menace 2 society

So in not-actually-directly-related-to-my-house news, today I slacked off and took myself on a Vegas Vintage Architecture tour. Every time I think I've found the very last neighborhood with cool houses here, I end up finding more. In this case, I was tipped off by a couple homes from the veryvintagevegas.com site run by the realtor who moves all the old joints around here (it's a cool read, but he updates the blog pretty infrequently).

Since it wasn't too oppressively cold, I thought I'd hop on my neglected motorcycle and see if I could get it to start (the longer it sits, the worse it gets, and leaving the battery in cold cold garage doesn't help). It actually started pretty easily and off I went. For those who know the area, my initial destination was the Rancho and Alta area just northwest of me. I'd been up there during the summer when I was still looking for places, but it was a pretty cursory drive-by, because I knew the area was a little champagney for my beer budget. As it turned out the specific places I wanted to see today were in a gated area with a security boof, so I wasn't gonna try and bum rush the show. Wah-wah. The good news was there was plenty of non-gated real estate to explore, and oh my… some amazing, huge, opulent joints. The big difference between my 'hood and up here is that, though there are some great houses around me, the lots here are pretty small. But over there… clearly this was the Beverly Hills of Vegas circa mid 50's to mid 60's. All kinds of custom-built madness, some on huge lots, some just beautiful, some mind-blowingly tacky. One has awesome western murals painted all over it along with metal horse silhouettes and other western silliness… located on Palomino Ln… I kid you not. That couldn't be a coincidence (I would kill to see the wild-west trainwreck stylings of its interior). There was another house with giant, and I mean GIANT statues of horses and bulls on the front lawn. I should have taken a picture.

I accidentally discovered a whole other hood (east of Rancho between Charleston and Oakey). I actually tried to check it out months ago, but most of the entrances are blocked off. It's technically not gated, but you have to know where to get in. Here were more lovely places, some old, some newer, and I think I found my new favorite house in Vegas, which is located, get this, at 2001 Bannie Ave. Those who know me well know my all-time favorite film is 2001: A Space Odyssey. Maybe one day I'll buy the place and I can write a blog called "2001: A House Odyssey"… or maybe "A Cool Place Odyssey". The picture doesn't do it justice at all, but trust me, it's super mid-century awesomeness, it's huge (3500 sq ft), has a guest house and is on a giant corner lot.

So there I am, minding my own bidness, tooling around on my bike (which BTW, is a vintage 1974 Honda CB750, in very nice shape. This will soon be semi-relevant.). I'm not really driving up and down the same streets much, but I am going rather slowly for obvious reasons. There's barely any traffic in these neighborhoods. Suddenly some dude in a Nissan SUV turns left, driving directly toward me, stops and jumps out; I could've gone around him, but clearly he stopped for me. Judging from the his curt actions and the not-nice look on his face, I didn't think he was stopping to compliment me on the bike. (Old dudes occasionally gawk at it. Chicks, not so much.)

"DO YOU LIVE HERE?!?", barketh he.
 "Uh, no", I replied innocently.
 "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?", barkethed he more.
(By the way, he wasn't a particularly menacing looking guy. For those of you with aspirations to randomly mess  with slow-moving neighborhood motorcyclists, removing your Bluetooth® headset might help to ramp up your intimidation factor.)
"I'm looking at houses. I'm into mid-century architecture. And old stuff. Look at my bike…old, restored... ", intoned I. Guy seemingly slightly embarrassed, but not nearly as much as he should be. I'm 40-years old, how old do I have to be before they stop treating me like a kid?!?
"Oh. Well we've had a lot of robberies here lately, and we have to watch out. You'd want people to do that for you too."

Well, I wouldn't necessarily stop motorists on the street. Besides, I'm no expert on burglarly/theft, but if I was gonna steal your stuff, I'd bring a bigger and far less conspicuous vehicle. It's real hard to strap a big-screen TV on the back of a bike with a cargo net on the passenger seat. Maybe those stealing-crap experts know some tricks that I don't. As an aside, earlier I rode past two separate pulled over cops and exchanged pleasant nods with each. Hmmm.

"I'm just looking at houses. I just bought a sixties place on the other side of the freeway. I even felt kind of bad because my bike's a bit loud", I offered.
"Oh, uh, sorry. Have a good New Year".

I wonder if he clicked that Bluetooth® headset on, called a loved one and told them he just did his McGruff the Crime Dog good deed of the day and took a bite outta crime. Or maybe he told them he randomly hassled someone flagrantly minding their own business. But I doubt that.

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By the way, I've accomplished a LOT in the realm of kitchen drywall patching. The ceiling already looked like swiss cheese, and not only did Handyman Keith have to cut more holes for the light install (and not the kind that the fixtures to into), but there were holes from all the lights I removed, missing chunks of drywall from when the plumbers installed gas lines for my dryer AND areas to fill due to removal of superfluous light switches. All in all, a great deal of drywall busywork, and I've made great strides. Photo essay forthcoming.

Update on Monday, January 2, 2012 at 11:24AM by celebutante

I got a better pic of that cool house (thanks to google maps). The carport/driveway awning thingee is kind of Frank Lloyd Wright-esque, no? (I'm getting all hoity-toity tossing around the names of the like, three architects I actually know the work of)

And while we're at it, below is the previous "Mitch's Fave House In Vegas" front runner. This has the distinction of being around the block from my place, so I drive past it every day, and everyone who's visited me is forced to listen to me yak about it. Amusingly, a couple of people seem to think the houses I like look like office buildings- one even said "dentist's office". BTW, that's a google map pic too- the current owner has fixed up the ugly dying grass landscape. As you can see from both places, I have thing for corner lots (the other place I almost bought in Paradise Palms was a corner lot). You can see this one has that cool room on top, and there's an outdoor spiral staircase in the yard that goes up to the roof; you can sort of see the guard rails in the pic. I've seen pics of the inside, and it's been very nicely updated. Wood floors, minimal furnishings, etc. And it sold for around $140k a year and half ago. Crazy!

And OH YEAH, it took me a minute to find it on google maps, but here's the aformentioned bulls 'n' horsies on da front lawn house mentioned above. Can you believe this s@*t? You really gotta wonder what kind of person lives here (and how many airport metal detectors their belt buckle sets off).