Results tagged “vegas”

Over this weekend, Blue Frog celebrated its grand opening in Macau's Venetian in a glitzy event that featured performances by Shaolin monks, Australian DJ Alex Taylor and Shanghai's very own Sugar Mama and the Cotton Club Band. Apparently, quite a number of people flew over from Shanghai for the event (too bad for us, we were never invited). In this video, Blue Frog looks a lot more like a club than anything else, and certainly...

Our Shanghai champions that went to the finals of the Cocktail World Cup held in Queenstown, New Zealand, have come back and done us proud! Unshaken by an itinerary that included some really extreme cocktail shaking via bungy-jumping, on top of a mountain and on a jet boat, Cross from Vault and Alex from Volar (together with Johnsen from Aria in Beijing) emerged fourth after Teams Vegas, New Zealand and England. Okay, so they weren't tops but it appears they did manage to wow some of the biggest mixologists around like New York cocktail king Dale DeGroff.

He's performed shows around the world from London to Los Angeles, from Vegas to Berlin and from Zurich to Tokyo. Earlier this year, world-class magician Marco Tempest, the Virtual Magician, was hired by Daihatsu for Auto Shanghai, apparently the world's second largest car fair. Watch him in this newly released video as he goes around Shanghai, rehearses for the big show and impresses the girls backstage. Pretty interesting stuff. At least we now know one car company is not just counting on the tall svelte models dressed in metallic mini-skirts to pull in the crowds.

The emergence of China as a commercial superpower is, by some way, the most important economic phenomenon of our time. In the last few years, analysts of the global economy have had to rewrite their computer models and recalibrate their slide rules to cope with the People's Republic.

Shanghaiist really needed a break and what better place to take that break than... the Venetian? I know what you're thinking: biggest casino in the world + gambling Chinese tourists = a big fat headache. Well, it wasn't that bad, really. The Venetian was fully booked over the weekend so we could only get one night at the Vegas transplant... which was quite enough for us. The casino is an exact replica of its Vegas hotel, except about ten times bigger, and just as gawdy and tacky... which makes it perfect for the throngs of Chinese crossing the border each day. The casino (which looked to be the size of several football fields) was completely packed both Friday and Saturday, and reached a fever pitch around midnight both nights. The big game in Macau is Baccarat, which is a glorified version of high/low, and a electronic version of Roulette called SicBo that is played with dice. The second level was the shopping plaza, complete with false "Venetian style" storefronts, canals and singing gondola drivers (see picture). Shanghaiist doesn't gamble (except for hold 'em poker, which isn't offered in any casino in Macau!), but was content just watching other people throw their hard earned money away.

The $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort Hotel is finally open for business on Macau's Cotai, and can you believe our local Blue Frog is somewhere in that building? Las Vegas Sands claims the 10.5 million square foot Venetian — twice the size of the Las Vegas original — is the largest building in Asia. Sands' next casino in Asia -- which at US$3.6 billion will be one of the costliest casino-resorts ever -- will open up in Singapore. But reports have come in that the development cost will swell by up to US$1.44 billion due to an Indonesian sand ban. Fuelled by strong growth in gaming revenues, the Macau economy has ballooned 28.9% in the first half of the year.

We just got word that Blue Frog will be opening a restaurant at the Venetian Macao-Resort-Hotel on August 28th. From their press release:

Chinese cash helps former Portuguese colony overtake US city's gaming revenues.

Even as 85-year-old Macau gambling mogul Stanley Ho is in hospital undergoing treatment for constipation and an injured rectum, the word is out that Macau has overtaken Las Vegas as the world's biggest casino draw. Macau's 22 casinos raked in over US$7 billion last year while Las Vegas' 40 casinos lagged behind at US$6.6 billion.

Are you in the Chinese stock market? We're guessing the answer is no for most of you — by law, only Chinese nationals are allowed to purchase A Shares traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges. Well, sucks to be you (and us). We're missing out on a get-rich-quick opportunity of a lifetime, as millions of Chinese are swept up in stock trading mania. The International Herald Tribune reports:

While the rest of the world is wondering how George W. Bush will further fuck up Iraq and where Becks and Posh are going to settle in L.A., we came across a report about a concert event in Las Vegas:

As most American Football fans know, and ESPECIALLY University of Michigan fans (GO BLUE!) there's a huge game this weekend when #1 ranked Ohio State takes on #2 Michigan in Columbus. Back in Americaland, they're calling it the came of the decade. It's. Gonna. Be. AWESOME.

It may be the pariah for self-respecting filmmakers (and film buffs) everywhere, but if it’s true that there’s no business like show business, then, the Oscars are anything but irrelevant. Case in point: The recent announcement that China will have not one, but two of its own submitted for consideration in the crapshoot otherwise known as the Best Foreign Film category. Of course, it never hurts when you’re able to find a loophole in the system. For all intents and purposes, the would-be blockbuster The Banquet should be represented by the mainland -- it features one of China’s most beloved (and commercially successful) auteurs in Feng Xiaogang, while starring Chinese megastars Zhang Ziyi and Zhou Xun. So how come it ended up as Hong Kong’s submission? Well, the catch is that The Banquet is a Hong Kong-China co-production, which means those of you who were pulling hard for Johnnie To backed the wrong horse.

The two photos above are from Shanghai. The second, we think, is Shanghai Railway Station. Barbieri's work comes to our city as part of the Shanghai Biennale and the Year of Italy in China. More Biennale events are listed here.

Phillyist keeps it fresh by getting a new motto, learning to prioritize, and taking in an experimental indie rock show.

Could big-time boxing be headed to China? If Hasim Rahman defeats your-favorite-and-ours Oleg Maskaev August 12 in Las Vegas, maybe. (Although we admit it's hard to call any heavyweight bout from the past 15 years or so "big time.") ESPN.com's Dan Raphael writes:

This unhealthy obsession with movies is going to stop soon ... but first, we just have to tell you what we just heard.

Photo by CaptainVideo taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos page, use Flickr and tag your photos "shanghaiist". Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site.

Remember back in late 2004 when plans for a Playboy "lifestyle club" in Shanghai were announced and then halted over the span of a couple days? Well, a look at the minutes from a recent Playboy conference call with investors shows there is still hope for the Bunnies to hop over the Huangpu:

More people should have listened to analyst Kelvin Tan of Las Vegas Sands, the Nevada-based hotel, gaming and retail corporation. When reports began appearing on various horse-racing websites at the end of October stating that Beijing Jockey Club had been awarded an unprecedented 12-month gambling license, Mr Tan swam against the tide, maintaining that the Chinese government would continue to restrict betting to table games in border casinos. Had his bearish stance been adopted earlier by the main drivers behind the Beijing Jockey Club’s ambitious breeding, training and racing programme -- namely Hong Kong businessman Yun Pung Cheng and his racing director Kevin Connolly -- things might not have taken as dramatic a turn as they did in the last month, when more than 600 thoroughbreds were given lethal injections as fortunes at the club waned. In a country where considerably less humane slaughter methods are widely employed, the mass-euthanasia has been described by the chief executive of the International League for the Protection of Horses as “a tragedy, but not one as bad as neglect, starvation or being sold to work in front of a cart for the rest of your days”. Nonetheless, with the 2008 Olympics looming, it is a major PR blow for animal-unfriendly China, which is having to stage its Olympic equestrian events in Hong Kong as a result of being unable to provide adequate quarantine provision. Not to mention a huge blow for the 600 horses who met their maker.

• It's "rat breeding season" in Shanghai and the city is running a "rat sweep" campaign through November 11. "Businesses and residents will be able to get information about rats, how to control, catch and kill them, from their local health campaign office." Lovely.
• The first Miss Hooters China was crowned recently -- and there are three of them. "I can meet new friends, broaden my mind and have fun," said Zhou Shouya, one of the winners who has a chance to join the 10th annual Hooters International Swimsuit Pageant in Las Vegas next year. "Hooters makes me happy. I can't change the weather but I can change my mood."
• A man in Baoshan District agreed to buy an apartment there, but now he wants out of the contract. Why? The previous owner murdered his lover and dismembered her body there. For some reason, the real estate agent neglected to mention this.

It was just over a year ago that Shanghaiist was with a company -- whose CEO is rumored to have been beaten-up by thugs at least once and possibly arrested for fraud by Chinese police -- that was commissioned to write up a business plan for a Chinese developer based in People's Square, looking to add a little amusement park gaudiness to the Square's collection of museums. The developer had been making frequent trips between London and Shanghai, working hard at luring the Tussauds Group into China. But Shanghaiist never heard anything more about a wax museum for the city and assumed Shanghai was safe. Until now:

The Crystal Method at Miami's 2005 Winter Conference music festival