Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

2009: A look back

  • Houses sprawl across the Las Vegas Valley. When the housing bubble burst in 2007, Las Vegas became the No. 1 area in foreclosures nationwide.

    The bubbles popped in a bungled decade

    January 1, 2010

    As Las Vegas limps into a new decade, let us return to the now-hazy origins of our current sickness: 2005. It would seem the entire Las Vegas Valley had been slipped a drink laced with a financial hallucinogen — a powerful narcotic that combined Ecstasy’s feelings of well-being with methamphetamine’s urge to be busy. Even the city’s most accomplished business and political elites could not resist its influence. They were spaced out, convinced that the laws of the economic universe had been suspended, that housing prices could expand into space, that borrowing money was as holy as prayer.

  • Lessons from the 2000s beckon. Will we heed them?

    January 1, 2010

    For Las Vegas, the end of the 2000s has been the equivalent of the housekeeper walking into a Strip hotel suite midmorning, cranking some Christian rock, and then Tasing the bedridden guest who is nursing a bad hangover.

  • Former Canyon Springs quarterback DeVonte Christopher, left, passed for 3,265 yards and 44 touchdowns during his senior year with the Pioneers. He has since converted to receiver at Utah.

    Sun’s all-decade team an electrifying group

    January 1, 2010

    Canyon Springs High football coach Hunkie Cooper remembers Friday nights during the fall of 2007 with a distinct fondness. He had one of the best seats in the house for the offensive juggernaut that was the Pioneers' attack. According to Cooper, if you showed up late for a Pioneers' game you would have missed part of the greatest high school football show the Las Vegas Valley had seen in years.

  • Wink Adams was selected as the Sun's UNLV Player of the Decade. His stellar career left him sixth on the school's all-time scoring list and the Houston native helped push the Rebels to a pair of NCAA tournament appearances.

    Unveiling the Sun’s UNLV All-Decade Team

    December 31, 2009

    It was a decade of ups and downs for the UNLV men's basketball program, to say the least. But along the way, several individuals made their marks - some for four years, some for only one or two.

  • Nevada’s Top 10 political stories of the decade

    December 20, 2009

    As the 21st century dawned, even though the state was evenly split in voter registration, Republicans controlled the state’s most important offices, inhabiting five of the six constitutional slots.

  • Nevada’s 10 biggest political stories of 2009

    December 18, 2009

    A year when the state’s top two Republicans couldn’t get to 50 percent approval if you combined their favorability ratings. A year of dramatic entrances and exits from the political stage. And a year of the largest tax increase in history combined with the biggest budget cuts.