Side discussion to the Vdara opening: I heard one PR person reference it as “the Vdara,” and it sounded wrong. It’s funny how some casinos need the definite article in front of them, others don’t, and others sound OK either way. I know there’s a debate about “the Wynn/Wynn,” but you’d pretty much never say, “the Circus Circus,” “the Caesars Palace,” or “the Planet Hollywood,” while you always say “the Hilton,” “the Sahara,” and “the Flamingo.”
It’s kind of like ships in Star Trek. I think on the original show they alternated between calling their ship “the Enterprise” and just “Enterprise.” I’m pretty sure that on Enterprise (the show with Scott Bakula), they mostly called the NX-01 “Enterprise.” On Deep Space Nine, they had the Defiant, and I can’t imagine someone saying, “we’ve got to beam up to Defiant.” On Voyager, though, I don’t think anyone ever talked about getting the Delta Flyer back to “the Voyager” before the subspace anomaly of the day hit. This is a show that took “the” serious: one of the main characters was just “the Doctor.” Using “the” correctly is something small but nonetheless important.
So what’s the correct usage for City Center? Here are my suggestions:
1. City Center
2. THE Harmon
3. THE Mandarin Oriental (funny, I must be giddy from all the art exposure; I first wrote that as “Mondrian Oriental”)
4. THE Crystals
5. Veer
6. Aria
I really, really hope that no one ever calls it “the Aria.” Even in a city defined by moral and linguistic relativism, that’s just wrong.