Welcome to the October RN&R! Awards season is upon us. While I was pleased to see the people who created some of my favorite television shows (The Bear, Slow Horses and The Daily Show) take home Emmy Awards, I’m even more pleased to see my own colleagues recognized for their hard work. During the Nevada Press Foundation’s annual Awards of Excellence ceremony on Sept. 14, the RN&R team collected 10 awards for our work in 2023-24.
Frank Mullen, editor at large and an always-compelling storyteller, won first place for Feature Writing. Versatile longtime contributor Matt Bieker won second-place for Entertainment Feature Story. Sheila Leslie, who diligently wrote our Left Foot Forward column for many years before she retired to go play with her grandkids, earned third place for Local Column, and designer Dennis Wodzisz, who adds dimension to our print stories with his creative page layouts each month, won third place for Page One Design/Cover Design.
The RN&R team as a whole also won first place for Advertising General Excellence, Editorial Page, and Special Section (that one was for the 2023 Best of Northern Nevada issue) and third place for Special Section or Campaign (Advertising), General Online Excellence, and Overall Design.
It was heartening to see the hard-working journalists from other news outlets in our region recognized for their work as well. The Reno Gazette-Journal, Sierra Nevada Ally, This Is Reno, Fallon Post, Edible Reno-Tahoe, Nevada Independent and several others made strong showings in the contest, too. The news industry is still wedged between a rock and a hard place, and many of us who work in it spend much of our time glued to our desks, so it was a rare treat to be able to mingle with colleagues and share a few relaxed moments in between deadlines.
Thank you for another year of great work, RN&R team! Thank you for recognizing our commitment to quality local journalism, Nevada Press Foundation!
—KRIS VAGNER krisv@renonr.com
Cover illustration by Parkair
LETTERS
Dems’
suit to remove the Green Party is impeding democracy
The Democratic Party has positioned itself as the paragon and last bastion of democracy in the face of almost certain fascism, a fear-mongering tactic used to try to win the presidential platform again by threatening that the “orange man” would enact the now-infamous Project 2025. I am writing today because, despite the Democratic Party’s pearl-clutching, it is no champion of democracy.
The party has just successfully sued to remove another major third party from the Nevada ballot. This move directly impedes democracy and the right of Nevadans to vote for whom they choose. So much for being the “saviors of democracy.”
What’s even more disturbing about this incident is that the party sued not once, but twice. After a lower court ruled in favor of the Green Party, the Democratic Party changed its lawsuit, citing a different reason: a supposedly incorrect form issued by the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office. This form, however, was the same one recommended by the Secretary of State’s Office in its guide for minor parties. This appears to be an egregious error by the Secretary of
State’s Office and a failure on the part of Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar. Yet there has been minimal news coverage of the incident, which has been dismissed as a mere oversight, an oopsie-daisy.
It is reprehensible that an elected body responsible for ensuring voting rights, regulation and access in Nevada could so blatantly and maliciously provide the wrong forms to a minor party and then refuse to offer any remedial action or way to rectify the situation. The Nevada Secretary of State’s Office, the Nevada Supreme Court, and the Nevada Democratic Party have demonstrated that the status quo persists.
The “Hope and Change” and “We Go High” rhetoric that I have accepted throughout my voting life has proven to be a charade and a blatant lie. There is no “Hope and Change” coming from the Democratic Party, now or in the future. With my vote effectively taken away, under no illusions that Jill Stein could win, I cannot stomach voting for a party that would disenfranchise 15,000 Nevada voters.
Tucker Monticelli Reno
I’m ready for President Harris
Demented 78-year-old delusional dingbat Donald Trump was utterly demolished in what will now be his one and only disastrous presidential
debate against the soon-to-be-first Democratic president from the state of California, ass-kicker Kamala Harris. Trump is terrified at the thought of another debate after having catastrophically imploded hilariously.
It just goes to show what happens when a racist Republican reprobate like deranged Donald “eating dogs and cats” Trump totally underestimates their political opponent simply because she happens to be a woman of color. And speaking of color, conservative treasonous coward Trump has absolutely ruined the color orange for me and millions of Americans. Halloween will never be the same again. However, Election Day is going to be fantastic (unless you’re a fascist).
And speaking of Halloween, perhaps someday soon I’ll finish writing the screenplay for my often easily offended Jewish bosses in Hollywood titled The Color Orange about a morbidly obese, sweaty liar from South Florida by way of Queens, N.Y., named Don the Con who is already well on his way to Club Fed, after having killed more than 1 million Americans with his COVID-19 pandemicide.
It’s going to be the Big House for diabolical Donald, not the White House— that’s where the 47th President of the United States Kamala Harris will be residing for the next eight years. Jake Pickering Arcata, Calif.
Mailing address: 31855 Date Palm Drive, No. 3-263, Cathedral City, CA 92234 • 775-324-4440 • RenoNR.com
Publisher/Executive Editor
Jimmy Boegle
Managing Editor
Kris Vagner
Editor at Large
Frank X. Mullen
Photo Editor
David Robert
Cover and Feature Design
Dennis Wodzisz
Distribution Lead
Rick Beckwith
Contributors
Matt Bieker, Maude Ballinger, Owen Bryant, Loryn Elizares, Bob Grimm, Michael Grimm, Helena Guglielmino, Matt Jones, Matt King, Kelley Lang, Chris Lanier, Michael Moberly, Steve Noel, Dan Perkins, Carol Purroy, David Rodriguez, Sarah Russell, Jessica Santina, Max Stone, Delaney Uronen, Robert Victor, Matt Westfield, Leah Wigren, Susan Winters
The RN&R is a proud member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the Nevada Press Association, and the Local Independent Online News Publishers. Coachella Valley Independent, LLC, is a certified LGBT Business Enterprise® (LGBTBE) through the NGLCC Supplier Diversity Initiative.
GUEST COMMENT BY
ILYA ARBATMAN
Vote to support our public libraries
I never thought I’d be writing an op-ed about a fuddy-duddy ballot measure. But the time for cynically dismissing voting or tuning out of politics is long gone, as is the time when pillars of collective life, such as the public library, existed in a special zone above the fray of partisan conflict.
We don’t have to agree on what is said in those shared, public spaces, but we should agree that they must remain shared and public, so that we can gather in them to celebrate our differences as the only path to common ground.
I’m waxing electoral to get you to vote yes on WC-1, which would renew, for another 30 years, a special fund that allots two cents of every $100 of assessed property value to the Washoe County Library System.
First, the talking points: This is not a new or an additional tax, but a renewal of a voter-designated allocation that gives the community an opportunity to determine how a portion of their taxes will be spent. If WC-1 fails at the polls, this tax will still be collected, but rather than going directly to our libraries, it will revert to the county’s general fund.
Singing the library’s praises seems gratuitous. “Unlike the internet, where you search for specific things, the library lets you wander and allows discoveries to find you,” said Megan Kay, outreach and content coordinator at UNR’s Living With Fire program. “I love bringing my daughter there. She discovers books on a bunch of topics I never knew she was interested in, sparking new adventures in our lives.”
Melissa Fant, who homeschools her kids, emphasizes that “our public library system is a critical resource for families like ours. Without it, homeschooling in Washoe County would be significantly more expensive, and our access to books that inspire imagination and a love of learning would be far more limited. We check out dozens of books from the library every week. Our homeschool group also meets monthly in library meeting rooms around the county, allowing us to gather together for group lessons, art projects and storytime.”
In 1994, then-library director Martha Gould developed the original ballot measure to ensure stable, long-term library funding; in 2000, the Board of County Commissioners directed that expenditures from this tax be “limited to costs associated with expansion of services including, but not limited to, additional library branch debt service payments, expanded library services, expanded library hours and additional library collections.” Elected officials are unable to redirect this money to any other purpose.
The aptly named library expansion fund helped build the Northwest Reno, South Valleys, Incline Village and Spanish Springs libraries, and renovate the North Valleys, Downtown, Northwest, Sparks and Sierra View libraries. Money raised protected the library system and staff members through multiple recessions and allowed libraries to open on weekends.
When renewed, the expansion fund will continue to make libraries even more accessible to communities. We can expect a brand new North Valleys Library, renovations to the South Valleys and Spanish Springs libraries, an expansion of Bookmobile and book-vending services in north and south Washoe County, and a stable, secure, recession-proof library system.
STREETALK
What scares the living daylights out of you?
Asked at Reno Town Mall, 4001 S. Virginia St., Reno
Chloe Strohmaier
Stay-at-home mom
BY DAVID ROBERT
Clowns. There is an uneasy feeling about them. They’re just not natural. John Wayne Gacy has ruined it for clowns. When I was 6, we went to Six Flags, and it was horror night. We were walking around, and there were people dressed like zombies and clowns. They would chase you, and a clown got up into my face, and I’ve never been the same since.
Did you know that there is a branch of the library at the Senior Center on Ninth Street, complete with music, movies, books, newspapers, public computers and even printers? Did you know that you can check out materials online, and staff will deliver them to your home through Washoe County Library Homebound Services? Did you know that the North Valleys and Incline Village libraries feature legal kiosks— supported by Nevada Legal Services—where you can get access to legal resources and even attend virtual appointments and hearings?
At the Downtown library, there is now a Reno Housing Authority kiosk where you can research RHA properties and programs, manage your documents, apply to housing waitlists and even pay rent. Oh yeah, you can also check out blood pressure machines and state park passes. The list goes on!
I feel confident that if you are reading this, you are likely a library supporter. However, being a supporter in spirit only won’t quite cut it this November. Don’t take publicly funded social programs—like the library—for granted. Elections can be a source of frustration and disillusionment, but they can also be a tangible way to declare and act on your values. Tell the county that libraries are vital to our community and deserve direct, secure and long-term funding. Vote yes on WC-1.
Ilya Arbatman is a small-business owner and community advocate. He sits on Reno’s Ward 3 Neighborhood Advisory Board. He is part of Freedom to Read Nevada.
Cullin Knight Retired
I’m scared of the upcoming election. What really scares me is the state of the federal government and the voting choices that we have for president. As a veteran, it’s very important to me that we get this election right by electing the right candidate.
Cary White Realtor
What scares me is: Us and our future generations—our children and our grandchildren and their grandchildren— drowning and dying in a sea of plastic. It’s absolutely abhorrent and a shame. Look around; plastic is everywhere. It’s in our faces; it’s in our blood; it’s in our brains; and we eat it. There has to be a better way.
Ashley Rose
Financial services business owner
Financial instability, demise and distress. In the world that we live in, it’s hard to make money to be able to eat and function on an emotional level. You have to have a clear headspace. You need to balance your life with financial stability, and have a balance between work and happiness.
Greg Carter
Lockheed Martin engineer
What scares me at this point in life (I’m 69 years old) is the way that things have been changing in the office of the president. The office is being run by committee. I didn’t vote for a committee. And if the same party is still in power after this election, that will continue. I think that the country should be run by the elected individual, and they should ultimately take the responsibility.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
To me, home means Nevada … and California, too
A couple of weeks ago, I received an angry response to, of all things, our weekly events newsletter. It was the type of email we unfortunately get on occasion here at the RN&R—a homophobic rant calling us names and accusing us of bias—and the writer saved what they thought was their harshest burn for last.
Go back to fucking California where you belong and fall off into the Pacific Ocean.
Yep, it’s true: I am a Californian. In fact, as I write this, I am looking out my apartment window in Palm Springs, where it’s sunny and 101 degrees. Another confession: This newspaper is indeed published by a California company. Our mailing address really is in Cathedral City, Calif., since the RN&R has not had a proper office since the pandemic arrived.
That said … I am a Californian who was born at St. Mary’s long before it became a “regional medical center.” I am a graduate of Wooster High School, and I can trace my Nevada roots back five generations. I left Reno twenty-some years ago only because the city had no real opportunities for me in my chosen career. My mom is still in Reno, and I have all sorts of other family mem-
bers spread across northwestern Nevada. My husband grew up in the Truckee Meadows—he graduated from Sparks High School—and still has family, including his father, in Sparks. Our deep roots in Northern Nevada are why, at great personal and professional expense, we returned as part-time Renoites in 2022, after my California company acquired what was left of the RN&R, and I devised a plan to rebuild this little newspaper that I love so dearly. For the most part, that plan has worked. Oh, and for the record: Had it not been for a California company, this publication would have died in February 1995, when the owners of the News & Review newspapers in Sacramento and Chico stepped in to rescue what had been the Nevada Weekly from extinction. One name change and almost 30 years of California ownership later, the RN&R is still here, serving Reno, Sparks, Carson City, Gardnerville, Minden, Truckee
and Lake Tahoe.
Now that I’ve gotten all of that off my chest, I have a request: Can we (both part-time and full-time) Nevadans stop with the ridiculous California bashing?
Light-hearted jabs and jokes, of course, are still fine, welcome and absolutely appropriate. There’s a lot to make fun of in California. I mean, what other state would exact a ban on plastic grocery-store bags that actually leads to more plastic going to landfills … a “ban” so bad that other states took lessons from its failure?
But as for the legitimate, real disdain for California … it’s time for that to stop.
I love Nevada. To me, Nevada Day will ALWAYS be on Oct. 31—forget this legal last-Friday-of-October crap to create a threeday weekend. Today’s younger Nevadans will never know the joy of having every Halloween off from school, because it just so happened
| BY JIMMY BOEGLE
that Oct. 31 was the date when your state was admitted to the Union back in 1864.
I love California, too. It’s the place where Disneyland and Dodger Stadium and Yosemite National Park the Golden Gate Bridge are. Even if you’re a native Nevadan, let’s face it: It’s where many of your local friends lived before coming to Reno. Heck, it’s where most of Lake Tahoe is located.
And if you’ve ever both 1) expressed serious disdain for California AND 2) devoured an In-N-Out burger with joy … well, my friend, you need to deal with some serious internal contradictions.
Here’s my message to that hateful reader who I mentioned in the first paragraph: I don’t need to go back to fucking California, because I am already in California … although I’ll be back at my adorable apartment in Midtown Reno in a couple of weeks. If California falls off into the Pacific Ocean, there’s a good chance that Reno is coming, too, given the sheer amount of earthquakes and seismic activity native to the Truckee Meadows.
And even though I am indeed a Californian, I have more love and appreciation for Nevada and the Reno area than your hateful brain can even fathom.
ON NEVADA BUSINESS
Business developments far and near
A new program connected with the UNR Extension is meant to boost local food producers
I returned to Nevada in mid-September from my latest Euro-tour biz trip to Karpacz, Poland; Vilnius, Lithuania; and points in between.
Karpacz is a beautiful, tiny “locals” ski town in southern Poland on the Czech border, with one main street weaving all the way up to about 1,600 feet above sea level. I had planned to hike 20 kilometers to an observatory at the highest point, where I could have stood in Poland and the Czech Republic at the same time—but it never happened. I was there for the 33rd Annual Economic Forum, which drew European Union presidents, prime ministers, commissioners and corporate leaders. I was there because the host institution, the Warsaw School of Economics, sponsored me, as I’ve been a guest lecturer there for the last seven years.
The entire town of Karpacz was sealed off, and except for locals, no one went up the mountain to the resort without credentials. Police and secret police were everywhere, monitoring everything near the beautiful host resort, the Hotel Golebiewski. My team and I had a private meeting with our old friend, the marshal of Lubelskie, who was there to discuss a new program to help small and medium Polish enterprises that wish to do business in the U.S. (You may recall that I was pinned with the Polish/Ukrainian medal of solidarity last year by the vice marshal of Lubelskie. It was an honor I will always cherish.)
The initiatives discussed at the conference include programs to jumpstart Poland’s technology sectors, startup ecosystems, small businesses and economies. In the years I’ve been over there helping companies prepare to enter U.S. markets, one of my important tasks has been to break the myths of U.S. markets and how businesses here are funded. Many entrepreneurs believe that, when they get off the plane in the U.S., people will hand them bags of money.
We all know that this is not true. I never had any government funding for any of my companies—although, during my years in early virtual reality research and development, I helped a company access a Small Business Innovation Research grant to build a prototype computer keyboard utilizing pin technology for the blind. I believe we got a total of $75,000 for two rounds of grants. That won’t get you far in today’s tech push.
That said, there actually are some great programs here in the U.S. for small companies—if you know where to find them and how to exploit them, which most small business owners do not. The SBIRs I mentioned
are still around and can provide up to $250,000 for two rounds of development. That kind of influx can get a small business some real traction. The Nevada Small Business Development Center at the University of Nevada, Reno, can help find programs for you.
Another funding program—one urgently needed in Northern Nevada and recently funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture—is the Southwest Regional Food Business Center. It’s a regional accelerator for farms and other food businesses that operates in Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. Locally, it’s connected with the UNR Extension, and it is necessary to help our economy.
The center will award about $900,000 in grants as part of a five-year project—up to $10,000 grants for up to 10 producers per year that finish the technical assistance program. Additional grants of $50,000 are earmarked for producers working on getting products into local and regional food systems. These grant
awards will not fund any production activities. The UNR Extension is expected to hire a grant assistant to help administer the funding.
“This backing is essential to ensuring the development of safe, high-quality food systems that serve our communities,” said UNR Extension professor Staci Emm.
So, what does this mean for you? As a consumer, it means that you should soon have access to more foods sourced within 400 miles of you. So, at the Great Basin Community Food Co Op, you’ll continue to find more and more locally or regionally sourced products. This is good for everyone in the supply chain, from the egg farm to the shipper to the grocer. If you make your own commercial ice cream, you may qualify for the grants. If you make commercial soup and source your beef, chicken, herbs and veggies within the 400-mile perimeter, you may qualify. If you make a food product with onions grown in Yerington, you may qualify.
Shiva Kittusamy, a former student of mine
in UNR’s undergrad and MBA programs, is the small business education/development coordinator of the new program. He teaches, assists and recruits producers to access local and regional markets with food products they are already producing.
While we caught up for this column, Kittusamy mentioned an additional aspect of the program. “We are launching an accelerator program that includes a 10-week course covering all aspects of building a food business, from initial concept to market entry. Participants will also receive ongoing mentorship throughout the program, ensuring they have the support needed to scale their businesses.”
Other UNR Extension partners for technical assistance are Jordan Hosmer-Henner at Desert Farming Initiative, and Kelli Kelly from the UNR College of Business’ Small Business Development Center.
Learn more about the Southwest Regional Food Business Center at swfoodbiz.org.
Shiva Kittusamy, small business education/development coordinator at the UNR Extension, listens to Melanie Stephenson, co-manager of the Great Basin Community Food Co-op, explain the co-op’s mission. Photo/David Robert
UPFRONT
New funding announced for Nevada law enforcement
Nevada’s U.S. Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto announced on Sept. 24 that nearly $1 million in federal funding has been allocated for three Nevada law enforcement agencies.
The awards include:
• $500,000 from the COPS Hiring Program for the Sparks Police Department to hire more officers.
• $353,063 from the Tribal Resources Grant Program for the Lovelock Paiute Tribe to hire officers and invest in equipment.
• $43,308 from the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act Program for the city of Henderson’s mental health and wellness projects for law enforcement officers.
The funding was initiated in May when Congress passed federal, bipartisan legislation to address a shortage of law enforcement officers nationwide. The shortage is attributed largely to the stresses on law enforcement resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
A study by the Police Executive Research Forum reports that, nationally, police resignations increased by 40.4% in 2020. Retirements increased by 30%, and hirings decreased by 20.5%.
According to the study, the numbers of resignations and retirements dropped significantly in 2021, and the number of hirings increased. This left police departments approaching—but not meeting 2019—staffing levels.
According to a press release from the office of Sen. Rosen, the funding for the three Nevada departments will go to “hire more officers, purchase equipment, and improve officer mental health and wellness.”
Officer Jen Bader, public information officer for the Sparks Police Department, said the department plans to use the funding to hire 12 new officers.
“When we applied for this grant, what we pitched was: We want to have a misdemeanor follow-up team,” she said. “About 33% of our active misdemeanor cases right now are generated from either the front desk officers or online reports. The people who follow up on those reports are our patrol officers. … So, the misdemeanor follow-up team—the design of that is to essentially expedite the process of investigating those cases and accelerating the prosecution of those.”
—Kris Vagner
| BY KRIS VAGNER
The case for phones in classrooms
As
KTVN Channel 2 News reported on Sept. 6 that the district had “almost a dozen non-planned emergency activations” so far during the school year—which started just 16 days before that report. WCSD photo
more and more school districts ban cell phones, some parents voice reasons to allow them
Starting this school year, the Carson City School District joined Clark County and a growing number of districts around the nation in banning smartphones in class. On Sept. 23, California Gov. Gavin Newsom— following the lead of Florida, Louisiana and Indiana—signed legislation to restrict phone use among the state’s 6 million public-school students. Districts have cited distraction, disruption and mental health concerns.
Last month, the RN&R reported on the Carson City ban. Shortly afterward, we heard from a few readers who opposed the ban and could not imagine being out of touch with their children during a school emergency. Two Reno parents, both of
whom are also teachers, shared their perspectives on the pros and cons of hyper-connected students—and while both agree that disruption in classrooms is an issue, they ultimately side in favor of phones in school.
Emergency calls and a lifeline to Mom
In the spring of 2022, Michelle Hammond, then a Washoe County School District employee, was addressing a power struggle between Sparks fifth-graders, who wanted to carry phones, and teachers, who wanted phone-free classrooms.
The students walked her onto the playground, she said, and pointed out a part of the
schoolyard that’s out of teachers’ sight and faces a busy street.
“They’re, like, ‘So, what if a school shooter came?’” Hammond said. The kids feared that an intruder could easily jump the fence, escaping teachers’ notice. If that were to happen, the kids reasoned, they would need to call someone. “We can’t even call a teacher without a phone if the teacher’s too far away to hear us, because the playground’s so big,” Hammond remembered the students saying.
“They had this whole scenario in their heads,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘This is what you guys think about?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah.’ … It broke my heart.”
Today, Hammond is a real estate agent. Her two daughters have each given her a reason
to favor phones in schools. Her eldest, 21, is prone to anxiety.
“People aren’t realizing that kids are getting secondary trauma just from watching these school shootings play out,” Hammond said.
Those fears were just one part of a cocktail of everyday worries that could exacerbate her daughter’s anxiety. When she was in class, and the anxiety mounted to unmanageable levels, she would sometimes hide out in the bathroom, where she would text her mom.
“I was always, of course, her safe space,” said Hammond. “I calm her down and bring her back to reality and tell her she’s OK. I wanted her to be able to reach out to me at any time, to have some reassurance.”
Hammond’s younger daughter, 17, attends North Valleys High School. In May, a fight involving around 50 young people broke out at Golden Valley Park, about a mile from the school. No one was injured, but a gun was discharged into the ground, and police appeared on the scene. From the school, Hammond’s daughter heard sirens. The school ordered a lockdown, and many students assumed that meant an incident was taking place on campus.
When her daughter called to say, “Mom, don’t panic; I just want you to know I’m safe,” Hammond was relieved that her daughter had the technology—and the autonomy—to stay in touch.
Hammond worked in the Washoe County School District for 15 years. She’s seen a lot of drills and a lot of actual emergencies. Her conclusion: “There is a true fight-flight-orfreeze natural-response system that we all have that is going to come into play when it’s not a drill. I’ve just told my kids, unfortunately, there are 2,400 students at North Valley High School; the teachers can only watch out for so many kids. No one is ultimately going to be watching out for your life more than you. … I was so highly trained on how to deal with all this. I worked very closely with school police. We did drills regularly. But in a true emergency, even I, myself, panicked—it’s very difficult for anybody to stay calm.”
As a teacher, Hammond is as frustrated as
anyone by the power struggles and distractions that smartphone usage brings to classrooms. But she thinks there are some smart moves teachers can make to curb these problems.
“It’s our job to keep those students engaged enough to stay off their phones,” she said. She wants to see more hands-on lessons and “classrooms that are not boring.”
“I mean, phones now, they’ve just become too much a part of everybody’s life,” she said. “How many of you adults can give up your phones? If you walked into an office, and your boss said, ‘Put your phone right here until the end of the day,’ how many of you would stay at that job?”
Lessons and lockdowns
Kim Cuevas left classroom teaching in 2006, a year before the first iPhone was launched. She moved to administration for many years, and returned to the classroom three years ago. She now teaches 10th and 11th grade English at McQueen High School. When she first landed in the modern era of hyper-connected students, she thought, “Could we put our cell phones in our backpacks and just pay attention to instruction?”
Now, she calls that “a super cute idea.”
“Nobody does that,” she said. Cell phones are present in her classroom, but, starting this school year, she has a new rule.
“I actually make my kids put their cell phones in a caddy in my classroom, because I cannot stand fighting them about their phones anymore. … I got my instructional time back,” she said.
Cuevas sometimes instructs students to retrieve their phones from the caddy as part of a lesson. Her 11th-graders are reading The Scarlet Letter this semester. Their character-study assignment is to select the apps that a character from the book would need on their phone if they existed in 2024 instead of 1850, and briefly explain their selections in writing.
But choosing the right shopping app for Hester Prynne is not reason enough alone to favor phones in class. Cuevas has a more pressing justification.
On Sept. 23, McQueen issued a lockdown. It was not a drill.
“It’s the second one we’ve had this year at my school,” Cuevas said. “And I will tell you that it is absolutely frightening. … When that happens, there are kids running, and there are kids trying to get to cover, and then you are in your room in the dark for a certain amount of time with kids who are legitimately scared. Every one of my students grabbed their phones out of my cell-phone caddy, and they all got on the floor, and they were all texting their other friends, texting their parents.”
Cuevas swapped texts with her own son, who’s a 17-year-old senior at McQueen.
According to a letter that the school sent to parents, which the WCSD provided to the RN&R, the Sept. 23 lockdown was due to a “system error.” That doesn’t change Cuevas’ mind about cell phones at all.
“I would never want to work someplace where they took our phones at the door and put them in zipper pouches or something, because I can’t imagine my students, or even my own child, who was up in the main building, not having their phones on them in my classroom today, because they needed them,” she said.
The school district declined to provide the RN&R with the number of lockdowns that occur annually; we have filed a public-records request.
Meanwhile, KTVN Channel 2 News reported on Sept. 6 that the district had “almost a dozen non-planned emergency activations” so far during the school year—which started just 16 days before that report. “Emergency activations” is the term the district implemented recently to include “lockdowns,” formerly called “code reds,” and “secured campuses,” formerly “code yellows.”
Deck the arboretum
Xiaorong Yang sets up lights at Rancho San Rafael Regional Park while a gargantuan azure spider towers over him. He’s an employee of Tianyu Arts and Culture Inc., based in the Sichuan province in China, where lantern-making techniques have been preserved for generations.
The setup was expected to take two weeks.
Dragon Lights Reno was scheduled to open Friday, Sept. 27, and run through Saturday, Nov. 30, at the Wilbur D. May Arboretum and Botanical Gardens in Rancho San Rafael. Admission is $20 on weekdays and $25 on weekends, with discounts for children and families. For tickets and information, visit dragonlightsreno.org.
—David Robert
Natural gratification
Trail maintenance is hard work, but it pays off with a sense of accomplishment
Before the day of trail work started, I vowed to leave at noon precisely, unwilling to stretch my altruism one more minute during my weekend—but a conversation with other volunteers caused me to stay longer at the Biggest Little Trail Stewardship volunteer event at Galena Creek Regional Park.
I was talking with three men, still riding the high that comes with trail work, which tends to leave me with an immense sense of capability, strength and purpose. We huddled around the parking lot, looking back at the hill where we had smoothed out a new trail between the virgin pines. We shared the whereabouts of our favorite trails (I’m sworn to secrecy), the wild adventures we’ve had along them, and hopeful plans for the future of our region’s outdoor recreation.
My brain lit up. After years of hiking here, scratching off every trail listed in guides and apps, my sense of adventure was invigorated.
One of these conversationalists was Curtis Johnson, the BLTS president and crew leader for the day’s work. Johnson was the whole reason I was there; I had interviewed him the day before about local trail-building and maintenance. Over the phone, he offered an invitation to volunteer, which I half brushed off.
Full disclosure: I’ve spent the last five months working on the Tahoe Rim Trail Association’s staff trail crew. For 40 hours a week since May 15, this four-person crew cleared trees, built rock structures, and broke tread on new sections along the 172-mile trail. While my TRTA team consists of paid staff members, volunteers often join. Some have been with the company for decades and are recognized by the TRTA as master trail-builders, segment coordinators or crew leaders. Others are new to trail work. New volunteers almost always vocalize a lot of appreciation for trail-building and maintenance. They’re often amazed at how much work goes into these projects.
Johnson noted that the BLTS uses mini-doz-
ers to do the initial excavating work when building new trails, but that volunteers are needed to fine-tune and polish that rough job, “which is really fun, because it’s what you call instant gratification, because the heavy lifting has been done. You just have to do the fine, finish work.”
In Galena, we were tasked with just that.
The “Robin Hood Trail” is a popular but unofficial trail cut by mountain bikers that you won’t find on a map. It sends bikers through the parking lot, often at high speeds, and the BLTS directors wanted to create a safer route.
“If you didn’t use your brakes, you’d be doing 60 miles an hour easy,” Johnson said. While we stood in the parking lot after our work was finished, two bikers did exactly that. Everyone shook their heads.
The general shape of the trail had been cut out, but a ton of work was needed to make it ridable. A few of us grabbed rock bars (four feet of solid iron used to pry objects) and pick mattocks (whose head includes both a pick to pry and a five-inch-long straight edge to
| BY HELENA GUGLIELMINO
Participants were gleeful (which is not unusual) after doing a trail-maintenance session at the Biggest Little Trails Stewardship volunteer event in Galena Creek Regional Park on Aug. 24. Photo/courtesy Biggest Little Trails Stewardship
remove material). Other volunteers defined the backslope (the uphill edge of trail) and smoothed out the tread with McLeods (with the handle of a shovel and the head of a bentdown fork). Our team filled dirt bags with soil and moved them to places where rocks had been pulled.
By the end of the day, the team of 21 volunteers completed what looked like 300 to 500 feet of new trail quite an accomplishment. It’s slow work that takes a lot of effort. Firsttime volunteers often comment that they’ll never look at a trail the same way again.
Christina Thayer, the Washoe County Trails Program coordinator, once told me that experts carefully consider how a new trail will impact nearby flora, fauna and cultural resources. When trails are not well maintained, erosion can take place, and trail users might improvise a cutoff, called a “social trail,” which can impact the area more than the planned trail. This is one reason trails require ongoing maintenance.
“It’s like having a road,” Thayer said. “You don’t just build a road and walk away from it. You have to maintain it, especially with increased use and things like hard winters. You kind of have to pay to play.”
Thayer said finding volunteers to work trails is difficult, both here and in other regions where she’s worked.
“For the most part, it tends to be retirees and folks who are aging out of being able to do that sort of work,” she said. “This new generation needs to kind of step up and grab the reins.”
While volunteering for trail work helps the community, that might not be reason enough for you to get out of bed early on a Saturday— but there are selfish reasons to participate as well. You can connect with like-minded people and discover new places and ways to explore.
For me, even though I spent my summer of trail work smelling like a sunbaked garbage can, I felt capable and accomplished—a feeling I’m otherwise missing in the oppressive and doubting day-to-day routine of a freelance writer. In what other volunteering job can you learn how to move a thousand-plus-pound rock 50 feet down a steep side slope without killing anyone?
To sign up to volunteer with Biggest Little Trail Stewardship on a future trail work day, visit www.bltsnv.org/events.html or www. facebook.com/poedunks.
Planets and Bright Stars in Evening Mid-Twilight
For October, 2024
This sky chart is drawn for latitude 40 degrees north, but may be used in continental U.S. and southern Canada.
October’s evening sky chart. Illustration/Robert D. Miller
with the sun on Oct. 9 will be followed a few days later by a favorable emergence into the western evening sky, as the comet climbs higher and farther away from the sun nightly. The comet’s daily eastward shift against background stars is 5.6° on Oct. 11-12, and then 5° on Oct. 14-15, slowing to 4° on Oct. 17, and 3° on Oct. 20. It’s down to 2° per day on Oct. 24, and just 1.5° on Oct. 27.
Predictions of a comet’s brightness can be notoriously uncertain! A forecast by comet researcher Joseph Marcus, reported by Bob King on the website of Sky and Telescope, cautiously predicts magnitude -4.8 at peak brilliance on Oct. 9; magnitude +0.2 on Oct. 13; magnitude +2.5 on Oct. 17; and magnitude +3.6 on Oct. 20. We may place comet updates and links on the Sky Calendar Extra Content Page at www. abramsplanetarium.org/msta.
In other news: Keep checking the Northern Crown, Corona Borealis, for the once-in-a lifetime eruption of the recurrent Nova T Coronae Borealis. The brightest star in the Crown is 2.2-magnitude Alphecca, or Alpha Coronae Borealis. It’s easy to spot, nearly 20° east-northeast of Arcturus, and one-third of the way from Arcturus toward Vega. (Vega and Arcturus are 59° apart.)
October skies
The month brings a potentially bright comet—and the possible eruption of a nova!
Good news about Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS): After being lost in the glare on the far side of the sun for several weeks, the comet was again seen in mid-September by observers in Australia, who report that its brightness should provide an impressive show in October.
The comet will pass closest to Earth on Oct. 12, at a distance of 43.9 million miles. The comet is visible in the mornings, rising in twilight 7-8° south of east, just more than an hour before sunrise through Oct. 4; binoculars should give the best views. The comet will be 12° to the upper right of a rising, 1 percent crescent on Oct. 1.
It seems likely that there’ll be a surge in the comet’s brightness, caused by forward scattering of sunlight by cometary dust grains, as the comet passes halfway between Earth and the sun, while appearing within
4° to the upper left of the midday sun, on Oct. 9. Will Comet C/2023 A3 become visible in the daytime, as Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) was in some areas on Jan. 14 and 15, 2007?
To try for a daytime naked-eye or binocular sighting, stand in the shade on the north side of a building at 12:46 p.m. in Reno, and be very careful to block the sun entirely with the top of the building. Then look 4.3° to the upper right of the (hidden!) sun’s midday position on Oct. 8; then on the next day, Oct. 9, look 3.9° above and slightly to the left of the sun’s position; and look 7.2° to the upper left of the sun on Oct. 10. Let’s hope for a very dusty comet to make these observations possible!
You can also try looking during sunrise and sunset on Oct. 9, 3.6° to the upper left of the rising sun, and 4.5° to the upper right of the setting sun. Again, be absolutely sure the sun is completely covered! The conjunction of comet
In reasonably dark skies, seven stars in the bowl-shaped crown are usually seen. Here’s a list of the seven stars, in order from west to east, counterclockwise around the arc, with their magnitudes: Theta (magnitude 4.2), Beta (3.7), Alpha (Alphecca, 2.2), Gamma (3.8), Delta (4.6), Epsilon (4.1) and Iota (5.0). Note the three stars along the southern edge of the crown—Alpha, Gamma and Delta—lie in a nearly straight line. When the “Blaze Star” T Coronae Borealis becomes visible, it will extend that line another 2.2° past Delta, so there will be four stars—Alpha, Gamma, Delta and T—arranged in a nearly straight line. Check often, because T CrB won’t remain near peak brilliance very long before it quickly fades.
Corona Borealis will sink low in the west-northwest at nightfall by mid-November. If the eruption of T Coronae Borealis hasn’t occurred by then, switch to the morning sky, and you’ll find the Northern Crown low in the east-northeast as twilight begins, and climbing higher each morning. You’ll be able to continue to watch for the eruption of the nova through its conjunction 46° north of the sun on Nov. 17.
A quick summary of our usual topics, the visibility of the moon and planets: At dusk, look for brilliant Venus, of magnitude -4, low in the west-southwest to southwest, and Saturn, of magnitude +0.7, well up in the southeastern sky. Watch the moon pass a few degrees south (to the lower left) of Venus on Oct. 5; pass Antares
| BY ROBERT VICTOR
on Oct. 7; and hopscotch past Saturn on Oct. 13-14. Venus goes 3° north of Antares on Oct. 25. A telescope shows Venus’ tiny disk now in gibbous phase; the planet will be much more interesting to follow in January through March as it draws closer to Earth and displays half and backlit crescent phases. As Earth pulls ahead of Saturn, we see the rings temporarily opening to 5.0° or more from edge-on from Oct. 19-Dec. 5, before they present edge-on to Earth and the sun in early spring of 2025.
As morning twilight begins to brighten, Jupiter, of magnitude -2.6 in Taurus, and Sirius, of magnitude -1.5 in Canis Major, dominate. On Oct. 9, Jupiter begins 10° of retrograde motion, entirely bracketed between the stars Aldebaran and Beta and Zeta Tauri, the tips of the horns of the Bull. Mars, at magnitude +0.5 to +0.1, is in Gemini nearly all month before crossing into Cancer. At month’s end, the red planet still ranks below Capella and emerging Arcturus in brilliance, but overtakes Procyon and ends about equal to Rigel. Mars passes 5.7° south of Pollux on Oct. 19, the first of a triple conjunction between them in 2024-25. Watch Mars nearly align with the Twin stars on Oct. 29 and 30: A line from Castor to Pollux, 4.5° long, extended about 7°, will locate Mars.
Follow the waning moon in the morning: Look for the old moon low in the east at dawn on Oct. 1. After full, watch the moon pass widely north of Aldebaran on Oct. 20; pass north of Jupiter and very close to Beta Tauri on Oct. 21; move through the field of Castor, Pollux and Mars on the mornings of Oct. 23 and 24; and pass closely north of Regulus on Oct. 26. On Oct. 30, look for the star Spica rising below a thin crescent moon beautifully illuminated by earthshine on its upper, non-sunlit side. On the following morning, Oct. 31, look again about 40 minutes before sunrise for an even thinner old moon rising to the lower right of Spica. The event is not illustrated on the Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar for October, but I think if the sky is very clear and you have binoculars and an unobstructed view, you’ll be able to see it! The Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar is available by subscription from www. abramsplanetarium.org/skycalendar. For $12 per year, subscribers receive quarterly mailings, each containing three monthly issues.
Robert Victor originated the Abrams Planetarium monthly Sky Calendar in October 1968 and still helps produce an occasional issue. He enjoys being outdoors sharing the beauty of the night sky and other wonders of nature. Robert Miller, who provided the evening and morning twilight charts, did graduate work in planetarium science, and later astronomy and computer science at Michigan State University, and remains active in research and public outreach in astronomy.
Stereographic Projection Map by Robert D. Miller
Evening mid-twilight occurs when the Sun is 9° below the horizon.
Fomalhaut
In the wake of Donald Trump’s failed efforts to reverse his defeat in the 2020 presidential contest, Republican officials in at least 21 counties across eight states, including in Washoe County, refused—or threatened to refuse—to sign off on voting tallies in 2022 and this year, potentially delaying results and setting the stage for denying the outcome of the November election
In Washoe and across the country, Republican politicians cited relatively minor election glitches or baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud as reasons to decline to certify the votes of entire counties. Voting advocates and Democrats said that those officials are sowing seeds of doubt about the democratic process and laying the groundwork for claims of a “stolen” election should Trump lose again this year.
Nevada officials warn that refusals to certify elections are attempts to amplify disinformation and increase doubt that people’s votes will be counted. In Washoe County, the three Republican commissioners who illegally voted against certifying a recount of two races in the June primary have set a dangerous precedent, they said.
“It is unacceptable that any public officer would undermine the confidence of their voters,” Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a joint statement in July. “The importance of this issue cannot be overstated.”
Election results in all 21 counties were eventually certified after dissenters were warned that the task is a “ministerial” duty, and county politicians don’t have the power to reject vote totals.
With two seats on the Washoe County Commission in play this year, the previously mundane election-certification procedure has become an issue in those races and others across the country.
In Nevada, after local precincts close, election workers tabulate the vote along with the mailin ballots and send their unofficial counts to the Secretary of State’s office, which reviews the data for errors. At the county level, election officials check the precinct results and the counts in what’s called a “canvass” of the vote. The county assembles the results across all of its precincts and tabulates them. Each county commission, within 10 days after the election, then certifies the results and sends them to the state. By law, all allegations of improprieties or fraud are investigated by the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office.
results have justified their decisions by pointing to errors in voter rolls or by citing constituents who allege widespread voter fraud. In Washoe County, some residents who regularly show up at commission meetings parrot the claims of local GOP activist and conspiracy theorist Robert Beadles. Beadles insists, without evidence, that Nevada’s elections are always rigged in favor of Democrats. Carson City District Court Judge James Todd Russell dismissed Beadles’ lawsuit alleging fraud, noting his arguments were “a lot of smoke, mirrors and all kinds of fancy numbers” and “none of it makes any sense.”
The Nevada Supreme Court upheld Russell’s ruling six months later.
In April, the office of Nevada’s Secretary of State released a report that concluded there was “no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Nevada” in 2020 or subsequent elections. Only 14 cases in the state were referred for possible prosecution since 2020, including nine cases from 2020 and five from 2022. A Brennan Center for Justice study of votes cast in 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 election found that after counting 23.5 million votes, “only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting” were referred for investigation or prosecution.
vague suspicions that party functionaries steal mail-in ballots and fill them out en masse for the benefit of their candidates.
The unfounded claims chip away at public confidence in the process, Rodriguez noted.
“We’re seeing questions about voter rolls, non-citizens voting, dead people voting and so forth,” she noted. “Those things are meant not to discover evidence of fraud or improprieties, but to cast doubt on the process. So, if we get to the point where the votes have been counted, and one side doesn’t like the results, they will say, ‘Look at all of that. We just can’t know what happened.’”
Emily Rodriguez, communications and advocacy strategist with Protect Democracy, which describes itself as a “non-partisan and anti-authoritarian group,” said the trend started in 2022. “Delaying official election tallies may result in missed federal and state reporting deadlines, cause confusion and suspicion among voters and imperil the democratic process,” she said. “All uncertainty about who won elections is risky, especially in these intense times.”
Why are county politicians required to certify the totals? The role of certification, Rodriguez explained, is not to verify the final vote count, but to sign off on the comprehensive verification process already performed. Those laws were codified in the states, she said, in direct response to past partisan attempts to sabotage certification in order to change election outcomes.
Local election officials are like the umpires in a ball game, Rodriguez said, and the county commission is akin to the scoreskeeper. “After the game, the scorekeeper doesn’t have the authority to question a play and negate the score of the game,” she said. “Ultimately, we want to preserve the will of the people and not the wishes of the scorekeeper.”
Officials who refuse to sign off on election
An audit of Washoe County elections last year documented poorly maintained voter rolls and one very costly mistake: $200,000 was spent to reprint sample ballots that failed to include a libertarian candidate. None of the deficiencies found by the state or county officials affected the outcomes of the elections, according to the reports.
The county investigation found that “unprecedented turnover” and inadequate staffing at the Registrar of Voters Office were at the root of the problems. The audit found no evidence of fraud. Nonetheless, some officials in Washoe County and elsewhere point to errors in voter rolls or ballot deliveries as justification for refusing to accept vote counts. Other officials and activists, absent evidence, make claims about “rigged” elections, mysterious computer algorithms that automatically change votes, debunked conspiracy theories about ineligible voters or
In Washoe County, two of the three Republican commissioners, Jeanne Herman and Mike Clark, have consistently voted against certifying voting results. In 2020, Herman was the lone vote against certifying the general election, and Clark followed suit in subsequent elections. In July, Republican
Clara Andriola—who had been the 3-2 swing vote to certify previous elections—joined her two GOP colleagues to vote against accepting the recount results for the June primary. The certification failed by a 3-2 vote, with the two Democrats voting to accept the totals.
The results eventually were certified after state officials informed the dissenting commissioners they were breaking the law and petitioned the Nevada Supreme Court to intervene. Clark, who said he has concerns about election malfeasance, but was under “extreme duress” to change his vote, reversed course. The measure passed 4-1, with Herman the lone vote against certification.
Herman also has supported drastic changes to elections, including using paper ballots instead of voting machines, hand-counting of ballots, eliminating voting by mail except for absentee ballots, and stationing sheriff’s
deputies at polling places.
Andriola, who is up for re-election this year, said in a prepared statement in July that she now understands certifying the vote totals “is a legal duty and affords no discretion to refuse. … We can and must do everything we can to restore faith and confidence in our elections.” She is facing two nonpartisan challengers in District 4, which leans Republican, in November.
Secretary of State Aguilar, in a legal filing to the Nevada Supreme Court, warned that the threats of “rogue” commissioners like Herman rejecting ballot counts, even when they know it’s illegal, “provide a license and roadmap for likeminded commissioners to prevent certification of future elections,” in violation of the law. He asked the court to rule on the issue, but because the commission later certified the recounts, the justices declined to intervene. If commissioners reject certification in November, Aguilar warned, “the court would have mere hours or days—not weeks or months, as it does now—to consider this canvassing issue and avoid disrupting Nevadans’ voice in selecting their elected officials, including the next president of the United States.”
Democrat, Commissioner Mariluz Garcia.
“We certify so we can show the final vote totals in a public meeting. That’s important,” Hill said. “But I don’t think it’s appropriate at all for the commission to be meddling in those vote totals. It is important for us to provide the appropriate resources to the Registrar of Voters’ Office so that they can conduct a great election. (That’s what) we have done since 2022, when we certainly had a fair election, but mistakes were made, and it turned out we didn’t have sufficient staffing.”
Hill reiterated that last year’s audit found nothing that would affect the outcomes of the races.
“We need to invest in (the registrar’s) office, but not meddle in totals and take away people’s votes,” Hill said. Rejecting vote totals is “incredibly partisan. It’s right out of the Trump playbook. … (In Washoe), there is one person who told people beginning in 2021 not to believe in the vote (totals), and we’re all suffering because of it,” she said.
The “one person” Hill referenced is Beadles, a wealthy Republican activist who moved to Washoe County in 2019 and subsequently put the County Commission and the School Board on notice that he would spend millions to replace their members with people who shared his viewpoints. Beadles declined to comment for this story.
On his blog, Operation Sunlight, Beadles consistently claims he has “100% proof” our elections are predetermined in favor of Democrats. Beadles has branded the judges, officials and citizens who reject his allegations as either being corrupt or cowards.
ballots. … Am I a conspiracy theorist like the media states, or did I just call out their BS to wake YOU up to what’s really happening?”
In his posts, Beadles encourages his followers to attend commission meetings and testify about his fraud allegations and other complaints he spotlights on his blog. As a result, the commission’s public comment period sometimes goes on for hours.
In this election cycle, state records show Beadles contributed $5,000 to Marsha Berkbigler, Hill’s Republican opponent in the District 1 race. In an interview with the RN&R, Berkbigler said she accepted Beadles’ donation, but does not agree with his theories about rigged elections.
“I’m not close to Beadles,” she said. “He donated to my campaign because I’m honest. I believe in transparency, and you can trust me. He hasn’t asked me for a single thing. He hasn’t asked me to join him in his lawsuits or conspiracy theories or anything else.” Berkbigler routinely certified all elections during her previous two terms on the panel. She has never been an election denier, she said, and she doesn’t think her loss to Hill in 2020 was rigged, as Beadles maintains. But after the 2020 election, she said, there was a perception that the voting “wasn’t necessarily fair.” In 2020, Berkbigler said, she was told the livestream cameras in the registrar’s office “went down for a 15-minute period, and my
continued on Page 15
If Andriola retains her seat as expected, and Berkbigler defeats Hill, the panel will consist of four Republicans and a lone
“In a county of over 500,000 people, I’m the only one calling out the county for breaking the law,” Beadles wrote on Dec. 18, 2023. “They counted all of our votes in secret. We can never verify what they say the results are. Meaning, we have to trust who they say wins; we can never verify it ourselves. We can never count the
Alexis Hill, a Democrat who now represents Washoe County’s Ward 1 and is chair of the commission, is facing a challenge from Marsha Berkbigler, a Republican who served on the panel for eight years until being defeated by Hill in 2020.
Alexis Hill, left, talks with Donna Clontz, who is on the executive council of AARP, at Senior Fest, held at the Reno Town Mall on Sept. 3. Photo/David Robert
Incumbent Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill is facing challenger Marsha Berkbigler on Nov. 5 in the race for the District 1 seat.
Berkbigler held the seat for eight years until Hill defeated her in the 2020 election. Berkbigler was a state lobbyist for more than 40 years, representing a variety of businesses. Those included mining, engineering, health care, insurance, telecommunications and nonprofit groups.
Hill, prior to being elected to the commission where she now serves as chairman, worked in public policy and city planning for more than a decade at the cities of Sparks and Reno. She also has worked with the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, and Kids & Horses, a nonprofit program.
District 1 includes portions of the western side of the Truckee Meadows and extends south along the eastern Sierra to include Incline Village and Crystal Bay at Lake Tahoe.
WHY THEY ARE RUNNING
Berkbigler, a Republican, came out of retirement last year to run for her former seat, she said, because many district residents complained that questions they asked county officials often were ignored, and/or they were displeased with Hill’s actions on the panel. Berkbigler said if elected, she would revisit initiatives she was working on when she was on the panel between 2012 and 2020. Those include affordable housing, senior and homeless services, and transportation.
“I dream of a place where older people feel valued and where everyone thinks their opinions matter for our future,” Berkbigler said. “… I believe in being careful with our money and not making you pay more taxes than needed. We can find smart ways to solve our problems while making sure we use our money to improve our lives here.”
Hill, a Democrat, said she is seeking a second term to follow through on initiatives started over the last four years. She said she has “a strong belief that government should make our lives better.” Her priorities include following smart growth policies; fighting climate change on a local level; government accountability and transparency; and citizen access to government. She said she supports community-building initiatives, including youth, senior and neighborhood services; mental illness and drug addiction support; homelessness services; and other public health initiatives while balancing the needs of various constituencies.
“That’s why I get so excited about this job,” Hill said. “Every day, it’s what can I do with the sphere that I control, with the funds that I have and the power I can exert to make things better for people in Washoe County.”
The two candidates differ on a variety of issues.
CARES CAMPUS
Berkbigler said the county should “seriously consider” collecting a fee from unhoused people staying at the CARES campus who have jobs or other income.
“There are a lot of people who have significant income over there, and yet they are living there for free. It’s not the majority of the homeless; I’m talking about people who can work and have money to buy drugs,” she said.
In addition, Berkbigler said the county spends money on CARES “without any real serious transparency for what they’re spending that money on and why.” She noted that the county and cities used federal COVID-related grants to help fund the project while rents in the area have skyrocketed.
“Seniors are losing their apartments because instead of placing some of that money that came in from the feds during COVID … to protect our seniors and their housing, most of that money went somewhere else,” she said.
Berkbigler called for “a full forensic accounting” of the CARES campus and homeless services.
Hill said charging a fee for employed people to stay at CARES is a bad idea. “(People who have jobs) usually have relatively short stays at CARES,” she said. “Charging those vulnerable people fees is a pretty callous concept when talking about people who need a hand up. ... If there’s a fee, they will stay on the river; they will stay in their cars.”
Hill noted that about half of the people who stay at the shelter are older than 55, so what is spent on CARES does directly help seniors, including permanent supportive housing coming online next year. Budget figures and a breakdown of expenses, she said, are easily available from the county.
SENIOR SERVICES
Berkbigler said too little is spent on senior services compared to other county programs, including homeless services and animal services.
“The seniors who worked and lived in Nevada for a long time are not getting the same sort of attention that we are giving to homeless people—who have recently arrived—and that bothers a lot of people,” she said.
County documents show that a total of $19.5 million is budgeted for CARES campus operations in fiscal year 2024, with $17.5 million of that coming from the county’s general fund. The documents put the annual budgeted amount for animal services at $7.2 million, and the budgeted amount for senior services at $7.6 million. (The total county budget is $1.1 billion, with $516 million coming from the general fund.) Hill said senior services have expanded during her time on the panel, noting that the county has recently remodeled the senior center on Ninth Street. She said she supports seniors being able to “age in place” in their own homes. The commission, she said, approved a grant for respite care for caregivers who need a break, as well as a Homemaker Program to help keep people in their homes.
Hill noted the county has many different needs. “Should we do more for seniors, for everyone in our community? Absolutely!” Hill said. “There are so many opportunities for us to invest for every single facet of our community.”
She noted that the county is limited by depreciating property tax and decreasing sales tax revenues since COVID, “but we are doing everything we can. … We have to invest in trails, child care, foster families, parks, transportation and so many other things. We’re trying to find a balance.”
The two candidates for the District 1 seat on the Washoe County Commission have differing views on the CARES campus. Challenger Marsha Berkbigler proposes that the shelter charge residents who have an income, while incumbent Alexis Hill opposes such a fee. Photo/David Robert
GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY
Berkbigler said many residents complain about a “lack of transparency” in county government and say they can’t get answers from the county when they ask about issues.
“People are paying closer attention to what’s happening at the local government level,” she said. “They want to know what their government is doing.”
She said when residents ask questions about programs or funding, they often are sent lengthy reports and budget documents that are inscrutable to people outside of government. Even as a former commissioner, she said, she has trouble unraveling the financial reports for homeless services.
Hill said transparency in county government was a top issue in her 2020 campaign and that the county practices open government. Decisions are made in public at commission meetings, and the county adheres to Nevada’s open records laws. Commissioners work with citizen advisory boards and encourage citizens to get involved in the development process. The county, she said, is about to implement open paycheck and open payroll information online with the state.
“I’m not sure what (Berkbigler) is talking about when she complains about a lack of transparency,” Hill said.
PUBLIC COMMENT PERIODS
Over the last few years, the County Commission has seen an increase in people who want to address the panel during the open public comment period. A local election denier who stokes conspiracy theories routinely implores his followers to swarm commission meetings to complain about elections or other topics, which adds hours to the panel’s meetings. In response, Hill rescheduled the public comment portion of the meetings.
Hill said she initially moved the comment period to the end of the meeting, because many of the speakers were “purposely trying to disrupt our meeting, something that we are seeing all over the country. … We’re not there to have a dialogue with everyone who speaks about topics not on the day’s agenda. That would make it hard for us to get the work of the county done.”
Commissioner Clara Andriola wanted the comments restored to the start of the meeting. “We compromised,” Hill said. “We now have open comment (from 10 to) 11 a.m., and then resume it at the end after the agenda items. ... That’s actually worked out really well.” Berkbigler said she wants the entire comment period restored to the beginning of the meetings.
“If citizens want to speak about some item on the agenda, but can’t speak until the end of the meeting, their item will already have been decided by then,” she said. “You may not be able to get to the meeting when the public hearing (on the agenda item) is scheduled in the afternoon, but if the issue is of vital importance to you, you can address the commission at the beginning of the meeting. … It’s the commissioners’ job to sit there and listen to what the citizens want to say.”
LAKE TAHOE CONGESTION
Hill suggested considering a visitors’ fee for the often-gridlocked Lake Tahoe Basin, with the proceeds going to public transportation initiatives around Tahoe.
“Congestion pricing is happening all over the country. It’s not unheard of,” she said. “… I’d like to see a really great transportation program at Tahoe like some other mountain communities have. We need ways to dissuade folks from using their cars.”
Hill said the county will have to work with the state and regional governments and agencies to make that happen. Next year’s Legislature, Hill said, will consider a bill Washoe County proposed that would add $4.25 a day to the short-term rental fee already in place for Incline Village and Crystal Bay properties. The revenue from the increase, she said, would go directly to transportation. Each county or city around Lake Tahoe charges its own short-term rental fees, she noted.
Berkbigler said that some Incline Village residents have also suggested a visitor-fee measure, but she doesn’t know how such a system would work in practice. She said a portion of the short-term rental fees goes to the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority.
“That money should go to transportation, but it isn’t,” she said. “Instead of sending it down to the valley, that money could be used for transportation in Incline Village.”
She said the proposal for the $4.25 fee increase “should be (Tahoe) Basin-wide. If it is not, then it might have a direct impact on vacation rentals on the Nevada side. … Where is the gaming industry on this? Is this something the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency can do on its own? It will be important to look at the total impact.”
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numbers dropped significantly during that time”—an allegation she said she did not investigate. In 2022, Berkbigler said, an election worker was seen on video inserting a USB drive into one of the counting machines. “How do the citizens know if there wasn’t something on that thumb drive that altered the results?” she asked.
“ There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Nevada, at any point in our state’s history. ”
Washoe County officials in September told the RN&R that cameras blinked out briefly a couple of times during the 2020 count, because YouTube didn’t support a 24-hour live feed. The cameras had to be switched to a different stream after 12 hours. Vote counting continued while the video feed went dark, they said.
Workers in the registrar’s office aren’t allowed to connect USB drives to election computers, the officials said, except for a single thumb drive that collects data from all counting machines. In other words, the worker was caught doing his job, they said.
In the June primary, Berkbigler said, “several” of her friends received more than one ballot in the mail. In the recount for two candidates in the primary, she said, mail-in ballots should have been counted by hand rather than by machine.
When asked if she would have voted to certify the recounts for the June primary, Berkbigler said she wasn’t sure: “I’m on the fence about whether I would have stood with Jeanne Herman (against approval) or thought that because I’ve always approved (certification), I shouldn’t change that now,” she said.
In light of the pushback from state officials, Berkbigler said she understands county commissioners don’t have the discretion to reject the vote count. “I believe state law is clear—I will certify elections, but that law needs to be changed before the county commissioners have a vote or a say,” she said.
Hill said commissioners should not have the power to arbitrarily reject voting totals. She said she doesn’t believe Berkbigler’s concerns about voting procedures are legitimate. “My opponent will give any excuse to cast doubt on our elections and give her cute statement that she ‘may not have certified the election’ credence,” Hill said.
Alexis Hill’Insky.” His posts about Hill are illustrated with a doctored image depicting the commissioner wearing a Chinese People’s Liberation Army uniform. Prior to the June primary, Beadles’ blog posts about incumbents he doesn’t like were repurposed into a direct mail campaign and paid for by Beadles’ PAC, the Franklin Project. Those mailers depicted Commissioner Andriola—who has unequivocally acknowledged the legitimacy of the 2020 elections—as a clown and a “Republican in name only”; pictured a school board incumbent as the grim reaper; and portrayed a Reno City Council candidate as a drag queen.
Berkbigler said she doesn’t want that kind of help from Beadles or his PAC.
“I said, ‘Look, you (Beadles) can do whatever you want, but please don’t put my name on any of the nasty stuff you do,’” she said. “I don’t want to be included in that. I run an above-board, honest campaign. … I’m not going to get down in the mud and wallow with the pigs. The name-calling that he’s done and the ‘Comrade Hill’insky’ stuff, I’m not going to get into that.”
No matter who wins the two commission races in November, certification of elections will remain in the spotlight. Election deniers and others who are skeptical about the fairness of the process are expected to continue to make unsubstantiated claims of fraud, voting activists said.
Rodriguez, of Protect Democracy, said any attempts in November to delay the vote count in any county will fail: “As we saw in Washoe, the secretary of state and the attorney general jumped in and filed an emergency petition with the Nevada Supreme Court to compel the commissioners to certify. There are consequences for not obeying the law,” she said.
Baseless allegations of fraud, vague accusations and threats not to certify elections remain a danger to our democratic system, Rodriguez noted, and cause confusion and chaos.
“It’s easy to take partial information and make wild claims about it,” she said. “That’s why it’s important for voters to understand the process, so if that happens, voters can investigate for themselves and know that the claims are not true. All of these things are knowable. It’s important to scrutinize these claims—and not just take someone’s word for it.”
Beadles’ blog entries often praise Berkbigler while vilifying Hill, who he calls the “illegitimately (s)elected commie Comrade
ARTS
Celebrating the written word
A preview of the Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl—including a chat with Pulitzer Prizewinning author Anthony Doerr
If you’re not familiar with the Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl, think of it as a celebration of the written word in Nevada, in its many forms. More than 30 readings, panels and other events—all free—take place in venues of all sorts, mostly along California Avenue, on Saturday, Oct. 12.
Some happen at bars, like RN&R contributor
Max Stone’s Landline Poetry Showcase at the Loving Cup. Royce Burger Bar will host a panel on masculinity featuring Christopher Coake, director of the University of Nevada, Reno’s creative writing program, as well as Las Vegas poets Harry R. Fagel and Rodney J. Lee.
There are hands-on workshops in letterpress and postcard making, a family story time at the
Downtown Reno Library, and discussions on the various ways in which Northern Nevadans use language. Paiute language teacher Esha Hoferer and Reno-Sparks Indian Colony language and culture coordinator Stacey Burns, for example, will lead a panel on why and how the Numu (Northern Paiute) language is being revived.
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BY SARAH RUSSELL
Author Anthony Doerr: “I turned to books through the pandemic, because we were trying to keep it locked down, and books were really this salvation, a way for me to stay mentally sane and imagine myself outside of my own life during those hours.”
You’ll also be able to record an oral history, take a workshop in science fiction and fantasy writing, or read your own poetry during open mic events. To avoid a long walk, you can hop on the Brew Bike shuttle. Yes, that’s the quirky, human-powered trolley you see ferrying people to bars in downtown-adjacent neighborhoods—and during the Lit Crawl, the Brew Bike is all-ages, and if you board at the right time, you might catch an onboard presentation by attorney/comedian David Gamble Jr., fiction author Mark Maynard or artist/poet Pan Pantoja.
If you’re already a dyed-in-the-wool fan of this (almost) annual event, you probably have a question: How can the Lit Crawl possibly retain its cozy, sought-after, neighborhood-stroll feeling now that its longtime hub—Sundance Books—closed earlier this year?
The folks at Nevada Humanities are just as sad as the rest of us that Sundance is no longer, and they’ve found a few ways to retain the Lit Crawl look and feel. For one, the Jabberwocky—that larger-than-life version of Lewis Carroll’s legendary monster—that long stood at the top of the banister at Sundance will be stationed at Lake Mansion for your selfie-taking pleasure. And there will still be a hub for books.
“We’re partnering with the Radical Cat to create a pop-up bookstore that will be at the Lake Mansion throughout the day,” said George Tsz-Kwan Lam, Nevada Humanities’ assistant director. “We needed, of course, a way for folks to gather and to check out the books that are on offer, written by the featured authors, and do book-signings.”
Typically, the Lit Crawl brings in a keynote presenter from another Western region. This year, it’s Anthony Doerr. He lives in Boise, Idaho, and he’s been in the national spotlight for quite a while now. Doerr’s talk, which takes place at the Nevada Museum of Art, sold out weeks ago, but given his razor-sharp view on the power of stories, we figured you’d still like to hear from him—so local educator (and major fan) Sarah Russell gave him a call.
—Kris Vagner
Anthony Doerr has published three novels, a memoir and two collections of short stories. His novel All the Light We Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and other literary honors. Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) was shortlisted for various literary awards.
When we spoke, he was home in Boise, despairing about wildfires and how, between
smoky skies and the presidential election, it was feeling like 2020 all over again. We talked about the pandemic and environmental concerns, but in the end, like his novels, he is filled with hope.
Cloud Cuckoo Land has three timeframes: The 1453 fall of Constantinople, with Anna inside and Omeir outside the city; a library in contemporary Idaho where Zeno, a Korean War veteran, protects children from a bomb; and in an interstellar starship where 13-yearold Konstance quarantines alone in a vault. Doerr had begun to draft Cloud Cuckoo Land before the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020. The primary theme of the novel—becoming trapped (or “hemmed in,” as Doerr says), and how stories can help “slip the trap”—was already there, but the shutdown led to significant revisions of this theme.
In the novel, Zeno tells a friend about librarians reading him ancient texts when he was a lonely child. The friend says, “I know why those librarians read the old stories to you … because if it’s told well enough, for as long as the story lasts, you get to slip the trap.” This theme—a love letter to books, librarians and stories—became clearer to Doerr during the shutdown.
“I turned to books through the pandemic, because we were trying to keep it locked down, and books were really this salvation, a way for me to stay mentally sane and imagine myself outside of my own life during those hours,” he said. His characters—trapped in a vault, in a library under siege, in the walled-in city of Constantinople—already felt hemmed in.
“Before I sent the draft to my editor, I think, ‘I’m just going to try to heighten all these feelings of entrapment,’” Doerr said.
Some readers found the settings apocalyptic and scary. “But you also feel this hope, because you see art thrive,” he said. “The candle glows a little bit more brightly when it’s surrounded by that kind of darkness.”
This hope, despite the world crumbling around his characters, is also present in All the Light We Cannot See, which is set during World War II.
Doerr said writing a hopeful story about World War II is “kind of a wild, crazy, scary idea.” He believes he has a responsibility to address the horrors of war, but also, that if you focus on individuals and the way they connect, “It’s OK ... to say, ‘Look at what humans are capable of’ in terms of connection and imagination. We can make these amazing, startlingly beautiful things, even as we’re also a really destructive species.”
and embroider and connect, a librarian who is gay, who has to conceal himself from himself for most of his life, and finds heroism.”
“What voices are being silenced right now? ... When you look at book bans across the United States, what kinds of voices are those? Often, there are characters who are LGBTQIA+ or writers of color, or characters of color. What if we were to be able to access the works of Indigenous peoples from before the Columbian exchange and smallpox, and learn from them?”
The themes of protecting texts, stories and radio so people can connect left me wondering: What are the most important texts to preserve? I asked him what he would include on a golden record, like the one launched into space on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 with sounds and images to convey life and culture on Earth. His answer included Emily Watson’s translation of The Odyssey (“I feel like The Odyssey has got this new blood pumping through it”); Sappho; Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino; Aboriginal music from Australia; and a big list of species and DNA: “We’re never going to be able to actually lift these big bodies full of water ... out of the solar system, but maybe we can launch little, tiny DNA printers. Someday spacecraft could colonize a habitable planet in another solar system.”
The RN&R is looking for new freelance writers—especially talented writers/reporters who have a nose for news.
Interested in making a difference in the community—and getting paid to do so? Email a resume and clips/writing samples to krisv@renonr.com!
The last one showering shouldn’t be left in the cold! GO TANKLESS.
Doerr’s stories are often set in the intermountain West. In his work, he said, the vastness of our region suggests that “our lives are just these little finger snaps in the 4 1/2-billion-year life of the Earth. Does that either make you feel tiny or make you feel incredibly blessed? Does it make you feel afraid? Or do you feel like, ‘Wow! What a privilege that we get to be here for a few decades and witness this extraordinary, incredibly complex tapestry of evolution that delivered this kind of organism to this moment’ … and maybe de-center ourselves in the best possible way, the way literature can de-center us, take us out of our own Copernican sense where everything revolves around us.”
Doerr places his characters in settings that show how simple they are, and their missions are. Can they still be heroes against a backdrop like the fall of Constantinople? In Cloud Cuckoo Land, he was subverting the hero paradigm, Doerr said.
“I was trying to invert the typical Greek and Roman hero, who is a male, who is Achilles. … When we were kids, maybe 80% (of movies) had a male who destroys things, alone. … I thought it’d be interesting to play … with unfamiliar hero tropes in Cloud Cuckoo Land—people who knit
Doerr then turned the question to everyone participating in the Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl: He asked us to contemplate what should go on a golden record, and what metaphorical golden records have been lost.
“What voices are being silenced right now? ... When you look at book bans across the United States, what kinds of voices are those? Often, there are characters who are LGBTQIA+ or writers of color, or characters of color. What if we were to be able to access the works of Indigenous peoples from before the Columbian exchange and smallpox, and learn from them?
“We worship progress in the United States, but progress isn’t this steady curve that sweeps ever upward. There is a lot that we don’t know that our ancestors did know. How we can build a more rich and resilient codex in the years to come? That’s what these literary festivals are all about.”
The Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl will take place from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 12, with 30-plus panel discussions, book signings, workshops, family-friendly activities and other events at the Nevada Museum of Art, Downtown Reno Library, Lake Mansion and other venues, most of them on or near California Avenue. Learn more at www. nevadahumanities.org/literarycrawl.
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ART OF THE STATE
| BY MAX STONE
Hints that help
A group exhibition and print exchange inspired by typography pioneer Corita Kent showcases her famous ‘Ten Rules’
In the late 1960s, Corita Kent—an artist, activist and Catholic nun, also known as Sister Mary Corita—created the Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules, often called the “Ten Rules,” with her students. Among them: “General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.”
“Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.”
These rules have been a guiding light and source of inspiration tacked to the walls of studios, classrooms, offices and homes for generations. (The rules are often credited to the experimental composer John Cage, who helped popularize them widely, but it was Kent who wrote them.)
The rules were the impetus for the Black Rock Press’ most recent body of work, Helpful Hints. The project began in 2023 as a single poster design. University of Nevada, Reno, Art Department chair Kelly Chorpening asked the Black Rock Press to prepare something for Washoe County School District teachers to print during a visit, so that they could experience the
press in action. The team looked through some books for inspiration, and someone pulled out a book on Kent.
“We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we printed one of the rules?’” said Meg Pohlod, interim manager of the Black Rock Press. Student worker Tanya Gutierrez designed the poster’s layout, using vibrant colors and striking graphics in the style of Kent’s work.
Pohlod decided to expand the project by inviting 10 artists to each interpret one of Kent’s rules in a letterpress print, and then swap prints with each other. She and Kelsey Raiman, former interim manager of the press, invited mentors, colleagues and students (Gutierrez among them) to participate.
“Meg invited people who I never would have been brave enough to ask to be in the exchange—like Jessica Spring, who I have known about since I started in letterpress 10 years ago,” Raiman said. “She’s kind of a hero of mine, and it was really exciting that she wanted to do a project with us.”
Spring is a prominent letterpress printer and book artist, and the owner of Springtide Press in Tacoma, Wash., which she founded in 1999.
The list of participants also includes book artist Thea Sizemore, who operates Kavamore Press in Berkeley, Calif.; Josh Dannin, who runs a letterpress, printmaking studio and artist residency in New Hampshire; and Zach Clark, from Oakland, Calif.
Meg Pohlod from the Black Rock Press is one of the exhibition's organizers. Here, she's working on a letterpress print. Photo/Melissa Whipple prints, embraced the unpredictable nature of hand-marbling to align with her chosen rule, “Consider everything an experiment.”
Each artist had the freedom to creatively interpret their chosen rule, with minimal restrictions on size and orientation.
“Some of the rules feel kind of simple or straightforward, but when you’re printing them, you obviously challenge yourself to think about how you are adhering to the rule or taking the advice of the spirit of the rule,” Raiman said. “Obviously, some of the rules are tongue in cheek, too; they are not meant to be interpreted as laws, but more so as suggestions”—which left ample room for the artists to be innovative and curious in their approach to their designs.
Some of the printmakers emulated Kent’s usage of pop culture, religious iconography, social critiques and even pleas for action on important social-justice issues. Some pushed creative boundaries. For example, AB Gorham, known for her meticulous work in books and
The Lilley Museum of Art at UNR actually has several of Kent’s prints in its special collection. The Black Rock Press crew visited the Lilley to check them out last week. Pohlod said the bright colors and intricate details of Kent’s work made an impact that reproductions don’t capture.
“Being able to immerse myself in her artistic vision inspired me and gave me a deeper appreciation of her contributions to art,” she said.
Helpful Hints is on view in the McNamara Gallery, in the hallway of the Church Fine Arts building at the University of Nevada, Reno, through Friday, Oct. 11. Copies of Corita Kent’s rules are available there for viewers to take.
Meg Pohold, Lee Carney and Tanya Gutierrez will teach a free letterpress workshop from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 12, at Lake Mansion, 250 Court St., in Reno, as part of the Nevada Humanities Lit Crawl. Learn more at www. nevadahumanities.org/literarycrawl.
ART OF THE STATE
‘I’ve got my guys’
Reno Little Theater’s ‘Support Group for Men’ reflects on the struggles of modern masculinity
When a small group of Republican politicians began claiming that “men are under attack” a few years ago, it was easy to roll our eyes and scoff. Oh, the poor white guys, with all their influence and higher salaries and historical predominance in leadership roles—they must be soooo sad! Cultural touchstones of the past few years, from #MeToo to Taylor Swift, Barbie and now Kamala, have women cheering aloud about reclaiming some power after centuries of powerlessness.
But hear me out: Today’s men are struggling, and we need to listen. You should start by seeing Support Group for Men at Reno Little Theater.
Interestingly, this dramedy about four men who meet weekly to share their troubles and bear witness to each other’s lives was written by a woman. Ellen Fairey penned the play after a male friend described his own support group to her, explaining that members used a talking stick and Native American names as part of its supportive rituals. Fairey had begun to see that society’s shifting ideas about masculinity were contributing to a growing epidemic of male loneliness. And there’s evidence for this: According to one survey, 15 percent of American men report having no close friendships. Many men report feeling disconnected from society and depend on women to manage
their social lives and rescue them emotionally.
This phenomenon is on display in Fairey’s play, and audiences will likely recognize the men in their own lives in the characters. That relatability is part of what makes the show hilarious.
Set in a Chicago apartment, the play opens as Brian (played by Layne La Vanway), puts out snacks in anticipation of his friends’ arrival. It’s Thursday night, time for his weekly support group. Soon, his three buddies arrive. There’s Brian’s younger co-worker at the Apple store, Kevin (Eduardo Arce-Gutierrez); his old high school buddy, Del (Dametrius Munerlyn); and a relatively new member of the group, Roger (Bradford Ka’ai’ai), a stereotypically macho guy whose job is cleaning the “Cloud Gate” sculpture (“The Bean”) and who barely tolerates the touchy-feely aspects of the support group.
The session opens with a ritual saging, as the men seem sort of sweetly oblivious to any cultural appropriation, and the “talking stick”—a baseball bat decorated in feathers and puka shells—is used to designate who has the floor to speak. Members give themselves Native American names. Nobody may comment while another has the talking stick, and when the speaker is finished, his fellow members pound their chests and grunt in solidarity.
Throughout the session, the men share concerns about their romantic relationships (or lack thereof), the painful invisibility that comes
with aging, their fears about death, and their confusion about shifting gender norms. Then, when a fight breaks out below their window, and a young, gender-queer man named Alex (Joseph Villegas) flees the scene—right into Brian’s apartment—the night takes a comical turn to the bizarre and revelatory.
The cast is strong across the board, from Ka’ai’ai’s vulnerability as Roger, who confronts the shame of his loneliness; to Arce-Gutierrez’s
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BY JESSICA SANTINA
Layne La Vanway, Bradford Ka’ai’ai, Matthew Stevenson, Kim Rochelle, Eduardo Arce-Gutiérrez and Dametrius Munerlyn in Reno Little Theater’s production of Support Group for Men Photo/David Robert
lovable, wide-eyed curiosity as Kevin, who is so eager to bond with his new friends; to Villegas’ ability to turn what at first seems “other” into a highly relatable and even wise new friend.
Set shortly after the 2016 presidential election, on the cusp of the #MeToo movement, the play nicely captures a moment in time that, objectively, has been confusing for men. They’re often expected to be stoic and tough. Years of cultural programming have told them that sharing their feelings makes them weak. And a changing landscape of gender roles means they often don’t know what’s expected or needed from them. For these characters to find a safe place in which to be vulnerable is a kind of miracle. In one of the show’s most touching moments, Brian expresses hope that he’ll get through this tough period in his life: “I’ve got my guys.”
The play is empathetic, tender and at times heartbreaking in its portrayal of men’s fears and insecurities about finding where they fit in a changing world. But it neither preaches nor engages in gender-bashing. In fact, it’s remarkably uplifting and enlightening—not to mention one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a long time.
The remaining performances of Support Group for Men take place Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 3-6 and 17-20, at Reno Little Theater, 147 E. Pueblo St., in Reno. Tickets are $28, with discounts for seniors and students. For tickets and information, visit www.renolittletheater. org/support-group-for-men.
FILM & TV
Delighted disgust
‘The
Substance’ skewers beauty standards in impressive ways; the American remake of ‘Speak No Evil’ wastes a sinister performance by James McAvoy
Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley give their all and then some in The Substance, a blisteringly funny and extremely gross body-horror film that blasts current beauty standards for women—and the ungodly cost of achieving and maintaining fame.
Newly 50 and fired from her long-running aerobics TV show, Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) gets clued into something called “The Substance” by a mysterious healthcare worker. It’s a bright green drug that, once injected, unleashes DNA in the body and causes the eventual birth—violently out of your back, mind you—of an alternate, younger self. In a moment of crisis, Elisabeth injects the drug, and “Sue” (Qualley) bursts out of her spine. Let’s just say things don’t go well for everybody involved.
Coralie Fargeat, who made the very good Revenge, has directed a movie that often re-
lies upon visuals and a lot of practical makeup effects to tell its story. Much of Moore’s screen time has no dialogue, with her deep-staring into a mirror. The power of her performance comes from the control of her facial muscles: She has a range of expression in this film that she has never shown before. As things devolve, she gets to use her vocal cords more. It’s career-best work.
Qualley gets to have brighter moments, but the downside of her character’s arc is just as brutal as that of Elisabeth’s. She, too, must rely upon her powers of expression over dialogue, although she does carry most of the comedic load and the film’s few lighter moments.
Dennis Quaid is repulsive as a misogynistic TV producer who eats shrimp in a way that will have you avoiding that particular food for a while.
The body-horror aspect of The Substance feels like a throwback to the extreme horror films of the ’80s and early ’90s This is the craziest movie to get a major theatrical release in years. It’s sort of film that used to go straight to video—not due to quality of the picture, but because distributors figured mainstream audiences couldn’t handle it.
How The Substance managed to get an R rating is a mystery. It’s unrelenting in a way similar to the great 2018 Nicolas Cage film Mandy, which was unrated. (That said, The
Substance is sunshine, rainbows and your favorite jellybeans compared to Mandy.) During the film’s opening weekend, audiences stayed away from The Substance, of course: It tanked at the box office. This one will have to find its audience on home screens. When it does, you might hear neighbors shrieking in delighted disgust.
While it boasts a fun, sinister performance from James McAvoy, Speak No Evil is yet another watered-down remake of a superior foreign film.
The 2022 Danish version of Speak No Evil stands as one of the most unrelentingly brutal horror films of the last 10 years—and it is completely different from this James Watkins-directed remake.
Both films feature a family being invited to another family’s home for a vacation break, and both families barely know each other, having just met. Both include a young boy who can’t speak, and a young girl with a stuffed-animal obsession. Finally, both versions have a sinister character who starts off all chummy and gradually becomes a monster.
While the Danish version offers the sort of twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan shit his pants, the American remake is more of a standard siege/hostage thriller, with few surprises and no commitment to its potentially nasty premise. It reminded me of the awful American remake of The Vanishing: The Dutch film had one of the scariest, most disturbing finales ever, while the remake was destroyed with a happy ending.
Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis play Ben and Louise Dalton, a vacationing couple
Demi Moore in The Substance.
James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi in Speak No Evil.
who encounter Paddy (McAvoy) and his significant other, Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), at the swimming pool. They hang out a few times, and eventually, an invitation is extended by Paddy for Ben and Louise to come visit in the countryside. The movie’s main lesson: Thou shalt not take thy family into the countryside after an invitation from strangers.
The visit starts innocently enough, but things start to get weird when Ant (Dan Hough), Paddy and Ciara’s son, seems to be attempting to alert the family to something. He can’t simply tell them what’s happening, because he has a malformed tongue. Slowly but surely, we start to find out that—surprise surprise!—Paddy and Ciara might not be as nice as they seem.
It’s always fun to watch McAvoy chew the scenery. His work here reminds me of his nasty turn in Split, another film where we got to see him play both mellow and crazy.
Sadly, McAvoy’s complex work is done in the service of a story that doesn’t get nearly dark enough. We just watch as some psycho guy and his accomplice try to do some bad stuff to an unsuspecting family, and the film devolves into an all-too-typical attempt-to-escape routine involving rooftops, ladders, staircases and flat tires. Not once during any of these set pieces does the film really establish a reason for being.
The movie looks good, and it has some decent work from Davis, although the usually reliable McNairy comes across as a little too pathetic in ways that register as overacting. The so-called mystery of the movie is not as shocking as its makers seem to believe it is. In the original, that mystery was the setup for something completely hellish, and the end was a shotgun blast to the senses. As for the remake’s ending? It’s maudlin.
I hadn’t seen the original Speak No Evil before seeing this remake. I saw the new movie with somebody who actually liked it and argued with me about my dislike of the film on the drive home. Then I watched the original— and it gave me yet more reasons to dislike the American remake.
Seeing Michael Keaton back as “the ghost with the most” does provide an initial rush, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a sequel that tries to do too much, and it unravels with an unpleasantly frantic and sloppy pace.
Keaton hilariously grumbles and mumbles during his few minutes on the screen. He has the same energy he had 36 (!) years ago in the role—yet he’s a bit player here despite playing the title character. Why?
There’s a fun flashback showing the origins of Beetlejuice and his problems with his psychotic ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) that is fun and intriguing. But that ex-wife, supposedly coming to suck out Beetlejuice’s soul, is reduced to a silent, shallow side character
who just runs around doing unpleasant things. This film could have been a lot more fun had it expanded upon that origin story, with Keaton playing Beetlejuice before his death, allowing us to see just how bad his marriage was in more than a brief flashback. More Keaton would equal more fun.
Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara return as Lydia Deetz and her stepmom, Delia. They each have their moments, along with Keaton, as they attempt to give this mess a sense of purpose.
Jenna Ortega is surprisingly dull as Lydia’s daughter, Astrid. Old-timey director Tim Burton, a lost cause for many years now—he hasn’t made a really good film since Sweeney Todd 17 years ago—has misplaced his ability to both charm and creep out audiences at the same time.
Lydia has become the host of a reality show about ghosts being real—perhaps the most unexciting and unsurprising development writers could give her character, who was so original and wonderful in 1988. She even sports the same hairstyle with the funky bangs. Give me a break! Lydia was not a cartoon character in the original, but she is in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Ryder tries her best, but the character feels hollowed out.
O’Hara gets a couple of laughs as a more road-weary version of Delia; she’s just sort of blasé about her husband’s horrific death in a combination plane crash/shark attack, but she’s much sweeter regarding Lydia. Disgraced actor Jeffrey Jones, who played that husband in Beetlejuice, doesn’t appear in the flesh in the film, but there is a short and amusing animated sequence where his character’s likeness appears.
The ever-reliable Justin Theroux tries to breathe some life into the proceedings with his
usual high-quality strain of comedic prowess as Lydia’s boyfriend and producer. He definitely has his moments and is the best thing about the movie beyond Keaton, but I get a feeling a lot of his good riffs wound up on the editing-room floor. He’s a great screamer.
Ortega gets caught up in a subplot with a boyfriend (Arthur Conti) who might not be what he seems, which is just another distraction cluttering the movie. The weird boyfriend plot, along with the Beetlejuice-origin plot thread, would’ve benefited from more time and development. One of them should’ve been dropped to create a little breathing room. This movie is edited in such a way that makes you just want it to stop and be over.
All my grumbling aside, there is a wedding scene in this movie involving the Richard Harris version of “MacArthur Park” that is so outrageous, and so funny, that it reminds of Burton’s prior brilliance—and shows what this movie really could’ve been. It’s one of the few things that kept me from giving the movie my lowest rating.
We all had high hopes for this one, and honestly, I’m sure many viewers will have some degree of fun with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Despite its massive flaws, it’s still fun to see the likes of Keaton, O’Hara and Theroux delivering on the promise.
But alas, Burton tries to pack three sequels into one here, creating something more deserving of a miniseries than a 104-minute movie (a common problem these cinematic days). This deserved a solid 800 minutes—but instead, there is so much crap on the screen that you’ll stop caring a quarter of the way into the movie.
Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos returns to making completely weird movies with Kinds of Kindness—which is perhaps his most bizarre
movie yet, and this is the guy who made The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
The film is told in three parts, with the same cast playing different roles— and the title is a bit on the sarcastic side: Each of the stories focuses on toxic relationships, the sometimes-insatiable need to be wanted, mental and physical abuse, and even allegiance to a religion or cult. It’s a real party!
Performers including Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau and Willem Dafoe deliver work that is oddly stripped of most emotion, resulting in flat line readings that viewers could mistake for bad acting—if they weren’t in on the joke. This is a difficult way to deliver a script, but the cast delivers it admirably, and the moments that do contain heightened emotion really stand out.
Plemons is especially good in the roles of an extremely needy employee, an abusive husband, and a really dull husband. Despite the sometimes (intentionally) stilted line deliveries, he shows a wide range, with each character being distinctive.
Dafoe is also very good as a boss who goes from complete kindness to vicious asshole in an instant. Stone delivers perhaps her scariest work to date as a mysterious wife and a deranged cult member who can dance like nobody is watching.
I can’t say that I enjoyed the picture all that much, but I did admire it, and it gave me plenty to think about afterward. It’s not always an exhilarating watch, but when moments hit, they hit hard, and its sense of adventure had me quite captivated at times. Kinds of Kindness is a somewhat successful attempt in experimental moviemaking.
Kinds of Kindness is streaming on Hulu and available for purchase on other platforms.
Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
FOOD & DRINK
Oktoberfest in Reno
Three
places where you can get your wurst and stein
on this festive season
Reno embraces its diverse cultural heritage with enthusiasm—and Oktoberfest celebrations are no exception.
Oktoberfest, an annual festival in Munich, Germany, held over several weeks at the beginning of fall, originated in 1810. As is tradition, the mayor of Munich taps the first keg to open the festivities. An estimated 2 million gallons of beer are consumed, along with countless sausages. Locals and visitors from around the world, many dressed in folk costumes, sing renditions of traditional drinking songs. There are parades, music and dancing aplenty.
Halfway around the globe, Reno’s Oktoberfest events help bring a slice of the season here to the high desert. As fall
begins to paint the Sierra golden, here are three places you can catch some German-flavored festivities.
A rare brew
Prost Biergarten
180 W. Peckham Lane, Suite 1070 775-409-4142; prostnv.com
Prost is a lively Bavarian beer hall with long, communal tables and festive decorations. Owner Thomas Wetzstein, who comes from a family of German emigres, offers imported, seasonal beers, an Oktoberfest radler (half-lemonade, half-beer) and other specialty brews that pair especially well with his wursts (including a kasekreiner, or cheese-filled version), schnitzels and, of course, custom-made pretzels.
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While the bar’s official Oktoberfest celebration occurred in September—Oktoberfest actually started on Sept. 21 in Munich this year—the Prost staff plans to pour Oktoberfest märzen, a hard-to-find, seasonal wheat beer from Munich’s noted Hacker-Pschorr Brewery, throughout October.
“Wheat bears are traditional for this season in Germany, and this märzen is really the best of the style,” Wetzstein said. “Prost is the only place to find it in all of Northern Nevada. This is the perfect way to experience the spirit of gemütlichkeit, a German concept of warmth, friendliness, and good cheer.”
Oompah till you drop Nugget Event Center, the Nugget Casino Resort
| BY DAVID RODRIGUEZ
The bratwurst plate and schnitzel plate are among the German dishes at Prost. Photo/ David Robert
1100 Nugget Ave., Sparks www.cnty.com/nugget
The Nugget is hosting its first Oktoberfest celebration this year, from Friday, Oct. 4, through Sunday, Oct. 6, titled “Have the Stein of Your Life.” It is set to feature stein-hoisting, costume contests for those dressed in their best dirndls and lederhosen, and live music from Oompah Kings and Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. Among the imported beers available will be two from the famed Hofbräu Munich brewery. The festival runs from 4 to 9 p.m., Friday, Oct. 4; noon to 9 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 5; and noon to 6 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 6.
Admission is free. Access to the Hofbräu VIP Tent, including food and unlimited beer and wine, is $175; all-day wristbands with a commemorative stein, a bratwurst ticket and unlimited draft beer are $125.
Straight From Austria
Edelweiss Pub
13979 S. Virginia St., No. 505, in Summit Mall www.facebook.com/events/1068052478249650
Edelweiss Pub, one of the newest entries into the local European food and spirits scene, opened in December 2023. Owner Monika Marsh channels her Austrian heritage into a beautifully themed space serving handcrafted Tyrolean specialties such as käsespätzle (handmade noodles in a cheese fondue), tafelspitz (boiled beef with horseradish) and goulash. Edelweiss celebrates Oktoberfest from noon to 10 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 19, when the area will come alive with the sounds of oompah bands. Miss Edelweiss and Mr. Edelweiss will be crowned in a costume contest.
“When my father Hans came to Tahoe in 1964, he kept our family traditions and recipes alive, and Oktoberfest is a great way to share them with our community,” Marsh said.
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Happenings
The 42nd Annual Great Italian Festival takes place Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 12 and 13, at The ROW in downtown Reno, celebrating Italian cultures and traditions with a sauce-cooking contest, an Italian farmers’ market, food booths and live entertainment. This year, celebrity chef Buddy V from the A&E shows Cake Dynasty and Legends of the Fork will be in attendance. For more information, head to www.caesars.com/the-row-reno/events/ great-italian-festival.
The 34th Annual Chocolate and Wine Festival is from 6 to 10 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 19 at the Hyatt Regency Grand Ballroom in Incline Village, at 111 Country Club Drive. The event begins with chocolate- and wine-tasting, is followed by an auction, and ends with live music and dancing. The evening benefits the Sierra Community House, which provides hunger relief, victim support and violence-prevention education in the North Tahoe/Truckee area. For tickets, which cost $200, and more information, head to sierracommunityhouse.org.
The 10th Annual Grand Sierra Beer & Chili Festival is from 1 to 6 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 19, at the Grand Sierra Resort, at 2500 E. Second St., in Reno. Guests can enjoy beer tastings from a variety of local, regional and national craft-beer favorites alongside chili samples, to be voted on for the People’s Choice prize. Unlimited tasting packages are available for $50 to $60, and a portion of proceeds will benefit the Reno Rodeo Foundation. For tickets, head to www.grandsierraresort.com/grand-sierra-beer-and-chili-festival.
The Reno Zombie Crawl starts at 8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 19, and this year spans downtown and the Brewery District on East Fourth Street. With more than 40 participating bars and 150 drink and food specials, the Reno Zombie Crawl is one of the largest bar crawls in the world. For more information and to purchase cups
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LIQUID CONVERSATIONS
Secrets to success
In Parlay 6 Brewing Co.’s first five months, it’s used a range of strategies to build its brand
In 2023, U.S. consumers bought more than 173 million barrels of beer, and 24.7% of that was craft beer, according to the Brewers Association, the national trade organization.
Down in the heart of Midtown Reno, Parlay 6 Brewing Co. is looking to capture part of that craft-beer market with an ambitious plan: to be the name-brand beer of Northern Nevada.
Parlay 6—founded by Ken Foster, Adam Kincaid, Mike Sotiriadis, Christopher Galli, Sam Straka and Zach Baughman—opened its doors on May 6. The partners have 30 years of combined experience in the beer industry. I sat down with Foster, the CEO, to discuss the team’s plans for the future and
what it means to succeed in Northern Nevada.
It’s one thing to say you want to be the namebrand beer of a region; it’s very different to put that into action. Part of the reason I wanted to chat with the team at Parlay 6 was because, for a new brewery, I felt that I had seen their beer around Reno a lot. Since June 3, Parlay 6 has placed its beer in 96 bars, restaurants and retail stores around Reno, which is no small feat.
“If you’re in Nevada and drinking a beer, we want it to be a Parlay 6 beer,” Foster said. He attributes the team’s early success to a strong sales team, distribution partner New West, and retail partners like Raley’s.
“We want this to be a watering hole for our community, where industry people can come to
| BY MICHAEL MOBERLY
Adam Kinkaid is a co-owner of Parlay 6 Brewing Co. and the vice president of sales and distribution. Photo/David Robert
get a bite … after their shift,” Foster said. “We want to take care of the community out of this flagship location. … We’re trying to break even and treat our people well.”
The distribution success takes some pressure off the brick-and-mortar location, so the partners can afford to lower certain consumer costs in the hope that they’ll keep butts in seats. During happy hour, all beers are 50% off, and a pound of wings is just $8. A late-night food menu features items $10 or less.
With all this talk of community, I had questions about the Parlay 6 managers’ relationship with their staff. In the service industry, it’s easier to train, retain and support staff if you show up for them in a tangible way as an employer. Parlay 6 incentivizes staff to stay by offering health benefits to those working full-time.
The beer world is fickle. With trends and new, hyped-up beer styles almost every season, it can be hard to know what people want. Most bartenders I know are haunted by the phrase, “What new beers do you have on tap?” In their first two weeks open, the brew team at Parlay 6 filled their 24 taps with all in-house beers.
“Our guys are constantly striving to brew new beers and experiment,” Foster told me. “So, if you come in here on a weekly basis, you’ll probably see a new beer every week.” Classic styles like Vienna Sky lager and 10:AM blonde are always available. A Bomb Pop hard seltzer and Well’s Coffee Cake pastry stout are there to satisfy the weirdos and dorks, too.
Going into the holiday season, Parlay 6 has a ton of events planned, like weekly karaoke nights and holiday party rentals. You can find the most up-to-date schedule on Instagram. Pete Barnato, who books events for the brewery—I like to call him the “Vibe Czar”—has no shortage of ideas to keep people coming in. At the Saturday, Oct. 26, Halloween party featuring local DJs, Barnato wants you to come in, get comfortable and stay all night.
“We are doing one big event a month, but the real deal to me is the after-10 p.m. dining,” Barnato said.
I love to see a new project thrive, and over at Parlay 6, the owners seem to have the recipe that will set them up for success. In particular, this sentiment from Foster gave me hope: “We take care of the people that take care of us, and that’s what community is to us.”
Parlay 6 Brewing Co. is located at 1041 S. Virginia St. For more information, visit www. parlay6brewing.com or www.instagram.com/ parlay6brewing.
Sip, shop and stroll
The Reno Wine Walk takes place monthly— and sometimes, attendees dress like pirates
On the third Saturday of each month, the Riverwalk Merchants Association in Reno invites you to take a stroll along the Truckee River and neighboring streets while sipping wine. What’s not to love about that?
The Riverwalk Merchants Association was founded in the early 1990s to promote the riverwalk—officially called the Raymond I. Smith Truckee River Walk and named in honor of Raymond I. “Pappy” Smith. Smith, along with his brother, Harold, established Harold’s Club in Reno in 1935, which was considered the largest casino operation in the world until the 1960s. The Smith family donated money to churches, clubs and organizations, just as the Riverwalk Merchants Association does today.
The association is a coalition of more than 60 restaurants, museums, theaters, shops and other establishments, including
Greater Nevada Field. The association hosts many events throughout the year to promote its members’ businesses and raise money for various organizations.
At the group’s monthly Reno Wine Walk, you can purchase a decorative wine glass for $30, which includes wine samples at participating locations.
I spoke with wine walk coordinator Ginger Graves, who works for Home Means Nevada Co. She listed several reasons the people attend the event.
“The wine walk experience is just a super-fun time,” she said. “It’s great for the locals to get out in the neighborhood, and some of these folks come every month. Other people love getting dressed up to match the monthly wine walk theme. Many are celebrating various milestones and life events, such as birthdays and anniversaries, and for some, it is a travel experience, with people planning their visits to
| BY STEVE NOEL
“We go big every wine walk,” said Ginger Graves about the store where she works, Home Means Nevada Co. Graves coordinates the Reno Wine Walk, where costumes are encouraged—and she makes sure the store is festive for every event.
Photo/David Robert
Reno around the monthly wine walk events.”
Speaking of getting dressed up, past wine walk themes have included Barbie, pirates, ugly Christmas sweaters and cowboys. October’s theme is a “Wicked Wine Walk.” Optionally, some merchants dress the part.
“I can tell you at Home Means Nevada, we go big every wine walk,” Graves said. For September’s pirate-themed installment, her plans included a plank to walk and an appearance by Captain Jack Sparrow.
While the wine walk is themed, you do not need to dress up. Graves estimated that maybe half of attendees show up in costume.
While the wine walk is a lot of fun for the people attending and drinking wine, it is also important for the members of the Riverwalk Merchants Association.
“Our merchants often run sales, special deals and promotions on wine walk day,” Graves said.
A portion of the proceeds from September’s event were earmarked to support riverwalk beautification, cleanup and art installations. Among the local nonprofits that the Riverwalk Merchants Association has supported are Northern Nevada HOPES, the Northern Nevada Children’s Cancer Foundation, Eddy House and Arts for All Nevada. Nonprofits can request consideration to be a wine walk community partner on the association’s website (www.renoriver.org/wine-walk).
The reality is that the wine isn’t the most important part of the wine walk. If you are looking for fine wines, you may want to spend extra time in one of the restaurants, bars or pubs participating in the wine walk, and order yourself a nice glass.
“We have fun wines that people come back for repetitively, so we try to keep the same wines that we’ve always had,” Graves said.
“Maybe we’ll bring in a one new one here and there, depending on the mood. The reality is people want to be out and about. The social interaction is what is important. It’s just a big party, and it always has been. It’s a gathering, and it’s a way to meet new people.”
Well, that is great advice, and I look forward to seeing all of you at a wine walk soon.
The next Reno Wine Walk takes place from 2 to 5 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 19. Tickets are $30. For tickets or more information, visit www. renoriver.org/wine-walk.
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online (currently for $13), visit crawlreno. com/event/zombiecrawl.
Openings
The Reno Public Market’s food hall, at 299 E. Plumb Lane, in Reno, will see the addition of a poke bowl concept and a salad bar, as well as the expansion of Honey Bar to offer more tequila and wine options. “The continued evolution of the food hall means that there’s always new options for the community and visitors to enjoy when they stop by Reno Public Market,” said Mike Mac Millan, general manager of the food hall at Reno Public Market, in a news release. To learn more, visit www.renopublicmarket.com.
Champagne & Chocolate has opened at 550 W. Plumb Lane, Suite E, in Reno. The second location of the South Lake Tahoe concept features a full bar, a buildyour-own candy bar station with more than 30 ingredients to choose from, and exclusive brunch offers Friday through Sunday. Learn more at champagnechocolate.shop/pages/location-reno.
Squeeze In has opened a new location in Fernley, in the Fernley Village Marketplace at 1420 U.S. 95 ALT, Suite 1. Opened by Fernley residents Troy Blake and Jim Gurnea, the new location will feature Squeeze In classics like omelets, eggs benedicts and award-winning Bloody Marys. Get more information at squeezein.com.
The Oyster Bar has opened in the Legends Bay Casino, at 100 Legends Bay Drive, in Sparks. Menu items include oysters on the half-shell, pan roasts, gumbo and Maine lobster rolls. “The Oyster Bar will showcase the freshest seafood selections and offer a modern twist on seafood classics,” said Ryan Walker, general manager of Legends Bay Casino, in a news release. “We’re committed to sourcing the highest quality ingredients with a menu that reflects our passion for seafood excellence, providing guests with an unforgettable dining experience.” Find out more at legendsbaycasino.com/eatdrink/oyster-bar.
Have local food, drink or restaurant news? Email foodnews@renonr.com.
—Maude Ballinger
MUSICBEAT
Scary-good covers
The Holland Project’s annual Halloween Cover Show is a festive celebration of community and music
A frighteningly long-standing musical tradition in Reno returns this year.
On Saturday, Oct. 26, the Holland Project will host its annual spooky soiree—the Halloween Cover Show. About a dozen local bands will tackle the music, style and personalities of musical icons, bands who are no longer with us, and creatives who have made a musical impact. Every year, a list of music legends is announced, and at the show, attendees find out which local band is adopting which persona. In recent years, the event has been held at Ferrari Farms, but this
After several years at Ferrari Farms, the Halloween Cover Show is returning to the Holland Project. Photo/Trevor Castillo
Iggy Pop or something like that. The idea is that it’s sort of easy music to play. Because of the level of musical creativity in Reno at the time, I think Holland leveled it up a little bit, and people started taking it a couple of steps further.”
Holland’s Halloween show debuted in 2007, the same year Holland opened. In the 17 years since, the event has seen bands go from simply playing cover songs to embracing the costumes, personalities and stage presences of the bands being covered.
“They were picking bands that were a little more challenging, and also really working on the element of getting into character,” Arbatman said. “… I think something that Holland innovated, in addition to pushing people to do more challenging bands, is sometimes people will kind of put a group together just for the Halloween show. That, for me, has always been the most fun element, because you get people who don’t normally play together to play together, and that’s both fun and it creates a more interesting experience for various reasons.”
Recent shows were hosted at Ferrari Farms, to accommodate more performers and even more attendees at the growing event.
“It’s probably the biggest show, attendance-wise, of the year,” Arbatman said. “I think something like 500 people came last year. They’re short sets, so you have tons of bands playing, and it has this frantic energy to it. There’s something about it that is really fun, but also, bands usually do a really good job.”
Many Reno favorites, Arbatman included, perform at the event regularly. However, part of Holland’s mission is to feature younger, newer bands, even at the most popular event of the year.
Holland’s dedication to primarily featuring old, dead and popular bands.
“We do try to push people to cover bands that are not their favorite band right now,” Arbatman said. “Someone always wants to do Surf Curse; someone always wants to do whatever kind of thing is in right now, but we try to encourage people not to do that. We want the Halloween show to feel like we’re either raising musicians from the dead, or creating this environment that’s a little bit of interdimensional time-traveling.”
Clark Demeritt has a long history with the Halloween Cover Show. The local musician was the music director at the Holland Project from 2009 to 2014; he helped run and performed at the Cover Show during that time, and he has watched it grow over the past 10 years.
“It’s a really good way to bring a lot of different kinds of bands together from different scenes and have a real fun thing for everybody of all ages to do around Halloween time,” Demeritt said.
One of the best moments for Demeritt was getting to pay tribute to his favorite band of all time.
“I participated as my favorite band, Devo, and that was pretty crazy,” he said. “It was crazy how cathartic it felt being able to play my favorite songs. I was a little dictator about it to all of my bandmates—and I made them buy the actual hats.”
Demeritt gave a special shout-out to the band CRUSH for subverting expectations year after year.
year, the Halloween Cover Show is returning home to the Holland Project.
During a recent interview with venue manager Ilya Arbatman, who has also performed at the event many times, he explained the origins the show.
“Halloween cover shows, obviously, Holland didn’t invent that,” Arbatman said. “That’s a pretty common ritual around Halloween time to do a cover-band show—especially in the DIY music world, you usually get a list of 20 or 30 bands that have some kind of Halloween-y element to them, from the Misfits to the Cramps to
“Holland is the only real all-ages place in town, which means that we’re the only spot where you’re going to get some new band of 16-year-olds to be up onstage in front of 300 people doing their best to play Metallica songs,” Arbatman said. “Other than at their high school or at a weird talent show or something, that group of kids is not really going to get an opportunity, and there is something to be said for being on a stage in front of a lot of people. It really is a special experience, and Holland is very conscious of that.”
The Halloween Cover Show may not raise any undead spirits, but the event does raise the stakes for participating musicians.
“The level of musicianship is definitely an important aspect of it,” Arbatman said. “I think people feel like they have to rise to the occasion. If you feel like people are really putting a lot of work into it, you don’t want to get up there and be the band that clearly just practiced twice.”
Another important aspect of the event is
“They kind of started out sounding like Nirvana, and then they ended up being an electronic DIY boy band, which was really, really interesting and cool,” Demeritt said. “Year after year, they would do just the most interesting choices, like Radiohead. You’d think, ‘How are they going to do Radiohead?’—and they absolutely killed it. They did the Beastie Boys one year, and it was unbelievable, and then I think they followed it up with System of a Down.”
Demeritt said he has been continually impressed with the way the event has evolved into a highlight of Reno’s music calendar.
“It’s definitely become more of a spectacle year after year,” Demeritt said. “The decorations got better; it became more of an event, and then they moved it over to the farm, which was kind of a cool change of pace. It is nice to have it come back to Holland. … It’s always a big deal.
One of my peers who I respect the most, he always says that it’s his favorite event of the year, which I was surprised to hear. I agreed with it, but for some reason, that was surprising to me, but then I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s just so much fun.’”
The Halloween Cover Show will take place at 4 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 26, at the Holland Project, 140 Vesta St., in Reno. Tickets are $10. For more information, visit hollandreno.org.
Feel-good vibes
Reno’s Jenes Carter blends genres in JeNes N the Juice
In her music, her business and her community involvement, Jenes Carter is all about making people feel good.
She owns her own nail salon in Midtown, serves as the vice president of the Wells Avenue District neighborhood association, and is the frontwoman and musical force behind JeNes N the Juice, “an eclectic bunch with a SoulFunkHopedelic sound,” according to the band’s Facebook page.
For years now, Carter has carved out a distinctive niche in Reno that not only highlights her musical talents, but also underscores her commitment to community engagement.
“I believe in my product,” she said, a sentiment that resonates through her artistic endeavors and her outreach efforts.
Born and raised in Reno, Carter participated in the Boys & Girls Club in her youth, which served as her introduction to both
Jenes Carter is the frontwoman for JeNes N the Juice, one of few local bands slated to play at this year’s OffBeat Music Festival.
Photo/David Robert
Chorus, and performed with the Reno Philharmonic on occasion. Singing was so important to her early development that she even credits it as the thing that kept her in school.
Her early experiences in the city’s music scene paved the way for her to connect with local musicians and to start the hip-hop crew Black Rock City Allstars, which helped her refine her skills and gain exposure on the regional festival circuit.
“We all became Black Rock City Allstars from going to Burning Man a lot and doing other different things and opening up for people like Paul Wall and Chamillionaire, and we then just kind of kept going—like, (performing with) Big Boi from OutKast and Sean Paul and different people like that,” Carter said. “Even doing crazy stuff like the AVN (Adult Video News) awards, performing at that with Too Short.”
From her exposure as a vocalist and rapper with the Black Rock City Allstars, she was approached to join the soul/funk outfit Mojo Green, which gave her one of her first exposures to the rigors of being part of a live band.
The formation of JeNes N the Juice is the culmination of her musical tastes, though, mixing the improvisation of her DJ sets and hiphop performances with the energy and structure of a live band. This process involved carefully assembling a lineup that could blend her diverse influences into a cohesive sound, with Carter sourcing musicians from Craigslist and mutual connections in the music scene alike.
community spaces and music production.
“The Boys & Girls Club had this workshop-class thing where we would, like, enter beats into contests, and I got into that and making music,” she said. “I think that really got me into the whole thing, where I live to do stuff for my community.”
From there, Carter began to explore the city’s karaoke scene. She created her own beats and performed original material at venues like the El Cortez. All the while, she continued to develop her primary instrument: her voice.
Carter credits her father for her initial exposure to jazz, which served as the musical foundation that would shape her artistic journey.
“There was always music kind of around,” she said. “My dad would always have me listening to jazz and picking up instruments and stuff.”
As a child, she took part in various choir programs as well as the Nevada Opera Youth
JeNes N the Juice features a rotating cast of musicians, growing and shrinking as the venue—and the band’s schedule—can accommodate. At a live show, you might see an electric guitar, drums, bass, keyboards, saxophone, trumpet, flute, backing vocals and more, all led by Carter’s soaring, lilting, velvety vocals. It’s a lot of sound, but as far as the specific ratio of soul, funk and hip-hop involved, Carter doesn’t like to overanalyze it.
“I don’t know—I think I’m just crazy,” Carter said. “I’m like, ‘That feels good!’ Like, I want to move, and feel like it’s OK to move. So how do I help to translate that with my words and my body to help free somebody else?”
As proficient as every musician sharing the stage with Carter is, the entire production mostly runs on vibes, as opposed to strict arrangements, with end goal simply to create a solid groove under Carter’s loose direction. That translates to the band’s songwriting process as well.
“I have some songs that some people helped co-write with either beats or a concept or a hook or something,” she said. “But for the most part,
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BY MATT BIEKER
I write the songs, and I’ll kind of have an idea for inspiration of the background music, and I’ll take the instruments, and I’ll play them for the person who actually plays, and then they can hear where my head is at.”
The fluid experience at the heart of JeNes N the Juice’s live shows, where audiences are encouraged to join in the celebration of music and movement, has been well-received. JeNes N the Juice played a packed schedule this past summer, including shows at Burning Man, High Camp at Palisades Tahoe and various venues across California and the Western United States.
“The majority of our shows this year, I think, were out of town,” Carter said.
JeNes N the Juice will also be one of the few local bands performing at this year’s OffBeat Music Festival—a performance that’s been years in the making, Carter said. For her, OffBeat represents more than just a music festival; it’s a platform to showcase Reno’s artistic talent and foster a sense of community while positioning the town as a destination for music lovers.
“I think that it makes us look dope as a city, because now here are these people who may have not come down here, who get to see how dope Reno is,” she said.
Despite the band’s growing popularity, Carter still splits her time between her music, her business, and local initiatives like her annual socks and jackets drive for the Boys & Girls Club.
“Nov. 16 is going to be the next socks and jackets drive that I want to do for Boys and Girls Club,” she said. “In my business plan, I made it a thing that I wanted to make sure that I make my surrounding area better—like, to help my community with having a business, so I immediately went straight into doing stuff for the Boys and Girls Club, and Nevada Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, working with different people in the community, just pulling all the resources I have together to give back.”
As far as her musical future, Carter hopes to record and master some of JeNes N the Juice’s tracks to start an online catalog sometime in the future, but she’s patently resistant to giving a timeline. She’s more concerned with doing things in her own time and in her own way.
“I want to be in my own space,” she said. “I want to be authentic. I don’t want it to be driven by how people think that I should be doing something, or when it should be done.”
Like all things Carter puts her talents to, the vibes have to be right.
Jenes N the Juice will perform as part of the OffBeat Music Festival at Sucias, 555 E. Fourth St., in Reno, on Sunday, Oct. 6, from 12:10 a.m. to 1:10 a.m. (While the show technically takes place during the wee hours of Sunday morning, it’s part of Saturday night’s festival lineup.) For tickets and information, visit www.offbeatreno.com.
JONESIN' CROSSWORD
| BY MATT JONES
“Duct and Cover”— there’s a way out. By Matt
Jones
Across 1. A, in Spain 4. Removes, as a hat
9. Word before bod or joke
12. State of danger
Allotted portion
Soccer stadium cheer
17. Aerosmith lead singer who announced his retirement from touring this year
19. Took the prize
20. “You’re totally wrong”
21. Made-up big number in Hobbit lore
23. Allow 24. Reggae singer ___ Kamoze
26. It’s in the loop
27. Bitten by the acting bug, maybe 33. Where funambulists walk 34. Court 35. Grammy winner Black
38. “Mr. Blue Sky” band 39. Gave an edge to
Diaphragmatic
spasm noise
42. Trample
44. Heat sensor on the range?
50. Party spoiler
51. Take to court
52. Son ___ Critch (Canadian sitcom)
53. Like ungulates such as pigs, hippos, and giraffes (but who’s counting?)
57. Concoct
59. German definite article
60. “Let me blow off some steam,” or the reason for five other Across theme answers?
62. Verb ender
63. “Hot in Herre” rapper
64. Tough-to-find character
65. Printers’ dash lengths
66. Evening Shade narrator Davis
67. Tajikistan, previously, for short
Down
1. Convinced to shell out more
2. It comes before “lands” or “world”
3. Coy comeback
THE LUCKY 13
Alice Legg Vocalist of shewasabutterflyandimjustamoth
4. “Spring ahead” clock abbr.
5. “___ of little faith”
6. Topple
7. Giveaway gift
8. Person who waits 9. Urban center
10. Tons
11. Say it isn’t 13. 1961 Nobelist Andric or comedian Graham
14. Forgiving 18. Italian grandma
22. Middle-earth inhabitant
25. Words after “as” that, on their own, look grammatically incorrect
28. Baron ___ Rightoften (playable character in the 1984 Trivial Pursuit arcade game)
29. NHL player in Edmonton
30. Many charity golf tournaments
31. Sturgeon eggs
32. The ___ Squad
35. Comedian Margaret
36. 54, in Roman numerals
37. Glacier breakaways
39. Keyboarder’s base (index fingers on F
and J!)
40. ___ Punch Man
42. Last word of an HBO megahit
43. Have reservations
45. Smoking alternative, ages ago
46. Pizzeria owner Jim who founded a frozen-pizza manufacturing company
47. Linen closet items
48. Money in an online wallet, e.g.
49. Jurassic Park predator
53. Falco who appears in the Avatar sequels
54. Type of diagrams appreciated by Kamala Harris
55. Squiggly fish
56. Salami source
58. Longoria on the current season of Only Murders in the Building
Find the answers in the “About” section at RenoNR.com!
One local band is experimenting with an uncommon genre called sasscore, a branch of hardcore punk known for flamboyant and over-the-top vocal performances. The band shewasabutterflyandimjustamoth pushes the sasscore sound in a unique direction, pulling elements of metal and doom into energetic jams. The 2024 demos EP (shewasabutterflyandimjustamoth. bandcamp.com) shows off the band’s sound in a raw way, and they are set to release a new EP on Friday, Oct. 4, when shewasabutterflyandimjustamoth will celebrate with a performance at local punk venue Urgent Care. Message the band for more info at instagram.com/ andimjustamoth. The band’s vocalist is Alice Legg.
What was the first concert you attended? Pierce the Veil at the (Grand Sierra Resort) two years ago on Halloween. About a
|
BY MATT KING
week after that, I went to a black metal show at the Holland Project that really made me love the venue. After that, I knew what I wanted to do every weekend.
What was the first album you owned? Pretty Hate Machine, Nine Inch Nails. I didn’t buy it, though. The first album I bought was Mazzy Star, So Tonight That I Might See.
What bands are you listening to right now? Right now, I’m really digging Kaonashi, Jeromes Dream, Torture, and Arsonists Get All the Girls. I am always listening to a myriad of artists, though, anything from grind to pop punk to DnB (drum and bass). I love all music.
What artist, genre or musical trend does everyone love, but you don’t get? I don’t get Lana Del Rey. I love Ethel Cain and artists in the same vein, but her specifically, I can’t get behind.
What musical act, current or defunct, would you most like to see perform live? Pig Destroyer back in the 2000s would be my top pick.
What’s your favorite musical guilty pleasure? Falling in Reverse, the old stuff, and AFI.
What’s your favorite music venue? Urgent Care!
What’s the one song lyric you can’t get out of your head? “I was given a broken compass and a torn map,” from “I Hate the Sound of Car Keys” by Kaonashi.
What band or artist changed your life? How? Pig Destroyer changed my life. They really made me fall in love with grindcore and extreme music. Also blink-182 made me love music in the first place.
You have one question to ask one musician. What’s the question, and who are you asking? How does the Sawtooth Grin vocalist do those screams?! Also, why does Morrissey always rip his shirt off?
What song would you like played at your funeral? “All of This,” blink-182.
Figurative gun to your head, what is your favorite album of all time? Terrifyer, Pig Destroyer.
What song should everyone listen to right now? “Straycations,” Kaonashi.
Holly Spahr
Co-owner of Dark Corner Haunted House
Holly Spahr is the co-owner and co-operator of the Dark Corner Haunted House, located in the National Bowling Stadium in downtown Reno. For most of the year, the venue—one of the giant orbs in the downtown skyline—is occupied by bowlers from across the country and globe, but during Halloween season, this 32,000-square-foot scare fest takes over. For Spahr, while managing the haunted house is a lot of fun and games, it is also a serious pursuit. She’s found that honing her interest in makeup, props and showmanship has given her a community—and an outlet that helps with her anxiety and depression. Dark Corner Haunted House runs through Nov. 2. For tickets and information, visit www.darkcornerhaunt.com.
Tell us wannabe ghouls about yourself.
I am a sculptor, painter, scenic artist, costume addict and Halloween enthusiast. For the past three years, I’ve been the co-owner of Dark Corner and now spend 100% of my time building the biggest haunted house in Reno. You might remember me from my time costuming at Junkee Midtown Reno, my art/deco work around town with Dream Machine Design, or from last October when I was featured on HBO’s Craftopia
Where do you come from? What crypt did you crawl out of? And what is your background? I grew up as the only child of a military family, moving all over the United States. However, much of my inspiration for becoming the haunter I am today came from my time attending SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) and working at the No. 1 haunted house in the nation, Netherworld. It wasn’t until I found a job doing makeup and acting at the haunted house that I finally felt part of a community of people just as strange, outcast
| BY DAVID ROBERT
and awkward as me. That experience changed my life forever.
How did you start this event in Reno?
I was a working artist in Reno, creating immersive environments with Dream Machine, when I met Dustin Ring and some local haunters in Mogul in 2021. Seeing these talented artists, their creations and their passion for horror reignited my own. With the support of my mentor Jessica Schneider from Junkee, Dark Corner Haunt was born. We’re now in our third year, and I’m proud to continue growing both our physical haunt footprint and our haunt family.
How did you get into the horror genre?
I’m a creative, proud weirdo, and I struggle with anxiety and depression. The horror genre just seems to fit. The people who gravitate toward this industry are some of the best I’ve ever met—tough on the outside, soft on the inside types. I got my start at Netherworld during college, but I’ve spent the past three years studying under the owner of the biggest horror props company in the U.S., Ghost Ride Productions. Through that, I’ve had the opportunity to travel, build booths and sell props at conventions. Knowing that my sculptures and creations are in haunted houses across the world is surreal. The family of lovable outcasts I found here solidified my lifetime love of all things horror, and the rest is history.
Do you have a favorite horror movie? What are your influences?
This year, the team is really inspired by Fallout (the post-apocalyptic drama television series), but personally, I’ve always been a huge fan of dark, whimsical influences like Jim Henson and movies such as The Dark Crystal
For this year’s resurrection of Dark Corner, what is the theme? Has it changed from last year?
The theme has transformed. After last year’s introduction of Dark Lane Mall, a twist on Reno’s past, we are now set in an apocalyptic future. With the mutation of the “shadow plague infection,” it’s clear that no doctor in the hospital has cured the disease. The infection has evolved, encouraged by experiments from Dr. Stain in a new outdoor mad-scientist zone. Inside the mall, survival has led to cannibalism.
THREE WAYS TO EXPERIENCE NEVADA HISTORY
Three unique Nevada State museums, three great cultural experiences, all close by.
NEVADA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1650 N. Virginia St, Reno
Wednesday–Saturday, 10am–4pm
NEVADA STATE MUSEUM, CARSON CITY
401 N. Carson Street, Carson City Tuesday—Sunday, 8:30am—4:30pm
Plan your adventure and learn about all seven Nevada state museums at NVMuseums.com
