The Eastside Cannery is opening on the Strip on Thursday. Not that Strip. This would be the Boulder Strip on Boulder Highway, a few miles yet a world away from the fabulous Las Vegas Strip.

The only way to confuse the two: if you were drunk, lost without glasses and stumbled into the knock off sign (pictured).

In most other cites a new 16-story hotel with 307 guest rooms, six restaurants, a nightclub and a  300-seat concert venue might get a lot of attention. But here, as nice as the new place might be, even the more adventurous tourists will go only so far as to brave downtown.

So Eastside Cannery like Sam's Town (which got a brief burst of national love as the title of the sophomore slump Killers' disc) will mostly be a place for locals. Still, if the price is right, the new building looks nice from outside and is only a short taxi ride to the other Strip. You might consider this as a budget alternative to the Strip. The truth is that any new hotel rooms are likely to be far nicer than the rooms I have been at in some of the older Strip hotels.
(Photos by Sarah Gerke)