Parkway of Broken Dreams

In the early 1990s, UNLV-adjacent thoroughfare Maryland Parkway was the thriving center of cultural activity in Las Vegas, where college students and the creative class of the city came to study, socialize, dine and shop. By the dawn of the 2000s, however, that scene almost entirely disappeared. College rock programming was cancelled. Record stores went under. Coffeehouses shuttered. The art and music scene, for the most part, moved downtown, and Maryland Parkway today looks very different: rising new UNLV construction projects mixed with a collection of decades-old shopping centers and proliferation of chain restaurants. How did Maryland Parkway go from cultural center to cultural wasteland in such a short time? Through archival footage and interviews with business owners, journalists, musicians, artists and scenesters from that era, PARKWAY OF BROKEN DREAMS tells the story of how alternative culture on Maryland Parkway was born, thrived, and, eventually, faded away.