Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Joe Downtown: ‘Unicorn’ fills in for llama at Hsieh birthday bash

Updated Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012 | 12:42 p.m.

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This "unicorn" made brief appearance Wednesday night at a birthday party for Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.

Map of Downtown Cocktail Room

Downtown Cocktail Room

111 Las Vegas Blvd S., Las Vegas

Apparently imported from North Korea, a unicorn was spotted Wednesday night in downtown Las Vegas in, of all places, a bar.

Friends of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh were stunned to see the magical beast for a brief moment inside the Downtown Cocktail Room, where dozens of revelers were helping celebrate Hsieh’s 39th birthday.

OK, so it wasn’t a real unicorn. And now the North Korean news agency is saying initial reports of finding a “unicorn lair” resulted from a mistranslation.

The unicorn at the “DCR” was a rented pony adorned with a single-horned headgear to make it look like the majestic beast.

As it was put by one reveler, Krissee Danger, who works with Downtown Project – part of Hsieh’s grand plan to foster “community” downtown through a variety of directives – ”no one really said anything (about the pony); everyone was just sort of speechless.”

But why a unicorn?

“We wanted to get a llama-corn,” Danger said, citing Hsieh’s affinity for llamas. “But the harness didn’t work.”

But why a unicorn, which was a pony

“Llamas and unicorns, we just like ‘em,” Danger said.

Joe Schoenmann doesn’t just cover downtown, he lives and works there. Schoenmann is Greenspun Media Group’s embedded downtown journalist, working from an office in the Emergency Arts complex.

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