Las Vegas Mixtape v43: Anything Goes Comedy, Essential Empanadas, and Punk’s Unhinged Stories

Track #1 (of 5): Jiaoying Summers @Copa Room inside Tuscany Suites

With these five “tracks,” “Las Vegas Mixtape” keeps the hits coming.

There’s off-Strip comedy by a viral sensation. Plus, off-the-beaten path mom-and-pop empanadas and an excursion train ride in nearby Boulder City.  You can also read about wild punk rock stories shared in a museum by those who live to tell. And more. 

Comedy, glamour, and fire. (Image: Vegas 411)

“The BTS boys are beautiful—I would love to breastfeed all of them.”

That was the fiery and glamorous comedian Jiaoying Summers deliciously riffing onstage about the South Korean boy band superstars at the packed Copa Room inside Tuscany Suites & Casino.

This is the kind of sly humor you can expect to hear when the Chinese American artist returns to the Strip-adjacent venue on December 17 for the third appearance of her four-show monthly residency. The viral sensation is armed with punchlines that sneak up on you and material that unflinchingly covers race, growing up in China, and her life as a divorced single mom who clearly knows how to take matters into her own hands. The 35-year-old Summers immigrated to the US at 18 from China, first attending college in Kentucky and eventually moving to L.A., where she was smart and fortunate enough to buy the Hollywood Comedy Club on Melrose Avenue.

“I realized that there’s not enough stage time for me to become great,” Summers recently told John Katsilometes of the Review Journal, “so I bought a comedy club in Los Angeles, literally two weeks after I started comedy. I still own the club. I actually just expanded into another room.”

Can’t make it to Jiaoying’s two remaining shows at the Copa Room? Tune in to see first hour-long comedy special “What Specie Are You?” on Hulu and Disney+ and watch the sparks fly.