Lifestyle
Las Vegas and Its Big, Big Ambitions
It’s just past dusk on the Las Vegas Strip and traffic has come to a standstill. That’s usual for a weekend night, but this is Monday.
Round-the-clock construction makes every excursion a dice roll with traffic, and these days everyone seems a loser. I turn right on Sands Avenue, just before the golden tower of the Wynn Las Vegas, and am so stunned by what I see that I join three dozen other cars illegally parked next to the crowded sidewalk. Some people are sitting on the concrete divider to gawk, camera phones pointed toward an otherworldly spectacle: a colossal eye seemingly the size of the Death Star staring down the street at us. The eye is so large and glaring that the neon-lit hotels and casinos are mere shadows.
And then it blinks.
This is the Sphere, Vegas’s newest epic attraction. A round, 360-foot-tall amphitheater clad in 1.2 million ashtray-size LED screens, the Sphere has, since July 4, been beaming fireworks displays, rotating globes, spiraling geometric designs and other images on its 580,000-square-foot surface, bringing traffic to a standstill.
“The Sphere will define Vegas architecture,” said Brian Alvarez, who goes by Paco, a former city cultural commissioner and tour guide. “It’s not a themed building like some of the other spots on the Strip. It’s on par with the Sydney Opera House or the Eiffel Tower for becoming a unique city icon.”
The Sphere isn’t the only big newcomer in the neighborhood.
A close inspection of the Strip’s surface reveals a fresh layer of tarmac so countertop-smooth that a half-dozen skateboarders jump a street barrier in front of the Bellagio hotel’s fountain to glide right past me through the traffic.
This is racecar tarmac. It runs along the Strip, then veers onto side streets, hairpins around a new grandstand that stretches the length of three football fields, circles the Sphere’s parking lot, and merges back onto the Strip to complete a 3.8-mile Formula 1 Grand Prix track. The first race, planned for Nov. 18, will see cars spinning 50 laps at speeds of up to 213 miles per hour.
Spectacles and sports
Las Vegas, a city that has recreated itself numerous times, is in the middle of yet another reinvention. A tiny railroad crossing in the middle of the desert at the start of the 1900s, it became a legalized gambling destination in the ’30s that, over the ensuing years, drew mobsters and other deep-pocketed investors who turned Vegas into Sin City, replete with showgirls and the Rat Pack. Starting in the ’80s, competition from other legalized gambling spots like Atlantic City inspired Vegas operators to transform the city into a family mega-resort destination, with kid-friendly spectacles like a volcano and pirate battles.
Then came the economic downturn followed by the pandemic, spurring the city to its current diversification into sports and big, splashy shows.
The strategy is working. In 2022 the city boasted 38.8 million visitors, making it the sixth largest destination in the United States, outranking Boston or Chicago — impressive for a place where the summer weather regularly tops 105 degrees.
A recent series of cyberattacks against the city’s hotels that may have resulted in data breaches for more than 10 million guests seems only to have been a speed bump for the Las Vegas juggernaut, though the city’s hotels are also facing the threat of a strike by hospitality workers, who voted to authorize one on Tuesday.
The sudden rise of the mega-venues has shifted the city’s center of gravity from the relative privacy of casino floors to spectacles as glaringly public as the Sphere after dusk.
“This reminds me a lot of Dubai,” said Bridgette Casellas, 24, an actress visiting from Los Angeles. “When I was there, it was all stadium building and bright lights. But they have so many restrictions on how you can behave. This promises to be more fun.”
“I’m having trouble describing what’s happening in this city right now,” said Mr. Alvarez, the former city cultural commissioner. “It’s Vegas 2 point 023. I can’t even keep track of it.”
There’s much to keep track of: Allegiant Stadium, which now rises a block west of the Strip will host Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, 2024. The $1.9 billion stadium is home to the Raiders football team, snatched from Oakland, Calif., just four years ago.
On the other side of the Strip, the Tropicana Hotel will soon be replaced by a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat baseball stadium to house the Athletics baseball team that Las Vegas is trying to snatch, again from Oakland.
The city already has the Golden Knights National Hockey League team, winner of the 2023 Stanley Cup Championship. With the successful acquisition of the Oakland A’s, the city will have completed the impressive hat trick of scoring three big-league U.S. teams within seven years, making it a year-round sports destination. Add a 10-year Formula 1 contract, and Vegas is arguably one of the world’s most compelling destinations to watch sports, with the Sphere as the asteroid-size cherry on top.
With all the changes, it’s little wonder that as you drive into Las Vegas from the desert, cranes pepper the skyline like a metal forest. Builders even had to import a special 580-foot crane from Belgium to construct the Sphere.
“Maybe a quarter of the travel market doesn’t like Las Vegas,” said Steve Hill, 64, the president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, and a major force behind the city’s transformation. “What sports and entertainment do is give these people a new reason to come here.”
“The success of Allegiant stadium has informed a lot of what’s going on,” he continued. “When we built it, we projected 450,000 annual visitors to come to town to attend an event there. Last year the stadium attracted 800,000 incremental visitors. Sports and light entertainment are increasingly important to extending the Las Vegas brand into the future.”
Vibrating seats, wind technology and $1,240 seats
The Sphere opens on Friday, Sept. 29, with the Irish rock band U2 playing its 1991 album “Achtung Baby.” The concert was supposed to be played two years ago, on the 30th anniversary of the album, but the pandemic delayed the Sphere’s construction. The band is booked for 25 shows in the 17,600-seat, bubble-shaped auditorium where audiences will be surrounded by a 160,000-square-foot LED media plane and 167,000 speakers. Other immersion techniques include vibrating seats and scent, temperature and wind technology.
The Sphere may stop traffic, but can it be filled? U2 will be playing in the venue until Dec. 16; tickets recently ranged from $268 to $1,240. But Live Nation, which is handling ticket sales for the Sphere, was still selling tickets to Friday’s premiere as of Monday. Seats for many subsequent shows are still available, and tickets at resellers like StubHub are going far below face value, fueling doubts as to whether this is really going to be a blockbuster. (A spokeswoman for Sphere Entertainment Company did not return a request for comment.)
Between U2 concerts, the filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (“The Whale”), will take his turn at the Sphere with the Oct. 6 premiere of “Postcard from Earth.” Mr. Aronofsky describes the movie, filmed on seven continents with high-resolution “Big Sky” cameras designed specifically for the Sphere, as a “love letter to mother earth.” A short clip on his Instagram page shows a towering elephant treading above audience seats on the domed auditorium screen. Tickets range from $49 to $199.
They will need to sell a lot of them. The cost overruns on the Sphere are already more than a billion dollars. Earlier this year, New York-based MSG Entertainment, which owns the Sphere, split in two, renaming the venue’s holding company Sphere Entertainment Company in order to insulate MSG Entertainment’s core holdings and protect existing shareholders.
A racetrack on the Strip
The Formula 1 race will be centered around a newly constructed, $480 million, 300,000-square-foot paddock — the pit stop for the racing cars — topped by two stories of luxury boxes, restaurants and rooftop grandstands.
This is not the first time that F1 has come to Vegas. In the early 1980s a Grand Prix course was constructed behind Caesars Palace, but the event fell flat and only two races of a five-year contract were run before it was canceled.
Renee Wilm, the chief executive of Las Vegas Grand Prix, said this time it will be different. “That was on a parking lot,” she said. “Now it’s on the Strip itself at night with all those lights. There’s not going to be a bigger or more glamorous sporting event on the planet.”
With F1’s popularity in the United States accelerating, thanks to media coverage and shows like Netflix’s “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” Las Vegas is now the latest of a dozen or so venues Formula 1 has had in the United States. The whole city seems to be jumping onto the speed wagon. All along the route, terraces, bleachers, spotlights and banners are turning the open desert streets into a race trench. Entertainment will be provided by Blue Man Group, the singer J Balvin and Cirque du Soleil around the track. In front of the Bellagio and the Mirage hotels, grandstands and viewing boxes are being erected and food will be catered by star chefs like David Chang and Jean-George Vongerichten.
Many of the other big resorts are racing to create the biggest over-the-top experiences for deep-pocketed guests, but the priciest is likely Nobu Hotel’s $5 million “Emperor Package,” replete with a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, a private dinner cooked by the chef Nobu Matsuhisa, five nights accommodations in the three-bedroom, 10,300-square-foot Nobu Sky Villa and private race events for 12 guests. Otherwise, the lowest three-day-pass still available on the F1 website is $2,000.
Hotels and restaurants far from the track are ramping up room prices and putting together themed meals. For $395 a person, “we’ve created our own Race Week Menu,” said Domenico Ferraro, the executive chef at the long-running Italian restaurant Ferraro’s, two blocks east of the Strip.
Mr. Hill of the convention bureau believes that Formula 1 will have a long-term upside for Las Vegas’s business. “Formula 1 is going to bring around 120,000 people from outside of Vegas during what is traditionally our second slowest weekend of the year,” he said. “That alone is at least 60,000 additional rooms sold. Ultimately it broadens us into an upscale and international market.”
Not everyone is happy with these changes.
“We’re very addicted to shiny things here in Las Vegas, but this isn’t the holistic way for city planning,” said Dayvid Figler, 56, a defense lawyer who doubles as one of the city’s most popular podcasters and cultural commentators.
“Traffic has been disrupted for years. On the Strip, 25-year-old shade trees have been cut down to make room for a two-day race,” he said. “Most of the people who live here will be paying for something they weren’t necessarily invited to.”
“I’m not coming back until the construction is over,” said Ms. Casellas, the visitor from Los Angeles, as she waded through hundreds of pedestrians moving at a zombie pace around yet another grandstand building site. “This is way too much of a hassle.”
Before I left, I decided to take one last pass at the Sphere, having finally discovered a great vantage point and parking on a frontage road called Manhattan Street. The enormous orb was morphing from a giant basketball to a jellyfish struggling in the water to an astronaut running in space.
(L-R) Mirage, Amanda Tori Meating, Morphine Love Dion, Sapphira Cristál, Mhi’ya Iman Le’Paige, Geneva Karr, Hershii LiqCour-Jeté, Plane Jane, Xunami Muse, Nymphia Wind, Q, Megami, Dawn and Plasma
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The 76th Primetime Emmys Awards are on Sunday night, hosted by father-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy, creators and stars of the hit TV series Schitt’s Creek. Nominees and stars hit the red carpet on Sunday evening outside of the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Here are some of their looks.
Andrew Scott
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Ayo Edebiri
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Dan Levy and Eugene Levy
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Da’Vine Joy Randolph
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Quinta Brunson
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Meryl Streep
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Selena Gomez
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Jennifer Aniston
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Bowen Yang
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Janelle James
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Maya Rudolph
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Nicola Coughlan
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Sofía Vergara
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Sheryl Lee Ralph
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Lisa Ann Walter
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Elizabeth Debicki
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Amber Chardae Robinson
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Idris Elba and Sabrina Elba
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Anna Sawai
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Paul Rudd
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Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern
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Tyler James Williams
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Ella Purnell
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RuPaul
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Christine Baranski
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Lily Gladstone
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Jeremy Allen White
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Saoirse Ronan
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Mindy Kaling
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Chris Perfetti
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Eiza Gonzalez
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Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor
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Dakota Fanning
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Skye P. Marshall
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Carrie Coon
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Hannah Einbinder
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Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer
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Nava Mau
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Rita Ora
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Jon Hamm
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Viola Davis
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Greta Lee
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Taylor Zakhar Perez
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Diego Luna
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Liza Colón-Zayas
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Ramy Youssef
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Catherine O’Hara
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Aaron Moten
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Kristen Wiig
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Niecy Nash-Betts
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Billy Crudup and Naomi Watts
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D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai
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Brie Larson
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Juno Temple
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Richard Gadd
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Molly Gordon
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William Stanford Davis
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Ilona Maher
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Isabella Star LaBlanc
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Alan Cumming
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This story is part of Image’s September Image Makers issue, celebrating some of the most daring and innovative artists working in fashion today.
Eric Solis describes his photos as “cyberghetto,” “flow 2000s,” “raver chic.” Models wearing cargos layered with neon mesh shorts, stand among the rims at a car lot, using a purse inspired by one. Remixed plaid jorts. A durag with a blinged-out butterfly bikini top. Club kid platforms accessorized with ripped black tights. The concept: Moda sin fronteras. Solis, an L.A. native who now lives in Mexico City, where much of his family is from, wanted the photos to tell a story about the connection between two brands — L.A.-based Planeta and Mexico City-based Wavey — and in a larger sense, to “blur the lines between how people perceive what fashion is, or how it should look, in both the contexts of L.A. and Mexico.”
For Solis — a multi-hyphenate who works as an architect, event producer, photographer, art director and creative consultant, among other things — this project was an opportunity to capture the conversation he sees happening between Mexico City and L.A. in terms of fashion and style, in a way that felt expansive and not necessarily confined by gender or culture. The models themselves are young people who are mostly from Mexico City (or live there) spanning queer, trans and Indigenous communities that Solis met through fashion shows. The entire team — from the stylist Tuzza to the hair artist Ozmar Báez — was an intentional part of the conversation he was trying to create through the clothes and photos, he says.
Solis was thinking about the dichotomy of the two communities in L.A. and Mexico City, and at least in terms of style, how they were taking from each other and presenting it in new ways. He wanted to take what he was seeing and present it so that it wasn’t L.A. style, wasn’t Mexico City style, but was a hybrid of both.
Genesis wears Planeta neon mesh top and hunting pants, Wavey snakeskin bikini top.
The shoot acted as a catalyst for a pop-up called “No Hablamos Inglés” that Solis is curating on Sept. 21 at Planeta’s DTLA store. He is bringing the work of more than 20 emerging Mexican designers — spotlighting a scene of alternative, young, queer artists who are morphing how we think about Mexican style — including Palida Studios, Tlacuache Muerto and Resurrected. The name is important; for Solis it stands for cultural pride and community: “Sometimes, Mexicans on the Mexico side feel like they should learn English to better their lives or to be better in business, but this is almost like a saying of defiance. It’s almost rebellious: ‘No Hablamos Inglés.’”
This project is also Solis’ contribution to an ongoing conversation artists have been sparking between L.A. and Mexico for years, chief among them artist and curator Anita Herrera. From the beginning, Herrera has infused her practice with the mission of finding the connection and disconnections between L.A. and Mexico. Her ongoing series, “Diaspora Dialogues,” has consistently used fashion as a medium to explore these topics — as has much of Herrera’s work; she went to fashion school and started her career in the fashion industry.
Israel wears Wavey zig-zag top, bejeweled beanie, acid cargo pants, chrome fanny pack, Planeta neon mesh shorts, Tuzza custom reflector earring.
Solis met Herrera through helping with “Diaspora Dialogues” and met the founders of Planeta at one of Herrera’s exhibitions in Mexico City, “A Través de la Moda,” where she displayed personal pieces from her closet that drew from images and symbols that Mexican Americans hold dear — La Virgen de Guadalupe, the Aztec calendar — “as an exploration of history, myths and novelties between L.A. and Mexico City,” Herrera says. Planeta, founded by designers Hoza Rodriguez and Richard Resendez, has an IYKYK cult-like kind of status among the fashion people, artists and club kids who wear it. Their work is best recognized by the magic they do with upcycling — flannel shirts layered on top of baggy denim become a new genre entirely, something from the future. When they went to Mexico City for the exhibition and were able to see the city through the eyes of Solis and Herrera (Rodriguez and Herrera have been friends since 2009, when they were both starting their careers in the fashion industry), something clicked. “Everything’s unisex,” Rodriguez says of the style he observed in Mexico. “And I learned that they are not influenced by us, we are influenced by them.”
Wavey, a Mexico City brand and store founded by Talulah Rodriguez-Anderson in 2018, makes the kind of things you might wear at a rave on the beach. It’s always been dedicated to communicating its clothing as unisex. Rodriguez-Anderson grew up in L.A. and was inspired by her visual experiences and memories on both sides of the border when starting her brand. The brand’s store, in Colonia Juárez, carries this same energy, with its aesthetic drawing from the cargo trailers that go from Mexico City to the States. A Wavey piece borrows from Chicano silhouettes and images, told through a Mexican streetwear lens — the latter of which Rodriguez-Anderson says is “evolving very quickly.”
Jorge, left, wears Wavey MX* T-shirt, Planeta jersey work shirt and Planeta checkered Dickies shorts. Axel wears Wavey mariposa bikini top, Planeta plaid block shorts.
Solis wanted to highlight Planeta and Wavey because they felt like family in his mind — with a shared ethos, a look that felt like it was drawing from similar references. “To me, they’re like siblings, they’re like cousins,” Solis says. “They sort of talk to each other in terms of their style.” This is shown in the styling of one of the models, Jorge, who wears reworked checkered Dickies shorts from Planeta pointing to an early-2000s L.A. skater aesthetic, and a blinged-out shirt with the initials “MX” from Wavey as a nod to Mexico City. “It’s a new aesthetic,” Solis says. “It’s not California, it’s not quite Mexican. But it’s both, it’s something else.”
With the shoot, and with the pop-up, Solis says he wanted to show a “cross-section of Mexican youth, real Mexican youth.” He chose Colonia Juárez for the location, specifically an area that’s home to many auto body shops, because it felt true to where these looks would actually be worn. The environment and the clothes are in communion with each other, Solis says. “I also wanted to shoot it in a location that was authentically Mexican. Whereas I feel like La Condesa, or Roma, it can feel foreign, almost.”
“For me, that shoot, when I look at it, it brings some sort of happiness and some sort of truth of who we are as Latinos, as the LGBTQ community, and as human beings,” says Planeta co-founder Rodriguez, also the founder of L.A. brand Hologram City. “When I see that, it makes me happy to know what we really are: we’re talented, we’re creative, we look like superheroes, we’re the s—.”
Ellie, left, wears Planeta button-up jersey shirt and biker vest, Wavey skirt, Tuzza custom rim bag. Israel, center, wears Wavey zig-zag top, beanie, acid cargo pants, chrome fanny pack, Planeta neon mesh shorts, Tuzza custom earring. Li, right, wears Planeta baby button-up shirt, Wavey purple flame dress, pink & white flame dress, snakeskin top, Tuzza custom reflector earrings.
Even as an architect, Solis has always worked in creative or community realms. He was on the team of designers for the 6th Street Bridge — and curated the art, photography and architecture exhibit “Nuestre Puente,” in collaboration with Estevan Oriol, in celebration of the bridge’s opening. He’s also one of the founders of the DTLA Proud festival. When he moved to Mexico City, he wanted to find a way to blend his obsession with fashion, art and culture, and embed himself into the creative community there as much as possible. Solis frequents Tianguis La Lagunilla once a month, which is where he says he came to really understand Mexico City’s fashion youth culture and meet some of the brands he’s bringing to L.A.
“Moving to Mexico City four years ago and really starting to understand by living here and building community here, [I realized] how our communities are not quite as connected as they could be because of those political, policy barriers that separate communities,” Solis says. “I have a whole circle of friends here in Mexico City that are artists, designers. They have their own brands, very integrated in the creative community here, and many, almost all of my friends who want to expose their brand or expose themselves as artists in the United States, they can’t — because they literally can’t go.” He wants to create connections for these Mexican designers, and allow the people of L.A. to experience their work. As a Mexican and U.S. citizen, Solis feels like he’s able to bridge the two sides — bringing Mexican designers to L.A. through their artistry, even if they’re not able to come here themselves.
The collection of designers that Solis is bringing to his L.A. pop-up this month conjures some key phrases for him: “It’s queer as in f— you.” “Barrio bratz.” “Sin género.” “Mexa-core.” The designers include Ese Chico, known for its irreverent graphic T-shirts and slogan: “Locura sin piedad,” or “madness without piety” — Herrera included it in her “A Través de la Moda” exhibition when she brought it to L.A. earlier this year. Another is Squid, a brand “inspired by nature” that transforms garments through upcycling, airbrush and screen printing into one-of-a-kind works of art. It was crucial for Solis that the pop-up captured this moment in Mexico City’s fashion scene, which he describes as “infinite.”
Jorge Líos of Palida Studios — a brand with a style Líos describes as a balance of elegance and deterioration — is a native of Nezahualcoyotl, an area about an hour outside of Mexico City. The spirit of Mexico City’s street-level fashion scene is a mix of “vulgar, atrevido y chido,” he says. “Como que la gente justo está desmitificando esta idea de que lo que debes de usar solamente son marcas gabachas y ya está volteando a ver marcas Mexicanas. Sobre todo, la escena está construyendo o reafirmando la identidad de ser Mexicano.” (That is, people are demystifying the idea that you should only use foreign brands and are turning to Mexican brands. The Mexico City scene is building up and reaffirming Mexican identity.) Since he was a kid, it was Líos’ dream to travel to L.A. or New York. He loves hip-hop and was inspired by the music culture in both cities. The fact that he is now traveling to L.A. through his designs and that they’re reaching a new audience that might be moved by them? “Es una locura.”
The list of L.A.’s sister cities includes Salvador, Brazil; Busan, South Korea; Berlin; and, of course, Mexico City. For Solis, it’s more than just a connection or conversation: there are familial ties. “The shared passion through fashion is something that really connects us and really unites us,” he says. “I’ve begun to see how fashion can actually build an identity that is of neither place, but is of both places.”
Production Eric Solis
Models Axel, Ellie, Genesis, Israel, Jorge, Li
Makeup Beauty Dealers
Hair Ozmar Báez
Production assist Dennis Caasi
¡Casa Bonita, Mi Amor! follows Trey Parker and Matt Stone as they renovate a dilapidated, inauthentic, 1970s Mexican restaurant. The labor of love becomes a money-pit as they chase the landmark’s former glory.
Paramount
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Paramount
Maybe because most of us come from somewhere else, Americans just love replicas of foreign places — William Randolph Hearst’s faux European castle in San Simeon, Calif.; Paris Las Vegas with its half-size Eiffel Tower and mini Louvre; or the mock Alpine village you find in, of all places, Helen, Ga. Creating a giddy atmosphere that Umberto Eco dubbed “hyperreality,” such crazily ambitious simulacra fill nearly everyone with childish delight.
This includes Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park and The Book of Mormon fame. Although notorious for their cynical humor, both harbor a profound affection for one of the places they adored as kids: Casa Bonita, a 50,000 square foot attraction in a Lakewood, Colo., strip mall that has been dubbed the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants. It’s an Anglo businessman’s fantastical riff on an old Mexican village, one decked out with Old West outlaws, volcanoes, cliff divers and even a gorilla that runs through caverns studded with stalactites.
More than half a century after opening in 1974 — complete with TV ads featuring Ricardo Montalban! — this once-spectacular crowd-puller had fallen on such desperate times that it was doomed to close. Then it was bought out of bankruptcy “as is” by Stone and Parker, who vowed to save the beloved Colorado landmark and return it to its former glory.
Their battle to do so is the subject of the enjoyable new documentary ¡Casa Bonita, Mi Amor! Directed by Arthur Bradford and produced by MTV Documentary Films, the movie’s a treat, weaving together great archival footage, excerpts from South Park and Elvis’ movie Fun in Acapulco, plus countless scenes of Parker and Stone’s amused horror when they hear the latest reason why their labor of love is becoming a money-pit.
After a zippy capsule history of Casa Bonita, with its Pepto-Bismol-pink facade and blue fountain out front, the movie returns to the present to show everything it takes to recreate a mecca whose true meaning lay in the feelings it once induced. Because the original Casa Bonita was legendary for lousy food, they bring on an executive chef, Dana Rodriguez, who’s been nominated for James Beard Awards. She takes Parker to Oaxaca so he can soak up the atmosphere and get inspired.
Yet wondrous inspiration bumps into un-wondrous reality. Turns out that their new property is a dilapidated death trap in which everything — electricity, plumbing, air conditioning — must be redone. A renovation originally budgeted at $6 million suddenly balloons to a new estimate of $20 million plus.
Now, as ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! chronicles the high price of nostalgia, it also offers an offhand glimpse at one of pop culture’s signature creative teams. It doesn’t take long to spot the differences between the two longtime friends — Parker is clearly the dreamy, creative one; Stone the shrewd whetstone on which he sharpens his ideas. What you may find surprising is the secret sentimentality of guys whose comedy takes such pride in finding nothing sacred. Parker, in particular, betrays a sweetness in his romantic attachment to the innocent pleasures of childhood. He’s also a perfectionist. We see his artistic process, fussing over and tweaking every creative detail of the project.
As their crew desperately races to have everything perfect by opening day — spending even more millions along the way — it becomes clear that Parker and Stone are chasing a ghost or maybe a paradox. The original Casa Bonita was a 1970s inauthentic version of 19th-century Mexico, but to recapture its magic this new version can’t be the same Casa Bonita that Parker remembers so fondly. Just as Indiana Jones’ movies had to use top-drawer talent to emulate cheap, old movie serials, so their restaurant has to meet today’s expectations — tastier food, sharper entertainment — or visitors won’t find it as thrilling as the original. To feel the same, it has to be different.
By the time Casa Bonita finally reopens — there is a happy ending — Parker and Stone have done something that could hardly be more quintessentially American: They’ve spent a fortune to make a copy of a Mexican-themed restaurant that’s actually better than the original.
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