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Please shop at Jay’s Market at 190 East Flamingo Road at the Koval Lane intersection east of the Strip.
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The Strip was serene at 7:15 AM on the final Saturday morning in July and surprisingly cool. I bicycled down to the Strip from my Red Rock Canyon area home for a 53-mile two-wheeled circuit that would feature stops at Las Vegas’ Holy Trinity of sports palaces — Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium (2020), A’s stadium (scheduled 2028 opening) and Golden Knights’ T-Mobile Arena (2016).
These palatial sports playgrounds drove Las Vegas to becoming a sports mecca, along with its sports-friendly elected county officials who have prioritized sports growth over local amenities/services and a sports-spending public tourism agency called the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (LVCVA).
I left my home shortly after 6AM because traffic is light and I don’t have to battle car drivers who control roads that are not very hospitable to people on bicycles. About an hour into the bike ride at Mile 16, I stopped at Allegiant Stadium, which is managed by the Raiders. Under this arrangement, Raiders owner Mark Davis can generate hundreds of millions of dollars from non-Raiders events throughout the year.
Allegiant Stadium:
I crossed Las Vegas Boulevard and reached Reno Avenue, a side street off the Strip where a Las Vegas Paving vehicle entered the A’s stadium site. A’s owner John Fisher is hunting for stadium/team investors, but has said his family stands committed to paying for the $1.75 billion domed 33,000-capacity ballpark minus the $380 million in public assistance.
Here’s the A’s stadium construction site:
About a mile away is T-Mobile Arena on the west side of the Strip. It’s about a 20-minute walk from the A’s stadium, about a mile away.
The Strip is quiet and bicycling this thoroughfare at 7:15AM is hardly a hassle.
Here’s T-Mobile Arena:
I am heading north on the Strip, past the Bellagio on the way to the Flamingo Road intersection:
While bicycling down the Strip, passing Casino Royale, Palazzo, Wynn, Resorts World and Fontainebleau, I am still plessantly amazed at the wonderful weather. If I had to guess, it was about 85 degrees with a nice breeze out of the south.
I crossed over from Clark County to the city of Las Vegas at the Strat, pedaled into the Arts District and turned left on Bonneville/Alta for the ascending bike ride to Summerlin and eventually Red Rock Canyon.
Biking west on Alta means ascending both elevation and economic classes, moving literally upward from downtown Las Vegas through economic layers until you reach Summerlin, where the roads are wider and engineered in a more friendly manner for bicyclists.
I biked over to Charleston Blvd/State Route 159 for the bike ride through Red Rock Canyon, where a consortium of government agencies finally launched a bike trail construction project from Summerlin to the Red Rock National Conservation Area and the Red Rock Scenic Drive entrance.
The groundbreaking for the Red Rock Legacy Trail was July 1 thanks to the support of Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones, Congresswoman Susie Lee, the Bureau of Land Management, the Nevada Department of Transportation and the federal agency that funds paved trails through federal lands.
This bike ride reveals Las Vegas at its essence — the Strip and a downtown trying to come of age; the layers of economic strata from downtown to the ‘burbs, and a stunningly beautiful Red Rock Canyon area that is remarkably so close to residential neighborhoods.
It also pulls back the curtain on public policy priorities — the focus on the Strip and palatial sports venues and the piece-meal style road construction you see for bicyclists.
The federal Bureau of Land Management, which manages the Red Rock Conservation Area, never did fix a water fountain at the Red Rock visitors center. So a tip of the bike helmet to the non-profit Friends of Red Rock organization that fixed this water machine.
But then when I stopped to refill my water bottles, I was saddened to see the water station was not working.
It was hardly a blemish on a spectacular bicycle ride, which gave me strong tastes of metro Las Vegas.
How can not smile when you see this type of scenery:
By 10:20 AM, I was back at the ranch. It was an inspiring 53 miles of pedaling.
PSA
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Buy Alan Snel’s Bicycle Man book by emailing him.