Posted on 09/15/2017 5:04:09 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
In Vegas, the only thing bigger than all the New Year’s Eve festivities is your bar tab afterward.
It’s long been the schoolyard bully of party weekends here, dismissively firing off spitballs at the Fourth of July, stuffing Memorial Day inside its locker.
But in terms of entertainment offerings, namely big-time concerts, NYE may have finally met its match in the city: Mexican Independence Day weekend.
With the focus on Latin sounds, it’s become a mammoth event.
“At this point, it parallels New Year’s Eve as far as the number of major concert events going on around the city,” says Kurt Melien, president of Live Nation Las Vegas. “If you measure it, it may even be a little bigger. We’ve got the three MGM arenas booked all weekend. We’ve got five arena shows over two days. The only date that doesn’t have a concert is the (Gennady Golovkin-Saul “Canelo” Alvarez) fight on Saturday.” As Melien underscores, Mexican Independence Day weekend has long been anchored by a big fight.
“It’s the chicken and the egg: I think the fights probably came first,” he says, “then it goes back Vincente Fernandez; he used to play here for years.”
While boxing may have once been the main attraction of the weekend, now it’s but one draw among many. And this year is its biggest yet, with nearly a dozen superstar acts hitting town in the coming days. Melien points to the opening of more and more venues locally as one of the engines driving the growth of the Mexican Independence Day festivities.
“Whether it’s the Cosmo or Axis or T-Mobile, we’ve got the opportunity to present a large collection (of artists),” he says. “It really is a de facto music festival. We’ll do well over 60,000 tickets to Latin music fans over the weekend.
As such, planning for the weekend has become a year-round endeavor: Melien says he gets to work on the following year’s Mexican Independence Day concert slate the day the weekend concludes.
“This is a 12-month process,” he notes. “We know the demand will be there.”
That demand has grown exponentially in recent years. Hey, New Year’s Eve, watch your back, dude.
“There’s been a snowball effect, in a positive way,” Melien explains. “The community has done a great job embracing the weekend. The reality is that it has become one of the biggest events of the year.
“Mexican Dependence Day”
When I lived in El Paso I was always perplexed by the Mexicans celebrating Independence day in my neighborhood since most of them were on welfare and nowhere near independent.
Mexico. One of the most reprobate nations in the history of the world. It has absolutely no redeeming social value, with the one exception being it is the birthplace of a great artist.
(1)Tequila, (2) Mescal, (3) Mexican food, and (4) Raquel Welch, are a few of the things you missed.
Oh, I forgot to mention (5)Mexican Cokes made with real cane sugar, instead of that fructose junk foisted on us in the U.S.
Tequila and mescal? No thanks. I had my share of both while in my youth, and the memory is not pleasant. Mexican food? I hate it. Raquel Welch, on the other hand.... BTW, the artist to whom I was referring was Alfredo Rodriguez. Check out his paintings. They are fantastic. He utilizes light superbly, much like Vermeer did four hundred years ago.
Classic dumbass journalist. Never finds a way to incorporate the actual date of the “independence day” in an article on “independence day”.
Only reason I would care is to learn enough to stay home on or about that date. As i do on Cinco de Mayo.
What’s the odds ICE is never there?
“...Mexican Cokes made with real cane sugar...”
Agreed.
Also, Carta Blanca beer.
Mexican independence worked out so great, that by 1846 they were practically begging the US to invade them
They love Meh-Hee-Co so much, they choose to leave it for the US.
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