Stardust Dies, and Rio Turns Purple

Some Las Vegas news. The Stardust Hotel, one of the older and run down properties at the north end of the strip is closed:

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- The Stardust, the neon-wrapped casino with a mobbed-up past whose 1,065 rooms once set the standard for size on the Las Vegas Strip, witnessed its last roll of the dice Wednesday.

Wistful longtime employees and loyal gamblers gathered for a last farewell to the iconic 48-year-old institution, which is to be razed early next year to make way for Boyd Gaming Corp.'s planned $4 billion Echelon Place resort.

The Stardust opened July 2, 1958, as the world's largest hotel and catered to middle America with $6-a-night rooms and low-minimum stakes gambling.

But as bigger, classier casinos sprung up around it in the late 1980s and '90s and patrons began shelling out more for rooms, food and drinks, its luster began to fade...

The new resort, Echelon Place, is expected to open in mid-2010 with more than 5,000 hotel rooms, two theaters, a shopping mall and more than 1 million square feet of meeting space.

Can the Sahara be far behind? Neither one is particularly impressive, especially when surrounded by the new megaresorts.

Over at the Rio, a property off the Strip and home to the big Mardi Gras Show in the Sky several times a day, has got a new weekend act in it's club:

Prince fans, fire up that Little Red Corvette and head for Las Vegas: the purple one will be performing there every weekend starting Nov. 10.

The diminutive rocker will play Friday- and Saturday-night shows at a nightclub inside the Rio hotel, spokeswoman Alissa Kelly said Wednesday.

Tickets for the 21-and-over shows cost $125 and will be available beginning Nov. 2.
Prince will also host Wednesday-night concerts at the club by other artists.

The Grammy winner, who once changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, will perform at the club indefinitely, Kelly said.

I'll be in town the weekend after he opens, but I think I'll save my money.