Bets off on Vegas’ literacy

Wednesday, July 30, 2003 | 11:33 a.m.

For one glittering moment, Sin City was among the most literate in the nation.

A report released this month by the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater ranked the city 13th out of 64 nationwide among "America's Most Literate Cities."

That tied Las Vegas, the home of strip clubs and Caesars Palace, with Boston, the home of ivy-covered colleges and the study of "Julius Caesar."

When he heard about the rankings, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, English Department Chairman John Irsfeld said the news of the ranking was "a suspiciously happy discovery ... like one of those things they send to old ladies telling them they've won $10 million."

How right he was.

The celebration lasted only as long as a bikini top at the Library strip club. The study has a major flaw -- it's based on 1990 Census population numbers.

UWW chancellor and study author Jack Miller was not available this morning, but his secretary forwarded a statement on the issue, saying that the old data were used "because there were certain subgroup numbers that could not be retrieved from the 2000 Census."

Irsfeld noted that "the population increase we've experienced since then (1990) would negate the whole thing." Las Vegas has grown from the 258,925 used in the study to 478,434 in 2000.

The study looked at educational levels, bookstores per capita, libraries per capita, newspaper circulation per capita and magazines published.

Perhaps fortunately for the city's rise to intellectual heights, the category of bookstores per capita included adult and gambling bookstores. Las Vegas ranked eighth in the nation in bookstores per capita, with about 100 retail stores, Miller said.

About one in five of those bookstores are in the business of selling adult or gambling titles -- prompting Dave Hickey, nationally renowned art critic and a University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor, to remark, "we all have our specialty."

Of course, said Irsfeld, the adult bookstores "don't have much reading material."

Calls to the five stores listed in the Yellow Pages under "Books-Adult" that have the word "book" in their names could neither confirm nor deny this. Those who answered the phone did not want their names to appear in print.

The city's ranking surprised, amused and delighted local citizens informed of the news, giving many a chance to talk about the town they live in as a parent would describe a child who's been sent to the principal's office one too many times but then wins an essay contest.

Before the flaw was discovered, Daniel L. Walters, director of the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, said that the study "might prompt us to look at ourselves differently."

"It says something most people in our community would be surprised about -- and in a way that's too bad," he said.

Libraries in Las Vegas also helped the city gain its fleeting moment in the literary sun.

Miller rated the local libraries second in the nation, with a high number of branches per capita, titles in circulation and total titles.

Many of the same factors cited by the study, as well as a push to obtain 20,000 new titles in Spanish and popular videos and DVDs, led Library Journal magazine to name the district its 2003 library of the year, Walters said.

Jose Luevanos, at the Clark County Library on Flamingo Road Tuesday afternoon, said he reads books on Biblical history at the library in both English and Spanish.

Tony Nicoletti goes to that branch to consult books on "personal legal matters" and computer and car repairs. On Tuesday he had "Haynes Repair Manual" open to chapter 6, "Emisssions control system."

Nicoletti said the city's ranking surprised him -- "especially when so many teenagers are not finishing high school," he said.

Las Vegas ranked 44th in education, 15th in newspaper circulation -- using the circulation of its main dailies and the population of Las Vegas, not the surrounding municipalities -- and 32nd in magazines.

Other cities were also caught off guard by the results, Miller said. New York ranked 47th, prompting the study's author to write: "There are some interesting results when looking at the cities that are often considered more stereotypically literate."

Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam wrote a column bemoaning the fact about where his city, the "Athens of America," ranked. "It gets worse. Much worse," he said, noting Las Vegas ranked higher than Boston in booksellers per capita.

The entertainment capital's newfound prominence as an intellectual bastion -- even if based on data shakier than a bump and grind -- prompted some of its best minds to invent theories to explain the phenomenon.

"Hell, even if Las Vegas was 26th, that would be pretty amazing," Hickey said.

Then the Texan went on to extoll the intellectual virtues of those who practice the city's most famous pastime.

"Texas hold 'em is like quantum physics ... (and) gambling is an abstract art," he said. This from the man who is the only Las Vegas resident to have won the MacArthur Foundation Award. At $500,000 with no strings attached, the award is known as the "genius grant."

"Gambling requires some ability to deal with statistics, and gamblers tend to be smart -- though they don't tend to be wise," Hickey said.

At the Dead Poet Bookstore, on West Sahara Avenue and Valley View Boulevard, Tuesday afternoon, Linda Piediscalzi, one of the store's owners, was selling a biography of Bob Hope to a young man and lowering the price of a Gregory Peck biography for a "sweet little old lady" with more interest in reading than spare change.

Piediscalzi, who worked 20 years on the Strip before opening her bookstore a decade ago, said she thought the study's results were "wonderful."

"I get upset when tourists come in here and say, 'Oh look, a bookstore' -- as if we didn't know how to read here."

In the end, though, somebody has to be like that old lady's son when she receives the letter about the $10 million, Irsfeld said.

"She didn't win the money, and we're not among the most literate cities," he said.