Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Columnist Jerry Fink: Beauty is business at new downtown club

Las Vegas is a freewheeling town that prides itself on its edgy living.

The phone book is full of dancers who will come to your room and perform in private.

Topless clubs are scattered around the valley.

Tourists run a gauntlet of pamphleteers lining the Strip, thrusting into their faces business cards depicting scantily clad women.

Just a short drive from Vegas, prostitution is legal.

It seems you can do just about anything in Southern Nevada except get a manicure while having a martini.

That's where the law draws the line.

"All the things you can get away with here, but not that," Paul Devitt laments.

Ten years ago Devitt co-founded Beauty Bar in a former beauty parlor in downtown New York.

The venture was an instant success, with one of the highlights of the cocktail lounge being a Manicures and Martinis Happy Hour.

Women came in after work, relaxed, had a martini and received a manicure while chatting.

Devitt's Beauty Bar was so successful that he opened another in San Francisco and then one in Los Angeles -- each with a beauty-salon theme, and each with a Manicures and Martinis Happy Hour.

His fourth Beauty Bar is scheduled to debut at 6 p.m. today at 517 Fremont St., with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that is expected to feature Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman doing the honors. It will be followed by a private party.

A grand-opening party is set for 9 p.m. Sunday, with a special performance at 10 p.m. by Latin Elvis impersonator El Vez. The event is to coincide with the Las Vegas Centennial.

The 2,100-square-foot Las Vegas Beauty Bar will include most of the features of the other Beauty Bars -- including the retro interior of a 1950s beauty salon, oversized hair dryers and cutting chairs.

But it won't have a Manicures and Martinis Happy Hour.

"It would violate a health code," Dewitt said. "We would have to build 6-foot walls to separate the manicurists from the bar."

Which defeats the purpose of Manicures and Martinis.

"The idea is for the ladies to sit around and be part of the crowd while getting a manicure," he said.

Instead of manicures, nail polish will be sold and demonstrations given on how to apply it.

Flavored martinis will be dispensed -- the Miss Clairol, Platinum Blonde, Blue Rinse, French Flip and the Prell.

Though one of the most noted elements of the Beauty Bar chain has been eliminated (Dewitt says he is going to lobby to have the law changed), Dewitt isn't discouraged.

"I always thought the Beauty Bar would be a good fit in Vegas, with the glam and the kitschy part of Vegas' subculture," Dewitt said.

He didn't want it to be part of a casino, preferring a free-standing building in downtown rather than inside a mega-resort.

"I'm not interested in casinos, and I've always liked downtown Vegas," Dewitt said.

The bar, which initially will be open from 6 p.m. until 4 a.m. nightly, is part of the district's redevelopment plans.

"Choosing to be in downtown Las Vegas, which is in the midst of a renaissance, is strategically symbolic," Dewitt said. "In a town that is more obsessed with a fast-paced lifestyle, I wanted to offer a real bar for real people that references the past while clearly looking towards the future."

The Beauty Bar has a natural appeal for women, which should also make it appealing to men looking for women.

"At any given time there are more women than men in the bar," Dewitt said. "Most bars appeal to men -- clubby sports bars."

Dewitt said beauty salons, in many ways, have the same purpose as bars -- a place to meet with friends and chat.

The Beauty Bar will feature DJs seven nights a week.

There won't be any gaming.

"We're trying to attract the local crowd who are looking for a place to go," Dewitt said.

While hair dryers may not be an attraction for most men, the women sitting under them should be enough for any macho man to set aside his pre-conceived notions about manhood and check out the nail polish.

Lounging around

Popular lounge entertainer T. Fox, who just returned from a three-month engagement in at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, returns to the Vegas Tropicana's Tropic's lounge at 8 p.m. Wednesday.

To celebrate Memorial Day weekend, RA (which normally is closed Sundays) will be open at 10 p.m. May 29 with a performance by special guest DJ Sizzahandz.

Wynn Las Vegas has a couple of bars worth checking out, Lure (an ultra lounge) and La Bete (a restaurant that turns into a nightclub after 10 p.m.).

Up the street from the high-dollar Wynn (just north of the Stratosphere on Las Vegas Boulevard) is the relatively low-dollar Dino's, billed as the last great neighborhood bar.

Something is always going on at Dino's, and you don't have to sit in your car for 30 minutes while waiting in line to get into a self-parking garage (as I did at Wynn Las Vegas).

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