First Friday

Did some work at home this afternoon with my usual PokerStars razz $2-4 going on in the background. Had an unusually good day at it: uptick $160 in about two hours of giving it part-time attention.

My visiting friend had read good things in the Fodor guide about a Mexican restaurant called Dona Maria Tamales. This is on Las Vegas Boulevard just north of Charleston, so not far from where I live and also close to where we were heading after dinner. It was truly excellent food--easily the best Mexican I've had since living here. My friend, who is much fussier and more educated about fine dining than I am, agreed that it was superlative. My only concern was that the restrooms were pretty nasty, and you know the old saying--if they don't bother to keep the restrooms clean, when they know you'll see them, you can bet that the kitchen is filthy, because they know you won't be seeing that. Ewww.

Then we headed off to "First Friday," a monthly sort of open house of all of the downtown artsy-fartsy shops and galleries. It's a pretty nice thing to take out-of-town visitors to, because it's unlike anything else they'll ever do in Vegas, and not at all the sort of thing anybody expects this city to offer.

Below is a tiny sampling of the arts, crafts, ware, antiques, clothes, etc., that are for sale at the permanent galleries and the various temporary ones that get set up in a closed-off few blocks of Casino Center street--plus a few other sights of the evening, bands, break dancers, girls in their underwear and body paint, that sort of thing.

One of my favorite contemporary artists (and this allows me to slip in minimal poker content!) is Matt Rinard, and some of his stuff was on display at a high-end printing shop. You can see his main web site here and some from his poker-themed series here.

I had my good camera along, so there are much larger versions of these photos available for the mere effort of a click on them. Enjoy.