Category 10 opened its doors on a Thursday morning and by evening the rooftop bar was already packed, the line outside stretched the length of a city block, and a band called the Maui Country Band was playing something described as island country reggae on a stage big enough to anchor a proper Saturday night. The Las Vegas strip keeps reinventing itself, and The Laughing Lion shows us that latest wave of openings arrived all at once, each one competing for the same foot traffic in the same two-mile corridor. From a Southern chicken joint with two bars and a dice-roll giveaway to a retro arcade where a single drink unlocks a night of free games, the strip in October delivered a run of debuts that ranged from genuinely surprising to almost absurdly ambitious.
Three floors, a whiskey lounge, and nowhere to smoke a cigar
Category 10 is a Luke Combs-branded live music venue, bar, and restaurant built into the space that used to be Margaritaville, and it is probably the largest entertainment venue to open on the strip in the past year. The ground floor alone holds two separate bars, the bigger of which the Laughing Lion called ‘huge’ twice in the same breath before moving on. A neon bar tucked into a smaller section offers a more intimate feel, lined with television screens and framed by some of Luke Combs’ award plaques. The second floor houses a premium whiskey lounge called the Steel, where Combs reportedly handpicked the bourbon selection himself, and the barrel design on the shelves is striking enough that it stopped the tour cold for a moment. The third floor is an open-air rooftop with lounge chairs, a DJ setup, a stage, another bar, and a direct sightline to the guitar marquee at a neighboring property. One question that came up immediately: can you smoke a cigar up here? Staff checked, conferred, and confirmed that the entire venue, including the roof, is non-smoking. The rollup door along one wall, left over from the Margaritaville days, was still closed, though it looked like it might open for air access on busier nights. F1 Grand Prix construction is visible from the balcony, cranes and lighting rigs going up in full swing just off the strip.
Bojangles rolled the dice and the blueberry shake won anyway
At the LINQ Promenade, right in the corridor between two major hotel properties, Bojangles held its own grand opening the same week. This location, according to Janette, the senior VP who secured the property, is the only Bojangles in existence with two bars and a live music stage. A giant dice sits near the entrance: roll it, win a free item. One roll landed on lemonade. Another, negotiated by charm and some persistence at the counter, became a Boberry milkshake anyway, courtesy of a staff member named Dominique. The rating given on the spot: nine out of ten, same as the last time. The band setting up inside that day was Status the Band, Kenzo (The Laughing Lion), listed their range as ‘everything from Snoop Dogg to Van Halen to Prince to Blink-182.’ Through a small window cut into the side of the building, visitors can watch staff make biscuits by hand from scratch, following the same seven-step process the chain has used since 1977: fluff, mix, knead, roll, cut, bake, butter.
Five Guys with vintage slot machines and an $8.66 vodka cranberry
A second Five Guys location opened on the strip that same week, directly across from a large candy retailer. It is a two-floor operation, smaller than the other strip location near the Venetian, but it has things that one does not: a full bar upstairs, a DJ on Fridays and Saturdays, a balcony with misters, and a row of vintage slot machines that play with no real money involved. ‘All the fun of it with none of the risk,’ a staff member said, which is about as good a summary of the concept as anyone could offer. A vodka cranberry at the upstairs bar runs $8.66, described by staff as well pricing. A strawberry shake at the street-level window, made with real strawberries on a vanilla base, costs $7.59. The free peanuts, fresh from Idaho, are still part of the deal.
One blueberry milkshake, order number 29
At the Bojangles counter, after the dice roll and the redemption and the back-and-forth over sizes (‘it’s only available in one size, you’ll get to see the size when you get it’), order number 29 was called and a Boberry milkshake appeared. It looked smaller than expected. It tasted like nine out of ten.
The Bonus Round bar and arcade, a 21-and-over-only room tucked into the same stretch of the strip, was almost missed entirely. One drink gets you access to every machine in the building: Galaga, Street Fighter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Donkey Kong, Tekken 3, a multiplayer Pac-Man cabinet, console setups running Nintendo 64 and what looked like Sega hardware, and a power hour running Monday through Thursday at five dollars. The arcade games were in unusually clean condition for the format. Category 10’s rollup door, meanwhile, stayed closed all night, the old Margaritaville hardware still waiting to see what the new place decides to do with it.
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