April 2023

LETTERS EDITOR'S NOTE

The kind of president you’d like to have a beer with

In 1977, as a reporter for my college newspaper, I snagged a Secret Service press pass to cover President Jimmy Carter, who was attending a conference in Denver on Western water issues.

My journalism experience was limited to interviews with professors and students, so I was excited to be among the press gaggle at a presidential visit. I arrived at the Denver Hilton early and pretended I knew the ropes. I stood in a hallway with a couple of other early-bird local reporters. A door opened, and Jody Powell, Carter’s press secretary, called us three scribblers into one of the hotel’s side ballrooms.

A small bar had been set up facing six stools. The president, grinning, poured us glasses of beer. Two real newspaper men—and one rookie—shot the breeze with the most powerful person on the planet. Subjects included solar energy, tribal water rights and the protesters out on the street. Carter was relaxed and friendly. He asked us about our lives. He gave the impression that he was a smart—but regular—guy who just happened to be president.

I left thinking that he seemed like a genuinely nice fellow. I naively thought all future presidents I’d meet would adopt a similar demeanor, whether or not it came naturally.

Holy crap! Was I ever wrong about that.

But nothing I’ve read about Carter since then—including Guy Clifton’s fine story in this issue of the RN&R—has changed my first impression of our 39th president. He was a decent, humble man who was dedicated to the tenets of his faith. He didn’t pontificate; he practiced. He was the real deal.

Sadly, in this age of Tweets and twits, culture wars and political performance art, I doubt we’ll ever see his like in the White House again.

—FRANK X. MULLEN frankm@renonr.com

Cannabis lounges need a law change

I just wanted to remind readers that Nevada, like Colorado, has an indoor-smoking law that prohibits smoking inside most restaurants and places of employment. That includes marijuana. Although cannabis consumption lounges (RN&R, February 2023) were authorized in 2021, the Legislature did not create an exception. Any regulation inconsistent with the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act is null and void. It would be wise for local governments to oppose such establishments until the NCIAA is properly amended.

Sean McCoy Reno

Lithium mine a threat to environment

I am appalled at lack of concern for land, air and life on the part of the BLM (RN&R, March 2023). That (Thacker Pass lithium mine site) is among the last of the wide open wild spaces in the world. How short-sighted can we and the BLM be? Who will care about a lithium battery in 300 years?

Dorothy Hudig Reno

Sheila Leslie returns to the ‘RN&R’

Welcome back to Sheila Leslie (RN&R, March 2023)! I’ve missed her clear-headed, insightful and relevant comments these past few years. I totally agree with the last paragraph: Nevada children before another tax break for Musk!

Patricia Lilley Reno

Thank you, Sheila! SO glad to see you back! Mental health is a continuing and concerning cause. Thanks for bringing it to the forefront.

Linda Brown Reno

Regarding BLM’s trapping of Fish Springs mustangs

To lure these horses with hay and water to trap them (RN&R March 2023) should be a federal offense and, in fact, is—except (that) these trappings were done by the BLM, who has never done anything to protect these horses. They are beloved horses and managed humanely on the range and should be returned intact so that their genetics and families can continue to thrive. Residents who don’t want horses in their yards should erect fences to

keep them out, not move to horse habitat and demand their removal.

Lee Thornton Douglas County

Thank you for this article. I have been following these horses via their advocates’ Facebook page for over 10 years. These horses help to raise the profile of the Carson Valley and the surrounding area. I truly hope that the remaining horses will be left to live out their lives wild and free, and continue to bring joy to their thousands of Facebook followers.

Inez Soman United Kingdom

Wow. Amazing how people from the UK, Massachusetts and other far-flung regions have the insights that us folks who have resided here for our entire lives somehow lack. Do a search on “BLM” in the local newspaper in the Gardnerville-Minden area, and see how many articles have been published and notices made for public input into local planning on BLM-administered public land. Just because things don’t go your way in life doesn’t mean laws are being broken or that the government is corrupt. Quit with the inflammatory rhetoric.

Bill Soligue Carson City

Mailing address: 31855 Date Palm Drive, No. 3-263, Cathedral City, CA 92234 • 775-324-4440 • RenoNR.com

Publisher/Executive Editor

Jimmy Boegle

Editor

Frank X. Mullen

Photo Editor David Robert

Cover and Feature Design

Dennis Wodzisz

Distribution Lead

Rick Beckwith

Contributors

Alicia Barber, Matthew Berrey, Matt Bieker, Maude Ballinger, Lucy Birmingham, Cheree Boteler, Owen Bryant, Brad Bynum, Max Cannon, Bob Grimm, Michael Grimm, Janice Hoke, Matt Jones, Matt King, Lynn Lazaro, Sheila Leslie, Michael Moberly, Maggie Nichols, Steve Noel, Dan Perkins, Jessica Santina, John L. Smith, Todd South, Kris Vagner, Robert Victor, Madison Wanco, Katelyn Welsh, Matt Westfield

The Reno News & Review print edition is published monthly. All content is ©2023 and may not be published or reprinted in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The RN&R is available free of charge throughout Northern Nevada, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies may be purchased for $5 by calling 775-324-4440. The RN&R may be distributed only authorized distributors.

The RN&R is a proud member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the Nevada Press Association, and the Local Independent Online News Publishers.

Photo/David Robert

On the cover: Gerlach residents Andy Moore, Elizabeth “Schatzi” Gambrell, Dave Cooper, Tina Walters and Jason Walters in front of Gerlach’s water tower on March 13.

GUEST COMMENT

BY TERRI FARLEY

BLM’s brutal treatment of mustangs is cloaked in secrecy, but the public has a right to know

Biscuits and gravy, black coffee and wild horse stories: That’s how I remember Bruno’s Country Club in Gerlach, Nev.

It was there I met members of the Bureau of Land Management staff to talk about wild horse roundups. I was researching fact-based fiction featuring mustangs and didn’t expect our meetings to be congenial. They were, but that was when BLMers could answer questions without consulting talking points, when they drove journalists out to observe a single helicopter bringing mustangs in at a nervous trot.

No more. These days, members of the public must make reservations to stand or sit (the BLM’s choice) miles from where choppers push multiple mustang herds into a frantic stampede to captivity.

And congeniality? In February, the BLM sent staff to spook a family of Pine Nut mustangs out of a hay trap into trailers. Eleven men, some armed, monitored the few observers who’d spotted government trucks and come to say goodbye to horses— Bunny, Blondie, Cree and others—they’d watched since birth.

The us vs. them attitude shift was born of the bureau’s reaction to the disastrous 20092010 Calico roundup. Weather, foal-heavy mares and terrain made it risky. I’d ridden the terrain and knew it was steep and covered with shale the size of dinner plates.

Over the icy weeks of December and January, 86 of 1,922 Calico Mountains mustangs died. Forty mares suffered spontaneous abortions. On Jan. 16, I was close enough to see a nursing mare forced into a trailer. Partway inside, her foal’s cry from a nearby pen made her turn. An onslaught of other mares, driven by contract staff, slammed into her. Her neck was broken. Eyewitnesses to these accidents plus the rise of social media could have meant positive change, or at least an end

to the BLM’s claims that roundups were humane. Instead, the BLM and lavishly paid private contractors made them difficult to observe.

Roundup announcements may come too late to make reservations with the BLM, drive to distant rangelands or secure the 4-wheel drive vehicles that may be mandated. On site, strategically parked BLM and contractor trucks often block binocular views of traps. Captive horses are often trucked to rented private land so that access by the press and public can legally be refused.

Sometimes there are no announcements. Watchers of the Pine Nut herd had spotted a BLM hay trap. They monitored it around the clock in below-zero temperatures, hoping their presence would keep mustangs away. In the meantime, the BLM erected a surprise trap. Members of the public had no time to call their legislators, to ask for an environmental impact statement or simply ask why. Rights to observe roundups, secured in court under the First Amendment, were brushed aside.

The BLM’s allegiance to agribusiness and extractive industries makes them willfully ignorant of science that says mustangs aren’t destroying the range. Only legislation will end the roundups, but mounting cameras on helicopters and traps for would bring us closer and end the BLM’s claim that access is restricted for our safety. The public has a right to know—to see and hear— what’s done in our name, with our tax dollars.

Terri Farley’s award-winning books, both fiction and nonfiction, have told the historic and contemporary wild horse story to millions of readers worldwide. She has been honored by the National Science Teaching Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Junior Literary Guild, the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame and others. he owns three adopted wild horses. Learn more at TerriFarley.com.

STREETALK

What’s the best—or worst—April

BY DAVID ROBERT

Fools’ joke in which you’ve been involved? Asked

Megan McCrossin Bartender

I was a mean big sister, and the worst April Fools’ joke I played on someone was on my little brother. I had him convinced that our house was haunted. I was 12 at the time, and he was only 7. He was in the bathroom, and he thought that I was downstairs, but actually I was hiding outside the bathroom, and I kept jiggling and shaking the door handle. He cried. I didn’t get in any trouble from our parents. I bribed him with candy and a movie he wasn’t supposed to watch.

John Root Trucking contractor

My buddy sent me a photo of the Sundial Bridge in Redding, Calif., showing that the bridge had collapsed. I knew the architect’s husband and called him to tell him what I had seen. I believed what I saw in the photo was real, and I got the photo from a reputable source—and I passed it on! I found out later that it was a joke. I think that it’s still being played every year.

Alex Batter Museum visitor service officer

I was a senior in high school, and we snuck into the school early on April Fools’ day and set up inflatable pools in front of all the teachers’ offices. We filled the pools up with floaty toys, and we then we sat in the pools. Some of the teachers we like WTF?!, and others got the joke. The principal thought it was a great joke.

Michaela Graham Fitness instructor

It was played on me by him, Alex Batter. We are roommates. He was talking to our other roommate. … He said that he had just gotten engaged to his boyfriend. They had only been together for a few months, and I was thinking that was pretty fast. It went on for, like, 10 minutes. I accepted that he was engaged but thought he was crazy—and then they just started laughing and said it was just an April Fools’ joke!

David Smith Warehouse maintenance worker

I told my boss that I was quitting. The look of shock on his face was worth a million bucks! He didn’t want me to quit as I was a hard worker, always showed up and was always on time. I kept it up for 10 to 15 minutes. I wanted it to fester for a bit. I went back later and said, “April Fools!” He had a few choice words for me.

| BY SHEILA LESLIE LEFT FOOT FORWARD

The 2023 Legislature has offered few surprises—and multiple disappointments

As the Nevada Legislature winds through its second month, there haven’t been many surprises. Despite an unprecedented number of snow days, the rhythm of bill introductions, committee hearings and easy bills rolling through on general file have kept staffers, lobbyists and legislators occupied—before they hit warp speed when critical deadlines arrive in April.

One resolution, AJR 10, has already passed unanimously in the Assembly and Senate and will appear on your ballot next year. It’s a measure to remove an offensive provision from the state Constitution: Voters will get to decide if slavery and involuntary servitude as forms of criminal punishment should be allowed in Nevada. This could affect the labor practices in our state’s prison system, where inmates are paid about $1 per hour for their service in fighting fires, making license plates and performing other types of work.

It’s been a little disappointing to see Democratic legislators, who serve in the majority in both houses, fold their cards far too early on other issues. They’re not even showing much of an appetite to fight the

lobbying titans when they clearly have a bill that would greatly benefit their constituents, on issues like tenant protections or insurance reforms to increase access to care, such as “any willing provider.” Instead of fully airing these concerns, legislators are amending their bills before a hearing is even held, hoping to assuage their opponents—who nevertheless will continue to oppose them.

By giving in too early, legislators lose their leverage to enact a stronger compromise. Lobbyists happily advise something “will never pass,” but constituents deserve an opportunity to advocate for what they need.

It’s been more than a little disappointing to see the Reno City Council attempt an end run around voters who have been patiently waiting since 2017 for the elimination of the at-large council seat in favor of a sixth ward. The tortured arguments about why the at-large seat is suddenly vital are insulting to other council members who hardly need a “big brother” to serve as intermediary between them and a citizen who feels “unheard” by their wardbased representative.

There is nothing special about an at-large seat except the ability to raise funds citywide

from moneyed interests, i.e., developers, who would much rather purchase a council member to do their bidding than convince members ward by ward.

And disappointment doesn’t even begin to cover how little the Legislature has done in response to the recurring massive tax breaks awarded to Tesla. The mercurial and erratic CEO, Elon Musk—still, by some measures, the richest human on Earth, despite his Twitter misadventures—raked in another $412 million of our hard-earned taxes, based on the smokeand-mirrors forecasts of economic benefits from the Governor’s Office for Economic Development (GOED).

There was no honest and basic cost-benefit calculation for the average Nevadan who already lives here, leaving us to continue facing sky-high rents with no hope of home ownership thanks to pressure on the housing market by all the non-Nevadans rushing in to work at Teslaville. Meanwhile, lobbyists and those who stand to gain the most from the Tesla debacle live in a bubble of denial, arrogantly claiming the rest of us are too ignorant to understand how their deal-making enriches all of us equally.

GOED and the Legislature are incredibly bad negotiators, too, as pointed out by the CEO of the Reno-Sparks Chamber of Commerce, who spoke out against granting Tesla hundreds of millions more in incentives when the community has yet to recover from the last billion-dollar round of giveaways. In a letter to Gov. Joe Lombardo, Ann Silver cited the lack of affordable housing, child care and other infrastructure needs as huge community concerns, saying, “If we’re going to give millions of dollars in tax abatements and incentives, the carrot should be, ‘What will you do to alleviate the desert of affordable rentals or houses or childcare?’”

Stating the obvious, Silver wondered as the state was “bartering with Elon Musk, why wasn’t it posed to him, ‘We’ll give you X if you build on-site childcare for 6,000 employees,’ or, ‘Will you build X number of affordable, easily accessible housing units?’ One or the other, or both would be in my request to any corporation moving to Nevada, and there are plenty.”

Indeed. You’d think Nevada, of all places, would have learned how to gamble a bit better on our future.

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

|

BY JIMMY BOEGLE

Drag is no threat to children, but hate-fomenting politicians are

I’ll never have to look up the address of Chapel Tavern; the fact that it’s at 1099 S. Virginia St. is forever burned into my brain, thanks to the bar that was at that address before the Chapel came to be.

The Ten99 club spent four decades in that spot before closing in 2011. It was a beloved gay bar—and was especially known as being a drag-friendly place, well before drag brunches and RuPaul’s Drag Race brought drag out of the dark and into the edge of the mainstream.

Now there’s a concerted effort to shove drag back into the dark—and that effort is succeeding. Numerous states are ramping up their efforts to ban as much drag as they possibly can … led by that alleged bastion of freedom, Florida.

Most of the proponents of these drag bans couch their arguments as “protecting children.” From what, I don’t know. Bugs Bunny? Tootsie? Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger? Can anyone make the case that there’s something, anything, sexualized about Mrs. Doubtfire?

Ah, but some drag queens can be lewd— and as someone who’s seen plenty of lewd

drag queens, I can confirm. But I’ve also seen a lot men dressed like men being lewd, and even some women dressed like women being lewd. The truth is, these actions against drag have nothing to do with sex or being lewd. The Miami Herald reports:

When the historic Plaza Live theater in Orlando hosted an event last December called “A Drag Queen Christmas,” the show drew a full house, noisy street demonstrators—and a small squad of undercover state agents there to document whether children were being exposed to sights that ran afoul of Florida’s decency law.

The Dec. 28 performance featured campy skits like “Screwdolph the Red-Nippled Man Deer” and shimmying, bare-chested men who wouldn’t have been out of place at a Madonna concert. Also a hip thrust or two, similar to what is sometimes indulged in by NFL players after a touchdown. All of it was dutifully recorded by the undercover agents on stateissued iPhones.

But while the agents took photos of three minors at the Orlando drag show—who appeared to be accompanied by adults—they acknowledged that nothing indecent had happened on stage, according to an incident report obtained exclusively by the Miami Herald. …

Still, the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation proceeded to file a complaint against the nonprofit that runs Plaza Live, claiming the venue had illegally exposed children to sexual content. The complaint, issued Feb. 3, seeks to strip the small, nonprofit theater of its liquor license—a serious blow that would likely put it out of business.

It’s all part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ statewide crackdown on drag shows, which could escalate further as legislators draft new laws to tighten restrictions on venues that allow minors into those performances.

No, this effort has nothing to do with protecting children—even though I’m sure

many of the terribly misguided people who showed up to the Washoe County Commission meeting on Feb. 28 to speak out against Drag Queen Story Hour at the county libraries genuinely believe it does. As Mark Robison of the Reno Gazette-Journal reported: “Many attendees likely received a mass email sent to a self-described Nevada patriots group by Bruce Parks, Washoe County Republican Party chairman. The email urged people to bring their library cards, carry a small U.S. flag and request the end of drag queen library events.”

This all happened even though the County Commission has no direct oversight of the library. Even though taxpayers don’t fund the Drag Queen Story Hour events. (The nonprofit Friends of the Washoe County Library do.) Even though no Drag Queen Story Events are currently scheduled.

This happened because cynical politicians who are happy to foment fear and hate are using drag queens—along with transgender individuals and LGBTQ+ people in general— as a wedge issue.

Drag queens have been a part of Reno’s fabric for decades, and they have never been a threat to kids. Fight the hate, folks.

| BY MATT WESTFIELD

Meet the people behind Vistro, a local entrepreneurial success story

I’ve had the pleasure of working with many startups in the Biggest Little City for more than 20 years—too many to enumerate. Most have been cool little lifestyle businesses, and they have had varying degrees of success. Many have gone on to be very successful, creating a lifestyle for their founders that is enviable.

Once in a while, I come across a founder who strikes a chord with me. Its usually a combination of things—the glimmer in the eye when talking about their idea, or the passionate way in which they articulate the solution they’ve come up with. It’s often the story of how they got here—and such is the case of the founder you are about to meet.

Five years or so ago, a young man requested a waiver to get into the startup class I began teaching at the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2011. It came out of another class I built for out-of-work professionals back in 2002 after the dotcom implosion. There were thousands of outof-work professionals who were sure that their lives were over. As a contrarian, I tried to impart the idea to them that since their high-flying “jobby job” was never coming back, why not build their own future instead

of other people’s dreams and futures? I built a curriculum for startups, step-by-step on how to build a business with little money while mitigating risk.

Tristen Houston was a freshman at the College of Business who had an idea for a business that he wished to build in my classroom. However, my class is for upperclassmen and graduate students, but I usually allow one savvy freshman to take the class if they have a legit idea or have already started building a company.

Tristen was a wideeyed kid who had an idea for new ride app called Don’t Drive. The premise was that folks who drink too much need to get home, but their car is often left behind, staying overnight at the bar until the poor hungover soul gets a ride back to their car in the morning. Tristen thought: What if we could create a service whereby the intoxicated

customer is driven home safely, and so is their car? That way, the customer doesn’t have to take an Uber back to their car in the morning—to perhaps find it broken into, or worse yet, stolen.

In my New Venture Creation class, we start with ideation and build real companies in 14 weeks. It’s not for everyone, but for those who are committed, tenacious and coachable, we have rock-solid strategies. The secret is to be able to create something from nothing without resources under their control. Oh, the resources are out there—but the founder doesn’t have them. Yet.

Don’t Drive made many mistakes and pivots in the first few years, but Tristen never gave up. He and his partners flipped the company into Chauffeur, with some new investors—and a new strategy, to also have drivers ready to take people and their vehicle home from the hospital or doctor’s office after a procedure. They got some traction with both companies, but never reached critical mass.

Then that little thing called the pandemic hit. No one was going anywhere; rides stopped, taking Uber, Lyft and the other ridesharing apps down a dark road.

Tristen and his team knew that he had to do something different and drastic. He and longtime business partner Derek Sornson started chalkboarding new ideas. (It’s good to have a sound partner in a startup!) The delivery model had been too flooded, with many companies vying for small slices left over by the big boys. The partners realized in 2021 that there were very few choices for quality home delivery of upscale foods, gourmet burgers, salads and

meals—especially late at night. Furthermore, once the pandemic began to wane, people started going out again—and they started hating the delivery fees.

Enter Vistro, a late night “ghost kitchen” with a dozen brands of gourmet choices, all under one roof, serving Reno until 3 a.m.— with no delivery fee! The founders created brands that they own. A ghost kitchen is a restaurant with no seating; it strictly prepares meals to go or to be delivered by the Uber Eats and Grubhubs of the world. These guys have flipped the script and have Uber Eats delivering food for them instead of competing against them.

Restaurants all over the United States went under during the pandemic, and some of these facilities remain empty today. The Vistro boys negotiated a sweet lease deal on an old Mexican restaurant that was sitting idle by the ballpark, at 250 Evans Ave.—and the rest is history.

When I visited the gang recently, the kitchen was rockin’, with Randall (the chef) spinning around the kitchen filling orders. While chatting with the founders, several people came in to pick up food. The founders split the front-ofhouse load, with one taking the afternoon shift, and the other running the night shift.

They have been killing it. Sales are booming, and they’ve gotten a couple of rounds of funding from local investors. My friends at the Governor’s Office of Economic Development invested in them, too. Vistro has now been accepted into a national accelerator to scale across the country in a big way, utilizing abandoned restaurant spaces to create a new paradigm for the industry.

Of course, Vistro (ordervistro.com) still needs all of us to support them, as well other local restaurants and startups, to keep this vibrant community ahead of the curve and the rest of the United States.

Next month, we’ll discuss bringing in foreign startups—to create high-paying jobs for Nevada.

"Big Bucket O’ Tunes" (a collection of some 4000+ tunes he curated from 2014-’22), old & current ID’s & Blurbs, and outtakes from his morning show on 'The X' in the ’90’s.

Bruce Van Dyke’s

“These guys have flipped the script and have Uber Eats delivering food for them instead of competing against them.”

Carter and Nevada

The president from Plains had a Reno connection

Politically, Nevada was never particularly kind to Jimmy Carter, the nation’s 39th president.

In 1976, the former Georgia governor lost the state’s Democratic primary to California’s Jerry Brown, and the general-election vote to incumbent President Gerald Ford— the first time since 1908 that bellwether Nevada was carried by the losing candidate.

But if Carter ever held a grudge, it never showed in his associations. In his post-presidential years, he developed deep and enduring friendships, philanthropic partnerships and artistic opportunities in the Silver State.

“The connection between Reno and Plains, Ga., is really strong,” said Jack Bacon, whose Reno-based appraisal business specializes in art, rare books, antiques, historical autographs and collectibles.

Bacon met the former president at a Carter Center weekend in Crested Butte, Colo., in the early 1990s. So, too, did Incline Village resident Dan Ostrander, a longtime professor of American history at Butte College and a presidential historian.

Both men—lifelong Republicans—have spent much of the past 30 years helping raise millions of dollars for the Carter Center, a foundation that works to ensure human rights, freedom and democracy, and improve health worldwide. Their families have become close over the years. That includes trips to Carter’s hometown of Plains on multiple occasions, including birthday, anniversary and other milestone events.

Both men have a deep respect for Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

“Whatever cause he supports, he gets his hands dirty,” Ostrander said. “He and Rosalynn, they go out there and are in the field

with the people, whether it’s building houses for Habitat for Humanity or digging latrines in Africa. He has this commitment.”

In 2017, the Carter Center weekend was held at the Resort at Squaw Creek. Bacon helped coordinate logistics on the Reno end, including side activities for the conference attendees and the “welcome” when the charter jet from Atlanta, carrying the Carters and other attendees, arrived at Reno-Tahoe International Airport.

Then-Gov. Brian Sandoval was on the tarmac to greet the couple. Tucked under his arm was a peanut bank he’d purchased as a youngster in Washington, D.C., when Carter was president. Carter signed it for him. “The governor wanted me to ask him to sign it, but I told him you’ll have to ask him yourself,” Bacon said with a chuckle. “I didn’t want to get in trouble with Jimmy.” From experience at multiple book and document signings, Bacon knew Carter didn’t like signing odd-shaped objects, but he was accommodating for the governor.

Bacon also helped arrange a trip to the University of Nevada, Reno, campus and its Earthquake Engineering Laboratory for a demonstration of the shaker tables, which replicate earthquakes. Carter, a civil engineer, was fascinated by the demonstrations and how some of the technology could be used in developing countries, Bacon said.

“It was a highlight for all of us,” Dr. Ahmad Itani, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering said at the time. “To be able to show off our facility and the world-improving research we conduct was the highest honor.”

Ostrander, who purchased a second home in Plains, helped lead a fundraising effort to create an endowment for the Boys and Girls Club

Gov. Brian Sandoval greets former president Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, at Reno-Tahoe International Airport on June 21, 2017. Under his arm, Sandoval holds a Jimmy Carter peanut bank he purchased as a youngster on a trip to Washington, D.C., when Carter was president. Photo/Guy Clifton

there. He and his wife, Dawn, pledged $500,000 to the effort, and more than $2 million was raised overall.

In 2022, Jack Bacon and his wife, Kim, spearheaded an effort to commission a sculpture by Reno artist Peter Hazel for permanent display in Plains.

The 3,000-pound, 15-by-15-foot sculpture, titled “Monarch Tree,” is the focal point of the Rosalynn Carter Childhood Garden and part of the Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail, a nationwide network of public and private gardens dedicated to protecting and preserving butterfly habitat. The “tree” features eight stems and 18 glass monarch butterflies, in honor of Mrs. Carter’s birthday, Aug. 18.

Hazel, an artist best known for his Burning Man artwork, and his colleague, Cody Munson, made two trips to Plains: One in May to survey the site, and another in August for the installation and dedication. He said they were treated

with great hospitality, even receiving a key to the city from the mayor of Plains.

During the dedication ceremony, they sat at a table with the Carters, Bacon and Ostrander. “It was kind of surreal,” Hazel said, adding that meeting the former president was an honor of a lifetime.

“Until you experience it, it’s impossible to put into words,” he said. “It’s emotional to be a part of a great humanitarian like him. He is someone I admire. He’s an amazing human.”

Ostrander and Bacon said the August event was poignant, as they were able to have final face-to-face conversations with their friend, who has since entered hospice care. “I got a chance to tell him how much I care about the two of them,” Ostrander said. “I felt good after I left that I got to say a final goodbye.”

Bacon, too, said he will cherish his last exchange with Carter.

“President Carter isn’t someone you walk up to and give a big hug or anything like that,” Bacon said. “He’s just not that way. But I just thought with this being the last time I was probably going to see him, and those of us at the table and in the crowd from Nevada, I just said, ‘I’m speaking for the people of Reno and Nevada that I know. We all love you very much.’”

Carter replied, “I know it.”

“I’m so glad I said it, because that response was great,” Bacon said.

UPFRONT Day of Remembrance targets Holocaust deniers

As the generation that lived through the Holocaust vanishes, some deniers are trying to erase the systematic murders of 11 million people from the history books.

On Tuesday, April 18, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and the Nevada Governor’s Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust will present its annual Day of Remembrance program at the Atlantis Casino Resort Hotel Spa from 7 to 9 p.m.

Denial: How Activists, Politicians and Educators Are Trying to Rewrite the History of the Holocaust, debunks those who falsely claim that the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews and millions of others Hitler deemed unworthy of life is a myth, fabrication or exaggeration. A survey in 2020 indicated that few young Nevadans know about the extent of the genocide.

Jan Grabowski, the keynote speaker, is a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa who specializes in Jewish-Polish relations in German-occupied Poland during World War II, and the Holocaust in Poland.

The event will begin with a welcome and introduction to the evening by Judith Schumer, past chairperson of the governor’s advisory council. Schumer’s immediate family escaped the genocide and immigrated to the U.S. after the war. The event, she said, “will honor the past and explore the current anti-Semitic threats in our nation and the world.” Admission is free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and there’s limited seating. RSVP at bit.ly/ holocaust 23.

Grabowski is a co-founder of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw and author of Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in GermanOccupied Poland (2013), which won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize.

A related program will take place from at the Northwest Reno Library, 2325 Robb Drive, from July 7 to Aug. 18. The Americans and the Holocaust exhibit is sponsored by the American Library Association and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. An opening reception at the library is scheduled on Wednesday, July 12, at 5 p.m. A lecture, “The History of Anti-Semitism” is scheduled for Tuesday, July 18.

—Frank X. Mullen

Staying fit post-COVID

Local gym patrons navigate the new normal

When Saint Mary’s Fitness Center shut down permanently in February after 18 years in business, patrons who suddenly had to relocate to other gyms discovered that the fitness-center landscape has changed.

Scott and Monique Sady, who were members at the hospital-associated gym for more than a decade, said the Saint Mary’s Fitness Center was an integral part of their lives. They were saddened to receive an email on Feb. 1 announcing the closure “after exhausting all options to remain operable.”

The gym allowed patrons to suspend their memberships for more than a year during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reportedly was slow to rebuild memberships when the contagion ended, and suffered from staffing problems.

Nevada Prime Healthcare, Saint Mary’s owner, didn’t return the RN&R’s messages asking for further comment. Scott and Monique Sady said the gym appeared to be winning back its customers, so the closure came as a shock—and sent the couple on a hunt for a replacement.

“Saint Mary’s had all the features we liked, was nice and clean, had steam rooms, a sauna, massages and group classes,” Scott Sady said.

They began looking for other fitness centers that had similar amenities and found a new home at Sports West in Reno. “It’s more of a drive, and it’s not the same, but it has a lot of amenities we are looking for,” he said.

The pandemic closures shut down some local gyms permanently and changed the way many folks approach their fitness routines. COVID-19’s most devastating effects fell upon people with obesity and pre-existing health problems—underlining doctors’ long-standing advice that people should stay active to maintain their health. For some, that meant enrolling in gyms or, instead, getting serious about exercising at home.

“(Our gym) is definitely less busy than we were before COVID, but this year, I already feel it’s going to change,” said Mena Spodobalski, owner of Evoke Fitness, 9744 S. Virginia St. “We are seeing more people, new people, (with) better retention across the board.”

Evoke Fitness is not an average gym; services are limited to diverse group-fitness classes or personalized training that can be designed for one to three participants. There is something special about group classes with lots of like-minded individuals committed to improving their health, Spodobalski said.

“It’s all about accountability,” she said. “Peo-

ple push themselves; they are more motivated.”

The pandemic affected some people’s motivations to join a fitness center, Spodobalski said. Traditionally, weight loss and physical appearance were the main reasons people cited for joining gyms, she noted, but now people prioritize overall well-being and mental health.

Derek Wellock, owner of Double Edge Fitness, 1065 S Virginia St., agreed that the industry and its clientele have gone through an evolution since the pandemic. Many people, he said, now prefer a more individually tailored fitness experience and want a facility that will invest the time and effort into catering to patrons’ needs. After the isolation caused by COVID-19, many people yearned to return to the person-to-person interaction at fitness centers. Working out alongside experienced instructors is the ultimate motivator to push through an intense workout, he said.

“People need, like and enjoy human interaction,” Wellock said. “It’s a positive and uplifting environment.”

Still, some of the folks who got used to exercising at home haven’t returned to gyms. When “nonessential” businesses, including fitness centers, were forced to shutter for months beginning in March 2020, those who could afford the costs purchased home exercise equipment.

Sales of the Peloton exercise bike, for example, surged 172% in 2021, according to CNN Business, despite its hefty price tag ($1,500plus). More than 1 million people subscribed to the Peloton app during the early stages of the pandemic. That subscription, at $12.99 per month, is a tiny fraction of a gym membership. The app allows users access to a large library of classes taught by a plethora of instructors. The classes include strength training, Pilates, running, cycling, stretching and even boxing. Although Peloton sales have fallen since the end of the pandemic, the company still boasts 2.33 million fitness subscriptions and an annual retention rate of more than 92%, according to Backlino.

Other fitness-conscious people, however, prefer the brick-and-mortar gym experience to exercising at home.

Linda Lambert of Reno, who for eight years had been a dedicated participant in Saint Mary’s Fitness’ cancer-wellness program, said the gym’s closure was devastating to members. The wellness program, which required a doctor’s referral, featured customized classes led by trainers with specialized knowledge of cancer.

“(The gym closure) really hit me,” she said. “Saint Mary’s was a place where everyone knew your name and had a smile on their face.”

For Lambert, the fitness center also was a hub for fostering community relationships in Reno.

Patrons work out at the Parkway Athletic Club in south Reno. Photo/David Robert

The Parkway Athletic Club, at 9400 Double Diamond Parkway, helped some of Saint Mary’s patrons fill the void left by its closure. Jennifer Deroche, Parkway’s general manager, said that the facility has accommodated many of those displaced by the closure of Saint Mary’s.

“We are so happy to give everyone at Saint Mary’s a new home,” she said. “Some of those members have been going to Saint Mary’s for almost 20 years; to them, it’s like losing a family member. We want to be their life raft during this transition.”

Parkway, she said, offers former Saint Mary’s clients a discounted rate and waives their enrollment fees.

The gym offers many of the same features that made Saint Mary’s popular, including group fitness classes in cycling, yoga, Pilates and weightlifting. It also has a steam room, sauna, massage studio and a pool. Most other gyms in Reno don’t have a pool or an aquatics department with coaches and classes, so the loss of Saint Mary’s pool was a hardship for many of its former patrons.

“We are way busier since the pandemic; we have doubled our memberships,” Deroche said.

“People are in power now and want control of their health. We offer something for everybody.”

Private gym memberships typically cost between $20 to $60 a month or more, and some have a one-time enrollment fee. The rates can strain some family budgets, but community fitness centers provide less-expensive options.

The city of Reno has community-recreation centers which offer a diverse range of fitness, sports and dance classes as well as exercise machines, basketball courts and well-equipped weight rooms; some have lap pools. A pass good for all the city’s fitness centers and pools costs $360 per year for adults age 18 to 59; $240 for teens age 14 to 17; and $150 per year for seniors and children. Per-visit and quarterly passes also are available.

The Evelyn Mount Northeast Community Center, 1301 Valley Road, serves as the primary hub for the city’s programs. Further information is available at www.reno.gov.

The city has a scholarship program to provide fee assistance for its recreation centers and programs. Programs are available to adults of all ages and include classes in Zumba, yoga, tai chi and other martial arts, water fitness and dance.

Request for Application Submittal For FFY2024

FTA Transit Funding Assistance

The Nevada Department of Transportation is accepting applications for the Federal Transit Administration Section 5310, 5311, and 5339 Grant Programs. Applications must be postmarked no later than April 28, 2023 and will be considered for the Federal Fiscal Year 2024 operating cycle. These grants are administered through the Nevada Department of Transportation and are available to fund transit services in Nevada’s small urban and rural areas. Eligible applicants must be private nonprofit, private for profit, governmental or tribal agencies. The application packets will be available on February 27, 2023, and may be obtained by visiting the NDOT website (https://www.nevadadot.com/ mobility/transit-resources) or by contacting the Multimodal Planning, Transit Office at (775) 888-7312.

Nevada Department of Transportation

Multimodal Planning/Transit Office

1263 South Stewart Street, Ste. 320, Carson City, Nevada 89712 (775) 888-7312

A man works out at the Parkway Athletic Club.

Photo/David Robert

Dining with dignity

The community’s generosity and corporate donations give families a night out

Most folks take for granted their ability to sit in a nice restaurant, order tasty fare from a menu, and enjoy the pleasure of being served.

But for families caught between rising food costs and stagnant incomes, dining out can be outside their means. A local pilot program is helping such families make the dining-out experience less rare—in a way that protects the dignity of recipients.

The program, called The Third Meal, combines computer technology with caring volunteers and local restaurants. Its name refers to dinner, the meal that children from low-income families who are enrolled in school breakfast and lunch programs often don’t get at home. The theme of the program is “dining with dignity.”

“A special part of the experience is enjoying it with family,” said Ray Roske, founder of The Third Meal. “We want families to feel that people care, that kids in need are valued.”

The three interlocking pieces of the program include administering a website and donation site, recruiting families who want to participate, and connecting them with local restaurants willing to match donors’ contributions. The families who use the program can’t

be identified as people in need of charity.

“There is no way to distinguish between a Third Meal family or a patron with a purchased gift card,” said Cyndi Wallis, co-owner of Great Full Gardens restaurant, which participates in The Third Meal and matches donations.

A brainstorm in Denver

Roske wanted to make it as easy for a family to walk into a restaurant and order a meal paid for by donations as it is for people to order an Uber or Lyft ride. He works for Oracle in Denver and reached out to his friend, Steve Johnson, a minister in Portland, Ore., for help in planning the program. The pair financed the startup with $5,000 made by selling motorcycles. Their friend Robert Galofre of Atlanta designed the website at cost.

To find families who could benefit from their plan, Roske and Johnson in 2021 turned to B.J. Foster, program manager for Communities in Schools in Western Nevada. The nonprofit operates in Tier 1 (underachieving) schools statewide, including 13 in the Washoe County School District. Its mission is to connect students with support to help them learn, advance and graduate.

Today, The Third Meal serves 23 Washoe County students in six families, up from 17 last year. Foster distributes $600 a month through the website, accessible to the enrolled students and families. The program also monitors the progress of the students and reports that participants have shown better attendance and higher grades, especially in math.

Foster sees the program’s impact first-hand. “I saw the light in their eyes come on. They are staying awake in class,” he said.

Said Johnson: “B.J. knows all the kids. That makes it very personal. The advocates do all the work, and I want them to be the heroes.”

A ‘how-to’ course for dining out

To prepare the families for their dining experience, Foster gives them some tips, including a budget of what they can spend. “I sit down and go through the menus so they won’t freak out at the prices,” she said. She encourages the youngsters to “try one thing at a time on the menu.”

Some participants may have a “poverty mindset,” she said, and feel out of place while dining out.

“Families can be embarrassed,” she said, or worry that the restaurant won’t let them in, or that they can’t find transportation to get there. “I take them in with me and have them order. That gives them peace of mind.”

When it’s time to pay, the restaurant server scans a QR code on the family’s smart phone. No personal information such as student names are revealed to the server.

“We treat everyone equally, with honor and respect,” said Juli Scala, Great Full Gardens’ co-owner and president.

Great Full Gardens is known for its community outreach. Scala said the eatery provided to-go meals for hospital staff and residents of Eddy House, a shelter for young people, during the pandemic. It partnered with other restaurants and One World Kitchen to feed firefighters,

other frontline workers and evacuees during a wildfire at Lake Tahoe in 2021. In partnership with RootEd, a nonprofit organization, the restaurant’s owners have donated modular greenhouses to local schools to teach students where their food comes from. In 2019, Great Full Gardens became the first restaurant in Nevada to win a Restaurant Neighbor Award from the National Restaurant Association.

It’s important to give back, Scala said. “We have an affinity for kids and good nutrition.”

More partners needed

Now that the proof-of-concept phase was successful, Roske plans to scale up the Reno pilot program, to include more restaurants and families in Denver and Portland, and expand to other cities. He hopes to utilize his experience at Oracle, where he finds solutions to business problems, recruits partners and brings them together to demonstrate the computer company’s innovations.

Criteria for restaurant partners include use of point-of-sale software, social awareness, healthy food and a community-oriented focus, he said.

“I know a lot of restaurant owners, and they each give in their own way,” Scala said. “This is a wonderful cause, and it makes a big difference. It’s beautiful to hear the results, and it warms our hearts.”

The computer part of the program is inexpensive, since there are no employees to pay, Roske said. “We boast that we spend less than $100— $89—per month on maintaining the website.”

Said Johnson: “Ninety-nine percent of donations feed kids. I think there are potential donors who, if they knew a kid was hungry and they could feed that kid, would donate.”

The school-based coordinators look for families who are not transient and have committed to improving their children’s well-being and education. The bottom line, Johnson said, is to “make life more stable for people climbing out of poverty.”

For more information or to make a donation, visit www.thethirdmeal.org.

Cyndi Wallace waits on customers at Great Full Gardens restaurant in Reno. Photo/David Robert

Planets and Bright Stars in Evening Mid-Twilight

For April, 2023

This sky chart is drawn for latitude 40 degrees north, but may be used in continental U.S. and southern Canada.

April’s evening sky chart. Illustration/Robert D. Miller

Evening and morning events involving planets, stars and the moon:

April 1 at dusk: Regulus, heart of Leo, the Lion, appears within 6° to the lower right of the gibbous moon, 85 percent full. During April 1-5, Mars passes within 3° north of third-magnitude stars Eta and Mu in Gemini, marking one foot of Castor.

April 5 at dusk: Spica, the spike of grain in the hand of Virgo, has just risen in the east-southeast, within 9° below the full moon.

April 6 at dawn: Spica, in the west-southwest, is 5° to the left of the full moon. The two brightest stars at dawn are Arcturus, high in the west, 33° to the upper right of Spica; and Vega, not far east/east-northeast of overhead.

April 6 at dusk: Spica appears within 6° to the upper right of the rising 99 percent moon, just past full.

April 7 at dawn: Spica appears 9° to the lower right of the 98 percent waning gibbous moon. Instead of waiting later each night until moonrise, we can follow the moon daily in the morning sky.

April 9 at dawn: Antares, heart of the Scorpion, is within 11° to the upper left of the 88 percent waning gibbous moon.

April 9-12 at dusk: Venus passes about 3° south of the Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster. A splendid view through binoculars!

April skies

Bright stars, Venus and fading Mars are celestial highlights

Throughout April, brilliant Venus and slowly fading Mars put on a grand show, moving against a rich background of stars of two adjacent zodiac constellations, Taurus and Gemini.

Venus gleams at magnitude -4 in the western sky at dusk. Mars appears to the upper left of Venus, by 44° on April 1. Venus is now moving just more than one degree daily against the stars, compared to Mars’ more than half a degree, so the gap between is closing, to 35° by April 15, and 26° at month’s end.

Mars glows at magnitude +0.9 to +1.4, comparable to Gemini’s bright “Twin” stars, Pollux at magnitude +1.1, and Castor at +1.6, just 4.5° apart.

Another bright planet, Mercury, has its best evening apparition of this year. Look low in west to west-northwest, 22° to the lower right of Venus, on April 1, holding at 20° during April 5-13, and reopening to 22° on

April 16. Mercury starts off bright, at magnitude -1.0 on April 1, but fades to 0.0 by April 10, +0.9 on April 16, and +1.9 by April 20, when Mercury is low in bright twilight, 26° to the lower right of Venus. Mercury’s fade occurs despite the planet’s decreasing distance from Earth, because Mercury, unlike Venus, has no cloud cover, and its surface features cast more shadow as Mercury moves around to the near side of the sun and displays crescent phases.

The brightest star in the evening sky—not as bright as Venus—is Sirius, the Dog Star, in the southwestern quadrant. Confirm your identification by noting that the Belt of Orion points to it. Extend the belt in the opposite direction, passing just below Aldebaran, eye of Taurus, to reach the beautiful Pleiades star cluster, which Venus will pass closely before mid-April. Binoculars will give wonderful views of the Pleiades and of the many of the events described here.

April 10 at dawn: Antares is 3° to the lower right of the 80 percent moon.

April 11 at dusk: Mercury reaches greatest elongation, 19.5°, from the sun. Also, Mercury attains its greatest altitude above the horizon at mid-twilight for this apparition—and for anytime this year, 10° up, when the sun is 9° below the horizon.

April 13 and 14 at dusk: Mars is very close to third-magnitude Epsilon in Gemini.

Night of April 13-14: Spica is at opposition, as Earth passes between that star and the sun. Look for Spica low in the east-southeast at dusk, high in the south in the middle of night, and low in the west-southwest at dawn.

April 15 at dawn: Saturn is in the eastsoutheast, 11° to the left of the 26 percent crescent moon. During April, Saturn’s rings are tipped only 9° to 8° from edge-on, our narrowest view since 2011. The rings are heading toward an edgewise presentation in spring 2025.

April 16 at dawn: Saturn is 6° to the upper right of the 17 percent crescent moon. The waning old crescent moon will be visible two more mornings, about 13° farther to the lower left of Saturn each time.

April 18 and 19 at dusk: Aldebaran is 7.4° south (to the lower left) of Venus. Binoculars show stars of the Hyades cluster in the same field

as Aldebaran, forming with that reddish star the V-shaped head of the Bull.

April 20: The young moon is very low at evening mid-twilight. Using binoculars, try to spot the 1 percent crescent 30° to the lower right of Venus, with Mercury 4° to the moon’s upper right. Mercury is now very faint, magnitude +1.9, so both will be a challenge.

April 21 at dusk: The 5 percent crescent moon, 17° to the lower right of Venus, is much easier than last night’s moon. Using binoculars, enjoy the Pleiades 5° to the upper right of the moon, and try one last time for faint Mercury, magnitude +2.2, 10° to the moon’s lower right.

April 22 at dusk: Venus is 5° to the upper left of a 10 percent crescent moon. Mars forms an isosceles triangle with Pollux and Castor, 10° from each.

April 23 at dusk: Venus is 6° below a 17 percent crescent moon.

April 25 at dusk: Mars is 3° to the lower left of a 34 percent crescent moon. The stars Pollux and Castor mark the heads of the Twins. Tonight, they appear 7-8° above the moon.

April 26 at dusk: Tonight, the moon is 43 percent full. Pollux, Castor and Mars all appear to the lower right of the moon, by 5°, 9° and nearly 12°, respectively.

April 27 at nightfall: The moon, 53 percent full, is in Cancer, the Crab, and just past first quarter phase, when it’s half full and 90 degrees east of the sun. Wait until dark, and binoculars will show you the Beehive star cluster, 5° to the lower left of the moon.

April 28 at dusk: Regulus, in Leo, appears 9° to the lower left of the 62 percent gibbous moon. Tomorrow night, the moon will be 71 percent full, with Regulus within 6° to its lower right.

April 29 and 30 at dusk: Mars is about 2° north of third-magnitude Delta in Gemini. Venus passes 3° south of 1.7-magnitude Beta in Taurus (Elnath, tip of Bull’s northern horn) on April 30.

The evening twilight chart for April shows a large number of bright stars in the western sky at dusk at this time of year. Not counting planets, seven of the 14 brightest stars of first magnitude or brighter visible from Northern Nevada at sometime during the year are gathered in the western sky, getting set to depart in the next several weeks. Stars (but not planets) disappear around the same date each year, so you can eventually learn to use the sky as a calendar—just as some ancient cultures did

Illustrations of many of the events described here appear on the April 2023 Sky Calendar. Subscription info is available at www. abramsplanetarium.org/skycalendar.

Stereographic Projection Map by Robert D. Miller

Vega

Robert Victor originated the Abrams Planetarium monthly Sky Calendar in October 1968 and still produces issues occasionally. He enjoys being outdoors sharing the wonders of the night sky.

Think Free!

MAGGIE NICHOLS

Quotes

Prep for summer

Even though there’s still a lot of snow on the ground, it’s time to start training to reach your hiking goals

There may still be plenty of snow in the mountains—but it’s time to start planning for the summer.

What are your summer goals? You could be looking to tackle one of the many trails around Reno and Tahoe for the first (or second, or third) time. Maybe you want to finally summit one of our many iconic peaks (when the snow is melted!), or reach a dreamed-of backcountry destination, or simply hit a mileage goal. Don’t wait for all the trails to melt before you start training for your next adventure!

Trail guides I’ve spoken to all agree that you can (and should!) start training for trails by walking around your

neighborhood and local parks. It’s a good idea to lace up (or slip on) the shoes you plan to wear on the trails and put some mileage on them while you explore near your home. This not only helps you to increase your daily distance limit, but it ensures that your shoes are broken in before you head into the wild. You don’t want to develop painful blisters or pressure points.

For those planning to carry a daypack or tackle a backpacking trip, many guides swear by practicing with sacks of flour. Because they are reasonably soft against your back, can be commonly bought in one- and five-pound sacks, and stack easily, they are a great way to put practice weight in your pack. While you

should check with your doctor before carrying heavy gear around, once you’re ready to train, flour can be a great tool.

The general guideline for how much weight you should carry is around 10% of your body weight in a daypack, and 20% of your body weight in a backpack—so if you weigh 150 pounds, that’s 15 pounds in a daypack, or 30 pounds in a backpack. If you’ve already got all your gear (and food and water!) and can pack it away to see how much it tips the scale, that’s another great way to know what your training goal is, and work toward it.

And then … walk! Walk your neighborhood before work or after dinner. Take your floursack backpack and trail shoes to work and walk on your lunch break. Check out local parks, and walk off the sidewalk for a little extra challenge. As the snow melts and you’re ready for more, check out some of the local low-elevation trails nearby, in places like Hidden Valley, Huffaker Park and Hunter Creek.

There are also many local resources to help you learn more skills and practice outside before you attempt a large journey. The Tahoe Rim Trail Association hosts public-forum discussions with guides about what it’s like to hike the Tahoe Rim Trail. Join one of these events to get some information from the pros. The Tahoe Institute for Natural Science offers opportunities to get out and explore local wildlife; why not carry your daypack while you snowshoe with chickadees or hike beneath eagles? REI offers various classes and workshops to help you get out more safely and knowledgeably.

If you’re feeling extra-inspired, you could learn a new skill to help with your trail goals, like winter camping with International Alpine Guides or wilderness first aid through the National Outdoor Leadership School. For some variety, you could also sign up for one of Reno’s many spring races; most of them will let you walk your 5k or 10k (or sometimes more!) if you want. With or without a backpack full of flour, these events can be a fun and social way to get out and enjoy the spring weather as you gear up for summer.

Davis Creek, Thomas Creek and Galena Creek all offer out-and-back trails where you can practice hiking uphill (until your way is blocked by the snow). As the days continue to get longer, and the snow keeps melting just a little more, your adventures can take you even higher into the Sierra Nevada. With some practice and training under your belt—and maybe a few new skills—you’ll be ready to adventure with confidence!

Madeline hikes Hunter Creek during the non-snowy season. Maggie Nichols

The last one showering shouldn’t be left in the cold! GO TANKLESS.

the town’s water supply. “… The attitude (of the company and regulators) is, ‘You’ll be fine—unless something goes wrong.’ Why should we volunteer to take the risks? Maybe they believe what they are saying, but that’s a risk that we take—nobody else. Why should we, as a community, be asked to assume any risk to our water supply that’s been functioning fine for 120 years? Why gamble that away for somebody else’s financial benefit?”

Gerlach is unincorporated, and local decisions are made by its Citizens Advisory Board. At that panel’s February meeting, 75 people—about half of the adult population of the town—attended either in person or via Zoom to speak against the Ormat’s proposal. Some of the residents who spoke complained that the company has repeatedly changed its plans and that the BLM has failed to do its job protecting the community.

GERLACH, NEV.—This

tiny town on the edge of the Black Rock Desert is an oasis of fresh water and bubbling hot springs and residents fear an international firm that wants to exploit those resources would destroy their 120-year-old community, while providing geothermal power to cities hundreds of miles away.

“We’re not saying that geothermal power is inherently bad; it’s just that we are kind of in the way,” said Jason Walters, who has lived in Gerlach for 17 years with his family and operates a business there. “We are inconvenient. As a community, we haven’t really been treated as stakeholders.”

Walters and other residents of Gerlach—the gateway to the annual Burning Man festival that attracts up to 80,000 people to the nearby playa in late August/early September—worry that they are being shoved aside in the nation’s headlong rush to develop alternatives to fossil fuels. They fear a 30 megawatt geothermalindustrial complex, less than a half-mile from their homes, would dry up hot springs, pollute ground water, generate constant noise, ruin views, reduce tourism, stifle economic development, undermine building foundations and light up an area that boasts some of the darkest night skies on the continent.

Ormat Technologies, whose Nevada subsidiary operates 15 geothermal plants in the Silver State, says residents’ worries are unfounded and based on misinformation. Many residents’ concerns mirror allegations made in a lawsuit against the federal government filed by the Burning Man organization, town residents, environmentalists and conservation groups. The company has said the lawsuit’s claims, and residents’ worries, just don’t hold water.

“You can ask any community where we operate a power plant if Ormat takes (them) very seriously,” said Paul Thomsen, vice president of business development for Ormat in Reno. “If we’re going to have a facility there, we need to have a positive relationship with the community. We’re going to be there for 20-plus years, so we want them to know we’ve invested in schools in rural Nevada— we’ve invested in all of those benefits for the facility that can also benefit the towns.”

Ormat’s initial proposal for the project called for two geothermal plants, an overhead power line and several miles of above-ground pipelines to be built mostly on public land managed by the federal government. In 2020, Ormat withdrew that plan from consideration by the Bureau of Land Management and replaced it with a proposal for up to 13

exploration wells. The BLM approved the plan, concluding the exploration wells would have “no significant impact” on the town or the environment.

Critics allege that the company is “segmenting” the project—advancing it in bite-sized pieces—in order to avoid scrutiny of its potential long-term impacts.

Walters said that for a long time, he kept an open mind about the issue, but now doesn’t trust Ormat and is disappointed in what he said is the BLM’s cursory “rubber-stamp” review of the project’s potential negative impacts. Previous meetings with the agency and company representatives haven’t provided residents with many answers, Walters said, and no one can guarantee a geothermal complex won’t harm the environment or negatively affect the community.

“It’s an unnecessary risk to take,” said Walters, who is particularly concerned about

“(In 2021), I was still in the buy-in stage with the project, because I liked green energy,” said Elisabeth “Schatzi” Gambrell, the former director of the Gerlach Senior Center. “When I found out that they had separated this project, and we’re now not talking about the disruption we would have with a full-time power plant that would cover several acres, I realized that I had been sold a really bad used car.”

Gerlach resident Dave Cooper retired after more than 30 years with the BLM, where he served as Black Rock National Conservation Area manager and authorized permits for the Burning Man festival. He’s an expert on the federal permitting process.

“Ormat segmented the initial project so that they didn’t have to look at the cumulative environmental and human impact of the whole development, only the exploration part of it,” said Cooper, who also is the spokesman for Friends of Black Rock-High Rock, one of the plaintiffs suing the BLM. He said the agency is required to look at the significant impacts of the entire project, not just the exploration wells, including “reasonable, foreseeable future actions” related to any permit request.

“The (2020 proposal) submitted an

Dave Cooper, left, with a map that shows the Bureau of Land Management excluded the town of Gerlach from the activity zone covered by Ormat’s exploration permit. Andy Moore is at right.

Photo by David Robert continued on next page

operations plan for full development of two power plants up here, with 23 wells, (for) production and injection, 26 miles of power lines and about another three miles of new roads for the plant and the well sites, among other things,” Cooper said.

If that happens, he said, “we’re talking about significant industrial development that would be larger than the town of Gerlach and would stretch for about four miles along the base of the Granite Mountains with the pipelines above ground. … That would mean the end of Gerlach as we know it.”

AN OASIS SPAWNED AN OUTPOST

In the early years of the 20th century, the town of Gerlach evolved around a railroad depot where a rancher shipped cattle to market. For decades, it also was a mining community, where many residents worked at the US Gypsum mine and processing plant in nearby Empire. The company shut down its Nevada operations in 2011, and 95 jobs went with it. (Another firm has since reopened the mine.) For a time, the town seemed on the brink of extinction. But after an inaugural Black Rock Desert arts and counter-culture gathering in 1991, attendance at the Burning Man festival grew exponentially each year. Over the last 15 years, the event has been breathing new life into the tiny town.

At summer’s end, Burning Man rises like an apocalyptic metropolis in the midst of the dry lake bed to temporarily become the Silver State’s 10th-largest city. Burners flock to Gerlach; some festival organizers are fulltime residents. Mutant art cars and Burning Man artwork can be seen around town, and an “art trail” is being developed. The festival’s notoriety attracts tourists throughout the year, as do the nearby hot springs, three nearby historic pioneer trails and the 800,000-acre Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area. Bighorn sheep occupy the Granite Mountains north of town, a steep range that would be the backdrop for the geothermal complex.

Hawks and golden eagles patrol the sky; chukar partridges dart among brushy slopes.

Wild horses, mule deer

and pronghorn antelope roam the area.

Hunters stalk desert hillsides in the fall. Hikers and star-gazers camp nearby in the spring and summer. The dry lakebed of the playa, when bare of Burners, serves as a launch pad for rocket clubs and has hosted attempts at landspeed records.

“Where the pavement ends and the West begins” is among Gerlach’s many sobriquets.

The village has fewer than 200 full-time residents. Twenty-one children attend its K-12 school. Supermarkets, hospitals and most services are nearly 100 miles away. Many residents appreciate that isolation—and the tranquility that comes with living in the remote area. New structures mingle with century-old buildings made from railroad ties.

Hot springs surface in several areas around Gerlach and run under the town, as evidenced by steel grates in roadways that billow clouds of steam in cold weather. The geothermal resource is under the houses, businesses and paths residents walk every day. Some older buildings are sinking into the soft alkali soil. If geothermal plants are built and affect the hot springs, they fear, Gerlach will literally sink into the desert. They worry about the potential for noise, water pollution and the loss of the two dozen hot springs in and around the town.

Ormat’s critics have little faith in the federal government’s role in making sure those things don’t happen. The BLM is required to complete an environmental impact statement

(EIS)—as it does for the Burning Man festival—if a given project may have significant environmental impacts on such things as wetlands, cultural resources, threatened/ endangered species, other wildlife, water quality, or wilderness and scenic areas. In approving Ormat’s permit for exploration wells, the BLM decided to conduct an “environmental assessment,” which has less-stringent requirements than an EIS. That approval document for Ormat’s exploration project lists possible concerns, then concludes that none are matters of “significant impact.”

Burning Man, Friends of Black Rock-High Rock Inc., Friends of Nevada Wilderness, Gerlach residents and other plaintiffs sued the BLM in January, alleging that the agency failed to comply with several federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act. The suit notes that “people travel to Gerlach to experience the solitude of the vast open spaces and undeveloped vistas present in the Black Rock Desert,” and surrounding wilderness and conservation areas. A geothermal plant shoulder-to-shoulder with the town and protected areas would threaten the community and environment, according to the lawsuit, “by industrializing a portion of the Black Rock National Conservation Area with the introduction of noise, traffic, light and presence of the drilling infrastructure.”

Ormat says the lawsuit has no merit.

ORMAT RESPONDS

Previous studies indicated that the Gerlach area is a prime candidate for a geothermal plant, but Thomsen said the company is obligated to do its own exploration. Separating the exploration and utilization permit procedures, he said, works in residents’ favor.

Ormat, Thomsen said, is making sure building a plant in Gerlach is viable. “The best surveys and so forth don’t compare to actually having a production injection well, and by doing the process in two steps, we’ve actually created more opportunity for the community to comment to the BLM to review the project moving forward, so there is no advantage to Ormat,” he said.

Concerns about noise and light pollution, Thomsen said, may be based on residents’ research of older geothermal plants, which don’t have the benefit of the latest technology and designs. He said lighting for new plants is minimized and shielded; drilling and other sources of noise are muted. “Noise is limited by decibels in the permit,” he said, noting that at some projects, drill rigs are shielded with

“We’re talking about significant industrial development that would be larger than the town of Gerlach and would stretch for about four miles along the base of the Granite Mountains with the pipelines above ground. … That would mean the end of Gerlach as we know it.”

— Dave Cooper Gerlach resident and former BLM manager

Above: Elizabeth “Schatzi” Gambrell, left, gestures as she and Dave Cooper, right, explain their concerns relating to the proposed geothermal project in Gerlach.

Left: Jason Walters looks at a building in Gerlach which is sinking into the damp, alkali soil. Hot springs run beneath parts of the town. Photos by David Robert

insulation. “We try to minimize noise pollution as much as possible,” he said.

Residents’ worries that the extraction and re-injection of fluids will affect hot springs and geothermal water close to the surface are also not based on facts, Thomsen said. The exploration wells will reveal whether the hot water deep in the ground is connected to the surface pools, he said.

“We need to determine that geothermal resource is separate and not connected to any surface waters or manifestations,” Thomsen said.

“The geothermal reservoir needs to be isolated. … We run state-of-the-art binary technology, which requires the system to be closed—meaning if we produce geothermal fluid from a deep reservoir, we need to be able to inject the geothermal fluid back into that reservoir at depth, and that’s what we want to do with exploration.”

Although the BLM’s permit allows for 13 exploration wells, only three or four will be drilled, he said. It takes about 45 days to drill a well, Thomsen noted, so Ormat “will know in a matter of months if there is a geothermal resource there for the development of a power plant. (If) drilling results come back negative, and there is no project to be developed, we will reclaim the well pads. We will grade, (and) there will be no footprint at all to indicate we were ever there.”

Ormat representatives previously told residents and members of the Citizens Advisory Board that there was nothing it could do to help with the town’s needs, such as better power lines, roads or other improvements.

Thomsen said those comments were in reference to the exploration phase of the project. If a plant is built, he said, Gerlach will get improvements and benefits.

If a plant is built, about 400 workers are needed for welldrilling and plant construction, he said. Once operational, 20 new permanent jobs will come to Gerlach. “Some people think that’s fantastic, because a 30 megawatt power plant contributes about $2 million annually in taxes, royalties and operational payroll, with almost no impact on roads, schools, hospitals or police departments, he said.

The projected millions of dollars in taxes would be paid to the Washoe County government, residents noted, so it’s uncertain how much of that windfall would directly benefit the town. “That’s something to ask the county commissioners,” Thomsen said.

If the exploration wells prove the development of the geothermal resource is viable, he said, the permitting process for plants will take two or three more years. The BLM also may determine that an environmental impact statement is needed. If and when a geothermal complex is built, Thomsen said, Ormat will provide benefits to the community.

“Being at the end of a transmission plant, we would have to work on telecom and internet, (because) our power plants are remotely monitored and reviewed by engineers, so we would we have to have stateof-the-art communication systems, and we share that with the community,” Thomsen said.

He said “subsidence”—sinking buildings, a problem already documented in Gerlach— won’t be affected for the same reason that the springs won’t dry up: The plant would tap a deep reservoir only if the company is sure the surface water won’t be affected. Ormat’s “tracer testing,” he said, identifies and tracks “the movement and location of every water molecule through our geothermal reservoir.” The results of the test wells will determine if the deep reservoir is a closed system.

THE ‘RIGHT PROJECT IN THE WRONG PLACE’

A 2004 research study in Iceland, however, concluded that surface disruptions— including land subsidence, lowering of the groundwater table, increased earthquake activity and the disappearance of surface hot springs—can be consequences of developing geothermal resources. Thomsen said such concerns don’t apply to Ormat’s projects.

Residents’ worries, he said, always need to

be taken seriously, but he emphasized that the company is in an investigation phase.

“We don’t have any proposal to build a power plant there yet; we are simply doing the drilling to determine if there is a resource,” he said.

The initial application for two power plants at Gerlach, he said, was possibly the result of some “confusion … but I think BLM made a mistake, and we corrected them as quickly as we could that we wanted to do an exploration plan.”

Jason Walters believes Ormat already knows the area is a great place to build their plants— and that it’s the right project in the wrong place.

“They claim no one is necessarily going to build anything; they are just going to spend millions to explore,” Walters said. “… They already know it’s viable, because the research is already there. The reason this is such a good spot for them is because there’s a road, a power line, and there’s water—our water supply.

“This works for them, but that’s because there’s a town here. Everything here is convenient for them, everything except the people who live here. We are just in the way.”

Ky Plaskon, of the Truckee Meadows Bicycle Alliance, assisted with the research for this story.

Jason Walters explains his concerns about Ormat’s geothermal project, which would be built behind the white buildings in the background of the photo, at the foot of the Granite Mountains. Photo by David Robert

“The attitude (of the company and regulators) is, ‘You’ll be fine— unless something goes wrong.’ Why should we volunteer to take the risks? Maybe they believe what they are saying, but that’s a risk that we take—nobody else. Why should we as a community be asked to assume any risk to our water supply that’s been functioning fine for 120 years? Why gamble that away for somebody else’s financial benefit?”

—

Jason Walters

Gerlach resident

An archway sculpture created for the annual Burning Man festival is among several works of art displayed or stored in Gerlach.

Photo by David Robert

To be or not to be

Created in 1944, the Ghost Army stage-managed more than 22 deceptions as allied troops fought their way from the English Channel to the German border. The inflatable tanks and vehicles were combined with carefully coordinated sound effects that mimicked what the Germans would expect to hear when American troops moved in and out of areas. The recordings of military drills and radio messages were supplied by the 3133rd Signal Service Company, which also was able to impersonate individual radio operators.

Phony dispatches were sent in Morse code— and telegraphers have their own unique styles of tapping out messages, Crean said. “The Germans listening in to radio frequencies could tell the signature of individual operators,” he said. “Deceivers learned the touch of multiple operators, so Germans listening in would think that an army that may have left was still there.”

Selected for their creativity, the soldiers had to learn to improvise. With no guidelines or routines to follow, they had to think on their feet.

The 23rd had less than five months of training at Camp Forrest, Tenn. The 3133rd Signal Service Company trained at Pine Camp, N.Y., before deploying in Europe. War was combined with performance art; lives were at stake.

ART OF DECEPTION

The Nevada Museum of Art honors the top-secret Ghost Army of World War II

One day in 1944, two French refugees cycling in a rural part of Luxembourg spotted what looked like trucks, trailers and M4 Sherman tanks draped in netting beneath sheltering trees. An American sentry approached, but the Frenchmen were mesmerized by what was behind him: four GIs effortlessly lifting and moving what appeared to be a 40-ton tank. The two witnesses were impressed, said retired U.S. Army Col. Peter Crean, the vice president of education at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. “These Americans are really strong,” one of the Frenchman was heard to remark. “After that, (the GIs) learned to keep civilians out of the area, or else it

would blow their cover,” said Crean, who came to Reno in March for the opening of Ghost Army: The Combat Con Artists of World War II at the Nevada Museum of Art.

The French cyclists had caught a glimpse of the backstage work of 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, aka the Ghost Army, an American unit of 1,023 artists and other specialists chosen for their abilities to create realistic and convincing decoys.

From the beaches of Normandy to the River Rhine, they conjured inflatable tanks and vehicles, faux artillery pieces, a phony general or two, vehicle noises and fake radio traffic—ruses to convince enemy commanders they were

facing tens of thousands of American soldiers massing for attacks.

During the final year of World War II, the handful of creative soldiers imitated up to 60,000 men. When the Nazis took the bait, they moved their own troops to face threats that did not exist. It is estimated that the Ghost Army’s deceptions saved 15,000 to 30,000 lives by misdirecting Nazi forces away from the sites of real attacks.

The exhibit, open through July 23, showcases the decoys, sound effects and other deceptions crafted by the soldier-artists, as well as the artwork they created in their spare time.

Walking into the NMA exhibit is like entering a time capsule. Puddles of rubber on the floor are inflated to blossom into tanks, planes or artillery pieces, some scaled down to fit in the museum spaces. Air pumps hiss like tea kettles about to boil as the decoys bloom. Some speakers blare military radio calls; others fill the air with the clanking, rattling and roaring sounds of a mechanized army on the move. The recorded voices of GIs are mixed in the din, shouting to each other and giving orders to more soldiers who aren’t there.

The artists at war also created images of the landscapes around them and portraits of their fellow soldiers. Some painted their comrades completing off-duty tasks such as sewing their fake unit patches on their uniforms. Jack Masey drew caricatures of his companions, including Bill Blass, who became a famous fashion designer after the war. They painted and sketched scenes of neighborhoods, with tanks scattered through the streets and magnificent mountains and valleys in the background. They used watercolors to bring out the glory of sunsets behind soldiers who were setting the stages to create deception. Some artwork is romanticized; others depict war-torn cities and landscapes of destruction.

An inflatable tank and a photo of some of the Ghost Army artists are part of the exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art.

Photo/David Robert

Their work documents their missions and their everyday lives.

Decades of secrecy

The unit was a secret during the war and for a half-century thereafter, until the Ghost Army’s history was officially declassified in 1996.

“They were so successful at deceiving the Germans that they couldn’t tell anyone, because the U.S. was entering (the Cold War), and deception was a necessary tool to reuse,” Crean said.

After the war, alumni of the Ghost Army returned to their civilian lives—not allowed reveal the top-secret details of their efforts. Many settled into careers in advertising, architecture, design, theater, art, fashion and radio. Some, like Blass, went on to become renowned, including photographer Art Kane, and artist Ellsworth Kelly.

Kelly became famous for artwork characterized by hard-edged and boldly colored shapes, which influenced abstract art in the 1950s. His work was partially informed by military camouflage techniques, which he said helped him learn the use of form and shadow. Kelly’s work, on loan from the collections of Jordan Schnitzer and his Family Foundation, is showcased in an exhibit accompanying the Ghost Army exhibition. The museum has scheduled a lecture about Kelly’s work, presented by Carter Foster, deputy director for curatorial affairs at Blanton Museum of Art, on Thursday, May 18, at 6 p.m. Other programs and lectures related to the Ghost Army and World War II are scheduled at the museum through July, including:

Thursday, April 13, 6 p.m.: Invisible Warriors: African American Women in World War II is a film documenting the Black women who served in the war. Filmmaker and historian Gregory S. Cooke joins virtually following the screening for a live discussion ($15 general admission; $10 members; $5 students).

Saturday, May 13, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.: The Estelle J. Kelsey Foundation presents Hands ON! Second Saturday. Free programs include hands-on art activities, storytelling, guided tours and live performances. Participants can create paper from military uniforms in a workshop hosted by Art Heals War Wounds.

Thursday, July 13, 6 p.m.: “Ghost Army: Deception and Disguise in World War II” is a presentation by Mark Stout, who will discuss the deception techniques used by the Ghost Army, from rubber tanks to double agents. Stout is an adjunct instructor at Johns Hopkins University as well as a former intelligence officer and historian of the International Spy Museum ($15 general admission; $13 students; $10 members).

Ghost Army: The Combat Con Artists of World War II is on display through Sunday, July 23, at the Nevada Museum of Art, 160 W. Liberty St., in Reno. Regular admission is $15, with discounts. Thanks to support by the E.L. Wiegand Foundation, admission to the exhibit is free to veterans, active military members and their families. For more information, call 775-3293333, or visit nevadaart.org.

GRR accepting summer music camp applications

GRR (formerly known as Girls Rock Reno), the annual music summer camp at the Holland Project, is accepting applications for GRR Summer 2023, scheduled for June 19-24. The program welcomes all self-identified girls, trans, nonbinary and gender-expansive youth to participate.

GRR is an annual music summer camp for youth ages 9-17. The schedule includes instruction in vocals, guitar, bass and drums to young people of all skill levels, supported by workshops in rock history, screen-printing and button-making, radio production, stage confidence and more.

“We strive to promote self-love with programs that foster not only creativity and community-building, but also confidence and empowerment,” said Ilya Arbatman, camp director. “GRR promotes skills which help guide participants throughout their lives.”

The goal, Arbatman said, “is to counter the underrepresentation of people of marginalized gender identities in music, and we are committed to creating a positive, inclusive environment.” Local musicians assist with instruction, mentorship and guest performances.

GRR is in its fifth year. The camp fee is $350, and financial aid is available. Visit www.girlsrockreno.org for details and applications.

Col. Peter Crean (ret.), from the National World War II Museum, talks in front of an inflatable artillery piece at the Ghost Army exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art. Photo/David Robert

Pictured: Participants at the 2022 GRR summer camp. Photo courtesy of the Holland Project.

Pinball wizardry

A vintage game connects a community of local players

As the song “Eye of the Tiger” blares from the arcade’s speakers, a player taps buttons and sends a silver ball flying from flippers to ricochet among lighted bumpers inside a glass-covered cabinet. The player is focused on the frantic action and does what he can to propel the ball at a variety of targets. The game comes to a sudden end as the ball rolls out of the playing field, and more bells and buzzers announce the final point tally.

Pinball—a “devil’s game” once banned in nearly every state—survives as an in-person pastime in an age of online gaming. In Reno, two businesses have built communities of players of all ages. Some come for the nostalgia; others step up to the tables to compete in a mechanical game that was already old when their grandparents were born.

What’s the attraction?

“The social aspect is the biggest thing,” said player Brooke Chesney, 21. “We get to see our friends, and we get to invite more of our friends here, too. Nothing compares to the physical machine, all the clicky-clacky sounds. You can emulate it on a home computer all you want, but it’ll never ever be the same as being there in person. Also, it’s

cheap; $20 will last you all night. It’s affordable, cheap thrills.”

Jake Cronin, 27, enjoys the lights and sounds of game play. “And it’s a really fun feeling to get better at something, and fun to see the skill actually involved with pinball,” he said. “It’s very satisfying. You can stay home and do whatever, but at the end of day, you aren’t really socializing the same way you can as if you actually physically go out.”

In Reno, Playfield ’76 and Press Start Bar and Arcade are hubs of the pinball revival.

Playfield ’76 managing partner Hassan Mahmood, who opened the bar at 150 N. Arlington Ave. in 2021, said his goal was to create a “speakeasy atmosphere” that would entertain his customers. When Mahmood was a teenager, his friends played ice hockey, but he was more interested in pinball, he said.

“I think there is a story in a pinball machine. Once you figure out what the goal is, it becomes pretty interesting to me,” Mahmood said.

The players’ diversity in ages and backgrounds also is an attraction, he said.

“We have someone who comes in who’s rated one of the top pinball players in America, (and) when he’s playing, there might be a 23-year-old

on the pinball machine next to him,” Mahmood said. “I love that about the game; it brings the age gap together.”

Banned in the 1940s

Pinball machines became popular during the Great Depression and, like slot machines, were seen as a corrupting influence. The machines were banned in many states in the 1940s, because they were considered a form of gambling.

Mahmood loves the game’s shady history. He christened his arcade Playfield ’76, because a New York court ruled in 1976 that the game involved more skill than luck.

As arcade games became more electronic, the popularity of the mechanical devices faded. The vintage games started making a comeback in the early ’00s, however, when arcade bars propagated in New York City.

Modern machines have the look and feel of the old pinball cabinets, but with high-tech upgrades. The games’ themes often are inspired by movie franchises, including Deadpool and Lord of the Rings. Inside, computer software creates the visual and audio effects.

Pinball wizards compete

Press Start Arcade and Bar owner and operator

John Simpson started with a few pinball machines; now, his arcade bar, at 600 S. Center St., hosts Reno’s largest pinball tournaments.

“Pinball’s popularity in this town has been in a state of disrepair for a long time,” Simpson said. “(The old) machines never functioned properly. They were never taken care of, so there wasn’t much to build a crowd from.”

When he opened Press Start in 2017, he focused on attracting regular patrons and growing a pinball community in the Truckee Meadows, he said. He has three rules for his business: “No. 1, make sure all the machines are functioning. Secondly, keep it affordable, (so)

we are half the price. … Lastly, (we want) to build a community that has all types of people with different skill levels.”

Press Start is the only arcade bar that legally caters to customers younger than 21, because the bar and arcade spaces are separate, he said. That attracts families and people of all ages to the games.

Most Press Start customers are in their mid30s, Simpson said, but he noted that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has seen more younger players.

Playing a mean pinball

RenoPinball.com owner and pinball player Jim Martin runs the International Flipper Pinball Association Tournament (IFPA) in Reno. Martin began playing the game in the early 2000s. He is now in his mid-50s and continues to play regularly. It’s all about flipper techniques, he said.

“With pinball, there is no pattern to be learned. The ball is random, so what it decides to do dictates what the player is going to do,” he said. “It’s betting on your ability to learn the skill of nudging the ball off the rubber and to hit the flipper where you want to make the shots.”

In 2018, Martin teamed up with Simpson at Press Start, where the duo began running the IFPA tournament almost every Tuesday.

“Because there’s a bar, most people who come to Press Start to play are 21 years and older,” Martin said. “However, I (recently) had a girl who played in my tournament who was 8 years old.”

Reno pinball player Ben Hoaks grew up in the 1980s playing arcade games and became fascinated with pinball. He now owns 14 pinball machines and plays regularly in the IFPA tournament every Tuesday. His advice for players: “Practice, practice, practice. Keep your eye on the ball, and shoot the flashing lights,” he said.

At year’s end, the 16 players with the most points in the IFPA tournament battle it out for the Nevada pinball championship. Last year, Hoaks and seven others from the Press Start tournament competed in the state tournament,

Pinball players at Playfield ’76, a bar-arcade in Reno. Photo/David Robert

ART OF THE STATE

| BY KRIS VAGNER

gain a foothold and help popularize a generation of locals.

DIY community

A self-taught artist who’s climbed the career ladder reminisces about his roots

Pan Pantoja doesn’t have an art degree. He’s also never had a job without “art” in the title.

“If you were to ask the farmers and ranchers I grew up around, they would just say I was really different,” said Pantoja.

He spent his childhood in rural Montana, Idaho and Wyoming in the 1980s and ’90s— running around the woods, catching fish out of creeks and causing the adults in his life to wonder where he might fit in.

“When I was old enough, they were like, ‘Maybe you should go to a city. Maybe this isn’t for you,’” he said during a recent interview.

Once, in elementary school, he was left unattended in a classroom, so he did what seemed to come naturally: He piled the furniture in the back of the room to make a nest. “I found some pigment, and I was making a bird onto the wall to go into the nest,” he said.

On another occasion, a visiting artist happened to be at the school. “He looked at me— he looked like a skinny Santa Claus. He grabs me and brings me into the principal’s office,” Pantoja said. “I thought, ‘They’re gonna kill me. This will be the end of me.’”

Instead, the visitor advised the school administrators that the young Pantoja had a creative spark that should be nurtured, and that he should be provided with art supplies and encouragement.

He got serious about drawing and painting right then and there, and he stuck with it through high school, depicting things

he saw in the natural world—deer, for example.

Though he remained in the rural West throughout his childhood, he caught a few glimpses into the buzzing New York art world on PBS shows. The frenetic portraiture of JeanMichel Basquiat—who began as a graffiti tagger and quickly became a gallery star—captured Pantoja’s heart. So did the cartoon-like paintings of featureless human bodies, always in motion, that Keith Haring cranked out by the thousands.

One day, in a public library in Idaho Falls, he happened upon a picture in a book. It was Salvador Dalí’s 1944 painting “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening.” In the image, an angry-looking tiger, pouncing toward a sleeping, nude woman, emerges from the mouth of a jumping rockfish, which emerges from a half-gutted pomegranate. Pantoja relished the sudden realization that art is not beholden to the constraints of reality. He remembers thinking something like. “You can do that! Wow! The deer can have four heads!”

In 2003, when he was in his early 20s, Pantoja moved to Reno, where he noticed two opposing phenomena. On one hand, the art scene was small enough that a lot of painters, musicians and other creative people were leaving for greener pastures as soon as they started to make it big.

At the same time, there was momentum in the air: A wave of artist-run galleries were able to pay then-cheap rents (even in Midtown, which was not yet called Midtown) long enough to

Pantoja found the scene energizing and quickly put down roots. Since then, he’s forged an artist’s life outside of the museum/ gallery/university system and climbed the DIY career ladder. He’s gotten several local mural commissions, taught high school art and, in 2019, was appointed the first city of Reno poet laureate. He’s the director of the Potentialist Workshop, the longtime DIY artspace on East Second Street that serves as a playground and experiment zone for artists, boasting studio spaces, a gallery, a recording studio in the basement and a black box theater in the back room. He also does the programming at Savage Mystic Gallery, which Morgan Savage-Moffat, a painter and psychic, opened in the former location of Ceol Irish Pub in 2021 to showcase artwork with a spiritual bent.

All along, Pantoja has continued to sew collaboration with local and out-of-town artists. In 2021, he and several others embarked on a national bus tour, installing paintings and sculptures in several cities. (Stay tuned for news of a documentary film on that project.) In 2022, he brought a team of artists from Reno and beyond to Miami to install an outdoor exhibition for Art Week. And in recent years, he’s struck up a collaboration with the Niyo Arts Center—a nonprofit in Rwanda that supports women and children living in poverty—and shown work by the center’s artists in various venues. (Founder Niyonsenga Pacifique will be the Savage Mystic Gallery’s featured artist in July.)

In April, Pantoja, now 42, is having a solo show at Savage Mystic. The focus will be his newest paintings, which still ring as celebratory and optimistic as if he’d just discovered Basquiat, Haring and Dalí yesterday. But, in classic Pantoja style, the show will also showcase the community he’s helped build. At the reception, plan to see aerialists, musicians and “formal fashions.”

Coming up over the next year: Pantoja listed poetry, improv, a local film, experimental plays, a presence in the next Fernley Mural Festival, a mural at Mayberry Landing, and the installation he led in Miami, the House of Infinite Potential, to be reinstalled closer to home.

The works of Pan Pantoja will be on display from April 1-30 at Savage Mystic Gallery, 538 S. Virginia St., in Reno. A reception will take place from 6 to 9 p.m., Thursday, April 20. For more information, visit savagemysticart.com.

This article was produced by Double Scoop, Nevada’s visual arts publication. Read more at www.doublescoop.art.

•

Pan Pantoja. Photo/Kris Vagner

If you have reliable transportation and are interested,

Fourth is best

John Wick: Chapter 4 is that rarest of sequels: It’s a masterpiece, even as the fourth film in the franchise. It even makes all of the chapters that came before it better. It’s the best film of a fantastic four.

John Wick is a career-defining role that plays to all of Keanu Reeves’ great movie-star qualities and allows him to show off dramatically and physically. He delivers his best work in the best film of his career. Yes, this film is better than The Matrix

As for director Chad Stahelski, whose directing resume consists of just the four Wick movies, he has given us a film that is anything but one note. The action takes place in so many glorious ways that it’s hard to keep track. Nightclubs, on horseback, staircases, Greek-like cathedrals and city streets are just some of the backdrops for some of the greatest action/fight scenes ever captured for a movie. This film is nearly three hours long, and every one of its seconds is wisely and entertainingly used.

To say this is something you need to see on a big screen would be a bit of an

understatement. Find the movie on the biggest, best-est screen in your neighborhood. Order five fucking buckets of popcorn to munch on for two hours and 49 minutes (and maybe take it easy on liquid consumption for obvious reasons), and just have at it. The is the sort of spectacle that makes you remember why you drag your lazy asses out of the house rather than watch NetMax Plussing in your living room all of the time.

Early in the film, Wick is seen dispatching bad guys while riding horseback through a desert landscape. It’s definitely a new look for him, and it’s beautifully shot. This sets the stage for an anything-goes vibe that, amazingly, has every scene feeling like something brand new.

At the end of Chapter 3, Ian McShane’s Winston, runner of the assassin hotel The Continental, shot an “excommunicado” Wick. The action picks up after Wick has been hiding with Morpheus, excuse me, the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) for months. When it is learned that Wick is back in business, the usual contracts go out, and the mayhem kicks into high gear.

A gunfight shot from above, showing the participants going from room to room, is a total trip. A sequence near film’s end, with a staircase seemingly out of The Exorcist, is an absolute showstopper. And a long scene in which it feels like the entire city of Paris is trying to kill Wick in the streets is insane perfection. It’s all paced and flows in a way that is simply thrilling.

As for villains, this has a reliably great one in Bill Skarsgard as Marquis, a family head who, of course, wants John Wick dead, and can’t seem to get the job done, no matter what he throws at him. Skarsgard is putting together a nice portfolio of characters outside of the Pennywise makeup. Donnie Yen is a total blast as a blind super-fighter commissioned to take out Wick; it’s a tough gig for him, since he loves the guy. Don’t we all?

As I left the theater, I felt like I’d just watched one of the greatest genre/blockbuster achievements in cinematic history. If this is the last chapter, it’s very well played. If there are more, I will certainly line up for what transpires.

This year has its first great film. Let’s hope it’s the first of many for 2023. Shazam! Fury of the Gods offers an example of a franchise that should’ve wrapped after one movie.

What was fun and charming in the original becomes tiresome and redundant in the follow-up. This continues the underwhelming trend of recent superhero movies, with the DC and Marvel universes both experiencing extreme fatigue.

The first Shazam! was a bright spot for DC—a fun take on a great premise that was mostly outside of the realm of all that Zack Snyder business, and the silliness that sprouted from it. That first installment was lightning in a bottle: Young stars Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer were in their teens, and Zachary Levi proved to be a decent all-around choice to play Shazam, a boy who transforms into an adult superhero via a bolt of lightning.

This time out, the boys are buzzing their 20s, but still playing teens—and they don’t come off as high-schoolers. It’s not as bad as, say, John Travolta playing 18 in Grease, but they aren’t really kids anymore.

Levi’s shtick, while fun in the first film, is kind of annoying in Fury of the Gods, as if he’s really straining to make the “boy brain in man

body” premise come across. You can feel every note of his performance; it seems a little desperate and forced, and maybe even a little sad.

When the action stopped at the end of 2019’s Shazam!, Billy (Angel) and Freddy (Grazer) had defeated Dr. Sivana, broken that power-scepter thing, and gotten superpowers for all of their young family members, essentially establishing them as a team.

The action picks up with two gods (Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren) with evil goals snatching the power rod from a museum. Meanwhile, the newly established superhero team is conducting business out of their foster home. Rather than some of them being young adults with, say, unsatisfying jobs (which could’ve been funny), they are still kids dealing with the rigors of high school and/or trying to get adopted. The vibe is strange.

Freddy gets a love interest in Anthea (Rachel Zegler). Zegler played Maria in the West Side Story remake, and she’s just way too good for the routine high school movie crap she’s asked to do in this movie. Meanwhile, Billy Batson’s action is mostly buried within his Shazam (Levi) alter ego. While his character was a big part of the original, he’s mostly a side story here.

The action that transpires is mostly CGI mayhem that steals from other movies (the collapsing bridges from Superman) and TV shows (Game of Thrones-type dragons). None of it really makes a lick of sense, and the stakes are quite uninteresting, despite the fact that the world could end. The screenwriters and director David F. Sandberg don’t do a very good job of establishing a true sense of danger or consequences. It’s just a bunch of CGI dragons and monsters running around.

A big part of the fun of the Shazam premise is the back and forth between being a normal person and a superhero. That fun is lost here, as the energy goes toward a run-of-the-mill apocalypse scenario rather than witnessing a group of people dealing with newfound superpowers.

The pandemic delayed production on this sequel, and that really messed it up. If they could have rolled this one out two years ago, the idea would have been fresh, and the actors would have still been young enough to pull it off. Instead, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is a lazy, tardy sequel.

‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ is the first great film of 2023; the second ‘Shazam’ is tiresome and redundant

Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 4.

Zachary Levi and Helen Mirren in Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

From their family to your table

Sierra Meat & Seafood focuses more on retail sales since the pandemic

Since 1934, the Flocchini family (pronounced flo-kini, like zucchini)— owners of Sierra Meat & Seafood, Durham Bison Ranch and Flocchini Family Provisions—have offered natural, sustainable and wholesome proteins.

Now in its fourth generation of leadership, the family is focusing on growth, community support and getting products directly to your family table.

In 2018, to continue growing and thriving, the Flocchini family decided to sell a portion of Sierra Meat & Seafood to a private equity firm, which the Flocchinis point out is also a family-owned business.

“Some people in the community get

confused and think that we’re not a familyowned business anymore,” said Bernadette Flocchini, executive vice president and director of specialty and exotic proteins at Sierra Meat & Seafood. “They think we’ve gone down that corporate route when, really, we simply reached out for more family support. This private equity firm owns portions of other food companies much like ours that are familyowned. They’re not the kind of company that comes in and makes demands. They simply evaluate, figure out where we’re lacking, suggest solutions and then hold our hand until we fully implement these solutions.”

Sierra Meat & Seafood, in fact, has more family members working in the building than

| BY CHEREE BOTELER

TASTE OF THE TOWN TASTE OF THE TOWN

Happenings

ever before.

“Family businesses are dying in America, and the passion of our family members within this private equity firm is to support family businesses and help them not only survive, but also thrive,” said Kate Castro, the merchandising manager (and Bernadette’s daughter). “They bring talent and support services to small family businesses such as ours to help us streamline processes. It’s very impactful.”

Sierra Meat & Seafood has always been supportive of Northern Nevada causes and invites nonprofits, customers and vendors to reach out to them when in need.

“We love supporting our community, and I think many don’t realize that they can reach out to us,” Castro said. “We’re so privileged to be surrounded by all this food all the time. We want to help those who may be hungry, and with our partners in the community, especially our customers and vendors, we want to support their staff and fundraising efforts. Most importantly, our family wants to have the opportunity to support them through tough times. In these cases, we really have a noquestions-asked policy.”

Their family is focusing on retail efforts. During the pandemic, when food service was hit so hard, the family realized that they needed to diversify their business. At the time, their business was 95% food service and 5% retail. Since COVID, while food service sales have bounced back, retail has continued to thrive. Proteins can be ordered via the website or by calling 775-322-4073. Castro said orders placed before 3 p.m. will be available for pick up the next day.

“The best part about this is that if you’re ordering steaks, we are going cut them that next morning, and you’re going have them as fresh as can be,” she said.

In addition to personal orders, Sierra Meat & Seafood holds quarterly cooler sales. Dates of these sales are released via the company’s Facebook and Instagram.

“The cooler sales are exciting new events that we started doing last year,” Castro said. “For one day each quarter, we open our warehouse, have everything out on pallets with sampling stations, and sell our proteins at a flat rate per pound. Since we’re a wholesale distributor, at these sales, we break our proteins down into smaller quantities for the average person.”

For more information, visit SierraMeat.com.

While spring has yet to feel like it’s sprung, we’re hopping down the buffet—er, bunny— trail this month for Easter, on Sunday, April 9. The Shore at Renaissance Reno Downtown, 1 S. Lake St., will be offering a breakfast buffet from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at $75 per person with add-on Bloody Mary and mimosa bar access for $25; shoreroom. com/menus/easter-brunch-menu. … Sparks Water Bar, 325 Harbour Cove Drive, will have an Easter brunch buffet from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., with a guest appearance by the Easter Bunny; www.sparkswaterbar.com. … The Nugget Casino Resort will have an Easter brunch buffet with seating times on the hour from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. at $59.99 for adults and $29.99 for kids 5-11 years old; www.nuggetcasinoresort.com/entertainment/ upcoming/easter-brunch. … Wild River Grille, 17 S. Virginia St., will have a threecourse prix fixe menu from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at $39 for adults and $16 for children, and optional bottomless mimosas for $12. Mains will include tri-tip, smoked salmon toast and breakfast burritos; www.wildrivergrille.com.

Homage Bakery, 519 Ralston St., is offering Easter goods for pre-order, like hot cross scones, monte cristo croissants and rhubarb rosemary coffee cake; www.homagereno. com/easter. … Perenn Bakery (both 20 St. Lawrence Ave. and Rancharrah locations) will be open on Easter Sunday with the usual offerings and additional pre-order items, like individual quiches and sour cream blueberry coffee cakes. On Saturday, April 8, they will be hosting a Cruffin Decorating Party at the Rancharrah location; www.perennbakery.com.

Openings and Transitions

Satisfaction Pizza will be replacing Pizzeria Lupo next to The Loving Cup, at 190 California Ave. The name was chosen to be cohesive with The Loving Cup’s homage to the Rolling Stones. Satisfaction Pizza will be a late-night option, staying open until 2 a.m. ThursdaysSaturdays, offering Detroit-style pizza; www. instagram.com/satisfactionpizza. … The Eddy has reopened. Head to this riverwalk hotspot at 16 S. Sierra St. for outdoor games, music and food from La Barca taco truck and woodfired pizzas from Firetrail Pizza; theeddyreno. com. … Reno Coffee Company, 1300 S. Wells Ave., has a new sister concept next door, the EP Listening Lounge, touted as Reno’s first listening bar. Guests can enjoy vinyl records played on a vintage hi-fi system, draft cocktails and an upcoming menu of elevated hot dogs; facebook.com/renocoffeecompany.

… The Great Basin Community Food Co-Op, 240 Court St., is revisiting plans to revamp and reopen the upstairs Foodshed Cafe. The original plans for the “fully organic and local food-based salad bar” were thwarted due to COVID. The co-op is currently fundraising for the project; greatbasinfood.coop.

—Maude Ballinger

Kate Castro, Bernadette Flocchini, Steve Flocchini and Ryan Flocchini, of Sierra Meat & Seafood. Photo/David Robert

Complement and contrast

Wine and charcuterie go so well together because of the mix-and-match flavor profiles provided by each element

Is baloney charcuterie?

The technical answer is yes—but do not try to serve it to your friends as “charcuterie” if you want them to remain your friends.

So what is charcuterie, anyway?

Charcuterie is a French word for cooking devoted to prepared meat products—you know, like baloney. In the United States today, however, when we say charcuterie, we actually mean a charcuterie board: a selection of prepared meat products and cheeses, along with other food products

that complement the meats and cheeses, like dried fruits, nuts, olives, pickles, breads, crackers, dips and spreads. Charcuterie is perfect as an appetizer or as finger food for a cocktail party.

Charcuterie boards are often associated with wine—because they’re a perfect playground for flavor pairings.

Many people think pairing a wine with food is some sort of voodoo food magic they’ll never be able to understand—while other people think it’s just B.S. Well, it is not B.S.— it is science, and a science that’s not hard to

understand with just a few guidelines.

In a simplistic model, there are six basic tastes the human tongue can sense: sweet, salty, acidic (sour), fatty (umami), spicy and bitter. Wine flavors are often described as fruity, acidic (sour), mineral, tannic, spicy and earthy. While there are thousands of flavor combinations in both food and wine, you do not have to be Gordon Ramsay to see that the flavors in food also exist in wine. The end goal of wine pairings is to elevate the flavors in both the food and the wine at the same time.

If you don’t think flavor pairings are important … have you ever had a nice glass of orange juice right after brushing your teeth? Yuck. The toothpaste tastes fine; the orange juice tastes great; together, they could not be worse. How can we make sure this does not happen with food and wine?

The simple rule is to pair wines and foods that are distinctly similar, or distinctly contrasting. Imagine similar flavors—pairing an acidic wine like an albariño with a citrus salad. Or buttery chardonnay with lobster. Stuffed mushrooms with pinot noir, and a sweet wine with a nice slice of pie. By doing this, we accentuate the flavors that are in both the food and the wine. This is what makes the butter flavor in the lobster really come to life.

With contrasting flavor parings, we want the flavors to be different in a good way, like peanut butter and jelly: The acidity and sweetness of the jelly balances and cuts the fat in the peanut butter. (Yes, a fruity red wine is great with peanut butter on a spoon. Don’t judge.) Think about spicy foods and a sweet German riesling, or macaroni and cheese with an acidic pinot grigio, or pickled vegies and Sancerre, and roast turkey with a Cariñena. These wine and food flavors work together to downplay some of their profiles that can be overwhelming— making the two taste better together.

Getting back to that charcuterie board: The meats and cheeses have the fatty, umami

flavors. Dried and fresh fruits provide the sweetness. Nuts and crackers provide the saltiness, while olives, pickles and capers provide the acidic (sour), spicy and bitter flavors. Based on these food flavors, you can see how you would be able to find both complementary and contrasting flavor matches regardless of the wine in your glass.

Charcuterie boards can be created or purchased depending on your culinary skills and creativity. We can all take a walk down the deli isle and toss pre-packaged meats and cheeses into our basket, slap those on a cutting board with some pickle slices and olives, and call it a day. Fortunately, in Reno, we can buy made-to-order charcuterie boards with just a couple of hours’ notice. Graze Craze, at 4092 Kietzke Lane, is a franchise business owned by the husband-and-wife team of Myron and Missy Bursell. They opened the store last year and are expecting big things this year.

“Christmas and New Year’s were huge for us,” Myron said when asked how the community was responding to the business opening. “We have not only provided charcuterie boards for people’s personal parties, but also large gatherings for weddings and events, like sorority parties, where 10 or more boards were required.”

The most popular board, “The Gone Grazey,” includes everything from goat cheese garnished with honey and pistachios to peppered salami. The store offers keto, vegetarian, sweet or special seasonal boards, and all these boards can be purchased in a variety of sizes to serve from one to 10 people.

“We only need a couple of hours of lead time for a large board, and we have individual grab-and-go boxes that we make to order in just 10 minutes or so,” Myron said. “We have our own house-made pickles; we bake a fennel ham in house; and we have a local baker make our cranberry walnut bread.”

I love wine, and I love charcuterie, so I look forward to ordering a charcuterie board from Graze Craze and enjoy exploring all of the contrasting and complementary flavors— entirely baloney-free.

Myron Bursell assembles a board at Graze Craze. Photo/David Robert

"Niko'siswonderful!Wehave hadallthetraditionaldishes frommoussakatothegyros - all amazing!Ithasthefeelofalocal dinerandthestaffmakesyoufeel athome" - Jacqueline G.

In charge behind the bar

Get to better know Dave Serna, a true bartenders’ bartender

It takes a lot of special skills to be a wellrounded bartender, from a knowledge of drinks and their ingredients to how you hold yourself behind the bar—and these skills often appear to the uninitiated as mundane or effortless, making them powerful weapons in making a room feel cared for, and for guests to leave happy.

When I think of what it means to have effortless cool under pressure, and limitless affability when needed most, I think of Dave Serna.

Since cutting his teeth 23 years ago at Mr. O’s (what is now 40 Mile Saloon), Serna has worked at some of the most influential bars at their inceptions, including Chapel Tavern and Reno Public House; he’s now at Corrigan’s Lost Highway on Wells Avenue.

When I was just beginning to learn by reading my first cocktail books, Serna was already working the early craft-cocktail scene in Reno, making his name known as a person who could work any shift and make a killer drink.

“I just took to it,” he told me. “I love just getting to know all walks of life and seeing people who would never have known one

another be together in that moment at the bar.”

It’s privilege to sit at Dave’s bar, and that is what it is when Dave is working: His bar. His ability to make everyone in a bar feel seen and taken care of is a product of his two decadesplus in the trade.

“You can learn to make drinks, but making people feel safe and cared for is about treating people like they are in your home,” he said. “I want to take care of you in my house—but you must also respect it.”

Serna has a way of making everyone feel comfortable that even his peers recognize.

“Dave can make great cocktails, but what makes him the best bartender around is his camaraderie and conversation skills,” said Kyle Aiton, owner of Reno Public House. “He finds ways to connect with literally everyone— the kid who’s freshly 21, the retired couple, the middle-aged professional, and the fellow service worker. He embodies the idea that the bar is a neutral zone, and everyone is welcome. Just don’t be a dick to the bartender.”

I asked Dave why I always see beverageindustry folks having the best time sitting at his bar.

“Try to leave dumb shit at the door,” he replied. “I appreciate when people just come

| BY MICHAEL MOBERLY

and hang out and get in with the banter.”

Richard Jackson, the owner of Corrigan’s Lost Highway, said of Dave: “One of the marks of being a good tender is when you find other industry people sitting at their bar. Dave has no lack of that company. He does a great job of making strangers and regulars alike feel welcome.”

More than two decades behind the bar can make any job feel a bit tired, but Serna continues to approach his craft with pride and care. Dave makes near-perfect classics with the ease and aplomb of a true craftsman. Former co-worker Roxanne Hamner told me, “I am personally grateful to have worked alongside Dave, as he has been a bridge between the days of dark dive bars to fresh craft cocktails. … He knows all the tricks and techniques.”

When I asked Dave what makes a perfect shift behind the bar, he said, “Everyone in good spirits, goes by quick, full of laughter, great music the whole time. You make a bunch of money, and you are home way before the sun comes up.”

The idea of making classics perfect, treating others well, and prioritizing laughter, music and friends makes Dave a bartender for the ages—and one of the best to pour a shot.

Dave

Serna:

“I want to take care of you in my house—but you must also respect it.”

Photo/David Robert

Power to the players

The Reno Musicians’ Union has operated for more than a century—but is facing an existential crisis

In the same year that President Taft took office, the first U.S. airplane was sold commercially, and the North Pole was first reached, the Reno Musicians’ Protective Union Local No. 368 was chartered. While there has been a musicians’ union in town since the late 1800s, Local No. 368 has been securing better pay, better working conditions and benefits for the city’s professional musicians since 1909.

“I joined in 1974, I believe, the first time—I’ve been in and out of it a couple times,” said union president John Shipley. “I was offered a job as a substitute in the house band at Harrah’s Reno. I knew about the union through my high school teacher. … He was the band director at Hug High School, where I went to high school, and he encouraged me to join the union.”

Shipley was born and raised in Reno and got his start studying classical music before joining jazz band as a teenager. As a young adult, Shipley was mentored by big band leaders at the casinos and clubs around town before eventually going to play stages worldwide as a “hired gun.” Among his many credits, Shipley played with surf-guitar great Dick Dale and served as the

musical director for Motown recording band the Funk Brothers.

“My big job right now is I’m at the Eldorado piano bar, the Roxy, four times a week. I call it singing Sinatra for martinis,” Shipley said. “My second wife and I did an opening act for Mr. Sinatra. And it was quite an honor to meet him and perform on the same stage as him.”

When Shipley returned to Reno in the late ’90s, he resumed his membership with the Reno Musicians’ Union. But wherever he played in the years previous, he kept his membership with the overarching international union with which the Reno local is affiliated, the American Federation of Musicians. Then and now, Shipley said, the primary utility of belonging to a musicians’ union is the power of the collective bargaining agreement, or CBA.

“When you band together, you can stand up to a CEO, one person, one corporation,” Shipley said. “Every union, their first goal is better working conditions, not more money—making sure that musicians aren’t playing in the sun, you know, playing outdoors in all this inclement weather, things that should be in a contract.”

The two major CBAs that Local No. 368 currently has in place are with the Reno Philharmonic and the Reno Chamber Orchestra—long-

Reno Musicians’ Union president John Shipley: “When you band together, you can stand up to a CEO, one person, one corporation.” Photo/David Robert

standing contracts that have brought positive change over the years, Shipley said.

“When I first became a union officer here … the lighting getting into the pit at the Pioneer theater was really inefficient, and several musicians had tripped and hurt themselves,” Shipley said. “(Fixing) simple little things like that are what goes on in contract negotiations.”

While CBAs are some of the most crucial services the union offers, they’re far from the only ones. Shipley said he’s attempting to negotiate payments into the AFM’s pension fund with this year’s CBAs, which could help provide retirement stability for professional musicians. Other benefits include everything from instrument insurance to discounted cell-phone plans, and even help to negotiate a mortgage.

Julie Machado, a longtime union member and bassist for the Reno Philharmonic, said the union was especially helpful during the pandemic.

“We called on the union to help us find ways to get money to musicians, because if you couldn’t go outside, you couldn’t actually make any money playing,” Machado said. “The union helped the musicians connect with other resources in our community and on a larger scale so that they could pay their bills, pay their rent, buy groceries, have child care—that kind of thing.”

Machado has been a member of Local No. 368 since 1980. When she joined the Reno Chamber Orchestra, she and the rest of the players were encouraged by founder and conductor emeritus Vahe Khochayan to join the union. She currently serves on the players’ committee for the Reno Philharmonic—a board of elected members that represent each section of the orchestra and negotiates in conjunction with the union.

“The union is the negotiator for our collective bargaining agreement, but the players’ committee is the one that puts it together,” Machado said. “The only people who can be on the players’ committee for any orchestra in the United States are people who are contracted and are members of the union.”

During the pandemic, Machado said, the Philharmonic board secured funding to pay for recording equipment for the Pioneer Center—a measure meant to continue performances during lockdown. The union secured broadcasting rights per the international media agreement, a factor Machado said was crucial to compensating everyone which is emblematic of the generally positive relationship between Philharmonic executives and the union.

“That eventually led to on-demand broadcasting in your home of the Reno Phil classics concerts, the Spirit of the Season concerts, and

the PBS series that we’re on,” she said. “It couldn’t have happened if we didn’t have the union there.”

Machado values the union for ensuring things like the musicians’ salary scale and proper safety accommodations at contracted performances. Earlier in her career, Machado also saw the union as a way to meet like-minded musicians and look for jobs—an option that has fallen by the wayside in recent years.

In fact, for as much as the union has done for Reno’s professional musicians, it now faces an existential problem: shrinking membership. From a peak membership of more than 600 in the 1950s and ’60s, Local No. 368 currently has around 80 dues-paying members—most of them older.

“If there aren’t enough musicians, there isn’t a lot of money to work with,” Machado said.

Plenty of factors have sapped the lifeblood from the local musicians’ union—and the organized labor movement in general—over the years. To Shipley, the greatest threat to any Nevada union is the state’s “right to work” laws, which essentially neuter any private company’s obligation to negotiate with the union.

But there is another, more subversive threat to union membership: A general lack of awareness, and sometimes apathy, by younger musicians.

“When you talk to a young musician, he says, ‘Well, I’m having trouble paying my rent. (Union membership is something) I have to pay for,’” Shipley said. “… But I’ve had young musicians come to me and say, ‘This club didn’t pay me,’ and I’ve gone over to the club and dropped my business card … and I was able to get money for the young musicians.”

Machado—who’s played in classical orchestras, rockabilly bands, bluegrass outfits and jazz trios—said she wished more young people knew about the tangible benefits even a college garage band could receive from membership, from contract-writing workshops to best touring practices.

“Let’s say you’re playing, and you look like you’ve got this regular gig going once a month or every week, and you see that you’re having problems,” she said. “You can join the union then and have the union represent you. You don’t have to join in advance. You can have it always there behind your back as a steadying force.”

Ultimately, Shipley said, the union is only as strong as its members. He points to instances like the recent train derailment in Ohio as consequences of organized labor being devalued nationally. If the protections for the town’s musicians put in place over the last 100 years are going to last, it’s going to take direct action.

“You get out what you put in,” Shipley said. “It takes effort to belong to a union.”

Learn more about the Reno Musicians’ Protective Union Local No. 368 at renomusicans.org.

BY MATT JONES JONESIN' CROSSWORD

THE LUCKY 13

Snail Mail is expressive indie rock at its finest. Frontwoman Lindsey Jordan uses a somber singing voice and subtle rhythmic instrumentation to create soft and often emotional songs that are as head-bopworthy as they are heartbreaking. Check out “Speaking Terms” and “Valentine” for the mix on full display. Jordan is bringing Snail Mail to Coachella—but is stopping by the Cargo Concert Hall, 255 N. Virginia St., in between festival weekends, on Tuesday, April 18.

What was the first concert you attended? Hilary Duff at the 1st Mariner Arena (in Baltimore) when I was 5. Halfway through the set, I remember she got tired and just sat in a chair and did the rest of the show in a chair.

What was the first album you owned? The first physical album was either So Wrong, It’s Right by All Time Low, or Oracular Spectacular by MGMT. I remember I got them in quick succession at the mall.

Where are we? How is this a venue?” because it’s so beautiful. Fuji Rock was the best view I’ve ever had on a stage, but maybe Le Botanique in Brussels. The grounds have beautiful statues all over, and it just doesn’t feel like you’re at a venue; it feels like you’re at a beautiful garden.

What’s the one song lyric you can’t get out of your head?

I heard “Closer” by The Chainsmokers on the radio in an Uber the other day for the first time in so long, and honestly, I really liked that song when it came out. When I was just thinking of guilty-pleasure songs, it came to mind, and now I can’t get it out of my head.

“Them Apples”—if I had four apples and you took one …

By Matt Jones

Across 1. Cacique garment

4. Finnish Olympic runner Nurmi

9. “Be on the lookout” alerts, for short

13. Slipshod

14. “Gimme a sec”

15. Karate stroke

16. Annual fashionbased New York fundraiser

18. Ancient harplike instrument

19. Shadowy locale?

20. Under the Sign of Saturn writer Sontag

21. He helps reveal RSTLN and E 24. Foe

26. Cousin that may appear in future seasons of Wednesday

27. Muscat denizens

29. Holding accompaniment

31. Jan. 6 Committee vice chair Cheney

32. One who’s in the hole

35. Initialism of urgency

38. Granular pasta

40. Bay of Naples isle

41. Pre-verbal Jodie Foster character

42. Coffeehouse connection

43. Like Cocaine Bear

45. Org. that 2K Sports creates games for

46. Sore subject?

48. Make rise, as bread

50. Rental hauler

52. 2600 maker

55. “It’s coming to me now”

56. Open-eyed

58. Beagle, e.g.

60. “Legal” attachment

61. Japanesemanufactured photography equipment, perhaps

65. Vizquel of baseball

66. Timeworn truisms

67. Sawmill input

68. Job for an actor

69. Resort lake near Reno

70. Entry price

Down

1. Three-layer sandwich

2. Retro shout of support

3. It may get thrown at trendy pubs

4. Cat food form

5. It might be obtuse

6. “Encore!”

7. He-Who-MustNot-Be-Named (conveniently created by SheWho-Must-Not-BeMentioned)

8. Out ___ limb

9. Org. that fights voter suppression

10. Scoffing term used to criticize research of “softer sciences” (such as with the Nobel Prize in Economics)

11. Sacha Baron Cohen journalist

12. Burnt out

14. Millennial’s call to a Gen Z-er, maybe (which makes me feel ancient by now)

17. Math average

20. ___ admin

21. “How could you stoop ___?”

22. Late poet Baraka

23. Traditional New Orleans procession with band accompaniment

25. Toni Collette title character

28. Hush-hush

30. Actor McDiarmid

33. Heart song with that guitar hook

34. Gulf Coast airport luggage code

36. Seascape Pulitzerwinning playwright Edward

37. Maps out

39. Dashboard gauge

44. “Strawberry Wine” singer Carter and crooner’s daughter Martin, for two

47. Pet it’d make sense to call something like “Sir Meowington”

49. “May I interrupt?”

50. Smoke, fog, or mist

51. King of the Hill beer brand

53. Princess Jasmine’s tiger

54. The Princess Bride character Montoya

57. It’s not not unusual

59. Slurpee alternative

61.

What bands are you listening to right now? The Stone Roses, and Water From Your Eyes. There’s this band called @, and they’re so fucking good. My Idea, The American Analog Set, and Ice Spice.

What artist, genre or musical trend does everyone love, but you don’t get? I’m implicating myself, because I got thrown in here, but sad-girl shit just drives me insane. Maybe it’s just because I never want to be part of a category like that, but the implication of sad girls, the whole concept, feels kind of sexist and belittling to the artists who they’re talking about.

What musical act, current or defunct, would you most like to see perform live?

I’ve never seen Water From Your Eyes. I’m excited that we’re going on tour together, and I’ve been wanting to see them for years. I would love to see PinkPantheress.

What’s your favorite musical guilty pleasure? Maybe the Viva la Vida era of Coldplay. The first couple albums are, like, masterpieces. X&Y, fucking Parachutes and shit— all that stuff’s awesome.

What band or artist changed your life? How? Paramore for sure. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 5 and have always been in environments where I felt discouraged. I don’t think I knew that guitar was even like gendered like that; I just felt discouraged and left out. I felt, “I’m really good at what I do, but why do I feel like I wouldn’t be able to do this job?” I saw Paramore when I was 8 with my older sister. It literally jumped me into gear, and I was, like, “I want to be a singer.”

You have one question to ask one musician. What’s the question, and who are you asking? I would probably ask David Byrne where he gets all the funk from.

What song would you like played at your funeral? I’m gonna go with “Vapour Trail” by Ride. I think that’s my favorite song of all time, maybe seconded by “Under the Milky Way” by The Church.

Figurative gun to your head, what is your favorite album of all time?

Elliott Smith. I got a tattoo based on that album.

© 2023 Matt Jones Find the answers in the “About” section at RenoNR.com!

What’s your favorite music venue?

There are definitely some places we played in Europe where it’s like, “What the fuck?

What song should everyone listen to right now? “Standing in the Sun” by Jessica Lea Mayfield.

Lindsey Jordan Frontwoman of Snail Mail, performing at Cargo Concert Hall

Photo/ Tina Tyrell

DAVID ROBERT

Gardening great

Soulful Seeds is a local nonprofit that focuses on decreasing food insecurity in the community by growing food in urban gardens. It was started by Earstin Whitten and his wife, Dee SchaferWhitten, in 2017, when they took over a 1,000-square-foot garden plot on the Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center campus. Soulful Seeds is now in the process of constructing a second garden on the Our Place campus. To learn more, visit www.soulful-seeds.com.

Tell me about your life before coming to Reno. I was raised in a sharecropping family in Arkansas. We learned how to grow vegetables as a means of survival and to support our family of 15 children (including me). After I retired from Allstate insurance after 31 years, I moved out here to Reno, because the weather was nicer.

How did you come up with the concept of Soulful Seeds? My wife, Delores, and I started it together. We started growing vegetables in 2017 at a space that St Mary’s allowed us to use. It’s about 1,000 square feet. As we grew, we basically gave away all the food to food pantries. Through social media, a lot of people became interested, so in 2018, we decided to start a nonprofit.

What are you doing now in 2023? We’re growing vegetables! (Laughs.) The St Mary’s facility is directly behind Planned Parenthood in the alley. Most folks don’t have a clue that we are even there, because it’s shielded. Right now, we’re getting a multiacre plot ready over at Galletti (Way) and Glendale (Avenue) that we got through Washoe County. It’s owned by the state, and we are subleasing 2.6 acres right behind the (Our Place) facility where the (transitional housing is). Last year, we planted 80 fruit trees and 32 garden beds, and right now, we’re trying to remove the rocks from the large row crop area so we can plant vegetables there as well. It’s a long, slow process, but with the right equipment, it can be done in one day. We’re in conversations with a company to help us with that. We want to use the removed rocks to mark garden spaces and build walls. We want to be in a highly productive planting mode. Our objective

there is to give the homeless people an opportunity to learn how to garden and grow their own vegetables.

You have regular sessions to show people how to garden?

I’m there (at the Our Place garden) every Tuesday currently, but as the weather improves, I’ll be there virtually every day. We seek volunteers from (Our Place) as well as volunteers from CrossRoads (a program supporting people overcoming alcohol and substance abuse), and when they come over, I show them actually what to do. But we also have master gardeners who are putting on classes on how to plant.

Tell me one of your success stories. One story that comes to mind is a lady and her girls came over and harvested kale for the first time and were actually able to take it back to their living quarters on the campus and have it for dinner that night. We’ve had individuals come back and express their satisfaction of being able to get out of their indoor living situation and do something outside, do something in the soil, something in the sun.

What is Soulful Seeds going to be doing this spring?

We were planning on having tours in the month of April, but due to the weather being so wet, we will put that off until the month of May. So in May, we will be very, very busy and active out in the fields. You can go to our website and fill out the contact part, and we will keep you up to date on our events.

Earstin Whitten, co-founder of Soulful Seeds

EILEN JEWELL

APRIL 15

EMILY NAJERA

IN THIS PLACE: PHOTOGRAPHS OF RENO

MAY 6

Free Artist Talk & Reception

MICHELLE LAXALT

THE SOFT ANIMAL OF YOUR BODY

MAY 6

Free Artist Talk & Reception

FREE IN-THE-PARK CONCERT FREE IN-THE-PARK CONCERT

PAUL THORN

JUNE 17

CHURCHILL ARTS COUN CIL

Members $17 • Non-Members $20 • Youth & Students $10

Box O ce, Art Bar & Galleries Open at 6 PM  • Performances at 7 PM

Oats Park Art Center • 151 East Park Street, Fallon, Nev. For tickets & info call 775-423-1440 or visit churchillarts.org