On Main Street, beauty is a sisterhood| Students hit the road to recovery at Mission High | Gas is on the rise ... Gas Studios, that is | Into Vegas history? There's a map for that | What are the KNPR staff reading this summer?
I AM HAPPY to report that I had great difficulty writing this profile on the Arts District’s newest salon — the Beauty Shoppe. This struggle does not stem from any negative circumstances or treatment; it’s quite the opposite. The service at my most recent visit was so inviting and fun that I agreed to try something that I haven’t done in years: applying nail extensions. Consequently, I’m relearning how to type quickly, open cans, and perform other daily tasks. But the Beauty Shoppe's fun and quirky specials are a revolving door of enticing ideas that’ll make you want to try something new. I would've never thought to get gel x extensions and nail art, but they made an offer I couldn't refuse — $65 for a full set including your choice of up to four nails to apply any basic nail art you’d like.
Not only are there undeniably good deals, but also the Beauty Shoppe has a wide range of offerings. The salon itself is highly Instagrammable. The bright white square-tiled walls and floors of the main room are complemented by yellow and turquoise accent walls and mint green grout. Disco balls balanced on the front windowsills reflect into the salon, shining onto the expansive wall of nail polishes and funky neon signs strategically placed throughout. Besides the 80s influenced decor and mod European vibes, the best part about this place has to be the two owners, sisters Gina and Kat Schiebel, and their welcoming staff.
With family roots in Central America, the sisters were born in Texas, raised in Los Angeles, but have since made Las Vegas their home and made considerable connections resulting in a solid reputation. Before they could hire their team, the Schiebel sisters had to build their salon from the ground up. They say, “One of the biggest struggles has been the construction process. It is our first buildout, so we had to teach ourselves how to be a multi-hyphenate of trades, that is: contractor, architect, sub-contractor, interior designer.”
Their independent professional experiences have prepared them to be an unstoppable duo. Prior to opening, Gina managed a team in finance and Kat opened Third and Arrow, a fashion boutique in Container Park, four years ago. This set them up to be the second solely women- and minority-owned business on Main Street. They balance each other out, Kat being the visual dreamer and Gina seeing how much dreaming they can do based on the numbers.
When checking in for my afternoon appointment I am met by an excited Kat, who is working the front desk. We chat about what I had planned to do with my nails, and she assures me that getting claws will be in my best interest. Gina later swings in through the front doors, arms full of supplies and sporting a smile. She is more than
happy to show me around and takes me to the back room where they provide waxing services. Two employees are in the room testing chrome colored polishes they plan on debuting. Gina says, “They’re the artists. We have to give them the opportunity to explore.”
During my visit, everyone seems to be having a good time. Normally, I shy away from nail salons, due to the awkwardness of someone clipping at my cuticles in silence (which could, of course, just be in my own head), but at the Beauty Shoppe, all anxieties dissolve. Perhaps it’s the upbeat music featuring artists like Bad Bunny, TLC, and Beyoncé, or the laughter and lively energy radiating from both clients and employees. The sisters say that’s the vibe they’re going for. “It’s a luxury to have time for yourself, and we wanted to open a shop where every person who walks in will feel great being there and walk out with a masterpiece,” Kat says.
Heaven MacArthur, my nail technician, says, “I don't know how I got so lucky to work for Kat and Gina. They truly recognize the craft — they make us feel like the artists we truly are.” As she buffs my nails, MacArthur tells me about a time she suggested they purchase specific polishes, ones that she knows people ask for by name. At previous salons, MacArthur’s suggestions went ignored; however, here, they’re welcomed and used, she says. Whitney Vertucci, the front desk receptionist, backs this up. She says, “Kat and Gina are two powerhouses that constantly inspire me … The Beauty Shoppe is the salon Vegas has been missing.”
The sisters consider Las Vegas their blueprint for bigger plans. "Our Main Street location is paving the way for us to open in different cities," they say. "Besides opening more shops, we really want our company to be an inspiration for all entrepreneurs out there. You don’t have to know the how, just know your why and it will connect.”
The Schiebels dedicate all their time and energy to the salon. When they’re not physically there, they are somewhere else thinking of things to make the business better. Since their opening in May 2022, they’ve reached customers through their social media and word of mouth. Their recipe for success lies within their genuine efforts to have a good time.
The Beauty Shoppe (1207 S. Main St.) is open every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
MEMORIES OF MY ADOLESCENCE are bombastic blurs: speeding down the freeway after First Friday, testing fake IDs at Fremont Street bars, sitting around my best friend’s garage with a gallon of Carlo Rossi sangria. Most of what’s retained includes alcohol or drugs, as did college, and several years after until March 2, 2018.
In a painfully cliche way, I was introduced to smoking, drinking, and drugging in middle school by someone who had a galvanic effect on my self-worth. Alcohol gave me a glowing confidence and sense of belonging I hadn’t had before. Drinking and getting high became routine after school, not so much a getaway, but rather an augmentation of our lives, or so we thought. Getting caught was a game of chance, but I got through without serious legal or mortal consequences. Bottles became the crutches I leaned on to get through social situations in high school, college, and a handful of jobs before the threat of losing one gave me the right amount of pause.
More than 11 years after my first sip, my crutch had moldered. I was sick in all senses of the word, and had harmed or hurt countless people in my life. My disease had become an aggressor and manipulator, casting people out when it, I, was done with them. What was worse, events made it so I began to see how I was seen.
My alcoholic ignominy (and subsequent recovery) is no anomaly. According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, about 414,000 American teens aged 12 to 17 have alcohol use disorder. Last year, more than half of Nevada teens aged 12 to 20 said they had used alcohol within a month of the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking report. Nearly a third in the same age group said they had binge drunk within that month. With drugs, teen overdose rates are on the rise for the first time in a decade in large part due to the opioid fentanyl, which is cheaply inserted into many street drugs. In the last two years, Las Vegas police said Clark County alone lost 16 kids under 18 to fentanyl overdoses. And while statistics have their role, recovery begins with the individual. Thankfully, there are millions of people passionate about helping individuals across the country, including those at Mission High School.
It’s a modest Clark County School District building north of Downtown, the first ever publicly-funded recovery school. The dozen or so students who are housed there each year, led by educators and addiction counselors, work toward a diploma, as well as their sobriety. The “small but mighty” school was cofounded in 2017, seven years after I graduated high school, by three sober men: former District Administrator Jeff Horn, Donn Jersey, formerly with Greenspun Media, and Joe Engle, founder of the nonprofit There is No Hero in Heroin.
Nearly everyone has been affected by drug or alcohol addiction in some way. That revelation is what bolstered widespread community support for Mission High School’s, well, mission, and a unanimous approval by the school board. Students aren’t zoned for this school, but arrive on referral from other schools or recovery programs and sometimes by word of mouth. Ultimately, every student there wants to recover. For the administrators and staff, success at Mission is knowing their graduates would have been a statistic without intervention. Horn recently told KNPR’s State of Nevada that at the most recent graduation ceremony, he looked to former principal Barbara Collins and said the students “would be gone if they’re not sitting in these seats right now.”
Current Principal Angela Nickels, who joined the staff this past summer, says, "The next generation is our investment.” Of the current generation, she adds, “They are fearless, and they've got that tenacity … It's amazing to watch."
Another piece of the puzzle is Frank Slaughter, who oversees a new fitness room at the school. He’s a multifaceted man of service and former boxing coach. The room provides a sense of high school normality and a place to release the nervous energies that come with recovery. The gym is outfitted with UFC-quality boxing equipment, but Slaughter knows it could be much more. Before this, students completed physical education online, but, Slaughter says, “They didn’t want something phony.” He says he wants to be a piece of the school’s puzzle that drives students to come back each day. With funding, he hopes to expand the program as the school slowly grows. Nickels says they can be of service to many more students in the school district.
In high school, I lost a friend to a violent suicide after he disappeared while on hard drugs. Years later, Facebook pulled up a memory showing another friend I used with. “Remembering,” it said before her name. Addiction took them both. Three-sentence small town news articles announcing their identities neglected to speak to his passion or her contagious laughter.
High school is filled with such precariousness, a multitude of pressures, and overwhelming expectations. It’s hellish for me to consider what it would have been like, facing my disease while I was in high school, even if I had the help offered at a program like Mission High School. It’s admirable of these students to do so, and I find parallels with my own story. In a meeting three years ago, I met a 16-year-old girl, freshly sober, braces on her teeth and a baby on her lap. Her circumstances differed greatly from my own, but her emotional experience with alcohol sounded torn from my pages. Guiseppe Russo, a student at the school, told KCLV Channel 2 earlier this year that he wouldn't be alive without the school. He explained the vitality of support and the sense of community at Mission, something I find in recovery as an adult.
When, at 24, I first sat in a meeting, I was afraid and desperate, but still tried to convince myself I was too young to need help. On top of that, it felt oxymoronic to get sober in Las Vegas — I quickly learned both ideas were common misconceptions. Las Vegas has hundreds of meetings every week at nearly all hours and is home to an annual international Alcoholics Anonymous convention. Recovery saved my life because strangers in that program took the time to care about me, to give me a sense of belonging — something I’m able to do now for others. This “small but mighty” school, as their principal calls it, is saving lives by doing the same thing.
“Mission High School is for kids who want to stop, and we wrap them in love and support, so that they can find recovery, and then they can work on their education,” Horn says. “You can't do it before being able to stop using … There is hope out there. And we have that every day, see it every day at Mission High School.”
TUCKED AWAY ON Losee Road’s automotive corridor, The Gas Station Studios has nothing to do with cars — but everything to do with fueling local talent. That was the aim of Tyler Gaston when he launched the North Las Vegas music production business with his spouse and business partner Tiana Shai in 2016. “It was really important for me to bring quality, professionalism, and production value to North Las Vegas,” he says. “I care about our stories and what we bring to music.”
Also known as King Gas (adapted from a nickname he earned as a UNLV football defensive lineman), Gaston has considerable Vegas roots and a respectable production résumé. He’s worked with artists ranging from Adina Howard to Tech N9ne to Adrian Crutchfield (Prince’s saxophonist). Songs that Gaston has produced have been licensed to popular shows such as Love After Lockup, All-American, and United Shades of America. But his ambitions for The Gas Station Studios have always gone beyond merely turning out songs, albums, and podcasts; from the start, he’s envisioned the studio as a fertile creative hub for the Valley’s hip-hop and R&B community.
“It’s about bringing more opportunity to the city,” Gaston says, “and showing young people here that it’s not far-fetched to have a career in music or the arts.”
That ambition drove Gaston and his team earlier this year to begin producing The Blueprint — think Tiny Desk Concerts for local talent — as well as hosting events such as the increasingly popular The Cookout, a live battle-rap series. He’s also deployed The Gas Station as a classroom, teaching music production classes to youth enrolled in Clark County’s gang intervention program. It’s little surprise that The Gas Station has since become a waypoint through which anyone interested or invested in the Vegas hip-hop scene passes.
“It’s ironic that the Entertainment Capital of the World doesn’t actually facilitate the growth of entertainers and artists, people who add to that economy,” Gaston says. “I see The Gas Station as a model for other businesses that are not only creating jobs in this industry, but also building a pathway for local creatives to work in digital media and film without having to relocate to a city like L.A.”
Film too? That’s right. Now The Gas Station is really kicking into high gear: Gaston and Shai recently opened an entirely new wing next door that houses a complete film studio with seven individually themed sets. After purchasing the building, Gaston and Shai spent the last five months renovating and redesigning the space with their business manager, Damian Hicks. What had previously been a mechanic’s shop now features multiple film sets, including a jungle-themed room with four walls of artificial greenery, a mock courtroom and jail cell, and a room dubbed “The Matrix” with a wall full of LED screens. They’ve also got two more sets under construction.
“Being artists ourselves, it was fairly easy to pinpoint what was missing here in the Valley,” Shai says. “Jail cells and prison sets are one of the most popular concepts for hip-hop visuals, but before we built ours, the closest one was in L.A. Similarly, when looking for locations with lush greenery to shoot my video, we couldn’t find a suitable place nearby.”
Other sets in the film studio follow a similar stylistic intent — to fill the visual concept gaps in the Vegas production scene and to make each set immersive and flexible enough to serve everyone from content creators to professional filmmakers. A number of artists and filmmakers have already used the new film wing to produce short-form projects and music videos, including a new video for Adina Howard’s “Keep Lookin.” One of the initiatives Gaston and Shai are most excited about is their plan to work directly with UNLV’s Department of Film and young, aspiring filmmakers throughout the Valley.
“Through our outreach in the community — from the projects produced here to the platforms we make to share and promote those projects — we can highlight the way that Vegas culture is built by creatives from the inside,” Gaston says. “There’s so much beyond the Strip.”
Whether The Gas Station is pumping out new films, developing Vegas’ next breakout artist, or showcasing local talent at live events, Gaston hints that the studio’s evolution into a North Las Vegas cultural hub has only just begun. “Without giving the plans away, we have a few ideas about how we can make The Gas Station a space where people in the community come together not just to create culture, but to enjoy it as well.”
The Gas Station Studios is located at 2270 Losee Rd.
READING JOE WEBER'S new book, Mapping Historical Las Vegas: A Cartographic Journey, was a humbling experience. As someone who has spent more than two decades studying, writing, and talking about Las Vegas history, I picked up the book assuming I would encounter little that I did not already know. I was wrong.
Here’s one example: I did not know that in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt created the Charleston Forest Preserve, protecting the southern part of the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas. A year later, Roosevelt created the Vegas National Forest to protect the northern Spring Mountains and Sheep Range.
Here’s another: I was not aware that surveyors for the Public Land Survey System, in 1882, spent a week creating the grid for the section line roads that crisscross the Las Vegas Valley to this day. As Weber notes, “Little could they have known that in those seven days they were laying out what would become the main streets for a city of several million people known throughout the world.”
Weber has delivered an impressive compendium of 137 maps and supporting information that documents the history of our community and region in fascinating ways. For those who enjoy Las Vegas history, this is an essential companion to other books that offer a more conventional narrative.
The maps, all well designed and easy to read, explore the city and region at different periods in history, including the time before Las Vegas existed, the railroad’s arrival, the city’s founding, the creation of Lake Mead, and so on. Weber traces the history of railroads, highways, airports, power lines, landfills, and even how radioactive fallout from above-ground atomic tests dispersed across the United States.
Weber’s creative use of geography is on display in a chapter titled “Unbuilt Las Vegas.” He documents a diverse array of projects — hotel-casinos, highways, housing developments — that were planned but never built. “The city is … littered with canceled plans, abandoned dreams, and assorted failures,” he notes.
Surely the most intriguing of these was a plan proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1959 to build a massive levee across the valley’s west side to control flooding. If this levee had been built, it would have prevented all development west of Jones Boulevard. Needless to say, this would be a very different community today if that levee had been built.
Another standout chapter documents the locations across the valley where iconic movies such as Viva Las Vegas, Diamonds Are Forever, and The Gauntlet were filmed.
However, not everything in the book is engrossing. Although Weber looks for ways to keep our interest, in some cases there just aren’t any interesting stories to tell about, say, a stretch of long-abandoned railroad track or air space zones over Las Vegas. However, this is not a major problem, because, as Weber notes, the book is not necessarily designed to be read cover to cover. Skipping around to discover subjects that capture your attention is encouraged.
Weber is a geography professor at the University of Alabama, but he grew up in Southern Nevada. His fondness for the city is evident throughout the book, as he prefers, for the most part, to focus on the positive. Since geography, not social history, is the driving force, this is not a huge issue. But the first sentence of Weber’s introduction — “Las Vegas is the greatest city in the world” — probably should have been left on the cutting-room floor. By almost any serious measure, Las Vegas is far from the world’s greatest city. But it is one of the world’s most interesting cities, an assertion that Mapping Historical Las Vegas helps to validate.
Mapping Historical Las Vegas: A Cartographic Journey by Joe Weber, University of Nevada Press, 336 pages, $45
NOT INTO CARTOGRAPHY? Perhaps you’ll find something of interest from this flight of delectably curated summer reading recs from the KNPR staff in this special edition of Media Sommelier.
1. Heidi Kyser, interim editor of Desert Companion: My favorite read this summer has been the nonfiction When the Moon Turns to Blood, by Leah Sottile. I’ve been following Sottile’s work since 2018, when she wrote and produced the fantastic Bundyville podcast for Long Reads and Oregon Public Broadcasting. The conspiracy theorists and far-right militia members that Sottile has studied and written about extensively often have ties, or even roots, in Nevada. Although that’s not the case with the main characters of When the Moon Turns to Blood, it’s still a fascinating look into a religious subsect whose extreme beliefs lead to unfathomable — and ultimately tragic — consequences. Beyond being riveting true crime, the book is a lesson in the importance of critical thinking and moderation of religious fervor.
2. Lorraine Blanco Moss, host of Exit Spring Mountain podcast: Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson is a delectable journey from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom to the United States. Painful, poignant, and powerful, it's the story of two siblings reuniting after their mother's death to uncover the mysteries of their complicated heritage. It's a tale of missed opportunities, the weight of grudges, and the importance of sharing your stories, especially in marginalized communities. The titular rum-soaked fruitcake isn't even the sweetest part of Wilkerson's debut novel. I read the last page filled with hope that healing is difficult, but always possible.
3. Kim Treviño, distribution and events coordinator for Nevada Public Radio: My current favorite read this summer is The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness: A Memoir by Sarah Ramey. In her debut memoir, Ramey takes the reader on the harrowing trip of her decades-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors refused to believe was not all in her head. From the medical gaslighting to the endless chronic pain to the decades spent researching and trying anything for relief, she paints the truest picture of what it's like to live as a WOMI — a woman with a mysterious illness. Ramey’s bravery and humor speak to a larger problem so many people face, especially women, when we know our bodies all too well, and are still not believed. This is a book for anyone interested in their own health, advocacy, medicine, and how to truly listen to our bodies and our gut.
4. Nick Barnette, interim editor of Fifth Street: A book that surprised me this summer was Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald. This memoir, or confessional as the book’s subtitle labels itself, surprised me because I typically avoid the genre, especially when the memoir is noted for its exploration of “male misbehavior.” However, Fitzgerald’s vulnerability allows him to deftly examine how masculinity informs and complicates religious trauma, substance abuse, and poverty. Funny and raw, sexy and boozy, this memoir reads like a conversation you’d have with a friend in the corner of a dive bar far too early in the afternoon.
What have you been reading this summer? Let us know at @desertcompanion.
Photos and art: Claws Out by Brent Holmes; No Brakes Necessary by Bronson Loftin; Putting Vegas on the Map courtesy of University of Nevada Press
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