Joe Downtown: Business owners talk aliens, politics and fashion

If nothing else, downtown Las Vegas has become home to those seeking their fortune.

Everyone has heard of Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project and its $350 million dollar investment in downtown’s redevelopment.

Like miners to California’s gold rush, swarms of people in the past two years have moved to town seeking a slice of that pie.

And then there are those doing it largely on their own.

On this episode of the “Joe Downtown Show,” which airs at 7 a.m. Wednesdays on KUNV, 91.5 FM, one of my guests is George Harris, owner of Mundo restaurant at World Market Center and Mingo, a bar/restaurant in Art Square. He also distills his Alien brand tequila.

Harris is also a political junkie. His dossier reads like a who’s who of Republican operatives. He once published a conservative/libertarian magazine called Liberty Watch, was former finance chair for the state GOP, ran for Las Vegas mayor in 2011 with an appeal to rid downtown streets of parking meters, and was national co-chair of Newt Gingrich’s finance team in 2012.

He knows the city and its politics, yet his stories of his struggles with city officials to get his businesses off the ground are only slightly less than nightmarish.

Harris, too, didn’t name his tequila Alien on a whim. Listen toward the end of the show about his military job and his easy test to see if you’re an alien-human hybrid. That’s not a typo.

The second half of the show features Daniella Capitano.

Capitano will be one of the few new business owners in the Downtown Container Park who is doing it on her own. She is using her savings to bring American Vagabond, a women’s fashion boutique currently housed in tiny room in the Emergency Arts building downtown, to the park.

It’s a daunting and scary experience, and one that Capitano relishes as a new business owner trying to break into the fashion industry.

Joe Downtown Radio

Tequila, fashion and politics

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Joe Schoenmann talks to George Harris, owner of Mundo restaurant at World Market Center, and Mingo, a bar/restaurant in Art Square, tequila distiller and political junkie. In the second half, Joe chats with Daniella Capitano, who is bringing American Vagabond, a women’s fashion boutique currently housed in a tiny room in the Emergency Arts building downtown, to the new Container Park.

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