on T...

Producer Layla Muhammad jumps into the host seat to welcome co-host Dayvid Figler and friend of the pod reporter Michael “MJ” Lyle of the Nevada Current to the roundup of Las Vegas’ last week. We start with the new Governor-elect Joe Lombardo’s first public address since winning the election. In a “tight 10” minute speech, he hit his priorities, the top of which was “education.”  The speech was ov...

Nevada State Senator Pat Spearman lost her bid for North Las Vegas’s mayoral seat this election cycle — but less well known is her win with Question 1. Spearman was a co-sponsor for the bill that got that Question 1 on the ballot this November, which passed and puts the country’s most sweeping Equal Rights Amendment in Nevada’s constitution. What’s more, she was the driving force behind Nevada’s r...

YES we love our city, but sometimes we gotta complain about it. Today, Vogue, Dayvid, Scott and Sonja sit down to kvetch about the buildings in Las Vegas that we hate — because they’re out of place, poorly-designed, or downright ugly. Did we get it right? Or horribly wrong? Are you itching to argue against one of our picks? Leave us a voicemail at 702-514-0719 or blast us on Twitter @CityCastVegas...

Election denialism hit hard in Nevada. So hard, in fact, that our neighbors in Nye County moved to hand-count their ballots thanks to distrust in tabulation machines. The county accounts for about 30,000 of our state’s votes, which is significant in a year of super close races. So the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada sued the county and headed out to observe their tedious hand-counting pro...

Did you know Las Vegas has an Erotic Heritage Museum? Of course we do! On the outside, it looks like a seedy strip club, covered in neon, advertising shows like Naked Boys Singing and Puppetry of the Penis, but on the inside…the museum examines and preserves our erotic heritage with art and science (they even have a Picasso)! They’re working to de-stigmatize sex in Sin City! How? Co-host Vogue Rob...

Everybody loves a true-crime story. Today, we have a special guest episode from our friends at the Las Vegas Review Journal’s Mobbed Up podcast. Produced in partnership with The Mob Museum, Mobbed Up is a true-crime series that dives in to the fight against organized crime in 1960s and 1970s Las Vegas. You’ll love this bonus episode from season 2 where a waiter from Vegas’s oldest steakhouse share...

Hosts Vogue Robinson and Dayvid Figler welcome Nevada Independent political reporter Tabitha Mueller to the Round up to figure out the shape of things as the count goes on and on. We take a dip into the most current numbers, why its taking SO LONG, and the implications as the march towards finality continues. We also take a sojourn down the fun tradition of journalists eating pizza through electio...

A few weeks ago, a sixth set of human remains was found in Lake Mead. And just last week, a Texas woman got confirmation that the 5th body found this year belonged to her father, who drowned in the lake 20 years ago. These discoveries come in the wake of water levels reaching their lowest point since the reservoir was being filled in 1937. Officials have yet to identify the victims, but that isn’t...

Congratulations everyone, we’ve made it past Election Day! Voting for the 2022 General Election may be over but the counting continues in Nevada as mail-in ballots come in and polling stations finalize results. Nevada is in the spotlight as efforts to flip our purple state come to a head in key races. So lead producer Sonja Cho Swanson and host Dayvid Figler got up EARLY this morning to share thei...

The day is finally here! Dawn has broken on Election Day 2022 and whether you’re braving the weather to go stand in line (we applaud you), you’re anxiously refreshing pages to watch the results, or you’re tuning it all out with some well-deserved R&R, we hear you. Today, Vogue, Sonja and Layla sit down for a chat about voting: Why we vote, the conversations we’ve had with friends and family who do...

Look, the elections fatigue, stress, and anxiety is real. We’re all feeling it, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on. And all of those doom-and-gloom ads EVERYWHERE aren’t helping much either — not to mention, how are they affecting our kids? So City Cast is getting a little help from Dr. Jim Jobin today, co-host of the podcast Pod Therapy. Dayvid and Jim talk about how we can talk children...

Not all the news this week is election-related! In our Friday news roundup, host Vogue Robinson talks with lead producer Sonja Cho Swanson and producer Layla Muhammad about the raid on the Boulevard Mall and Aces coach Becky Hammon’s new job as NBA analyst for ESPN. Plus, we dive into our favorite off-Strip casinos, and what distinguishes a“local” casino from one on the Strip.   Off-Strip Casinos...

Vegas restaurant icon Lotus of Siam put Thai food in our city on the national map — one food critic called it the “bestThai food in North America,” and chef Saipin Chutima has won a James Beard award (which is basically the Grammys of food). When Lotus announced their third location at Red Rock Casino, opening next week, locals rejoiced. The Thai food love doesn’t stop there: We’ve got incredible...

Sure, we tell folks that we’re “from Las Vegas” when we’re traveling… but how many of us are actually from the city itself? The majority of the Valley lives in either one of the adjacent municipalities (like Henderson and North Las Vegas), or in unincorporated Clark County. So how did we get this weird patchwork of townships and jurisdictions, and how did it set up the city and the county for thei...

With Las Vegas’ close proximity to Lake Mead, it is no surprise that the Valley has put some serious thought into addressing the 170 foot bathtub ring that indicates the lake’s decline over the past 20 years. One of the unique steps the Las Vegas Valley Water District and Southern Nevada Water Authority have taken is the use of water investigators — or water cops — to monitor residential water was...

Happy Halloween! Las Vegas is a fairly young city, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have some (literal) skeletons in our closet, especially on our boulevard of debauchery. Are some of the ghosts of Vegas’ past sticking around to continue the party? Today, host Vogue Robinson talks with Tandi Hornsby, a tour guide from Vegas Ghosts, about the real life stories behind the most haunted properties on th...

The weather may be cooling down but the news just keeps coming in hot! In this week’s Friday news roundup, lead producer Sonja Cho Swanson tells us how a local pawn shop takes a stand against Kanye West’s anti-semitic remarks, producer Layla Muhammad and host Dayvid Figler explain how Trump supporters are looking for fraud in Nevada’s election process through record requests, and we all debate som...

Every year, the Mental Health Institute releases a report on the state of mental health in America. One of the measures looks at the incidence of youth mental illness compared to the availability of quality mental healthcare. And for the last five years, through 2022, Nevada has ranked dead last in youth mental health. Just earlier this month, a U.S. Department of Justice report indicated that Nev...

On Saturday, high winds brought in roiling dust clouds, grounded hundreds of flights, and forced the organizers of the nostalgia-driven pop-punk festival When We Were Young to cancel their first day. Thousands of forlorn fans wandered the Strip (a few even got tattoos of broken hearts)… until something kinda extraordinary happened. Over the course of a few hours, community members rallied and foun...

The November election is right around the corner and if there is any indication of that, it’s the political ads that find their way onto every screen or into our mailboxes — barely regulated, never-ending, irritating as hell. At the only gubernatorial debate we will see this cycle, the Nevada Independent dedicated a whole section to the misinformation in Sisolak and Lombardo attack ads. And they a...

Just when you thought Nevada was swinging blue, we swung right back into the murky middle. All eyes are on Nevada in this year’s elections, where 75% of our house seats are up for grabs, and we have what might be the most hotly-contested Senate race in the country. So — whence all this purple?? Why do we have so many independent voters, and are we witnessing the demise of the Harry Reid Democratic...