These days, Facebook seems to be the first place you catch wind of any major life events in your circle of friends (or circle of random people you’ve “friended” on the internet if you’re less choosy about such things). Pregnancies. Births. Engagements. Weddings. Divorces. And, yes, deaths. The longer this platform exists, the longer I’ve learned of friends passing on, either from loved ones, mutual friends, or in the worst cases, when I notice their profile hasn’t been updated in several months and realize something bad has happened.
It happened again today, when I logged on to see a post from Brian Weiss mourning the death of Lenadams Dorris, the founder of the Newsroom coffeehouse, which many (including yours truly) credit with kicking off the popularization of “European-style” cafes that dominated the Las Vegas cultural scene in the late 1980s through the early 2000s. He also famously invested heavily in Julie Brewer’s Enigma Cafe downtown, transforming it into a garden oasis and helping to keep it afloat long enough to see the birth of the Las Vegas Arts District, though not long enough to enjoy its eventual success.
I knew Len only casually prior to his partnering up with Julie. I’d see him around other coffee shops, but I didn’t know anything about his history with the Newsroom or anything else, really. Not his radio commentaries, not his political ambitions, not his involvement in the art scene. I had been a regular at Enigma since it was just the little coffee shop behind Vintage Madness, a secondhand store I loved to frequent in high school. So, when Len jumped on board the Enigma co-ownership train, I was still barely out of my teens, and in my purview, he was responsible for the changes that were making Enigma more palatable to yuppie-types and less appealing for grungy kids like me. Even after letting my band(s) perform there multiple times. I was an insufferable jerk back then.
Worse, I was an insufferable jerk with a platform to air my grievances: a relatively well-read ‘zine that I published for several years. To me, everyone was a sell-out. And apparently, Lenadams Dorris was on that list at some point. I don’t remember writing some mean stuff about him, but I guess I did, after one of my band’s gigs at Enigma. Years later, when I was writing a book about the 1990s cultural scene in Las Vegas, I reached out to Len to contribute his perspective. It was only then I learned that he read whatever garbage I wrote, and was rightfully hurt by it. But we got past that, in part because, as Len told me, “I liked the work you were doing. You’ve certainly proven yourself as a legitimate culture-maker around these parts.”
With the air cleared up, we forged forward quite collaboratively. Len was very open and giving in providing material for my various journalistic projects, including the 2006 Las Vegas Weekly oral history of the Maryland Parkway cultural scene, and then of course, the documentary that was inspired by it, Parkway of Broken Dreams. I was adamant about getting to Len, who had been living in Ann Arbor, Michigan since the 2000s, in order to interview him for the film. He had been in poor health (the main reason he moved to Michigan), and I knew it was important to get his stories, not just related to the Newsroom, but also Enigma, and his other endeavors, captured for posterity. And last summer, I made it happen, thankfully.
We’ve lost a lot of friends and acquaintances over the years who had connections to the informal family that spun out of the Vegas art and culture scene of the 1990s, including the aforementioned Julie Brewer, who also was a huge influence on everything that came after, and personally, one of my favorite people ever (whose loss I still feel to this day). Last month, the modern Vegas art scene lost another icon, Alexander P. Huerta. It’s a sharp reminder of how limited our time on this planet really is, and also why this film, and the other historical journalistic work I’ve worked on, is so important to produce.
I’m glad I got to say goodbye to Len one last time, in person. And I’m glad that when I did, it was as friends. Or, really, in the scheme of things, as members of a weird virtual family.