SUPERSIZE EP: Mafia Wars, Vegas Style

Immediately after Mayor Oscar Goodman was elected, he got into political hot water for suggesting the city open a mob museum. And yet in the next 18 months, Vegas will be getting not one but two of them. The Las Vegas Mob Experience is set to open at the Tropicana in December and the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas is due sometime in 2011. In this supersized episode of The Strip, we’ll hear from prominent proponents of both. First, Steve speaks to Meyer Lansky II, the grandson and namesake of the legendary mob boss who first sent Bugsy Siegel to Las Vegas. Then, later, we have a conversation with Dennis Barrie, the curator for the downtown entry into the mob-artifacts sweepstakes. Barrie created the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. and was at the center of a major controversy in the late 1980s over the display in a n museum of sexually explicit Robert Mappelthorpe photos. In Banter: Banning hula hoops, some gay-straight observations about topless shows, the Cosmopolitan gains steam, news on the Garth Brooks scalping front and more. Blog: VegasHappensHere.ComSite: TheStripPodcast.ComE-mail: [email protected]: 702-997-3300Twitter: @TheStripPodcast