Bleeding Neon is the personal blog of writer, illustrator, musician, entrepreneur and busybody Pj Perez, who has spent the better part of his 20-plus years in Sin City embedding himself in and around the creative culture of this surprisingly diverse city. He’s been a performing and recording musician, a record label owner, a publisher, publicist, music producer, graphic designer, web maven, poet, playwright, actor and most prominently, contributing writer to a number of publications, including Rolling Stone, ART + Living, Las Vegas CityLife, Las Vegas Mercury, Scope, Las Vegas Weekly, Vegas Seven and more.

Introduced to the coffeehouse art and poetry scene at the tender age of 16, Perez quickly made the move from spectator to performer, regularly making the rounds in the Vegas poetry circuit. This led to connections with musicians, writers, artists, DJs and much more of the “creative class.”

After becoming involved with the underground rave scene, Perez began to publish Five/One Magazine, a ‘zine for Las Vegas culture that, in its five years of existence, developed into a production company that included a record label, graphic design firm, publishing arm and multiple websites.

With years of playing in local bands, running Five/One Magazine and its accompanying website and maintaining Domino Effect Records from his home office behind him, Perez took about six months off to plot his next media assault: indieVegas.com. The website, launched in July 2000, provided an on-line connecting point for Vegas music, arts, activism, culture and more. Aside from events calendars, website reviews, scene news and more, Perez innovated with an on-line gallery for underground artists and an annual music poll/awards program called the indieVegas Arts and Music Awards (or iAMs for short).

Perez began writing regularly for the CityLife in the fall of 2001, and by the next year, he had to shut down indieVegas.com due to increased overlap between maintaining the site content and developing new stories for various sections of the weekly paper, especially arts and entertainment.

In 2004, after three years in the masthead at CityLife, Perez joined the Greenspun family of companies at VEGAS.com, and concurrently began contributing to the Weekly, also owned by the Greenspuns.

As senior content developer at VEGAS.com, Perez assisted in the coordination of the on-line presence of Greenspun Media Group publications including the Weekly, In Business Las Vegas, VegasGolfer and Las Vegas Life. He regularly contributed previews and reviews to the website, created various web graphics and on-line advertising artwork and maintained the nightlife sections of VEGAS.com and LasVegas.com, including nightclubs, gay clubs and bars. Perez oversaw the re-launch of RalstonFlash.com.

In late 2006, Perez left VEGAS.com to helm the new monthly independent lifestyle magazine from Wendoh Media, Racket. At the end of 2007, while Racket was on hiatus, he launched DailyFiasco.com for Wendoh before leaving the company to lead web content and social media initatives for the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, where Perez won PRSA Pinnacle Awards six years in a row for his internet marketing and community building work.

In 2013, Perez left the Preserve to focus full-time on the boutique comic book publishing label he started in 2009, Pop! Goes the Icon, freelance work for Vegas Seven, DTLV.com, Desert Companion and other publications, and to launch with Daniel Lowber a new digital printing and design agency, Creation Forge Studios, in downtown Las Vegas. For his DTLV.com real estate column, “Urb Appeal,” Perez won a Nevada Press Association Better Newspaper Contest award in 2014.

After closing Creation Forge Studios in 2015, Perez returned to the world of digital marketing full-time, and is currently manager of web & digital content at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

Perez has become known as an “expert” on Las Vegas nightlife, music, arts and culture, and has been tapped by broadcast and print media for his unique takes on Sin City in such outlets as National Geographic Traveler, BBC Radio 1 and Hot Press. He has also extended his expertise with contributions to Time Out Las Vegas, Zagat Survey and American Express Travel.

Holding a dual bachelor’s degree in journalism and sociology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Perez is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and served as editor-in-chief of The Rebel Yell, UNLV’s award-winning newspaper, from May through December 2006. He is a card-carrying member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Nevada Public Radio and supports a number of nonprofit organizations, including the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District Foundation.