ELV has been a little busy lately, so it escaped his notice on March 31st that Mike Dobranski had thrown in the towel on the Tasting Las Vegas food/restaurant blog.
Dobranski could be infuriatingly personal, profane, and poorly pedantic, but he was always a fun read. He mentions his blogging having turned “(from)…a hobby into being a chore.” and his retirement points up what ELV (and others) have either known or discovered from the beginning: to have a successful blog/website about anything, be you Matt Drudge or someone who likes strange animal stories, you must be truly, madly, deeply obsessed with your subject. Anything less than maniacal commitment to the website (and the gigantic, tidal wave of a time suck in maintaining it) will crash upon the rocks of good intentions.
One of the reasons we get rather short-tempered when reader/commenters complain about what we should be writing about is because of the time, energy and (let us not forget) the $$$ it takes to keep this up. We love it of course, but we’re usually in no mood for someone opining about “filler” posts, or griping when we haven’t posted anything in a few days. (Remember, as ELV always says: “At Eating Las Vegas, your dissatisfaction guaranteed or your money back!”)
As we’ve also always said: Just like porn stars, many think they can keep it up, but few can. Mike Dobranski found this out for himself, and despite our many friendly disagreements with the bloke, his voice on the Vegas food scene will be missed.
PS: We haven’t talked with Mike, but another reason he might have shut things down is the food/restaurant scene in Las Vegas isn’t half as interesting now as it was even a few years ago, much less ten years ago. (Sorry food trucks, we love you, but your food and phenomenon is only so scintillating.)
Now that the Cosmo is open, it will be a long time before another seismic shudder goes through this gastronomic ground in the High Mojave. The sea change has occurred, and what we will see over the next five years or so is a gradual maturation of our food and restaurant scene. It will be fascinating to chronicle (in a small bore sort of way), but the cataclysmic changes are over with for the time being. ELV is just thankful he had a front row seat for the whole show.
I expected to read something completely different. Very nicely said, John.
Kudos to ELV and all other food critics. As advocates for the food, recipe’s and clients, [and NOT the restaurants, chefs or someone’s ego] your’s is a thankless job. I wish I had the stomach for all you endure on our behalf.
Tom
Hey, it is a job. If it weren’t it would be called ‘fun.’
If there is one thing I’ve noticed it is that our food critics are completely over-compensated for their work. After having possible choices of Linguistics, English, Pre-Law and other suitably useless majors in college, they (the three mousseketeers) have trundled on to become the top of their chosen profession. (Evidently the VIP Service major was filled when they went to school). If we didn’t get them fed regularly they probably would be homeless. Keep on working, Gents!
You could always mystery shop those restaurants and get paid to eat there. It makes it much more fun. The IMSC (Independent Mystery Shoppers’ Conference will be taking place at the Tropicana in October if you want to learn more.
Reminds me of that old saying about a tree falling in an empty forest.
Would an empty forest have any trees?
(Sorry, it’s getting late in a looong day.)