What makes a Vegas icon? That’s the question I asked and answered in this week’s Green Felt Journal:
Late last month, the Clark County Commission awarded Caesars Entertainment’s High Roller observation wheel the inaugural Las Vegas Icon Award. The County Commission’s best intentions aside, Vegas icon-hood can’t be bestowed, like a key to the city. It can’t be earned, either. It just happens. The ultimate test of whether something is truly iconic really comes down to this: When you see it, do you immediately think of Las Vegas?
I think that the High Roller is in the same class as the Stratosphere: the profile itself could be in another city (Seattle or London, for example), but over time it will become part of the skyline and by extension iconic.
When you think about it, Britney Spears and Elton John can now be considered Las Vegas entertainment icons, so iconhood is going to change over time.