CHRISTMAS LIGHTS, VEGAS-STYLE

Saturday, Dec. 16, 2006 | 7:02 a.m.

Address: 5029 Mesa View Drive

Where to vote: Online at www.fox5vegas.com/sponsors/10408421/detail.html

Lee Grube is wearing black slacks, a navy blue pinstriped shirt and that five o'clock shadow that so completes the image of stylish working DJ. He's also wearing bright pink Croc sandals. And a Santa hat with a button on the forehead that says, "Push to Party." Push it and the top part of the hat flops from side to side, fuzzy ball and all.

But he's not at work right now.

Instead, the 26-year-old DJ is at home with his Christmas lights, all 25,000 or so, plus the light-up choo-choo train lawn ornament, the fiber-optic trees, the snowflake projector, the star lights on his driveway, the spotlights and the six-color disco projector, all of it pulsing in time to techno remixes of holiday hits he programmed himself.

The house he lives in with his mother and sister gives him a big canvas, bigger than he would have if he got his own place. And he's not mooching off of anyone. He pays rent. Helps out around the house. Puts up lights.

"I don't have a girlfriend yet, I'm not married, what am I going to do - get a bachelor pad? Personally speaking, this is a nice house, this is a nice neighborhood," Grube says. "Until I get a special someone and go out and make a life, I'm staying here."

And he's happy, even if the extension cords alone cost $500. (The computers controlling the lights cost another $1,500, and the monthly power bill is about $1,000.)

But he would be happier if he won KVVU Channel 5's annual Griswold Award, in which viewers vote for the house with the best Christmas decorations.

He has been decorating the house for 16 years, and he has entered the station's contest for the past several years but has yet to win. He blames his house's location on a quiet street deep in the heart of a subdivision south of Tropicana and west of U.S. 95.

So he has taken steps. He has set up a Web site with pictures of and directions to his house, and he hosts a live chat on it every Tuesday night (www.drtechnology.org ). He has gone on the popular online message board craigslist to beg for votes. As it is, there's only one thing he won't do: put up garage sale-style signs pointing people to his house. Too much traffic, he says.

"I don't want 10,000 people over here clogging up the traffic. You couldn't get out," Grube says. He pauses. "It wouldn't be so bad, but I'm not going to court that."

It is, reflects the loquacious Grube, really all for his mother and his sister and his neighbors and their kids. It's the spirit of the season.

"We're Las Vegas; it's the city of lights. So why wouldn't you? I could understand if it's Milwaukee and it's 20 degrees and snow - how are you going to stick things in the ground? But here it's 60, 80 degrees in the middle of winter," he says. "Give the Strip a run for its money. Why should it get all the attention?"

But don't the neighbors mind the visitors, the pulsating lights and the music going until midnight?

Local wedding photographer Janet Ayala doesn't live next door to Grube, but she's there almost every day, taking care of her aging mother.

"My sister and I drive by and just stop and look. It's pretty eye-catching," Ayala says .

"Oh, yes," her sister says of the music, "it's syncopated to the lights."

"That's right, they're synchronized," Janet says.

"Actually, you can tell him to turn the music up a bit. "

Grube says he knows some of the neighbors want the music turned up, but he's keeping it low so his display doesn't become excessive.

And Grube has a vision. He wants to see Las Vegas neighborhoods illuminated with riotous displays of lights, just like the ones he used to know.

"Over the years, it seems like there's less and less decorating," Grube complains. "I'm trying to change that, get people to decorate, even if it's just a little bit. Give the people something to see. It's the spirit of the season."