Review of On the Boulevard

Title:

On the Boulevard-The Best of John L. Smith

Author:

John L. Smith

Publisher:

Huntington Press

Date:

1999

ISBN:

0-929712-69-2

Pages:

315

Price:

$12.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

June 17, 2003

John L. Smith is a Las Vegas institution. He is an award winning columnist writing for the city's preeminent-eminent newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Born and raised in the city he covers, Smith has seen his home town go through amazing changes as Las Vegas has become the nation's latest boomtown. On the Boulevard is a collection of many of Smith's best columns published in the Review-Journal during the 1990s.

Smith divides his columns into six categories reflecting some of the more important topics that are on the mind of Las Vegas residents: Everyday People, Boomtown Blues, Beefs with Bureaucrats, Sporting Life, Crime and Punishment, and You Are My Sunshine. These concerns are the same concerns that people in every city have, but Las Vegas is an unusual place. Often these stories have angles that are quite different than what residents of other cities might expect.

Perhaps another surprising aspect to these stories is that Smith's columns very rarely have anything to do with Las Vegas' biggest industry. Furthermore, for those columns in which casinos or gambling do get a mention, it's never the primary topic of the article. I have to expect that this is intentional, as casino gambling is definitely the proverbial elephant in the tent in Las Vegas. Consequently, it's quite clear that Smith intends to write about those people, places, and occasions that aren't as thoroughly covered as some of the more well-known aspects of the city.

Consequently, the book is mostly a collection of brief portraits of the lesser known sides of Las Vegas. We hear about retired B-list movie actors, about the musicians who aren't headlining the major showrooms, the political tribulations of the local fire department, and local property owners' disputes with their government. While each of these stories may not be front-page material even in a smaller town, when added together it forms a pretty clear picture of the true nature of Las Vegas. We sense the conflict in this tempest of hyperactive growth that treats its own past as a waste product of perpetual progress.

These sorts of "special interest vignettes" have their own format and flow, and reading hundreds of these back-to-back can become tedious at times. Smith, however, does a good job at mixing up his material so that the book doesn't become any more repetitious than is inevitable. Overall, he paints a pretty clear and interesting picture of Las Vegas, and it's a side that the folks who live in Las Vegas rarely get to see. Moreover, for someone who is grinding out three columns a week, he usually avoids the more formulaic constructions that one might expect.

There's not much specifically of interest to gamblers in this book, but it is well written, and I expect there's a significant audience who will enjoy it's content. Aside from those who enjoy the newspaper portrait column as an art form unto itself, or those who will read anything with even the most remote connection to the city of Las Vegas, I expect that On the Boulevard would be of special interest to the incessant stream of new residents that flow in to "The Meadows" on a daily basis. Especially for these people Smith captures a sense of recent history and continuity for a town that that seems to have little use for either. Smith is a pretty good columnist, and his collection of stories makes for a pretty good book.

Capsule:

On the Boulevard is an interesting "greatest hits" collection from award winning newspaper columnist John L. Smith. While it has little to do with gambling per se, it does provide a mosaic of the city of Las Vegas during the 1990s that the reader is unlikely to find elsewhere. If this sounds interesting, then the reader would be well advised to check out this collection.