Word: stupak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Stupak surveys his realm, the $550 million Stratosphere Tower, Hotel and Casino that rises 1,149 ft. above Las Vegas like a gleaming blue syringe in the neon night sky. For a moment, his taste of triumph is soured by a nagging memory. "A few days ago," the 54-year-old entrepreneur says, "I had a nightmare that the tower was cracking and starting to lean. Luckily, I woke up before it fell over. Which I guess means something is going on self-consciously...
Self-conscious? Stupak? Even in Vegas, city of naked, naive ambition, where the gods Whim and Ego bestride the Strip and hubris is just Greek for chutzpah, Stupak is a figure of such bejeweled swagger that confessing a nightmare of disaster-movie proportions can seem like a boast. The dream speaks to the compulsive gambler's fear of winning what he most desires, while planning even gaudier schemes. "Tell your editors that I'll donate $1 million to their favorite charity," he barks at a Time reporter, "if they put my picture on the corner of the cover. Two million...
Among Vegas' poker-faced master builders--Steve Wynn of the Mirage and Treasure Island, Bill Bennett of Circus Circus--Stupak is something of a wild card, a joke or a curse, a relic of the days when the town was run by guys whose middle name was "the." He enjoys banter about guns, was almost cast in Martin Scorsese's gangster epic Casino, and still refers to Mob characters like "Lefty" Rosenthal and Tony (the Ant) Spilotro as "the boys...
...Harrah, who in his 60s drag-raced with teenagers on Reno streets, have been displaced by quiet, invisible graduates of business schools. The last convicted felon to be spotted by a local columnist on the Strip was Michael Milken, the junk-bond king. "What this town needs," says Bob Stupak, the crusty owner of Vegas World, "is that scent of vice, a little sin, to stir that desire to come to Las Vegas...