Blue Vegas

By AMANDA LLEWELLYN

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There may be no one more qualified to write about life in Las Vegas, fictionalized or otherwise, than iconic Double Down Saloon and Frankie’s Tiki Room owner P Moss.

Moss, a downtown-area resident for nearly 20 years, has made a career of learning about people: how they think, what gets them going and the trials of human experience.

“Anybody who has an ability to watch other human beings and learn how they tick, well, that’s how you learn to run a successful business,” he said. “It’s also great for writing.”

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Author P Moss with members of the Swing Shift Side Show. Photo credit: Jesse Nabers

Man-about-town and current Vegas DeLuxe host, Robin Leach, did a write-up on the avant-garde debut of Blue Vegas on his Luxe Life blog complete with photos from this must-be-seen event.

Check it out here.

Author P Moss was recently a guest on KNPR’s State of Nevada to discuss his newly published book of “only in Las Vegas” short stories as well as talk about his less-than-usual night job for a writer – he owns a couple of unusual bars in town.

Listen here.

By Stacey Fott

If you couldn’t make it to the debut of Blue Vegas at the Double Down Saloon, you missed out on one of the wildest book debuts ever. This was not your wine and cheese and wait in line for hours to get an autograph gig. Oh no, this was an event complete with daring acts by SwingShift SideShow and an author P Moss who mingled with friends and bar patrons.

To see what you missed

P Moss divulges the real stories behind his short fiction collection Blue Vegas by TOD GOLDBERG

If there’s one question every author hates, it’s: Did that really happen? It’s a strange phenomenon, really, since it’s not as if people run up to Steven Spielberg to ask him how it was living with that adorable ET, as people can generally separate reality from fiction in just about all genres of entertainment except for fiction itself.

The temporal experience of reading lends itself to the belief that what you’re reading, what you’re experiencing on the page, must be true, or else why would you be feeling the emotions you’re having just on the basis of a typeface on a white page? The truth, of course, is that much fiction is rooted in at least some reality — authors do not exist in a vacuum — but reality may be a simple observation, a smell, a taste, a sentiment, memory or impression based on a fleeting moment of actual life.

Yet, in P Moss’s short story collection Blue Vegas, the first title from CityLife Books, it’s almost impossible not to see clear parallels between his fictional creations and the people who might sidle up to one of Moss’s two Las Vegas bars — the Double Down Saloon and Frankie’s Tiki Room — with a story to tell, a lie to sell, or a confession on their lips. But, of course, inspiration is a nebulous thing when it comes to telling an ostensibly “true” story — after all, truth and fact rarely are the same thing — so we’ve asked Moss to give us a little insight on a few of the stories that felt like the kind of apocryphal tales people tell late at night in bars they shouldn’t be in.

Read the full article here.

First-time author Moss recently sat down with dailyfiasco.com writer Jason Scavone to talk about the writing process, the trappings of  daily life, Old Vegas vs. the new, and being drawn to the ’seedier’ side of things …

2/26/10
Discontent. Discontent with change. Discontent with station and circumstance. Discontent with New Vegas. Seventeen times P Moss crawls into the venal, unlit corners of Vegas, and 17 times we come away with sordid, nasty stories of people trapped in their own lives, trapped by their own faults or trapped by forces well out of their control, desperate to break out.

“I think that’s how most people in life are. Whether you’re stuck in some kind of trouble or whether you’re just some schmuck who has to fight traffic every day to go to work. I think most people are trapped in their shit. A lot of them are aware of it. A lot of them are not aware of it. A lot of them are just resigned to the fact that that’s how it is. Whether you’re talking about murder or fucking chickens or whatever you’re doing, it’s really no different from the poor sap who has to fight traffic every morning just because if he doesn’t he’s going to lose his house and his wife and his dog,” Moss said.

Read the full interview here.

Richard Abowitz
Los Angeles Times ~ 2/28/10

“Despite getting frequent mentions in tourist guides and routinely topping out locals’ best-of polls, the Double Down Saloon is the Vegas institution that most appears to belong in another, cooler city than Las Vegas. With a scruffy pool table and a tiny stage, its character (and jukebox) is closer to New York’s late CBGB than an ultra lounge.

The décor reflects the owner, and few who know him will be surprised that P Moss has written a collection of short stories in his free time. With “Blue Vegas” in a new imprint from alternative weekly City Life, Moss is making his fiction debut at age 58…”

Read the full article here.

Check out the weekly e-newsletter from Thrillist featuring P Moss and Blue Vegas.

Read all about it…

Excerpt from Norm Clarke’s Vegas Confidential column, Feb. 5, 2010

Double Down Saloon owner P Moss is rolling out his short story collection titled “Blue Vegas” on March 2 with a carnival show that would make Jeff Beacher envious. Moss and CityLife Books are celebrating the release with an evening of entertainment that includes a reading by the author and book signing …

Look for Blue Vegas among the ‘choice picks’ in this February’s issue of 944 magazine (whose cover is graced by Hollywood up-and-comer, Luke Grimes).
Author P Moss is hailed as “a cultural icon” and his writing is said to explore “both vintage and modern day Vegas through its manifest of characters and experiences.”