Category: Places

I was a freshman living on the north side of campus. The shop was on the west side.

It was a rough year in the dorm. I escaped by hiding in bookstores and read the entire Sandman series in his shop.

Comic Relief had a simple rule. Read what you want but don’t sit down.

Beyond that, they were really totally chill. I went through the Blade of the Immortal series in that shop as well.

I was a poor student, so I read a lot but only bought the occasional comic, but they were cool about it.

Hopefully I repaid their hospitality with many purchases after I graduated and got a job.

The other night, I thought about Rory, a big guy with long stringy blond hair and a big black wrist stiffener. A jovial presence in his kingdom. I remember hanging out with him a few times as he smoked a couple cigarettes outside on University Avenue. I still think about his warnings about acid free tape (there adhesive was acid free, but the tape membrane wasn’t).

He was a gracious host. After all my free loading during the college years, I willingly bought much of what he recommended to me. There are plenty of obscure graphic novels on my shelves from his store.

I also fondly remember the time when I picked up Frank Miller’s Yellow Bastard from his Sin City series. A couple days later I returned it. I was a bit embarrassed, but that book was just too dark. A great novel, but I couldn’t have it in my house.

No judgment. No big deal.

He moved his shop to a bigger place right before I moved out to Texas. A few years later he passed away. The shop is now gone.

But the memory of Comic Relief still lives fresh in my mind’s eye. It was an institution, for a moment. Thankfully I was there for it.

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These small institutions that enrich our lives are always but fleeting. This haunting reality is a bit of a downer, so I just try to be grateful in the moment. And when they’re gone, I remind myself that it was a boon to be at the right place at the right time.

It was a lovely day, so we drove out to a local detention basin at the western foothills near our house. There wasn’t any good parking. All the nearby developments were gated communities, and we didn’t want to take our Odyssey up a gravel utility road.

So we drove back down a long suburban block to the closest elementary school. Fortunately, this extremely upscale development had created a linear park along the thoroughfare. This was no mere sidewalk. It wound back and forth and looped under itself (twice!) with unnecessary pedestrian bridges buttressed by gabion walls. Along the route, there was a large lawns which was populated with little mounds. The kids loved running up and down this bumpy plain.

At the end of this luxurious walk, we turned up the gravel utility road, slipped through a gap in the guard rail at the storm channel, and suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the desert.

At the upper rim of the basin you could look all the way out to the Strip.

In the bowl, you could only see the hills and sky.

A few months ago, I had hiked alone to this detention basin via a decidedly less bourgeois route, coming down from the hills via an arroyo, following the storm channel into this space. I already knew this was a pretty cool spot, and it was nice to share this place with the rest of the family.

Admittedly, the gratuitous walk with fancy trashcans that looks like planters is also enjoyable, but the pleasure of the linear park is dampened by its artifice. In contrast, the detention basin is real, a piece of infrastructure that exists because we insist on occupying this desert valley.

Unlike the linear park that tries to be something, this basin just is.

We moved to Las Vegas to be closer to our parents, but the timing worked out perfectly for me to get a job with Bunnyfish Studio right as Tony Hsieh was pouring funds into the improvement of the East Fremont District via his DownTown Project.

I only met him once, briefly at our office in the Emergency Arts Building. He was swinging through and dropped by to say hello the principals. However, I can personally attest to the veracity of those stories of an unassuming billionaire with a backpack walking around town, at least during the day.

I could have met Tony more often, however we had moved to Vegas to be closer to family and to start our own, so I did not indulge in the tech startup nightlife. From everything I heard, it was a heavy mix of working hard, and partying harder, (for good and ill).

During my time in the middle of the East Fremont district, I worked on two major renovations, the John E. Carson Motel and the Bunkhouse Studio. Both were glorious extravaganzas where we were asked to dream big and allowed to achieve some of it.

As with any client, it wasn’t all unicorns and roses, and ultimately I decided that I could not bet my career on a single patron. I changed firms after eighteen months, a week after the Bunkhouse opened, but a few weeks before DTP announced a big round of layoffs.

Ironically, I was working on yet another DTP project with my new firm. It was not completely surprising when we found out that even the largess of a billionaire has limits. But saying the magic had faded implies that there was some magic in the first place. And those of us lucky to be in the middle of that scene certainly felt it during that time.

A couple years later, I worked on the project that replaced the maze of artist galleries and offices at the first floor of the Emergency Arts Building with a couple chain restaurants. During demolition, I walked by the our old office. The mural the bosses had commissioned as a backdrop to our tiny room was still there, patiently waiting its turn to be turned to dust. This building wasn’t owned by DTP, but the Beat Coffeeshop was the nexus of that exciting time. As I grow older, I’ve come to realize the fleeting nature of these moments. It was bittersweet to play a hand in the final erasure of that time on East Fremont.

This Friday, we found out that Tony Hsieh passed away due to injuries from a house fire in Connecticut. The news of this tragedy brought back a rush of memories. As any good architect, I have sharp opinions about everything, but 2013 and 2014 around Downtown Project really was a special moment, and I was fortunate to have played a small role during that time.

Last year, the renovated Ferguson Motel finally opened up with a new massive sunken courtyard punctuated by a coffee shop. It was a completely gratuitous gesture that was half a decade late, but when this pandemic ends, I’ll go down there and buy Tony an espresso. Maybe I should have done it before he passed, but it’s too late for that, so this is the least I could do.

Rest in peace Tony, I hope you found it.