When Las Vegas turns 100 next year - really turns 100, not play-pretend turns 100 at the whim of a history-fudging mayor - it'll also mark the 100th birthday of culture in Southern Nevada. The Mesquite Club will mark its 100th anniversary in February.

Nearly a year after domestic partnerships became legal in Nevada, the GLBT community is learning to wield its newfound cloutWhen Senate Bill 283 passed last year, it provoked little more than a shrug from many Nevadans. Now, a year into the life of the Domestic Partnership Act - with interest groups planning their strategies for the 2011 Legislature - its far-reaching effects on individuals and institutions are coming into focus.

Hope your schedule's open, because we have big plans for you.Classical concerts.

The dancer - Bernard GaddisHe's leaping outside the box with his visceral - but disciplined - approach to danceIt's a waltz, to be sure, but, oh, how we get there: Snapping their fans open with a confidence that startles, the female dancers confront the audience with a supermodel strut and a sensual roll of their bodies. This recent rehearsal at the Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater studio in Holsum Lofts is for a historical piece about Henry VIII's reign.

Niki Sands' paintings can be vibrant (cubistic portraits that hum with a sanguine stillness) or ethereally morose (her works in which a gloom-clouded face ponders some grave idea). But what binds the two dominant moods of her work is their overriding silence.

Long before there was culture in Southern Nevada, there were woolly mammoths stomping all over everything as they fled hungry cavemen wielding spears and barbecue sauce. Today, the proposed Tule Springs Ice Age Park in North Las Vegas commemorates that era as proponents urge Congress to declare it a national monument (and hopefully short-circuit NV Energy's proposal to build a power transmission corridor through the massive, ancient fossil bed).

The faces in the paintings are featureless. You squint at them, hoping they resolve into recognition.

The Vegas Valley Book Festival takes place Nov. 3-7 at various venues throughout Las Vegas.

Gardeners will tell you that fall is our "second spring." It does feel like a new beginning after the searing summer heat that broke records in July.

This season, convert hot fall runway trends into a truly Vegas styleLadylike SilhouettesLuck may be a lady in this town, but the chignon-and-gloves aesthetic can be hard to pull off in a sea of hard-bodied models-slash-cocktail waitresses. The key to this fall's iteration of a ladylike silhouette is keeping it quirky with details, such as Prada's off-the-wall glasses or the full leather skirts that showed up at Louis Vuitton.