Please. Don't make me leave.

So my neighborhood library closes at 6 p.m. on Fridays. Bummer. Apparently all the other wi-fi-dependent transplants have better things to do with their weekends than hang out with hyperactive children and people too cheap to get a Netflix account.

Once I realized I wouldn’t be spending my evening in a pint-sized library chair, comfortably ensconced in the company of fellow nerds, families and the assorted homeless, I panicked. Then I got restless and struck out for Fremont Street.

The tourist throngs hadn’t fully descended when I arrived, which happened to be right in the middle of a “Free Bird” interlude courtesy of Viva Vision (also known as the big-ass video canopy). There were jets, bright colors, wailing guitars. When it ended, the transfixed crowd erupted in applause worthy of, you know, an actualLynyrd Skynyrd performance.

The whole spectacle pasted an idiotic grin on my face as well. It got me thinking about Greensboro, where I just came from and where a coalition of enfeebled business types tried to stifle a club owner who’d had the audacity to install scrolling video signage on a stretch of Historic Downtown Elm Street.

So… yeah. Not in Greensboro anymore.

It was almost enough to make me want to purchase a plastic football filled with fruity beverage. That would take the edge off, I thought. But I didn’t. And the next Viva Vision broadcast — an extended commercial for LG cell phones — sort of spoiled my alcoholic appetite.

I stayed until my eyes started burning (I’m beginning to think artificial light might also require a tolerance-building). Then I went home.

If the evening taught me anything, it’s this: If the Las Vegas-Clark County Library system wants to compete, it had better start staying open later. Also, its leaders might want to consider a line of novelty drinkware.

In the year 2048, the last locals casino patron finally succumbs.

Well, that’s what you might think when you read Sustain Lane’s 2008 city sustainability rankings, which basically measure how deeply any given city is sinking the knife in poor, poor Mother Earth’s back.

Sustain Lane ranks Las Vegas No. 47 out of the nation’s 50 most populous cities, which more or less means we’re going to spontaneously combust at any moment in a face-melting eco-splosion. It’s the stuff like no local agriculture, bad public transportation, high traffic congestion, sketchy water supply and air you can taste that really drags us down.

On the upside, we get props for pursuing green building initiatives (overweening corporate tax breaks notwithstanding) and, uh, we’re at relatively low risk of a natural disaster (that is, unless you consider Gov. Jim Gibbons not so much a person as a particularly creative and malevolent manifestation of bad weather.)

Read the Vegas ranking here. Ignore that line that sums us up as “High Tech Hub Makes Strides.” That’s either a mistake or the people at Sustain Lane consider payday loan centers and Wal-Marts part of the tech sector.

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley today made good on her promise to begin getting some grassroots attention on the state’s ever-shrinking budget. At a news conference at the Grant Sawyer state office building, Buckley announced a series of town hall meetings throughout Nevada to examine the state’s budget and get idea for funding it, as well as setting priorities for state spending and coming up with a realistic rainy day fund to avoid the boom-and-bust cycle of state budgeting.

“In our state, I think we’re lacking vision and leadership,” Buckley said. She aims to provide the same by asking regular folk what they think the state ought to be spending its money on, and where that money should come from. And while she did mention reviewing and perhaps eliminating some tax exemptions, she specifically said she wasn’t bringing new taxes to the table.

“I am not proposing new taxes through this process,” she said.

Damn it all. For a second, we thought it was taxing time!

The meetings — one set for Sept. 29 in Las Vegas and another Oct. 6 in Reno — are interesting inasmuch as its usually the governor who sets the tone for the state’s future. But since Nevada is saddled with Gov. Jim “No Tax McCuttington” Gibbons for as much as two long years, give or take a recall, others clearly are taking up the slack.

“I’d say we haven’t seen a lot of leadership or vision coming from the governor’s office,” Buckley said.

Now, the cynical among us might add things up thusly: A tour of Nevada + chatting about the future of the state + a term-limited, high-profile speaker + criticizing the Republican incumbent = Buckley for governor! But the speaker demurred on future political plans.

“This is about coming up with solutions before the next Legislative session,” she said. “I am speaker for the state of Nevada, not just for Clark County.” And while we tried, like, 40 times to get Buckley to admit some gubernatorial connection to her tour, we were unsuccessful.

Some might say that Buckley’s approach is simplistic: Getting community buy-in to a set of discrete goals that lead to prioritizing state spending and decisions that flow from that process is pretty much common sense, right? It’s what businesses do when they devise mission statements, or vision statements, or mantras, or whatever. But given that this is Nevada, where the spending seems to go where the most powerful lawmakers can tug it in the last 12 hours of a legislative session, the common-sense approach just might be worth a try.

John McCain practices for Friday's debate.

Reader T.W. Lindenberg writes:

CityLife’s last issue (Sept. 11-17) was special. The series of columns and articles each in their own way looked at the state of the current Republican Party, and one has to be alarmed at the direction this party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has taken. Whether one looks at Nevada’s Republicans or the national leaders in Washington, the absence of any serious concern for the social and economic problems that beset this country is cause for some deep reflection. As the events of the last month have shown, America’s economic problems require long-range thinking not popular vote getting cliches.

The drift of the party from the days of moderates as Nelson Rockefeller, Herbert Lehman or William Scranton to the stalwarts of the rightist Republicans today isn’t such a mystery as it is a sad commentary on American politics over the last 35 years. Yet with the wealth generated by enterprising Americans over this period, a view began to develop that the presidency can be obtained regardless of the means used to that end. And that end so often led to unheard-of wealth for those holding the levers of power. This power can also be used to pursue war aims in the name of protecting America’s image or to pull in more money.

So, with this recent history in mind, it should not be too surprising that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was selected by the Republican Sen. John McCain; and didn’t McCain only confirm a long-held view that Republicans will appeal to any level of demagoguery or change one’s beliefs to suit the moment? (See McCain’s switch from free-marketer to a populist bent as government intervention.)

These circumstances will certainly play out in the next few weeks as the McCain campaign now senses that Barack Obama can lose if the McCain staff resorts to that vapid form that has served the Republicans so well over the last decades.

I do believe CityLife writers brought these ideas out with considerable clarity for those interested in paying attention to the direction our shameless leaders have taken us.

Welcome to my humble abode. Watch your step around the champagne moat.

Nothing like a little searing irony to spike the usual puffhood that marks the Review-Journal’s real-estate coverage, which these days seems largely composed of investment consultants and self-styled market analysts crying, “The bottom is just around the corner! Just you wait! This just a momentary dip!” while leaping like hungry carp in tasseled loafers. This one’s about the brain behind MacDonald Highlands — you know, the swath of opulent monsterhood carved into the side of the McCullough Mountains — saying, “No retreat! No surrender!” in the face of our current economicocalypse. But it was the part I bolded that really stings.

Developer Rich MacDonald understands the challenges of the local real estate market, yet he’s proceeding with an estimated $160 million to $180 million in new-home construction and community enhancements at MacDonald Highlands.

About 40 custom homes are under construction in the 1,200-acre master-planned community off Horizon Ridge Parkway in Henderson, carved into the hillside of the McCullough Mountains. Most of them are in the range of $3 million to $4 million.

“People are starting to combine lots here,” MacDonald said as he showed a $9 million mansion being built with a waterfront view on DragonRidge Golf Course. “You see how modest it is.”