Kimo’s Vegas

Bartender Tim Rita represents Hawaii in the Bombay Sapphire contest. Photo from Kimo Akane

WELCOME TO Kimo’s Vegas … The Player’s Edge!

THAT’S TIM RITA doing what he loves, and next month he’ll be doing it in Las Vegas as he represents the 808 in Bombay Sapphire’s Search for the Most Imaginative Bartender! Fifty-one mixologists from across the country will compete for the title, and if you’d like to try rolling Tim’s Shuhali Shady in the privacy of your home, here’s his imaGINative (get it?) recipe: 1.5 ounces Bombay Sapphire, 1 ounce lemon-grass cardamom, 1 ounce pomegranate syrup, .75 ounce lemon juice, .5 ounce egg white, and ginger beer/ Ipa syrup in a soda siphon.

Add all ingredients into a mixing tin, dry shake, add ice and shake some more. Pour over ice then top with ginger beer/IPA syrup from the soda siphon and garnish with lemon peel. Drop lemon zest, black peppercorn and ground Spanish almonds over cocktail.

EVERYONE KNOWS the odds of winning $1 million from McDonald’s, a casino or a state lottery are astronomical. But consider the luck of a Massachusetts couple who bought a $5 lottery ticket and threw it away. Luckily, they remembered it – and lucky they found the scratcher in the trash! Even more lucky was Joseph and Joanne Zagami’s discovery that the now small-kine dirty ticket was worth a lump sum payment of $650,000.

MILEAGE MILLIONAIRES is the nickname they give folks who collect airline miles for a hobby. Many find that unless you have a gig that puts your okole on an airplane, it can take quite a bit of time to collect enough miles to take your significant other on a “get out of the dog house” romantic getaway. The FrugalTravelGuy.com is a website filled with tips to help everyday peeps like us join that exclusive club of mile-high mileage millionaires without ever getting on a plane.

HIS FRIENDS call him “Meat,” and I guess that’s marginally better than “Loaf” or the more formal “Mr. Loaf.” The Grammy Award-winning Marvin Lee Aday will begin his Las Vegas residency Sept. 26 at Planet Hollywood.

AREA CODE RELIEF … Everyone knows if your number is the same as the area code you’re in you don’t need to dial the area code (unless you’re in the 808 and call Aunty on a Neighbor Island). Next year, folks who live in the 702 are getting a new area code, 725. Driven by the high demand for 702 digits and to help migrate Nevada to the new “interchangeable NPA codes,” those are area codes that do not have a “0” or a “1” in the middle digit. When that happens, everyone in the 702 and 725 will have to dial 10-digit numbers (area code plus number).

FOLLOW US on Twitter, like us on Facebook and get the latest Vegas news online at KimosVegas.com and every week here in MidWeek. Send me your Vegas questions, mana’o, photos and reunions to Kimo@KimosVegas.com.