By Andrea Sachs, The Washington Post
LAS VEGAS — On a January afternoon at Atomic Liquors, Tony Hsieh stood behind the bar chatting up a mermaid. Iridescent soap bubbles swirled around them. A statuesque woman in a daring red dress walked up and ordered a shot. She drained the glass and motioned for Tony to join her. The strangers entwined arms like newlyweds and chugged. The woman strutted off and Tony turned his attention back to the mermaid. The bar was too loud to hear the conversation between the chief executive of Zappos, the online shoe retailer, and the mythical sea creature. But most likely, they weren’t discussing aqua socks.
Las Vegas is so strange that the brain just accepts the unexpected. A man dressed like Zoltar doles out fortunes outside a Walgreens. Couples tie the knot inside a Denny’s — Grand Slam for two included. A multimillionaire entrepreneur fraternizes with a fish-tailed woman. Ho-hum Vegas, right? But what shocks is the ordinary.
“This is the most community-focused place I have ever lived in,” the company’s 43-year-old top executive said of the downtown. “It’s neighborhoody in the last place people would expect it.”
Indeed, the downtown scene is so tightknit that many locals, including Tony, appeared in the latest Shins music video, which was filmed there last week. The production company shot on Fremont Street, an area that was once so blighted and dangerous that it belonged in an episode of “Cops.” Now, one of the biggest risks is miscalculating the wait time for a table at PublicUs, the canteen-style restaurant and coffeehouse recently opened by a champion barista.
“This used to be Skid Row,” a longtime resident told me during a party at Perch, a restaurant in Container Park, which opened in June 2015. He waved his mojito over the former wasteland about six miles north of the Strip. I followed the contrails of his cocktail over a llama posing for photos, a treehouse-themed playground and shipping containers aglow with shops, eateries and bars.
“This all just happened,” he said before ducking inside for a ceviche taco. “The area is blowing up.”
The abbreviated story of downtown’s development goes like this: In 2013, Tony relocated Zappos from Henderson, Nev., to Vegas’s old City Hall. The location complemented his business philosophy: “You should live, work and play within walking distance.” To fill in the area’s many blank spots, he created the Downtown Project, an investment company that pledged $350 million to build or support new places to eat, drink, shop and inhabit. To date, the firm has approximately 50 businesses under its umbrella, including the Oasis (where I stayed), VegeNation (where I ate), the Black Cup (where I caffeinated), the Writer’s Block (where I browsed) and Bunkhouse Saloon (where I drank).
For a more personalized reading of this Cinderella tale, I enlisted Tony to show me around the revitalized destination. True to his tenet, we never ventured more than a few blocks.
On tour
Obvious question: Does Zappos sell shoes at its Vegas headquarters?
Answer I hoped to hear: Yes.
Answer I learned during a tour of the facility: No.
The call center is based here, but the warehouses are in Kentucky. So if you ring up Zappos, you can ask the employee about the local weather or any Britney TMZ moments, because according to company bylaws, you can never be rushed off the phone. Nor is footwear a required topic.
“My longest conversation was 3 1/2 hours,” said Letha Myles, my guide on the Zappos Tour Experience. “It took 15 minutes to exchange shoes, and the rest of the time we talked about ‘Rescue Me.’ Her daughter was a producer on the show. She was such a proud mom.” The lengthiest conversation title belongs to Steven Weinstein, who set the record in June at 10 hours, 43 minutes.
Zappos offers several tours that focus on the arts, the company culture or downtown. (Zappos is owned by Amazon.com, whose founder, Jeffrey Bezos, owns The Washington Post.) For the Zappos Downtown Escapade Tour Experience, held on Friday mornings, our group gathered in the lobby, near a man in a porkpie hat shining shoes. We followed Brian “Paco” Alvarez and his Dali-esque mustache to the courtyard, which was festooned with the names of shoe and apparel brands. Paco asked us to call out our home towns: One for South Korea, one for Washington and four for Las Vegas. He joked that the locals have probably never seen downtown before, unless they had to pay a parking ticket or attend court. A woman nodded her head in agreement.
Before setting off, Paco explained that the land we were standing on was once a ranch owned by Helen Stewart, a Las Vegas pioneer in the 1800s. Her great-great-granddaughter still lives in town, behind the Neon Museum, a retirement home for glitzy signage.
“Even though we tear down our history in Vegas,” said Paco, the company’s art curator and historian, “there’s still living history in our county.”
Las Vegas was born near the corner of Fremont and Main streets in 1905, as a major railroad hub. The Golden Gate Hotel and Casino, which opened in 1906 as the Hotel Nevada, still wears the sash as the oldest continually operating hotel in Vegas. The attention-hogging Strip rose from the desert in the 1930s, a result of the new highway, Route 91, to Los Angeles. To compete with the Strip, officials in the late 1950s began to modernize downtown with new facades and parking garages. In 1995, they unveiled the Fremont Street Experience, an electrifying pedestrian mall with a 1,500-foot-long LED-lit canopy, the largest of its kind in the world.
Several years later, the nearby 18b Arts District kicked off First Friday, a monthly party with artsy activities, music and food vendors. The arts district is outside the Downtown Project zone, but the Fremont area is equally dedicated to creative expression. Zappos commissions visiting painters and has a resident artist, Miguel Hernandez, who was discovered while working in the call center. For Letha’s birthday, Miguel surprised the guide with a Prince mural.
Every fall since 2012, the Fremont East Entertainment District and the surrounding neighborhood have hosted Life is Beautiful, a festival that draws musicians (past participants include Kanye West, Stevie Wonder and Mumford & Sons), chefs, artists and TED-like talkers. After the three days of festivities, the crowds leave but the murals stay. Paco showed us several works, including a giant horned lizard spitting a stream of red. He assured us that the reptile wasn’t wounded; he was just defending himself.
On Sixth Street, he offered to buy us a coffee and a snack at the Donut Bar, a recipient of the Downtown Project’s funding. At Poet’s Bridge, we crossed a concrete span inscribed with the musings of local writers such as Harry Fagel, a lieutenant with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
This wasteland is just beginning to cook . . . / we get to shape it / shape it / shape it.
A constant presence
My first Tony sighting occurred at Zappos; his boyish face loomed in an introductory video about the company. The second viewing took place the following day, at the Writer’s Block. Co-owner Scott Seeley and I were discussing his decision to leave Brooklyn, where he ran literary nonprofit 826 Valencia with author Dave Eggers, when in walked Tony. He was wearing jeans and a black North Face jacket with a “Life is Beautiful” patch. The middle lane of his hair was spiked up. Hours later, I caught a quick glance of him at Perch during a party for the International Consumer Electronics Show, an annual convention mobbed by nearly 180,000 techies. I was engrossed in a conversation about drug addiction and homelessness. When I looked up, Tony was gone.
Tony and I had planned to officially meet after the weekend, but as a constant fixture in the neighborhood, he was hard to avoid. Without trying, I frequently stepped on his footprints and tripped over his whimsies.
“Tony likes a sense of discovery,” said Maria Phelan, former director of public relations for the Downtown Project. “He wants you to discover a little bit more each time you come.”
Maria and I were sitting inside the Gold Spike, a lark-to-owl entertainment venue attached to the Oasis hotel. She took me past carnival games and a bar to the Backyard, a Wonderland of a playground with oversize games such as Jenga and beer pong; fire pits and furniture covered in turf; and a stage backed by an Airstream. The newest addition to the scene is the Sugar Shack, a tiny house rental with a suburban front lawn. (Never mind those neighbors slurping boozy eight-person milkshakes from the Gold Spike’s bar.)
“He looks for the first, unique or best,” Maria said of Tony’s inspiration.
The Container Park fits snugly inside those parameters. At the entrance, a 55-foot-tall praying mantis spews flames and swivels its head as if searching for its next piece of kebab meat. Its creator built the kinetic art car to impress a woman (it worked). The pair brought the sculpture to the Burning Man festival, where Tony fell hard for the bug and installed it in Vegas.
In the park, the former site of a Motel 6, restaurants, bars and retailers wedged themselves into three levels of shipping containers and modular cubes. They vary in style and substance but share one common trait: They are all small, independent businesses, many with local roots.
If you go
Where to stay
Oasis at Gold Spike. 217 N. Las Vegas Blvd. 702-768-9823,
The recently renovated hotel (no two rooms have the same decor) recently hosted MTV’s “The Real World” in its seventh-floor penthouse suite. Guests have access to the pool, fitness center and indoor/outdoor entertainment venue at the Gold Spike, which includes the Living Room, the Backyard (live bands on weekends) and the Carnival Bar. Rates start at $23 a night and include two coffees at Fiddlestix cafe.
Where to eat
Le Thai. 523 Fremont St. 702-778-0888,
The Thai restaurant is known for its three-color curry dishes, noodle soups and waterfall sauce. Its beer garden also hosts DJs. Entrees from $11.
VegeNation. 616 Carson Ave. No. 120. 702-366-8515, A former MGM casino chef runs the vegetarian restaurant that celebrates global street food. Among the options: Vietnamese pho, African yam stew and mushroom sliders. Entrees from $11.
What to do
Zappos Insights. 400 E. Stewart Ave. 877-513-7424,
The online shoe retailer offers a number of tours for various interests. The two-hour Zappos Downtown Escapade Tour Experience costs $35; the 90-minute Zappos Tour Experience costs $10.
The Writer’s Block. 1020 Fremont St. No. 100. 702-550-6399,
Nearly everything (except Baron the bunny) is for sale at this eclectic and eccentric bookstore. The owners host special events, such as the Neon Lit reading series featuring writers from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
Bunkhouse Saloon. 124 S. 11th St. 702-982-1764,
The local hangout draws local and national music acts as well as word and dice game enthusiasts. Upcoming shows include Deerhunter (Jan. 29) and Dada (Feb. 21), on its 25th anniversary tour.
Downtown Container Park. 702 Fremont St. 702-359-9982,
The open-air retail and entertainment complex has three levels of shops, restaurants and bars, plus the Treehouse playground and a stage for concerts. After 9 p.m., guests must be age 21 or older.
