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It’s our 11th annual Best of the City issue, celebrating the best Las Vegas has to offer in everything from dining to entertainment to family fun! Also in this issue: Making sense of the Whitney Hologram Experience, an activist fights Big Solar with … poetry? Writer in Residence Krista Diamond considers The Real World’s infamous 31st season and how America’s Got Talent is changing Strip entertainment.

Best Wishes

Photo of Desert Companion Editor Andrew Kiraly at his desk
Christopher Smith
Christopher Smith

Welp, no lie, I’d really hoped to be smashing out a triumphal, caps-locked, comeback Editor’s Note that would herald our 2022 Best of the City issue as a resoundingly decisive return to normal, but instead I’m typing this from home in my warmups in a state of glummish bemusement. The past year did not go quite as I’d envisioned. Which isn’t to say I’ve been completely robbed of optimism: As of now I can still venture, at least, the earnest wish that 2022 won’t be, as the now-well-worn joke goes, 2020 too? One of my new year’s resolutions is to carpe more diem, so let’s beta test that puppy here: In what by all accounts is a “new normal” era of endemic uncertainty and continual, free-floating moral peril, there’s little good reason not to safely and responsibly celebrate this city, right now, in all its fracturedness, vanity, and fragility. And what better guide than our Best of the City feature, with its honorees fiercely handpicked by our unapologetically enthusiastic experts and fanatics? Enjoy but, please, read between the lines as well: Also in this issue, we have stories that confront the realities behind the fantasies so steadily manufactured about our city and state, whether it’s the numerous shadows cast by our industrial fever-dream of becoming a major solar power producer (“‘Running from the Apocalypse’” by Michael Hanson); the more technologically twisted iterations of the tribute act emerging in the entertainment space (“Ghost in the Machine” by Oona Robertson); or the quotidian locals casino as a site of longing and loss (“Silver Sevens” by Brittany Bronson).

Oooh, great opportunity for a transition: Image and reality also come into play later this year, in our June/July “Focus on Nevada” Photo Contest issue. Now in its 10th year, the contest is open for entries through April 10. Visit desertcompanion.com for details. Perhaps your unique vision of where we live can supply a bit of comfort and inspiration amid all the strange new normals surely to come.

As a longtime journalist in Southern Nevada, native Las Vegan Andrew Kiraly has served as a reporter covering topics as diverse as health, sports, politics, the gaming industry and conservation. He joined Desert Companion in 2010, where he has helped steward the magazine to become a vibrant monthly publication that has won numerous honors for its journalism, photography and design, including several Maggie Awards.