O/T The Las Vegas Boneyard

I know this post isn't "traditional hot-rodding", but I figured that someone with a passion for preserving the past might appreciate it.


At the edge of town, just past the edge of where your average tourist dares to travel, is the Las Vegas Bone-yard. Some romantic with a compelling sense of decency, both rare things in this town, has decided to restore and keep a few memories of alive for a few years longer. Washed out, broken, and slowly decaying in the desert's dry air, these statues reflect Las Vegas's own greedy self-destruction. The past is cut down, thrown aside, and otherwise forgotten as the new is welcomed in with promises of better revenue, increased profits; the american dream coming to fruition. These pictures were taken over chain-link fences and from the balcony of a decaying apartment complex whose tenants had long since forgotten the hope that brought them there.
Enjoy:

This one, the La Concha Motel Lobby, is currently being restored, but I have no idea as to the fate of everything else pictured below:

 

More info at http://www.neonmuseum.org/

Apparently they give private tours, It'd definitely be worth the time.

 

Wow, I'd love to have some of that as yard art.

 

Great stuff

 

is this accebile to people, like as a looksee, not a be an asshole and take souveniers? id like to visit it next time i travel the states.

 

i would think the eventual fate of this will be selling it off to collectors for large sums of money. I think it's really cool the way it is though. Wasn't it Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man or some movie like that that had a portion filmed in here? Or was that the airplane boneyard? It's been too many beers between now and then...

 

national lampoon vegas vacation had a scene where girls were dancing on these all lit up i believe

 

How many is to many beers?? Is there such a number?
Mmm beer.

 

I' love to know where that was dude,hopefully will be back out to vegas again this year.....i think i've heard of the place,isnt it the neon boneyard? Where all the old signs go,heard not for sale etc presumably they await restoration n replacing somewhere like the displays around fremont? I'm sure barracuda did an article which stated they could be visited,in a group,for a fee....

Cool pics tho........man we'd ALL love a bit o' that as yard art! It'd blow minds here in the UK lol..

 

I stayed in the La Concha once when the Riviera was overbooked for the VNEA International pool tournament. Nice place, complimentary cockroach in each room.

 

Back when I used to run the recovery & collections department of a finance company, we had a couple offices in Vegas and our cleintelle there was pretty sketchy, so I took a lot of trips to Vegas to work accounts and deal with our legal issues (suing people who wouldn't pay for their car or surrender it).

Our atty's office overlooked this place, and it's one of the most surreal places I've ever seen.

 

some of that stuff would look good in my garage.. great photos!

 

The people that run this place can be found at

http://www.neonmuseum.org/

they give guided tours, apparently, or you can drive down Las Vegas Blvd past the freeway and look for La Concha, like we did. This would be an awesome place to do a photo-shoot for a magazine

 

Let me know if you see a huge sign that says "LIVE NUDES" my front yard is a little dull during the winter of coarse it would be tuff to explain that on a permit application.

 

"live nudes" might not raise as much speculation from the cops as "dead nudes"

 

i want the girl im thee ninth pic down for my garage

 

How many movies have featured this place in scenes?
One I can think of is "Mars Attacks"

 

I lived in Vegas for 10 years and always wanted to go to that, but never got around to it. That's it.... next month when I go back to visit I'm going to go check it out. Very cool!

 

I lived in Vegas too. Except when I lived there most of those signs were probably lit up on the buildings.

That Sahara sign brings back a few memories. When I was home on Christmas leave before leaving for Viet Nam (Dec. 1966) I used to go to the Sahara everynight to see Don Rickles...He was in their lounge. I was only 19 but no one ever said anything. One night (after 2 AM) I was sitting in the coffee shop at the counter in my Army uniform. Behind me in a booth was Frank Sinatra, Buddy Hackett, I think Joey Bishop and someone else I don't recall.

The waitress came to me and said "someone who wishes to remain anonymous would like to buy you anything you'd like"...Pretty cool....Oh, I had a milk shake.

 

If Frankie and the guys were paying I would have put my hand up for some Feminine company....

 

I have a lot of fond Vegas memories.
Cruising Fremont street. In those days the Union train station was at one end, you just made a loop and the Purple(?) Onion drive in was the loop at the other.

Some auto parts stores were open 24hrs a day.

When Kennedy was shot they turned out all the outdoor lights on the casinos downtown one night.

A friend of a friends parents had a underground bomb shelter in the middle of the desert which at that time wasn't really that far east of the strip...Just east of Maryland Prkwy and south of Sahara (I think) ...anyway it was the size of a one bd room apt. fully stocked. We would ...well you know, we would do what young guys do...girls, drink etc.

My older brother was a life guard at a community pool on his Fire Dept. off days...not a bad place to hang out on a hot Vegas summer day.

We would go pool hoping at the strip hotels untill they ran us off...then to the next one.

 

here we go !my new workshop entrance..

 

I was 19, not too wise to the world but I'll bet it would have worked.

The funny thing is, under a different circumstance , I had Christmas dinner at Nancy Sinatra's house about 2 or 3 yrs before. Frank wasn't there.

At that time Nancy Sinatra was married to a little known singer named Tommy Sands. Tommy Sands was a friend of mine's uncle.

 

I have seen it in countless movie's a tv show's, I always wanted to visit it. I just saw it on a rerun of CSI today, I guess I will have to find it next time I am in Vagas.



CBB

 

Yeh, thanks for the info mate, tried to find this joint three years ago,
had no look, it had moved but no one new where to.
be there next trip for sure, Thanks.

 

These bits haven't been there long....part of the old Stardust sign. The second pic shows the side (rotated 90deg) next to the "T".....as per below. I took this pic just last January the day after I got married there.

 

I was at the Stardust a couple months before it went down. I swear you could hear a pin drop.

 

I'm pretty sure they are still "sponsoring" the restoration of what ever sign you like in the yard. I forget, but I had seen a pricelist with examples somewhere. Also, If I'm not mistaken, YESCO or the Young Electric Sign Co used to or still does own the yard. The neonmuseum might be the curators and restoration project managers to get signs sponsored,restored, and eventually moved into Freemont Street for all to see. Nice pics of the Yard!

 

Wow something i actually know a little about, i lived in Vegas just over the road on Bonanza way for about a year and was working as a features photographer,one of the things i shot was the old neon graveyard,connections are still important in LV, my landlord was also the custodian of the site as you see it now....
Many of the signs you see were originally part of the old yesco sign yard which originally being in the desert was eventually swallowed by the ever increasing sprawl, ( which is what appeared in the film Mars Attacks)these were then moved to this site until the neon museum comes to fruition, ironically a lot of the old vegas sign ended up either in Reno or in a museum in Korea...as mentioned earlier Vegas tends to ignore its own history, to its own detriment until fairly recently, as far as i know the tours can still be arranged and the site has been rearanged a few times to accomodate photo shoots often for higher end fashion magazines. Vegas also has the living neon museum which is where signs were somewhat restored and left in place and/or moved around the freemont street end of town, if the buildings were no longer there....
if i can dig through my archives i'll post up some shots from in side the fences once i have them transfered from slide.

 

There was a small casino, I think next to or near the Stardust called The Silver Slipper. I remember the Gaming commission actually chained and locked, as in ran chains through the door handles because they couldn't pay off a big Keno winner...at least that was the story at the time.