🎒 School closes for a day — not enough staff

🏫 School’s (Unexpectedly) Out

The principal of Henderson’s Gibson Elementary abruptly closed the school on Tuesday — details are few, but it appears too many teachers and staff were absent. [Review-Journal]

• Context: The battles between the school district and its largest teachers union. [City Cast Las Vegas 🎧]

🚧 Downtown Highway Blues

Highway widenings, improvements, and rando construction mayhem all blur into a massive quality-of-life suck. Now, a state plan to massively rework a downtown section of U.S. 95 is drawing the anger of area residents. Among other things, the project could wipe out dozens of homes and a community center, and, some residents complain, decrease air quality. [Nevada Current]

• Context: Why the orange cones are (probably) here to stay. [City Cast Las Vegas 🎧]

😔 Oct. 1 Memorial to Move Forward

The Clark County Commission has approved the seven-stage Oct. 1 memorial design by JCJ Architecture, set for two acres of the tragic site. (Renderings and footprint at the link.) Next step: Finding a nonprofit to oversee its construction and maintenance. [KLAS]

🐕 Can We Train Dog Owners?

People taking their dogs into restaurants is only the beginning — there are plenty of owners who don’t pick up after their dogs, or let them run unleashed. Have dog owners gone too far? [City Cast Las Vegas 🎧]

🗑️ Trashed

Last week we ran a note from a reader wondering why there’s so much trash on the valley’s roadsides. Your thoughts:

Anh: “I don't think Las Vegas is any more litter-y than other cities. It's our wind picking up detritus and spreading it all over in a highly equitable distribution!!!”

Cherie: “I blame a lot of it from the trash trucks cruising the freeways with nothing covering the top.”

Julie S.: “Plus the homeless leave trash everywhere they go. It’s disgusting. They expect others to clean up after them.”

🤔 Other Stuff

📰 Our melancholy Friday segment remembering the heyday of local alt-weekly journalism prompted this response:

James P. Reza: “When I win the lottery, a legit alt-weekly will be born (again)! It will be a grand, fully funded (for a time) experiment that will either fall flat or remind people of what they are missing.”

🏈 News that the XFL’s Vegas Vipers are abandoning Cashman Field (and maybe the city) didn’t trouble this reader:

John S.: “The XFL turned out to be a mediocre product in the best of circumstances, but playing at Cashman Field turns any mediocre product into something that is barely watchable. We should tear that joint down and build a state-of-the art, soccer-only facility.”

🎬 ‘Laughing All the Way’ | Today, Thursday | 4-8 p.m.

This documentary tells the freewheeling story of the 2002 Las Vegas Comedy Festival; there will be live standup, raffles, prizes, and who knows what else. [Clark County Library (today) and West Charleston Library (Thursday); free]

😬 ‘Rejecting Political Malice’ | Friday | 3-5 p.m.

Abigail Aguilar of UNLV’s philosophy department discusses the current forms political malice takes, with the aim of dispeling it to facilitate free speech. [UNLV’s Frank and Estella Beam Hall; free]

🖼️ Opening reception for ‘Hija/e/o/x(s) de Su—’ | Friday | 6-9 p.m.

This exhibit features multimedia artworks that bring together the Latinx communities of Las Vegas and Reno. [Nuwu Art Gallery + Community Center, Huntridge Park; free]

Have Dog Owners Gone Too Far?

You may recall the passionate response last month to this newsletter’s question of whether dogs belong in restaurants. Now that debate has broadened into a podcast episode about dog owners: the ones who don’t pick up after their dogs; the ones who let their pets roam off-leash; and, yes, the ones who insist on taking them into eateries. The staff’s passionate dog owners — lead producer Sonja Cho Swanson, host Dayvid Figler, and former host Vogue Robinson — discuss.