VegasBeat — Timothy McDarrah: Ushering in Beat generation

Friday, Sept. 6, 2002 | 5:47 a.m.

We've got the Beat

Today the Las Vegas Sun debuts VegasBeat, a new gossip column by Timothy McDarrah.

VegasBeat appears on the Accent page each Sunday and on the back of the Metro section in place of FlipSide on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

McDarrah is an award-winning reporter and writer from New York City who brings nearly 20 years of experience to one of the nation's most exciting cities.

In VegasBeat, McDarrah will report and comment on activity on and off the Strip. Wherever personalities are making news -- from Henderson to Harrah's, Summerlin to Stardust, Boulder City to Bellagio -- everywhere and anywhere in the Las Vegas Valley, McDarrah and VegasBeat will be there.

Starting today and continuing on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, feel the VegasBeat -- only in the Sun.

There are only a handful of cities in this country where a column like this can thrive.

Aside from Las Vegas, there's Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., perhaps Chicago and certainly New York. I've worked in two of them -- at the Daily News in Los Angeles, and for many years at the New York Post's Page Six gossip column -- and have spent significant time in the others.

There have also been short stays in Minnesota (Jesse Ventura, Prince and bad weather -- too cold) and South Florida (Rosie O'Donnell, Lenny Kravitz and bad weather -- too humid).

But I have been itching for Las Vegas. Ever since I first rode through town with my family on a cross-country trip when I was 10, I have been enchanted with everything Las Vegas. I have since returned numerous times for various prizefights, vacations and implodings.

Sure, there are celebrities. There are also those who aspire to be celebrities and those who pay good money to be near them, eat in the same restaurants and wear the same clothes. Every town I've been in has 'em. Vegas is now so celebrity-heavy that the National Enquirer just opened a local bureau. (Actually, I am not sure if that is a good or a bad thing.)

But this town offers so much more. Of course, there's gambling -- the city's original raison d'etre. There's also explosive growth, with Henderson having replaced Reno as the state's second-largest city. All that development, building and zoning is guaranteed to generate a lot of good copy. (Think "Chinatown" and the grab for water by Los Angeles.)

I certainly covered some colorful mayors in New York, including Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani. But neither of them was honored with their own bobblehead doll like Oscar Goodman.

Harry Reid is poised to become the next majority leader of the U. S. Senate. Not Ted Kennedy, not Hillary Rodham Clinton. And I smile when I think that Reid's Republican colleague from Nevada is a veterinarian. No disrespect at all toward John Ensign; it's just that the potential for humor regarding an animal doctor in Congress is tremendous.

The reputed Sin City offers an exploding arts and cultural scene and a potentially exploding nuclear waste dump. Simply, this town offers everything an inquiring mind like mine could possibly want -- and more.

Me? I grew up under the desks at the Village Voice in New York City. My father, photographer Fred W. McDarrah, was its first picture editor. Six decades later he's still there. My mother, Gloria Schoffel McDarrah, wrote poetry with Jack Kerouac. She also collaborated with my dad on several books, including "Glory Days in Greenwich Village," a Beat Generation memoir.

As a kid, I was lucky enough to go to work with my parents at assignments ranging from Woodstock to national political conventions to anti-war marches to women's liberation rallies to afternoons at Andy Warhol's Factory. What a way to make a living. I never even considered doing anything else.

My parents taught me to think independently and to be fair, but always to question authority. And then to question it again. I hope I eventually do as good a job with my son Theodore, age 7, as my parents did with my brother and me.

I've become a little more conservative since I was a kid, but not much.

I started an alternative newspaper of my own in high school and an arts magazine in college. After graduating from Columbia Journalism School, I ended up as New York City's youngest accredited daily newspaper reporter, becoming friendly with the tabloid characters I covered, from the Rev. Al Sharpton to Donald Trump.

I also wrote about AIDS, crack, the Mets, and spent some quality time in Harlem and Brooklyn homeless shelters for a series of first-person stories.

It has been a wonderful ride -- and the best part is just beginning.

While it may be my name atop this space, if VegasBeat is going to succeed, it is going to be a truly collaborative effort. I encourage you to contact me whenever the mood strikes, for whatever reason. My e-mail and direct phone number will always run at the end of this column.

VegasBeat will appear in this space each Sunday, and on the back of the Metro section in place of FlipSide on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

I am a reporter before all else. Everything you read here will be sourced, and people mentioned by name will be called for comments.

My philosophy is that gossip does not have to mean-spirited. The aim here is to let the information speak for itself.

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