Penn & Teller Court the Media With Street Renaming in Their Honor
Magicians Penn Jillette and Teller (née Raymond Joseph Teller) now have a street named after them and it’s adorable.
A section of Viking Road, which runs along the duo’s longtime home, Rio Las Vegas, has been renamed Penn & Teller Court.
Short road, long legacy. Let’s dive into today’s P.R. opportunity the local news just cut and pasted from a news release because they’re busy reporting about a rat chewing off a woman’s finger nails. We are not making this up.
Unlike traditional media, we care about you and think you should be able to find Penn & Teller Court. Let’s just say that if you blink, you might miss it.
That’s because Penn & Teller Court stretches a petite 667 feet.
To put that into perspective, 667 feet is about the length of the base of the Luxor pyramid in Las Vegas. It’s the distance between Wynn and Encore. It’s the distance between the Slotzilla zipline and Binion’s. It’s the distance between The Strat and a gaping stab wound.
Penn & Teller Court was initiated by Penn and Teller’s manager, Glen Alai, along with the owners of Rio, Dreamscape.
The original pitch was to the rename the baby street Penn & Teller Drive, but county officials came to their senses.
There’s actually a whole set of guidelines for what’s designated as a road or drive or court. Cities and counties usually follow naming conventions to help emergency services, developers, and the public distinguish between types of roadways.
A street runs in a straight line and connects to other roads on both ends. Avenues run perpendicular to streets. “Road” is a generic term which you can slap on pretty much anything. A drive is winding, often following the natural topography of the land. A boulevard is a wide, multi-lane roadway, often landscaped with medians or trees. Lanes are narrow roads, sometimes rural or residential, often less traveled.
A court is a short street or cul-de-sac that ends in a turnaround. Courts typically don’t connect to other streets, hence the term’s association with quiet, self-contained roads. They often imply intimacy, privacy or exclusivity. “Court,” then, is perfect for honoring a pair of Vegas icons without overstating the geography.
Don’t get us started about place, ways, terraces, circles and loops.
Ultimately, it’s not the size of one’s road, but the journey one’s taken arriving there.
And Penn and Teller have traveled longly.
Penn and Teller have been a team for more than 50 years. Their 25th anniversary at Rio happens in January 2026.
Penn Jillette (70) and Teller (77) first met in 1975 when introduced by a mutual acquaintance, Weir Chrisemer. They performed their first show together at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.
Originally part of a trio called The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society, Penn and Teller eventually evolved into the two-person act we all know and love today.
Well, maybe not all of us. Penn and Teller aren’t for everyone. Their show is for the smart people, several of whom are still among us despite all the evidence on Twitter. Ahem.
Penn and Teller have built a career that blends illusion, comedy, skepticism and showmanship. Onstage, Penn talks, Teller doesn’t. Yes, Teller can talk and often does, offstage.
Penn and Teller have done what they do so long, they have done everything at one point or another. Their New York and Broadway stints, television series and theatrical productions have made them two of the most recognizable magicians in the world.
Their show, “Penn & Teller: Fool Us!” is on the CW. The CW is like a TV network, just without all the viewers and ad revenue.
Penn is married to Emily Zolten Jillette (they were married in 2004) and the couple has two children, Zolten and Moxie “Luka” CrimeFighter.
Teller prefers to keep his personal life discreet. There is no public record of Teller being married or having children.
Jillette has a number of outspoken stances and is never shy about expressing them: Skepticism, atheism, libertarianism. He’s often critical of pseudoscience, government overreach and cults (also known as organized religion).
Penn and Teller’s willingness to not just perform magic but to expose illusions remains a defining, and sometimes polarizing, aspect of their legacy. We’re pretty sure Teller agrees, but he tends to be less public about his views.
Penn and Teller’s longevity is simply remarkable.
Even when Caesars Entertainment sold Rio to Dreamscape, Penn and Teller stayed on at the off-Strip resort.
How can an act that’s been in Las Vegas for a quarter century whip up some media attention? Street renaming and official proclamations, of course. You know, the stuff you do when the P.R.s can’t come with any original ideas, like stars on walks of fame, world records, National Whatever Days, keys to the city, turning lights off in honor of things, la-dee-dah.
Minimal cost and maximal coverage by local TV news (total viewership, 114, mostly in nursing homes).
Whatever happened to spectacle? Whatever happened to P.R. stunts? Bellagio drops a boat into their lake and it results in a collective yawn.
It’s freaking Penn and Teller. They could’ve made worldwide news if they’d done something crazy. They shoot guns at each other’s faces! This trick is very complicated and it has stunned audiences for 25 years.
Spoiler alert.
The great thing about sharing Penn and Teller’s secrets is they’ve made a career out of revealing how tricks are done, so they can’t get mad.
Penn & Teller don’t really need publicity, but if they’re going to be dragged out of their robes and slippers, have them do something wild!
These are the guys who dumped live maggots and cockroaches on David Letterman’s desk. They performed a card trick using two forklifts and oversized metal playing cards weighing about 1,000 pounds.
Where are the watertanks and nailguns and hand stabs and Teller’s head encased in cement?
This media event? Penn and Teller held street signs with the Clark County Commissioner.
Come on! Age is just a number!
Blow something up. Turn something into something disgusting.
They took part of Viking Road, so castrate a viking! Now you see it, now you don’t. Worldwide headlines.
Eh, come to think of it, Penn and Teller have earned the right to coast a little.
They’ve reached the pinnacle of Las Vegas entertainment success.
Penn and Teller are the success against which all future magic/comedy residencies will be compared.
These mischievous miscreants are woven into the fabric of Las Vegas and their court is well-deserved.
Drive the length of Penn & Teller Court in their honor. It will only use less than an ounce of gas. Round trip. If your car gets 35 miles per gallon, we aren’t kidding.
Then see Penn and Teller’s show at Rio. It’s a Las Vegas must-do, like the Bellagio fountains, Fremont Street Experience and copulating on a balcony at Cosmo.
Leave your thoughts on “Penn & Teller Court the Media With Street Renaming in Their Honor”