Las Vegas myth busted: Nude city on Las Vegas Strip named after sunbathing showgirls
In the 1960s, the Meadows Addition in Las Vegas was beautiful and showgirls lived there. They like to sunbathe in nature by the pool in their apartment because they don't like tan lines.
This is the story of the often nicknamed "Naked City." "Naked City" is a community of low-rent apartment buildings and homes in the stratospheric shadow of the Las Vegas Strip north of the Strip. This is nonsense.
No mention of the Naked City appeared in Las Vegas newspapers until June 20, 1982, when the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s cover story ended with “Las Vegas 'Naked City' appears as title "Battlefield." ".
In this story, Lt. John Conner investigates 10 neighborhood murders over 16 months. "Most of them appear to be drug related," said the homicide chief.
UNDERSTANDING MYTH
Planned in the late 1940s, the Meadows Addition ("Las Vegas" means "meadow" in Spanish) is a network of 16 streets named after other cities, including New York, Chicago, and Cleveland. , St. Louis and Philadelphia. Prior to the opening of Sahara in 1952, Sahara Avenue was located entirely within the neighborhood, where it was known as San Francisco Street.
When the first apartment buildings opened in 1953, the Meadows Addition became a popular home for strip workers, including showgirls, who found the low rents and short commutes ideal. But Las Vegas’ expansion beyond the Strip is finally giving its hotel workers and artists options for nearby accommodations, including beautiful new homes that are less expensive and more family-friendly.
By the late 1970s, the Meadows Addition was almost forgotten by everyone except drug dealers, gangs and illegal sex workers. Locals and police nicknamed it "Naked City," a 1948 noir film about a New York police hunt for a murderer that later inspired the 1958-1964 television series of the same name.
In fact, the R-J reported in 1982 that the area was "dubbed 'Naked City' by metro police."
"The explosion of the word in local newspapers, and the context in which Metro used it and the way it continues to be used, are hard to ignore," Jeffrey Carlson, published by the history site Vintage Las Vegas ) explain. . Published an article about Naked City.
Carlson said he has spoken to dozens of local residents in their 1960s and 1970s over the decades who "had never heard of the name."
Naked Truth
The owners of Naked City didn't like the name. One of them was Bob Stupak, who opened the Vegas World Casino Resort in 1979 on property he owned nearby.
In 1996, Stupak replaced it with the Stratosphere, whose 1,149-foot-tall observation tower remains the largest building west of the Mississippi River, and transformed the Vegas World tower into a new use.
Stupak's friends in city government agreed in the late 1980s to rename the nearby neighborhood Meadows Village. They also riffed on cover stories about sunbathing showgirls and insisted the "Naked City" moniker had nothing to do with crime.
Several local businesses have signed on to celebrate rewriting history, including Naked City Pizza, Naked City Audio and Naked City Sweets.
"This topic is interesting to me because it's not a travel story like so many other Vegas myths, and because the gap between the sunny, exciting legend and the harsh reality of the counter-story is so far away, " Carlson said. "Personally, I 'want' to believe the tanned showgirl story because the alternative is depressing."
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Source: www.casino.org
