Strip mauled

Mariachi bands. Roller derbies. Wigs. Hookahs. Gay cowboys. Japanese karaoke singers. Golf clubs. S&M harnesses. Thai food. Salvadoran food. Live sex clubs. Pentecostal churches. Diamonds. Kimchee. Elegant past, eccentric present and redeveloped future. All this and more can be found in Commercial Center, the sprawling foursquare strip mall between the Strip and downtown.

But perhaps not for long. Commercial Center is dead center of a proposed massive county redevelopment project that would rip out and rebuild everything from Maryland Parkway to Paradise Road, from Karen to Sahara avenues, and replace it with a duplicate of the District at Green Valley or Town Square.

Even if that municipal wish doesn't materialize -- the aging strip mall has been in the county's sights for years --the businesses in Commercial Center still have problems. Inside, there's the giant, neglected parking lot, outside, the network of service alleys that once welcomed hookers, the homeless, graffiti taggers and other ill-intentioned lurkers. Tenants have long squabbled with the county about whose responsibility it is to keep the area up and, over the past few years, many businesses have come together to improve things on their own. But is it too late to save Commercial Center?

It takes an international village

To discover just what is there and what might be gone, I spent 12 hours at Commercial Center, beginning my journey with some fortifying Korean food. The center of the Center is a large, one-story building, faced in black glass that gives it a faint aura of Imperial bunker, despite the orange-tiled roof. Jin Mee, a barbecue restaurant/karaoke palace, takes up one whole side with a pink granite wall. Inside the dining room, I twirl my spicy noodles and experiment with condiments while a woman blows up dozens of green-and-yellow party balloons, occasionally cooing at the newborn asleep in his stroller.

This single building is essentially Las Vegas' Koreatown. On all four sides are restaurants, bars, churches, karaoke clubs, dry cleaners, food markets, video stores. Incongruously nestled among them is the Harmony Nail Salon, where they do hair, nails and "facials, massages, seaweed wraps, Reiki, spiritual healing and automatic writing," according to proprietor Paula Sadler. The New Age-y treatments are in an apt setting: The salon is decorated as a hobbit's wooded glen, dominated by a fake tree bedecked with crystals and fairies, along with a rustic fountain and giant carved wooden doors.

Harmony Nail Salon's angel-bedecked boutique/waiting room is also the office of the Commercial Center Business Association, of which Sadler is president. "This is an international village," she says. "We have Mexican, Japanese, Korean, Israeli, Hawaiian, the Lesbian and Gay Center.... People of all different ethnic and cultural backgrounds working together."

It wasn't always that way. "Before they weren't networking, no one knew who else was here," she recalls. The Center itself was also in dire shape. "We had about two dozen homeless people, hookers, 12 abandoned vehicles." So Sadler "paid a homeless guy to paint each light post and trash can." Then she convinced a number of the other business owners to join the newly created association and continue making improvements to Commercial Center's common spaces, a task that, according to Sadler, should be someone else's.

"It was deeded over to the county in perpetuity under the condition they maintain the parking lot," yet most agree that little was done, she says. "Now the county has ceded the parking lot to the office of redevelopment. They've named this a blighted area."

She adds, "We clean, we paint, we're doing all these things, but still they're trying to make us look bad." Sadler continues to paint curbs and hassle bureaucrats: "This is the only place in Las Vegas where you see so many diverse businesses. This is the last stronghold." And she's not giving up, either. "I read omens," she explains. "When I came here there was a family of seagulls. Seagulls are natural cleaners," she continues serenely, "It's a symbol. ... I'm in it for the long haul."

Neon and wrought iron

Also draped in foliage, but not so mellow is Las Palmas restaurant. The vine-stringed walls and palm-tree-crammed corners surround an equipment-stacked stage; in eight hours, the giant speakers will vibrate with mariachi music as crowds pack the lime-green vinyl booths and tables. Right now, it's that dead zone between lunch and dinner, and I sit under a silk ficus, sipping a margarita and dunking warm chips into melted cheese. Only two other tables are occupied: A trio of chubby, smeared-eyeliner teenage girls with a similarly rounded, mom-like figure, echoes with giggles and "Oh my gawds!" while a man in a cowboy hat and bouffanted woman sit side by side, scarcely exchanging a word.

Las Palmas has been in Commercial Center for two years, long enough to join the area's cleanup campaign. Francisco, the manager, says, "We've improved all the area. It's a little bit cleaner than it used to be." Las Palmas pulls a steady stream of business almost 16 hours a day (even hosting a McCain campaign event), but the flow goes both ways. He adds, "We have a lot of business from other places. They look for a restaurant, they come here. ... We help out the other business owners."

The mazelike aisles of the Asian Mart are lined by packages labeled with anthropomorphic food, with big-headed children shrieking through perfectly round mouths, with labeling entirely in Korean except for the words "'ZERO' calories." I choose a package adorned with a trio of beetle-browed toddlers dressed up like Hot Dog on a Stick-hip-hop gangstas. It's a puffed-wheat snack spiced with cinnamon and sugar; I devour half the bag passing the "New Orleans Square" part of Commercial Center. Elaborate iron railings shade the art deco and disco-bubble fonts of the Casino Gaming School and the neon-tinted faux-Nagel adoring the New York-Dominican Hair Salon. Around the corner are the Violin Outlet and the Las Vegas Lounge. A shop selling all things classically stringed to Strip players, traveling bands, orchestral musicians and the occasional jazzbo -- next door to a dive bar patronized by neighborhootchie-style trannies and their admirers, where all manner of trade can be found in the back room.

A blonde mom and her rollerblade-toting fourth-grader emerge from the Las Vegas Roller Hockey Center. The Sin City Rollergirls sometimes have derbies there -- I recall one match, crowded against the side of the rink, everyone clutching a pint of Jim Beam, indulging in high-volume, obscenity-laden heckling while pounding the glass so boisterously that my friend had to come back the next morning and look for two stones that fell out of her wedding ring. (She found one.) Longer, fonder memories might remember it as the Ice Palace, host to acts like ZZ Top, Santana, the Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin. No shit. August 11, 1969: Jimmy page wuz here!

Next door is Wig Factory Outlet by Serge. Upon entering, I am confronted by a skinny woman in a grey sweatsuit wearing a gleaming, blonde Pam Anderson-style wig. "You are in for a treat, honey! They're two for a hundred!" she crows, bouncing off. Mesmerized by rows of coral-lipped, spider-lashed, fixedly staring heads, I spontaneously decide I need a new Bettie Page wig. A pleasant woman in a red culottes suit leads me to a curtained corner where we pull a nylon stocking over my head and I try on wigs. Wigs with names reminiscent of call girls and TV shows: Ashley, Paige, Angel, Friends. I consider each one and dismiss them as too pirate-wenchy, too mullety, too Louis XIV, too Cher.

The wig handler considers: "I'll get Roxie." She bustles off, whipping luxurious, coal-black falls of hair off of the severed heads in her path. I hear other clients chatting through the half-walls.

"... I look like Kirstie Alley ..."

"... and I tell him 'You drive a bad car, you dress badly, what do you expect?' ...."

Roxie is even more of a shag and makes me look like Blackie Lawless. Still no Betty.

" ... she's so cute, plus she's got great tits ... "

" ... I just hope my boss doesn't find out ..."

As I slip toward the door, trying to unflatten my hair, the lady in the gray sweatsuit is grinning away by the register, now wearing an auburn version of her Pam wig. "I just bought $1,000 worth of hair extensions. I'm cleaning the place out!"

Throwback to swank

Serge's Showgirl Wigs itself is across the square, one of the older-school businesses, alongside Tiffany Cleaners and John Fish Jewelers. The latter has been in Commercial Center since 1976. I enter beneath an Olde English-lettered sign and admire the engraved money clips while unsuccessfully eavesdropping on a bulky-shouldered man and his tight-sweatered betrothed choosing rings. With brass-and-crystal chandeliers and boxy veneer cabinets, John Fish is a throwback to when Commercial Center was Vegas' swankiest shopping area.

"Back then, all the high-end clothes shoppers came here," explains proprietor Steve Fish. "There was the Jack Slote dress shop, we got a lot of business from them." Slote sold high fashion to Strip starlets and mob wives. Their menfolk hung out at the nearby Vegas Village Supermarket, where wiseguys and politicos had on-the-low meetups, while less-shady summits were held over a pastrami on rye at the Commercial Deli in the afternoons and zuppa di pesce at Piero's in the evening. "It was a great business environment, lots of variety and high-end names, 12 jewelry stores," Fish recalls. "This was the place to shop back then."

The old customers still come, he adds, "A lot of people know we're here. We're dependable, people trust us." And so do the new ones: "A lot of restaurants are here. I see big busloads of people coming to them. People know about this place." He continues, "The county, they'd like to buy it up, bulldoze it and resell it all. But that's a long-term plan." But, for now, the businesses try to keep their end up: "On the outside, the Sahara side, it looks pretty ragged, but on the inside, it's nicer." He says, "It's gotten better."

The Sahara Avenue streetscape of Commercial Center is indeed bleak, brightened only by the retro signage of John Fish and Tiffany Cleaners, along with a Korean flag-painted dumpster -- flag-adorned dumpsters and fish-painted light boxes are another association effort. The Spotlight Lounge, a gay bar housed in a quaint, peaked-roof cottage beside the surrounding low-slung, late-'60s silhouettes adds its own distinctive touch. Inside, the Spotlight is already decorated for the holidays. Snowmen sit atop the slots and a chic black-and-white Christmas tree twinkles, although there's a rec-room vibe from the windowless walls, blaring AC/DC and the beefcake pinup by the ATM wearing a Shelley Berkely campaign sticker as a pastie. A half-dozen of us sit around the bar watching World's Dumbest Celebrity Mugshots and World's Dumbest Partiers, swapping snide remarks about Tonya Harding, speculating on similarities between Dana Plato and Lindsay Lohan. The bartender sets my second greyhound down in front of me. "There ya go, Pudding Lips," he smiles. "I like you. I don't care what all these bitches say."

The 2 a.m. circus

Two friends join me for dinner at Lotus of Siam, perhaps the best-known business in Commercial Center. Since the restaurant opened eight years ago, it's been lauded as one of the best in town, declared "Best Thai in America" by Gourmet, given a 27 in Zagat. They could move to swankier digs, but the modest room still draws such a steady stream of locals and tourists that reservations are necessary. Like at the table next to us, where a server gently explains to a group of overeager conventioneers that here, spicy means spicy, so they'd "better order the three."

After dinner, we head back to the east side of Commercial Center, where most of the adult businesses are located. The "World Famous" Green Door swingers' club is painted lurid Kelly green, while the "World Famous" Fantasy blinks with colored lights. Between the two, sits the "World Famous" Uniforms, a well-lit room of Carhart, Dickies and Converse amid the decadence.

But we're not going there, either. Instead, we walk though the faux-log cabin door of the neighboring Badlands Saloon. We wedge ourselves into a space at the bar between a fortyish hetero couple with pink faces and soft black leather jackets and a slight man with a big '70s mustache. Within two minutes of "Hi, y'all," he's asking for our favorite pickup lines and gleefully demonstrating his own, including an "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!" with full, lascivious witch-drawl.

"What're you in drag?" I inquire. "Blonde, brunette or... redhead?"

"Redhead. How did you know?"

We play quarter pool while a table at the back does birthday shots, one of the "girls" flipping a wig that I'll bet she got from Serge's. Onstage, the microphone stands empty before the silver tinsel curtain, waiting for someone to lip-synch or take his pants off.

Gay-oriented businesses are a big part of Commercial Center. Candice Nichols, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, says, "This is our second little hub, where people go to congregate. There's the Fruit Loop and then Commercial Center." The center has been here seven years and, like any community activist, Nichols is glad to see people joining toward a common goal: "I think the businesses have come together in support of each other. We've gotten together on cleaning up. There's less graffiti -- we painted it out every time something went up and they got tired of doing it over and over." She has a point. Commercial Center's alleys were once used in Metro's gang tag training. Now, the white walls stay clean. "Everybody takes a little more pride in the area."

"I see the businesses thriving," she continues. "This isn't like Dillard's or the chain stores where they're shutting down or closing branches. So many different cultures and populations support the area." Commercial Center is also ideal for organizations like her own: "You're not going up some alley or down into some basement. ... It's a great location for the low-priced square footage and it's central to the city." But, Nichols adds, what makes it good for them is also what makes it good for developers. "It's obvious why the county would want us out; it's a major piece of real estate."

Major or not, much is empty -- strolling from Badlands to the Cue Club, we pass storefronts hung with "for lease" signs. A man in a backwards baseball cap paces the Sahara entrance, muttering into his cell phone. "The cab picked me up at the Bellagio ... dropped me off at someplace called the Spotlight ... I left my wallet in the car ..." His face melts from bewildered into stricken, "I don't know where ...."

We duck into El Triunfo Salvadoran Food, drawn by flashing lights and loud salsa. By the time we get halfway across the room, each of us get grabbed by some guy. I thwart my partner's forbidden dance by repeatedly twirling away like Ginger Rogers and we swerve back out onto the sidewalk into the comparative calm of the Cue Club. Las Vegas' biggest pool room draws a mix of teenagers -- it's one of the few spots for under-21s left in town -- and serious players, so serious they run a shuttle from the Strip whenever a billiards tournament is in town. Right now, men with gelled hair and baggy polo shirts or shaved heads and untucked button-downs swig domestic beer and call trick shots. Walt, the Cue Club's night manager, thinks the Center has improved, "It's gotten better over the past two years." Still, he admits, "This place is a circus from time to time. Mostly on the weekends."

Outside, all three rings are whirling. The turquoise and magenta neon sign of the Club Yu-Mang glows like Tokyo across the now-full parking lot. A pickup truck with "Jalisco" window script snags a spot, a young man gets out, putting on his cowboy hat as a guy lugging a bucket asks to wash his windows. Inside the 420 Smoke Shop and Hookah Lounge, kids in baggy pants and spiked hair clutch energy drinks and nod heads to reggae. Outside the Ballantine Club, a trio of shiny-legged ladies in hot pants work the velvet rope, bursting into a chorus of "OOOH!" as an SUV loudly rear-ends a Honda. A woman jumps out, gesturing with daggerlike metallic fingernails: "What the fuck?!"

A man emerges from the SUV, waving his hands, "Yo, don't even trip. It ain't that bad." A limo pulls up outside the Green Door, a couple steps out and walks into the building, holding hands.

Jesus, meet Abercrombie & Fitch

"I would love to see the county build a big wall around the whole thing and create a red-light district," says Michael Morse, owner of the Hawk (men's gym), the Rack (fetish and/or clubwear boutique) and the Onyx Theater (where Shakespeare alternates with standup and showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show). "They should market Vegas for what it truly is," he continues, "but I don't think they're ready for that." Commercial Center's nightlife brings trouble along with economic benefits, as evidenced by the police cars cruising the lot, occasionally stopping to check a license plate or I.D. Historically, nightclubs are not businesses that cities protect, especially not in Las Vegas. "It'll be a sad day when they tear it down," says Morse with a sigh. "We're one of the most different and diverse places in Las Vegas. It will be much more fractured and scattered and Vegas will be poorer for it."

Truly, it will be sad to see the Commercial Center go, but right now I want out. A taxi disgorges two young couples, boys smoothing their hair, girls clattering on their platforms as they head toward one of the karaoke palaces. I tumble into the back, my window a blur of pastel neon and tipsy men in Santa hats, then we're out onto Sahara and gone.

I return the next morning to retrieve my now-lonely car. The only vehicles are parked near the blue-roofed Commercial Arts Building, which houses over a half-dozen storefront churches: block-letter signs above vertical-blinded windows, from the Church of God International to the Iglecia Casa de Oracion "Vida Nueva." Most of their doors are shut, though one still leaks organ music and "Hallelujahs!" A trio of young boys loiter outside, jumping on and off the curb, pretending they're on skateboards, as a man sweeps last night's cans and wrappers.

None of this fits into the county's redevelopment plans for Commercial Center or, as they have renamed the area, SOSA (South of Sahara Avenue). Lesa Coder, director of operations for the Redevelopment Agency, says the intent of the project is to "draw more people to the area, which will increase diversity." I imagine drawing more people and I imagine churches and community centers driven out by high rents, dance clubs and gay bars driven out by disapproving community boards, kids driven off sidewalks by underpaid security guards. When asked if the county has done its part to help Commercial Center in its present incarnation, Coder says, "Historically, the county has served to facilitate improvements in the area and much work remains to be done by the agency, property owners and businesses."

So, while there doesn't seem to be much of a plan for now, the plan for the future -- according to the 152-page SOSA Design Standards and Guidelines -- is high-rises. High rises surrounded by bland, tan-and-terracotta, Gap-in-the-bottom, "Main Street" commercial buildings and pedestrian plazas. Clark County has already designated what will be "encouraged" and then "required," down to the size of the font on the street signs (6-inch Arial). Officially discouraged: tattoo parlors, adult-oriented businesses, liquor stores, hospitals and gas stations. Atop the "encouraged" list: condos. Because if there's anything Las Vegas desperately needs, it's luxury high-rise condos and shopping malls.

Of course, we all know Las Vegas really needs a mid-sized live music venue. It'd fit nicely into that big, white building with the dented marquee. We need more words and music -- put the book store by the jeweler, the record store by the smoke shop. The boys and the ladyboys have hangouts, why not the ladies -- make that yellow-and-white storefront a dyke bar. Maybe a 24-hour diner for coffee and cheeseburgers, probably over by the AA office. And why not a tattoo parlor? Maybe these kinds of businesses shouldn't be "encouraged," but shouldn't a neighborhood be what residents want and need? Or should it be what "experts" decide is most attractive, inoffensive or profitable? The tenants of Commercial Center will find out. It's just a matter of when.