Editor's Note

I’ll be honest: There was something I dreaded about taking the helm at Desert Companion a few months ago. It wasn’t the management meetings, board reports, HR paperwork, or even the stress of being responsible for the accuracy and appeal of every word in these pages. It was the annual Restaurant Awards. Don’t get me wrong, I love assigning and editing stories generally. But this specific story is not only Desert Companion’s signature service piece, but also an entire project that lives beyond our pages

Fall feels like a break between seasons in our city, where it follows the hot mess of summer and precedes the frenetic cheer of the holidays. Philosophers of yoga write about the second between the inhale and exhale as the moment when the good stuff happens — though the entire breath requires attention for the process to work

Founding Editor Andrew Kiraly bids a fond farewell to the magazine he's called home for a dozen-plus years

My usual response to the word “tradition” is a whiplashy gag of nausea and dread at its connotations of unthinking obedience and ritualized conformity but, no lie, I actually love the way it sounds when applied to our Focus on Nevada photo contest.

This past year didn't go quite as anyone had envisioned. But in our "new normal," we still have plenty of reasons to celebrate the city, in all its fracturedness, vanity, and fragility.

On the surface, this year’s awards may represent a happy return to normal (whatever that means anymore), but our esteem for this year’s honorees is anything but routine.

The best way to celebrate is to bail on my introductory bloviating and flip immediately to our Fall Culture Guide, happily gravid with a season’s worth of exhibits, concerts, festivals, plays, readings, and more.

It’s both surprising and not that this year’s “Focus on Nevada” photo contest drew a record number of entries.

It’s easy to love Las Vegas for the obvious reasons: The great food scene, the beautiful outdoors, the exhilarating freedom to blow your stimulus check on a Deuces Wild machine at 3 a.m.

One of the things that bums me out most about how the pandemic has pushed the mute button on so many facets of our lives.