Tuesday, May 21, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
A good man and a great garden notwithstanding, there's probably nothing Lenadams Dorris likes more than a challenging give-and-take. But there's nothing that yanks the hair on his chinny-chin-chin quite like someone trashing his beloved Las Vegas.
If you really want to get his goatee, do as disgruntled resident "Brian" did recently at Enigma, the Fourth Street cafe and art gallery of which Dorris, arts facilitator and foliage fanatic, is now part owner.
Facing each other across a round patio table, verbal guns drawn, former dealer Brian and gentle intellectual Dorris engaged in point-counterpoint on the good, the bad and the ugly of Las Vegas like a couple of cultural cowboys.
Result: Brian drew blood when he raged that Vegas is nothing but a mean, opportunistic place that preys on losers. But Dorris had home-field advantage.
"I am not saying this isn't a hell hole of the highest degree built on this Earth. It is," says Dorris, echoing his opponent's basic tenet during the showdown. "But it's something else, too."
And that's the something the 6-foot-7, 360-pound "progeny of a Dutch jew and a Basque cowboy, raised ... by a vigorous Romanian woman and a tiny Irishman with the help of a passel of magical Filipino uncles," embraces, nurtures and waters.
"Everything has its flip side," says Dorris, a picture of bliss as he sips and smokes under a mist-shooting canopy on the Enigma patio, digesting a tuna-and-veggie pocket straight from the Enigma kitchen.
Part of the flip side is this testimonial to coffee, culture and conversation on the new downtown corridor, a place the erstwhile nursery employee bought into without "conventional financing" or the influence of "Italian friends."
"I have a little bit of money and a good reputation," he says. "It's amazing what you can do with a good reputation, and I feel the pressure to keep it good."
Dorris entered the picture to prevent Enigma's demise, and to cash in on a hunch.
"Fourth Street's about to happen," he says, "and a lot of people just can't see it."
It's obvious to Dorris. With the opening of the Fremont Street Experience to the north of Enigma, Stratosphere to the south and Fourth Street now serving as a connector between the two, Dorris believes the immediate area is primed to blossom and become the city's arts and cultural center.
He has dubbed it the Gateway District for two reasons: It is the gateway to downtown and the Gateway Motel, a shanty on the corner of Charleston and Las Vegas Boulevard.
The vicinity already is sprinkled with artsy-type businesses, including the Contemporary Arts Collective, in which Dorris has an office, of which Dorris is a board member, and he knows of three other galleries that are scheduled to open in the next six months.
"Our biggest barrier to having a cultural scene was, there was no place for it," he says. "It was scattered, and no business could benefit from the other. You go to other cities that have arts districts and they're centered in a physical location. We've never had a physical location, and the city built it for us (the downtown entrance corridor on Fourth Street) at a cost of $20 million. Now it's up to us to make it happen."
Dorris did his part by quitting his nursery marketing job and concentrating on Enigma, which his partner, Julie Brewer, opened three years ago.
"I left Star Nursery in February after six years because I felt this need to build an environment where arts and communication could happen," he says. "My favorite thing to do in the world is be an enabler for arts and communication."
Others so predisposed had better act now.
"People like me can get in on Fourth Street," he says. "A year from now it'll be the realm of industry. When it finally kicks in, it's going to be impossible for little guys to buy land."
Dorris never seems more alive than when he's discussing the prospect of a central arts district and Enigma's place in it. The cafe has always attracted a dedicated, albeit select, cadre of people to its various poetry readings, acoustic musical events and gallery shows, and that won't change.
But Dorris wants to expand the client base, and he's applying for a limited liquor license (beer and wine) to make Enigma an attractive after-work venue for downtown workers.
The complex also is undergoing a face-lift. New coats of paint have been applied, flowers planted, the courtyard deck repaved, the gazebo rebuilt and walls knocked down in the building fronting Fourth Street to accommodate a private meeting room for clients, a library and retail space.
To Dorris, it's the structures and the environment that distinguish Enigma from other cafes.
"We've got this beautiful, self-contained world," he says, "and the kind of charm from the old buildings that you can't possibly build."
The three buildings that comprise Enigma are converted houses and were moved to the site years ago. The main house, as Dorris refers to the Fourth Street building, is in fact three houses.
"You can see the three roof lines joined together," he says of the house, which dates to 1927. "Apparently, it was a school for handicapped children in its history, and a vintage clothing store."
The cafe building, which dates to 1917 and was moved to the site in 1930, once housed Hoover Dam workers. The gallery is of unknown vintage but appears to be of the same era. It was once a garage.
They stand in back, separated from the main house by a large courtyard with plastic tables and chairs. Sure, other cafes have outdoor tables and chairs, Dorris says, but with what? A view of the street. Enigma's is a garden setting, and hidden speakers bathe the courtyard in '50s West Coast jazz.
"What more could a guy ask for?" he says. "To be surrounded by flowers and music, fine food, excellent drink and the most interesting people to talk to. I just can't imagine a better job."
Plant guy
Dorris himself may be the most interesting; certainly he's one of the most informed and loquacious, and perhaps the most open. "I'm probably the only 6-foot-7 Basque Jewish faggot in the world." He also is something of a local celebrity -- that is, as much of a celebrity as someone who talks plants on TV and radio can be.
Dorris is the host of "Desert Bloom," a two-minute public-service program that runs twice each weekday (8:59 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.) on KNPR 89.5-FM. He also has a spot on KVBC Channel 3 newscasts (4 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. Saturday-Sunday), and he hosts a biweekly segment on KLVX Channel 10's "Outdoor Nevada" (7:30 p.m. Tuesday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday).
The TV spots are sufficiently different to enable Dorris to adopt a contrasting tone. On Channel 3 he's the "Garden Guy," the green-thumb guru passing on helpful hints and tips. On Channel 10 he's the environmentalist, tackling issues and assuming a serious posture. On KNPR he's both alternately.
"I'll have a week of serious information, then I'll have a week where I talk about flowers, then I'll have a week of attacking scum-sucking developers, then a week where I'll talk about your lawn," he says. "Water politics and urban planning issues, those are the ones that always get me in trouble."
Dorris is perhaps best known to the general public in this capacity, but he came to prominence locally as a cultural maverick. His foray into the cafe culture with Enigma is simply his latest; the Newsroom, a cafe and newsstand he opened downtown in 1986, was his first.
Dorris had just returned to Las Vegas after eight years of city hopping -- much of that time as a member of a religious cult he "ran away" to join when he was 17 -- and found there was nothing here for him.
"That's why I started the Newsroom. I wanted it and I knew other people wanted it, and I wanted to find them. I wanted playmates, so I opened a professional living room."
That's where Ginger Bruner, Dorris' producer at KNPR, first noticed him.
"I didn't really know him, I knew him as that big guy who ran the place," she says. "I got to know him when he moved the Newsroom across from UNLV (a year later). For their grand opening there was a huge New Year's Eve party, and a bunch of us from KNPR were co-sponsoring the party. I was in on the planning, and that's how I got to know Len. We've been great pals ever since."
What Dorris has done, Bruner says, is give people in the arts community "a place to do their thing, a place to hang out and, frankly, a place where they can be comfortable. They can be an artist and a musician and meet cool people and have interesting discourse."
Dorris' involvement with Enigma, which suffered financially during the Fourth Street reconstruction, is typical.
"The Enigma was kind of on the ropes there," Bruner says, "and he was thinking of opening a club. The Enigma thing blew right up at him and he went, 'Wow, gosh, this can't go away, I must get involved.' He sees things that he thinks are good and sort of leaps in with both feet."
All by himself
But it is times such as these, during the rebuilding of a dream, that Dorris wishes he had someone to share the daily joys and frustrations with.
"I have a great business partner, but this seems like couple's work. It feels unnatural to do it alone."
He's been unattached since his lover, Stephen Anderson, died of AIDS in 1990. It was Stephen's illness combined with financial reasons that caused him to close the Newsroom after two years.
"Even though I've come to terms with the fact that I'll spend the rest of my life alone, I'd like to prove (myself) wrong. I scare 'em off," he says of potential partners. "I guess I'm not what a fag is supposed to be."
But Dorris understands their reticence.
"I'm well-known on TV and radio," he says. "Anyone with me gets thrown into the spotlight real fast."
'Show city for the world'
Las Vegas is in the spotlight itself, Dorris says during his shootout with Brian.
"It's what the world wants to be. We have taken our place on the world stage now. This is now a show city for the world, whether we like it or not. What's happening here on a physical and spiritual level is unlike anything that's happened on the planet. Eventually all that is good will make its way here. (Las Vegas) is so pragmatic. Things only happen when it's feasible."
Cafes, for instance.
"When it was right for the coffee culture, bam! It happened. Las Vegas is now as coffee-fied as any city in the world. It's bizarre how things go here."
The landscape, for example.
"I've never seen a place where the life cycles of buildings are talked about in one, two or three decades," Dorris says. "The physical and spatial face of the city changes at an extraordinary rate. I can go back to LA after 12 years and I can still find my way. The space is still intact. Here, things keep popping up. It's like, 'Oh, look at that one, I've never seen that one before.'"
Brian remained unconvinced.
Las Vegas gives people a license to hang themselves, he says. Las Vegas is full of cynical, unhappy people. Las Vegas is big, mean and ugly.
"I've seen a lot of ugliness."
"Well, if you don't like it," says Dorris, responding with atypical ferocity, "get the (expletive) out. There are three things you can do: Let it consume you, get the (expletive) out or you can do something about it."
Which is what Dorris has chosen.
"In the face of all these lights and casinos, the people here need the organic and the spiritual to balance out all this," he says. "It's what we're trying to do. It's what we are doing here. I feel like I'm married to this town and my whole job has to be bringing out what's right about it."
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