Replica

Resorts World Las Vegas, the city's first new mega-resort in six years and scheduled to open in 2016, will have such Asian influences as a replica of the great Wall of China and a panda preserve. Resorts World is to open on the site of the former Stardust Hotel-Casino. The 87-acre development will rise at Las Vegas Boulevard and Desert Inn Road, just south of Circus Circus  and cater-corner from Wynn-Encore. The multibillion-dollar project is the brainchild of Malaysia-based Genting Group . The development will feature 3,500 hotel rooms in its first phase, along with a multi-story casino, upscale restaurants and high-end shopping.

Resorts World Las Vegas, the city's first new mega-resort in six years and scheduled to open in 2016, will have such Asian influences as a replica of the great Wall of China and a panda preserve. Resorts World is to open on the site of the former Stardust Hotel-Casino. The 87-acre development will rise at Las Vegas Boulevard and Desert Inn Road, just south of Circus Circus  and cater-corner from Wynn-Encore. The multibillion-dollar project is the brainchild of Malaysia-based Genting Group . The development will feature 3,500 hotel rooms in its first phase, along with a multi-story casino, upscale restaurants and high-end shopping.

PHILADELPHIA - Copies of famous paintings are everywhere: on dorm-room walls, on computer screens and lately pouring forth from Chinese art factories, which can churn out a hundred passable Rembrandts in a week. Architectural copies, on the other hand, remain rare, especially at full scale. Las Vegas and the original Getty Museum aside, it's not often you see an important building, in whole or in part, rebuilt in one location to match the original in another. The Barnes Foundation, in moving its spectacularly deep collection of postimpressionist and early Modern art from suburban Merion, Pa., to the center of Philadelphia, will on May 19 open a high-culture, high-stakes experiment in the second kind of duplication.

Most restaurant owners shudder when a food truck pulls up outside. Not Mike Israyelyan. He invited one inside the Hollywood restaurant he calls Calle Tacos. Israyelyan and partners Robert Vinokur and Dorian and Javier Villaseñor spent $20,000 to have the side of a 22-foot-long food truck measured and an exact copy fabricated out of stainless steel. Then they equipped it with lights and tires, covered it with a colorful vinyl logo wrap and hauled it on a flatbed to Hollywood Boulevard.

Re "David's New Resting Place" (Calendar, July 15): As an alumnus of California State University, Fullerton, I was dismayed to see the replica of the statue of David in his "final resting place." The sight of David in pieces on the lawn offends my sense of classic art. Prof. Don Lagerberg's opinion that the broken statue is an image that belongs to everyone is a bit presumptuous. I, for one, do not identify with it except in a negative way. I am appalled at the lack of respect shown to this great work of art. Unfortunately, with Mickey Mouse ideas like those expressed by Lagerberg, it is no wonder that CSUF is frequently referred to as Cal State Disneyland.

Lady Luck or Lady Liberty? Las Vegas edged out the Big Apple on a postage stamp that bears the likeness of Sin City's diminutive replica of the New York City landmark instead of the original. It wasn't intentional, U.S. Postal Service officials said, but there are no plans to correct the mistake. Though 2 billion of the stamps were issued Dec. 1 -- and 3 billion were printed -- the agency learned of the discrepancy only last month. "A stamp collector looked at the image and noticed that's not the original, that's the replica, the Las Vegas version," said Roy Betts, manager of community relations for the Postal Service in Washington.

Regarding Barton English's plans to strip the historic Blacker House of its original doors and replace them with replicas (Times, Jan. 7): While it is true that English owns the deed to the Blacker House, he doesn't own the house any more than an art collector owns his current collection. He has been entrusted to preserve and maintain one of the Greene brothers' finest examples of bungalow architecture. He has no right to remove the stained-glass doors, which demonstrate so well the appreciation of nature that the Craftsman movement represented.

An AIDS activist group briefly inflated a 15-foot replica of a condom on the roof of Sen. Jesse Helms' suburban Washington home. Seven protesters used two blowers powered by a portable generator to fill the nylon replica with air, said Peter Staley, 30, a member of Treatment Action Guerrillas. The group was protesting positions the North Carolina Republican has taken on several AIDS-related issues, Staley said. There were no arrests.

Home buyers in Taiwan will soon be able to get design ideas from the replica of a Laguna Niguel house. The Taiwanese house will be a replica of the 4,346-square-foot Steinway design at Quintessence, a development of Presley of Southern California. It will be used as a not-for-sale model in a new tract of custom houses in a Taipei suburb. Some features of the Taiwanese house will differ from the original.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has endorsed a proposal to erect a Chinatown replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue, toppled by tanks during the bloody confrontation in Beijing's Tian An Men Square. A coalition of Chinese groups in the San Francisco Bay Area is seeking to raise up to $250,000 to build the 30-foot sculpture, which still requires approval by the Parks and Recreation Commission and the Arts Commission. "It would be temporary," said Thomas Marsh, a sculptor promoting the project.

The San Juan Capistrano dinosaur is one step closer to extinction after city planning commissioners voted to evict the 40-foot long Apatosaurus statue from a petting zoo in the heart of the city's oldest neighborhood. Commissioners said the dinosaur, which peeks onto historic Los Rios Street from the tiny zoo, does not reflect the history of San Juan, which would have been underwater when such animals roamed the Earth. Carolyn Franks, owner of Zoomars Petting Zoo, said she plans to appeal the commission's 4-2 vote.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles is planning to issue nostalgia-stoking replicas of the yellow, blue and black plates that graced the state's bumpers from the 1950s to the 1970s. But will classic car collectors buy into the impostors? Starting Tuesday, the DMV will take orders for the so-called legacy license plates. If the department gets at least 7,500 orders, it will print them, said spokeswoman Jessica Gonzalez. But if that threshold isn't met by Jan. 1, 2015, officials will refund the $50 application fee. Though any driver can purchase a legacy plate for any year of car, commercial vehicle, motorcycle or trailer, the program's success depends, at least in part, on classic car enthusiasts.

Spear guns, inert grenades, stun guns and loaded 9mm handguns. The holidays bring no letup in the number of real and replica weapons that Transportation Security Administration officers uncover at airport checkpoints. But finding them is more of a challenge at this time of year with the swelling volume of bags, many filled with food and novelties. Take the Christmas lights made of real green and red shotgun shells that were recently discovered in a carry-on bag at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.

A 10,000-square-foot replica of the Disneyland Haunted Mansion attraction minus the 999 ghosts will go up for auction Wednesday on eBay for $873,000 or the next highest bid. Photos: A virtual tour of the Haunted Mansion replica home The ghostly retreat, custom-built in 1996, was designed to fit in with the New Orleans-style homes of the Sweet Bottom Plantation neighborhood, a private, gated community in Duluth, Ga., near Atlanta. The replica Haunted Mansion will be listed on eBay Auctions for 30 days starting Wednesday with a $873,000 Buy-It-Now price tag. The seller can accept or deny any lower bids.

It was 70 years ago that a tiny shop on Venice Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles produced its last motorcycle. At the time, Crocker Motorcycle Co. made the most powerful race bikes of any American manufacturer. But like other small companies facing supply shortages during World War II, it was forced to close, leaving only a few dozen bikes that have become a favorite of collectors and enthusiasts. Steve McQueen owned one before it was sold in auction for more than $276,000. Now the Crocker is back, with a modern, limited-production version of the Big Tank V-twin.

INDIO, Calif. - In one corner stands a music promoter that made its mark in L.A.'s punk scene, throwing gritty events at warehouses and velodromes, giving voice to songs like "Beat Me Senseless" and "I Kill Children" before birthing an annual desert bacchanal that might be the world's most successful music festival. In the other corner is the master-planned community that put the O.C. in Orange County, where safety, schooling and temperance are hallmarks and a homeowners association can overrule one's choice of house paint.

One man's decision to make a side trip to see a giant replica of a dumpling on a fork has led to a quest to record all big and tacky monuments across Canada that can be found only in towns too tiny to bear notice. "It's a hobby," David Yanciw, 33, said Tuesday, explaining how two years ago he felt compelled on a car trip to stop and see the Glendon piroshki--an oversize monument to Ukraine's national dish.

A 10,000-square-foot replica of the Disneyland Haunted Mansion attraction minus the 999 ghosts will go up for auction Wednesday on eBay for $873,000 or the next highest bid. Photos: A virtual tour of the Haunted Mansion replica home The ghostly retreat, custom-built in 1996, was designed to fit in with the New Orleans-style homes of the Sweet Bottom Plantation neighborhood, a private, gated community in Duluth, Ga., near Atlanta. The replica Haunted Mansion will be listed on eBay Auctions for 30 days starting Wednesday with a $873,000 Buy-It-Now price tag. The seller can accept or deny any lower bids.

PHILADELPHIA - Copies of famous paintings are everywhere: on dorm-room walls, on computer screens and lately pouring forth from Chinese art factories, which can churn out a hundred passable Rembrandts in a week. Architectural copies, on the other hand, remain rare, especially at full scale. Las Vegas and the original Getty Museum aside, it's not often you see an important building, in whole or in part, rebuilt in one location to match the original in another. The Barnes Foundation, in moving its spectacularly deep collection of postimpressionist and early Modern art from suburban Merion, Pa., to the center of Philadelphia, will on May 19 open a high-culture, high-stakes experiment in the second kind of duplication.

At dawn on the dock, a few sailors kiss spouses and dogs goodbye. Then we muster on the quarterdeck: 17 crew (nine volunteers and eight professional sailors) ranging from a 19-year-old South Carolina college student to a 76-year-old Michigan farmer. I have cruised the South Pacific, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean on the most luxurious ships afloat and have been crew on sailing and racing sailboats for decades in inland lakes, the Great Lakes and the Caribbean. As a volunteer on a tall ship, however, I knew I'd have a rare chance to learn classic skills and be part of a genuine adventure.