July 3, 2014

Letters............................ 3 Opinion/Streetalk............ 5 Sheila Leslie.................... 6 Brendan Trainor.............. 7 News.............................. 8 Green............................ 11 Feature......................... 13 Arts&Culture................ 16 Art of the State............. 19

Foodfinds..................... 20 Film.............................. 22 Musicbeat.................... 23 Nightclubs/Casinos....... 24 This Week.....................27 Advice Goddess........... 28 Free Will Astrology....... 30 15 Minutes..................... 31 Bruce Van Dyke............ 31

School’s

out See Left Foot Forward, page 6.

Think your kids are being

educated?

See News, page 8.

Nothing

like used See Arts&Culture, page 16.

Bay watch See Film, page 22.

RENo’s News & Entertainment Weekly

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July 3, 2014

Send letters to renoletters@newsreview.com

Vote for sanity

Needs more facts

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Have you voted in the Biggest Little Best of Northern Nevada yet? I’ve been seeing the usual social media campaigns of some of my favorite people and businesses striving to humbly ask for votes to be declared the best. You guys have to help your friends out; sometimes the campaigning gets a little pathetic.

If I calculate correctly, we should be about halfway through. Voting ends on July 25 at 4 a.m., so if you’re waiting for an opportune moment to get started, consider this a hint.

We’ve already had more than 1,500 people vote, so when you consider the last-minute bump, we’re running at about the usual clip. As always, we don’t care what you do to get people to vote for you, but if we catch you using technological means to game our little popularity contest, we’ll punish you. +++ The last time I wrote, I talked about the internship that I was doing for my journalism master’s. I optimistically hoped to work seven days a week for 16 hours a day. You might have thought I was kidding when I wrote that, and maybe I was, sort of. But spending a solid eight hours a day researching incidents where someone was killed by a law enforcement officer is some of the most soul-sucking, depressing work anyone can do. Fortunately, it’s not that easy to get into therapy, and except for being a little edgy, I’ve pretty much normalized. I added in the neighborhood of 500 entries to the database, which meant I was going along at a little better than three entries an hour for the entire time. I’ve got around another 2,500 more incidents already logged to research, and I’m sorry to report that that’s barely scraping the surface.

I have yet to figure out the crowdsourcing angle to this.

Only about 10 percent of the total incidents have been input by strangers, but I think when I finally get that part sussed out, the database will fill up pretty quickly since I can fact-check research at about five times the rate I can do the research.

Re “No kid gloves for them” (editorial, June 19): While the editorial regarding the pay and benefits for Reno police officers and firefighters was interesting and brought much valid information to Reno citizens, it was somewhat misleading in the comparison with military members and their pay. The editorial implies that military pay is similar, if not even greater, than police and firefighter pay. Nothing could be further from the truth. Comparing starting salaries and salaries throughout the time of the career of these professions, the members of the military enlisted is on average less than half over a 25-year career span.

The article should have included the pay scales so that a valid comparison could be made by the reader.

This letter by no means is questioning the other valid points made by the author of the editorial as to the fair compensation that should be paid to the members of both dangerous professions in the city of Reno or for any other city in this nation. There is also no question that the members of the military profession that face the dangers of wars and ongoing training under dangerous conditions are not paid enough. Frankly, I believe that neither of these professions can ever be compensated fairly for the dangers they face.

Fred Speckmann Reno

Street smarts (or not) Re “Climate change—true or false?”

(Street talk, June 19): Climate change, the actual warming of the planet, shouldn’t even be a question. It is established in ice core samples, vegetation changes, glacial melting, and dozens of other means of physical proof. I can only hope that those participants who answered in the negative were responding to the manufactured debate that is happening politically: Is man responsible for climate change? I say politically manufactured because even that isn’t debated in the scientific community.

The Intergovernmental Panel on

Our Mission To publish great newspapers that are successful and enduring. To create a quality work environment that encourages people to grow professionally while respecting personal welfare. To have a positive impact on our communities and make them better places to live.

Climate Change states unequivocally that current climate change is accelerated because of human activity.

Humans are the only animal to have had such a global impact in deforestation, atmospheric composition, and declining biodiversity. Meteor impacts have done worse, but that’s about it.

The only people still arguing against mankind’s direct attribution to climate change are either misinformed or reimbursed for that opinion. Asking people “on the street” about whether climate change even exists can only be a way of shaming those misinformed, using them for lazy news filler, or to stretch out the real debate that is happening in Washington: What do we do about climate change?

Felix Danger Reno

Act accordingly Re “Election could turn on Affordable Care Act” (Let freedom ring, June 19): Brendan, you missed it! Here are the highlights of the 2009 Republican Health Care Reform Act: Most health care would be financed by for-profit insurance companies.

They’ll charge as much they possibly can, but pay for as little care as they can get away with. They’ll be able to arbitrarily drop anyone’s coverage at any time; they won’t have to cover anyone who’s already sick. Older people and the poor will still have Medicare and Medicaid—for now.

About 45 million people will be left out of any program. Look for them in the ER when they get sick. A million and a half people—many of them insured—will file for bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. No one will keep records in any standard format, and 45,000 Americans will die each year because they lack (or lose) a way to buy care. Every year this “system” will kill 15 times as many people as the 911 hijackers did.

Rep. Heller and his GOP frat brothers waved copies of this plan at that joint session in 2009. After the address, Rep. Alan Grayson walked over to retrieve one. It was a blank sheet of paper.

C.G. Green Reno

Editor/Publisher D. Brian Burghart News Editor Dennis Myers Arts Editor Brad Bynum Calendar Editor Kelley Lang Staff writer Sage Leehey Contributors Amy Alkon, Woody Barlettani, Bob Grimm, Ashley Hennefer, Sheila Leslie, Eric Marks, Dave Preston, Jessica Santina, Todd South, Brendan Trainor, Bruce Van Dyke, Allison Young

—D. Brian Burghart

Creative Director Priscilla Garcia Art Director Hayley Doshay Junior Art Director Brian Breneman Design Melissa Bernard, Brad Coates, Serene Lusano, Kyle Shine, Skyler Smith Design Intern Geraldine Centinaje Advertising Consultants Joseph “Joey” Davis, Gina Odegard, Bev Savage Senior Classified Advertising Consultant Olla Ubay Office Manager/Ad Coordinator Karen Brooke Executive Assistant/Operations Coordinator Nanette Harker

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High job satisfaction, too Re “Did you see our crack item?”

(Letters to the Editor, June 26): There is no correlation between sexual abuse and adult film industry workers. Many people who suffered abuse don’t grow up and star in pornography. The Journal of Sex Research published the most comprehensive study done on the matter, you can find it online. The study compared people in the adult industry to matched people from airports and universities.

The conclusion was not that adult film stars have a higher incidence of childhood sexual abuse or that they are less psychologically healthy. It found many were happy and healthy—not just by their own standards but by completely objective measures. It also found they had higher levels of self-esteem, positive feelings, social support, sexual satisfaction and spirituality—quite contrary to the belief that a legal industry is full only of people lacking self worth who are forced into it. It’s about one’s own beliefs and morals and perspective. If the hot days, hotter nights didn’t make me laugh out loud, I would have been more uptight about the suggestion to smoke crack.

Staisha Ray Reno

Eat your veggies Re “Veg out” (Arts & Culture, June 26): The recent RN&R article on vegetarian cuisine in Reno was truly pathetic. Two of the six recommendations are massive chains, another is an unremarkable sports bar, another is in Carson City, and another is in California. In fact, Reno has a great and growing selection of vegetarian options. In the Midtown district, Süp, Great Full Gardens and Laughing Planet all have delicious and versatile vegetarian options. In terms of burgers, the Great Basin’s black bean burger, Midtown Eats’ portobello burger, and Burger Me’s veggie burger are all vastly superior options to the recommended Red Robin Gardenburger.

If driving to Carson City for sushi isn’t in the cards, Sushi Lover has an entire menu of vegetarian and vegan

Distribution Director Greg Erwin Distribution Manager Anthony Clarke Distribution Drivers Sandra Chhina, Joe Medeiros, Ron Neill, Andy Odegard, Clayton Porter, Christian Shearer, Marty Troye, Warren Tucker, Matt Veach, Gary White, Joseph White, Margaret Underwood General Manager/Publisher John D. Murphy President/CEO Jeff vonKaenel Chief Operations Officer Deborah Redmond Human Resource Manager Tanja Poley Business Manager Grant Ronsenquist

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rolls. This is only a smattering of great places for Reno vegetarians; there are also sandwich shops (Rubicon Deli, Michael’s Deli), cafés (Homage, Café DeLuxe), and food trucks (Electric Blue Elephant, Gourmelt) that have lots to offer vegetarians. I expect better from the RN&R—especially when it comes to supporting small businesses.

Tara Littlefield Reno Editor’s note: With all due respect, the story was about vegetarian options in restaurants where you wouldn’t expect to find them, not the great vegetarian options in places that we’ve frequently written about.

The song remains the same Re “Missing case” (Letters to the Editor, June 19): A letter you published from Daniel Duckworth of Scottsdale, Ariz., referred to an article I wrote for this newspaper March 8, 2012 (“Top 10 Worst Supreme Court Decisions”).

The writer said that my list was “just not serious” because I omitted Buck v. Bell (1927). That infamous opinion, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes justifying forced sterilization, declared that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

The ruling, as outrageous as it was, did not make my list because other decisions were far worse. Nevertheless, as Justice John Harlan II remarked in an obscenity case: “One man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.”

Jake Highton Reno

Free speech zones Since the Supreme Court has now said that protesters have the right to get in the face of the people they’re protesting at abortion clinics, does it also mean that cities and political parties can no longer restrict political protests miles away from political conventions, gatherings of the rich and powerful, etc.? We’ll see.

Michel Rottmann VC Highlands Editor’s note: I had the exact same wonderment.

Business Nicole Jackson, Tami Sandoval Lead Technology Synthesist Jonathan Schultz Senior Support Tech Joe Kakacek Developer John Bisignano System Support Specialist Kalinn Jenkins 405 Marsh Ave., Third Floor Reno, NV 89509 Phone (775) 324-4440 Fax (775) 324-4572 Classified Fax (916) 498-7940 Mail Classifieds to classifieds@newsreview.com

THIS WEEK

Web site www.newsreview.com Printed by Paradise Post The RN&R is printed using recycled newsprint whenever available.

Editorial Policies Opinions expressed in the RN&R are those of the authors and not of Chico Community Publishing, Inc. Contact the editor for permission to reprint articles, cartoons or other portions of the paper. The RN&R is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts. All letters received become the property of the publisher. We reserve the right to print letters in condensed form.

Cover and feature story design: Priscilla Garcia

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by Dennis Myers

ThiS Modern World

by tom tomorrow

What makes you irate?

Asked at the Yellow Submarine, 920 Holman Way, Sparks Mike Hancock Production supervisor

When NBC changes the hockey game from one channel to another, but the DVR doesn’t pick up the change, and I miss the game. That makes me rant.

I’ve done it regularly when I get home, and my game’s not there because they moved the channel from NBC to MSNBC or CNBC or NBC Sports, and it’s not where it’s supposed to be.

Michelle Howe-Stark Business owner

There’s so many things. People who have no sense of humor. They make things much less fun for the rest of us.

Jessica Aguiar Sandwich maker

Reno 334

People’s ignorance to each other. That’s what really gets me because I feel like everyone can be friends. People take each other for granted.

That’s Reno. That’s Reno all the time.

We’re embarrassed to say that we’ve spent an But it illustrates the problem with promoting a inexplicable amount of time in this office talking about unified image for Reno. For every single person who whether Reno needs to “rebrand.” We’ve actually gone knows the real Reno, there is one who thinks Reno has to experts and asked. We’ve sponsored roundtables to one great art month. Are we saying we think Artown discuss the issue. We’ve read innumerable Facebook is bad because it fosters an inaccurate view of Reno’s fury postings regarding imagined slights by pop culture culture? No, although there are those who will, as usual, websites, news sites and G-rated movies. We’ve heard claim that pointing out an issue is being part of the the lyrics in songs that make us either a haven for thrill problem. killing or impossible dreams.

It’s sort of like when David Sedaris came to the Reno has an image, and we love it.

Pioneer on April 29, 2013. He got the big bucks to be It’s awkward. It’s tacky. It’s sophisticated. It’s there, and it was a fundraiser for Artown. Sedaris immeoutdoorsy. It’s libertarian. It’s liberal. It’s scholarly. diately left and took a giant dump on It’s anti-education. It’s spiritual. It’s Reno, suggesting that people in Reno irreligious. It’s outdoorsy. It’s prisThere are those who were willing to pay to see his tine. It’s polluted. It’s industrial. It’s lecture were somehow unsophisticated.

August through June. It’s Artown. who will, as And yet, he had no problem returning Artown, which runs through July, usual, claim that to take the money of the scores of is emblematic of what we’re talking people who showed up at a book about. Very little about Artown is pointing out an signing at Sundance last week. That’s Artown’s. In other words, similar issue is being part the truth of the matter: Some people in cultural events go on every single Reno wear Count Chocula shirts, but day in Northern Nevada. Artown of the problem. our money still spends. just places them in the shade of its We’ll no doubt continue this image umbrella for the month of July and debate here in the office and in the paper because it’s publicizes them. important if ineffectual, and eventually someone will But when you go down to those events, you’ll see come up with a mulligan’s stew metaphor that not only Reno’s fetid groin, and it’s as beautiful as any plié. incorporates the seedy (as in grimy), but the seedy (as in You’ll see the homeless, the hipsters, the hippies, the locally grown). burners, the vaqueros, the soccer moms, the deadbeat But put this newspaper in the category of fans of Reno dads, the bankers and banksters rubbing shoulders with who actually like Reno’s image. Just keeping it real. Ω the hoity and the toity.

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Richard Messmore Business owner

The Obama administration and the growing government he wants and everything he does wrong with the bringing in of the illegal aliens.

Angela Christensen Baggage handler

I don’t really get irate. I guess when people are mean. I don’t like it when people are selfish and mean.

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Nevada’s higher education downward spiral Despite the political rhetoric from both parties and constant agitation of numerous advocacy groups, Nevadans really don’t value education much at all.

Consider these facts. Nevada has the lowest number of children enrolled in preschool in the nation, and still doesn’t have full-day kindergarten by available at every public school. We Sheila Leslie consistently rank 49th or 50th in per capita K-12 education spending and have a low percentage of residents with a college degree.

During the recession, Nevada slashed its education budget at all levels and officials responded by cutting programs and raising tuition.

As the economy improves, higher education regents insist they will bully the Nevada Legislature into restoring lost funding. Meanwhile, they look to students to shoulder more of the financial burden, arguing the cost of education in Nevada has always been a bargain.

Public education is supposed to be the grand equalizer in our country, providing an opportunity for those who work hard to succeed in life. But

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shifting a higher percentage of the cost from state taxpayers to students has resulted in pricing many students out of the market, thus reducing their potential lifetime earnings exponentially.

According to the Reno GazetteJournal, over the past decade, tuition and fees for Nevada residents have risen an average of 137 percent. The cost to attend community college has gone up about 76 percent.

Last month, on a 7 to 6 vote, the Nevada Board of Regents approved an additional 17 percent increase in tuition over the next four years, insisting the funding is needed to lower class sizes, increase research capacity, provide more needs-based aid for low-income students, and cope with inflation.

Meanwhile, the oblivious University of Nevada Foundation in Las Vegas enticed Hillary Clinton to speak at its annual dinner for a mere $225,000, a ridiculous price tag for a group dedicated to raising money to support the university.

Regent Jason Geddes penned an editorial in several newspapers stating he made it through college in Nevada with a full-time job, scholarships and student loans, implying today’s students should do the same.

But why should we make it even harder for them?

I can’t help but remember my own experience as a California high school graduate in 1973 from a working class family with no college fund. In those days, high-quality junior colleges were free to residents. I chose a state school over the University of California system because the tuition was lower.

I worked half-time at the campus library and earned a bachelor’s degree in three years, thanks to the policy of unlimited credits for one price, graduating debt-free, something unimaginable today for someone of a similar economic background.

It’s sad to see what’s become of California’s superb higher education system. They’ve clearly rejected the idea that lower-income students should be able to go to college without incurring a huge amount of debt.

As candidates jockey for position in the months ahead, it would be refreshing to hear more debate about reinvesting in education instead of devising more business subsidies to supposedly create jobs that our under-educated populace won’t be able to fill. The Legislature may throw a bone or two to higher education, but there are many other areas of the state budget with chronic underfunding and the competition for scarce new dollars will be fierce.

It’s ironic that the same people demonizing the Education Initiative, a corporate tax aimed at just 13 percent of businesses in Nevada that pay a similar tax in nearly every other state, are the ones demanding Tier 1 status, a medical school in Las Vegas, and the expansion of research capability.

They want it all, as long as they don’t have to pay for it. And if you’re from a less privileged economic background and unwilling to mortgage your future with mounds of debt, well, there’s always a casino or service industry job awaiting you. Ω

Didn’t read Jason Geddes’ column in favor of indentured servitude? www. lasvegassun.com/ news/2014/jun/04/ nevadas-highereducation-needsincreased-tuition-a/

Save your money, dump the union Attention Nevada teachers! Would you like to save between $600 and $770 dollars this year?

All you have to do is opt out of the Nevada Education Association, the state teachers union. You now have from July 1 to July 15 to do just that. In Washoe County, all by Brendan Trainor you have to do is write a letter announcing your decision to the local affiliate office. I can even give you the address: Washoe Education Association, 1890 Donald St., Reno, NV 89502 Just tell them that, per Sec. 6.4 of the contract between the Washoe County School District and the WEA, you are withdrawing from the union and all payroll deductions for dues are to stop. You can also remind them that, per Nevada law, there will be no recriminations because of your decision. It is that easy in Storey County also.

In Douglas County, you have to send a copy of the letter to the local school board as well. Carson City does not have an official

opt-out time, so it means you have to demand that they provide one.

There are convenient sample letters on the Nevada Policy Research Institute website, www.npri.org.

The libertarian-leaning think tank has been supplying this information to Nevada teachers for several years now. Union membership has been declining to the point where statewide only 60 percent of teachers belong to the union. Union membership is bleeding over a million dollars in lost dues over the last two years.

According to paperwork filed with the IRS in 2011, the Nevada State Education Association defines its mission as being to “promote the cause of public education, the rofessions [sic] of teaching and education support personnel and the welfare of youth of Nevada.” I guess teaching proper spell checking is not one of the core objectives of the “rofession.” It is also apparent that the welfare of the children

in their charge is only the third highest concern. The “welfare of education support personnel” is evident as the filings show that the top personnel of the union make outrageous salaries. The seven highest officials make an average of $174,354. Three of these “officials” only carried a job title of “employee.” In Clark County, one official pulled in over a million dollars in two years from unionrelated activities.

The union has spent over $1 million on the badly designed margin tax ballot campaign. This is not a winner, as similar proposals have gone down in flames before.

If it somehow passes, it will cripple the state’s economy. Whether your politics are right or left, do you believe that your dues should be spent on lobbying politicians, or on the real welfare of teachers and students? Did you become a teacher to teach, or play politics?

The proposals of the union are often about expanding their own

coffers through dues collection, such as classroom-size reduction.

Classroom-size reduction has not worked to better educational outcomes but will increase teacher jobs and the union hopes dues paying members.

The union also contributes heavily to left wing organizations such as Progress Now Nevada and the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada. There is no record of significant contributions to conservative organizations.

Do you want your dues going to support organizations that you do not believe in?

What could you do with an extra $700 a year? Buy school supplies for your own children?

Pay a month’s mortgage? Finally take that wished-for vacation? If you believe that you could do a better job than the union of spending your own money, now is the time to opt out. Ω

The Nevada Policy Research Group is always a fun read: www.npri.org.

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PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS

Higher education has taken a beating in Nevada since 2007, one of several factors that brings Nevada’s national rankings down.

We’re No. 18!

It’s nice to see Nevada not ranked worst in something.

Last month, President Obama announced a proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule to reduce carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030.

This wasn’t the daring move the White House would suggest, nor is it the arrow to the heart industry cries would imply. For one thing, it is pegged to levels in 2005, which were all-time highs, and which also means that half that 30 percent has already been achieved. Cute, huh?

In addition, the president delayed an awful long time in acting, until he was facing lawsuits—not by environmental activists but by state governments—to force him to comply with the Clean Air Act. Anyway, we took the occasion to check on where Nevada ranks in carbon emissions. Given the importance of air conditioning in the hottest sections of the state, we weren’t optimistic, but in fact, Nevada ranked 12th from the bottom among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in the carbon emissions it produced in 2010.

That, however, is just a reflection of raw numbers, which are meaningless. Nevada would expect to produce few emissions compared to other states simply because it has a small population. But when the numbers are per capita, the state’s ranking is less impressive. It produces 14.3 metric tons carbon dioxide per person. That’s 18th in the nation.

Among small Western states, that compares to Arizona’s 14.4, Utah’s 22.7, Montana’s 26.5, and Wyoming at 118.5. (What the heck is going on there?) Wyoming is highest among the states, D.C. the lowest at 5.4. New York is the lowest state at 8.8.

Nevada is significantly lower than it used to be. It dropped from 22.4 in 2000, which is a decline over a decade of 36.17 percent. So it may be 18th, but it’s headed in the right direction.

For a change.

Dumping lawsuit rejected U.S. District Judge James Mahan declined to reconsider his dismissal of a lawsuit against Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas by patient James Brown, one of many who were dumped by the hospital.

After a three day stay at the hospital in February last year, Brown was put on a bus with a one-way ticket to Sacramento, six containers of Ensure, and three days worth of his medications.

He was told to call 911 when he arrived in California’s capital, where he knew no one.

Hundreds of such Nevada dumpings were revealed last year in exposes in the Sacramento Bee. The lawsuit, filed by attorney Allen Lichtenstein for Brown, sought damages and an order to stop the dumping. Mahan dismissed the suit last year and upheld that dismissal last week.

Lichtenstein said he will appeal.

The Nevada’s Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee last week approved $3.5 million to supplement the regular mental health budget and beef up mental health programs at both ends of the state. Mental health has suffered severe cuts in state spending during the recession.

Still at it During June, federal officials say a Nevada marijuana farm with 2,000 pot plants was busted. The officials have not released a date for the bust.

Meanwhile, in nearby Nevada County, California, police on June 22 seized 150 pounds of marijuana.

The next day in Imperial County, Calif., police arrested a Las Vegas man driving a van filled with 2,000 pounds of marijuana.

Just for the fun of it, we thought we’d throw in here an Aug. 28, 1953, quote from California Attorney General Edmund (Pat) Brown that the fight against marijuana was “showing marked results.”

—Dennis Myers 8 | RN&R |

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Bad grades Sweeping look at Nevada shows state getting worse, not better Nevada began the first decade of this century with high expectations. Gov. Kenny Guinn’s administration was taking aim by at some of the quality of life indicators Dennis Myers that often make the state unappealing to business and young marrieds, and some of them such as the teen pregnancy rate, were showing some improvement.

Then 2007 hit the state, bringing with it both the recession and the governorship of Jim Gibbons. It was a one-two punch that sent Nevada reeling.

In a national survey in December, a Boston/Washington, D.C., think tank called Opportunity Nation, in partnership with the Social Science Research Council in Brooklyn, released figures that reflected the damage. It ranked Nevada dead last among the states in offering opportunity to businesses and for children (“Opportunity doesn’t knock,” RN&R, Dec. 19, 2013).

Now, the two organizations are back with further information on the topic, this time tracking the same topic over a longer term—the past 40 years.

The report can be And the findings are just as unfavorread at http:// OpportunityNation.org/ able for Nevada.

The new report takes the same kind of approach as the original study—ranking states, the District of Columbia, and the United States generally by their economies, education, and civic engagement (the degree to which residents are involved in community activities). This time it monitors the same kind of data from

1970 to 2010 to show long term trends.

Nevada is shown slowly sinking.

The three areas were ranked in this way: • Job market indicators, unemployment, income equity, housing affordability, poverty levels, and access to banking were among the indicants used to adjudge local and state economies.

• Preschool enrollment, high school graduation rates, and number of adults with college degrees were used to rank education.

• Membership in civic groups, churches, sports leagues, the level of young people who were both without jobs and out of school, health care rankings, rates of volunteerism and violent crime were used to rank community life.

“Only two states—Nevada and Michigan—saw a decline in their Historical Report score between 1970 and 2010,” the report reads.

“Michigan’s biggest challenges were, unsurprisingly, in the economic realm. ... The worst decades for Michigan on these indicators were the 1970s and the 2000s, which, of course, encompassed the Great Recession. Nevada’s decline is linked in particular to one decade.

From 2000, when Nevada ranked 40th among the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., to 2010, when it was at the very bottom of the Opportunity Scale, the state faced steep struggles across all three areas of the report. In the area of jobs and local economy, every state

saw negative impacts on economic opportunity during this decade due to the Great Recession, but Nevada and Michigan experienced the worst declines.”

The report says Nevada has joined “a set of states that have consistently struggled with the opportunities available to their residents. Most prominent among them are Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and New Mexico, four states that have been among the bottom-ranked five states throughout most of the four-decade period. As is discussed above, Nevada only joined this group of opportunity-poor states in 2010.”

This was a somewhat surprising finding because Nevada has so frequently, over a period of decades, placed in the same segment of numerous national rankings with Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The economic section of the study further reports, “Ohio, Nevada and Michigan saw the greatest setbacks in the jobs and local economy dimension of the Historical Report. Between 1970 and 2010, these three states saw their scores in this dimension fall by more than 35 percent from their original 1970 values.”

In education, the report reads, “Between 1970 and 2010, the state with the greatest absolute increase in the education dimension was Massachusetts, and the state with the smallest increase was Nevada. Both states improved their education indicators between 1970 and 1980, but then diverged, with Massachusetts making strong gains from the 1990s onwards while Nevada’s score fell or stagnated in every decade after 1980. … Looking more closely at recent state-level trends, between 2000 and 2010, the trend was mostly positive with only four states experiencing a decrease in the rate of on-time high school graduation rates—Nevada, Utah, Connecticut and the District of Columbia. While the U.S. average for students completing high school four years after they enter ninth grade is about 78 percent, Nevada, the state with the lowest rate, has a rate that is just under 58 percent.

This is in marked contrast with states like Vermont and Wisconsin, where over 90 percent of students finish high school on time.”

The study also ranked educational accomplishment at higher and lower levels.

In 1970, 1980 and 1990, Nevada did not place in the bottom five of states in pre-school enrollment, but by 2000, it placed above only North Dakota. By 2010 it was last in the nation.

The figures for the number of people who completed work for an associate college degree or higher

knowledge economy, but Nevada saw the slowest progress. And in the area of community life, the decline in Nevada was extreme. In fact, Nevada was the only state with a decline in this set of indicators from 1970 to 2010, mostly in the last decade of this period due to a rise in youth disconnection—one in five young people in Nevada ages 16 to 24 were neither in school nor working in 2010—and a dramatic increase in violent crimes.”

Washoe County School Board member Howard Rosenberg, who also spent 12 years at a higher education regent, noted that the report halts at 2010.

“ Nevada’s [education] score fell or stagnated in every decade after 1980.”

Forget the ‘deal of the day’! Visit www.newsreview.com

were positive, but were not competitive with other states: “There were no states for which the percent of the population who had acquired an associate’s degree or higher decreased between 1970 and 2010, and only one state—Nevada— where this positive gain was less than 10 percentage points.”

Just from 2009 to 2012, Nevada cut higher education funding by nearly one third—30.74 percent.

On education overall, Nevada was described as “least improved” over the four decades.

On the community life ranking, the report says, “Many states saw negligible improvement in these indicators over this period and, as mentioned above, Nevada saw its score on the community life dimension decrease, experiencing a loss of almost 12 percent. The period of most drastic decline in Nevada was from 1970 and 1980; the violent crime rate increased by nearly 130 percent over the course of this decade. Between 1980 and 2000, Nevada regained ground on its community life score only to see some of these gains reversed between 2000 and 2010 when the violent crime rate jumped, breaking a nationwide pattern of decline.”

In 2010, only the District of Columbia placed below Nevada on the ranking for violent crime.

Once again, in the community life category, Nevada was designated “least improved” over the course of the 40 years.

One paragraph of the report summed up many of its findings: “In education, important gains have been made across the nation in meeting the new requirements of today’s

Opportunity Nation report “Numbers have improved between 2010 and 2014,” he said. “So at the point where they stopped their investigation, yes, it’s probably true. But we have made positive improvement since then.”

The report publicized Nevada’s frailty across the nation, often bracketing it with the economic basket case of Michigan. The Washington Post reported, “Recent economic research has shown economic mobility varies widely across states and metropolitan areas. The Opportunity Index is no different: States began in 1970 with wildly varying opportunity scores, and they have improved (or in the case of Nevada and Michigan, fallen back) at different speeds since then.” Ω

Food for thought Photo/Dennis Myers

Volunteers dished up food at an open house fundraiser at Safe Embrace in Sparks last weekend. The group is a domestic abuse shelter program that is marking its 20th anniversary this year.

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Think Free

Andy Gebhardt is the customer services manager for Truckee Meadows Water Authority.

Tap out Water supply reserves may be exhausted this summer For the first time in 20 years, we’ll be tapping into our water supply reserves this summer.

Truckee Meadows Water Authority says that the upstream drought by Sage Leehey reserves will be needed around the end of July or beginning of August. At that time, the Truckee River will be extremely low, too low for the flow s age l@ standards set by the federal government to supply the area. news review.c om “We have water that we’ve stored in Donner and Independence reservoirs, and it’s kind of like your savings account,” said TMWA manager of customer services Andy Gebhardt. “We’ve just stored it up there waiting for, well, the opposite of a rainy day, a dry day.”

The water flow standards for the Truckee River were set back in 1944 with the Orr Ditch Decree, and they require a certain amount of water flow in the area.

“As long as water is flowing out of Boca and out of Tahoe, they’re meeting the demands,” Gebhardt said. “About the end of July, beginning of August, that water’s not going to flow anymore, and it’ll be drastic. People will be playing in the river on one day, and the next day they’re going to be saying, ‘Where did all the water go?’ It’s going to be really low. At that point in time, in order to meet the community’s needs, we’re going to release some water.”

But like a savings account, TMWA doesn’t want to release more than absolutely necessary, so they will be asking for a 10 percent outdoor water usage reduction from the public. Currently, TMWA disallows watering from noon to 6 p.m., but when they begin using the reserves, they will extend that time period two hours. It will be from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

For more about the “You never know what next winter is going to bring, so we want to water supply forecast, make sure that if we don’t have to use it, we’re not going to,” Gebhardt visit http://tinyurl. said. “That’s why we’re calling on people to voluntarily take a look at their com/ky9xvc9. irrigation system, take a look at your sprinklers, get on leaks as soon as you can, make sure everything is operating properly. A 10 percent reduction is pretty easy. It can be as simple as taking a look at your sprinkler clock, and your cycles are probably on 10-minute cycles, take it to nine minutes.”

TMWA is asking for reduction in outdoor water usage and not indoor water usage because indoor water usage reductions won’t have the same effect. The indoor use is already relatively low, but as a community, we use four times the water in the summer than in the winter, and that’s mainly for outdoor use, like watering the lawn.

Gebhardt said they will not be asking for the public to reduce their usage until just before TMWA taps into the reserves because reducing water at that time will help TMWA be able to store more water in the reserves for the future. Conserving water is always a good idea for the community, but it just won’t have the same effect until TMWA has tapped into the reserves.

The river will be very low come the end of July and beginning of August, though, so Gebhardt said the public should be prepared for that.

“And if you’re planning on floating the river, I would float it before the end of July,” Gebhardt said. “You’re going to be dragging rock a bit at the end of July and in August.” Ω OPINION

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A WHOLE NEW WAY TO HONOR OUR HEROES.

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Please join us at the Reno-Tahoe Open and Nature’s Bakery Heroes Hangout, where all military personnel and first-responders are welcome free of charge. Enjoy hosted refreshments and food provided by Flowing Tide, Coors Light and Pepsi at our exclusive viewing area on the 9th Green, where we salute our local heroes, courtesy of Nature’s Bakery.

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JULY 28-AUGUST 3, 2014

Photo illustrations by Priscilla Gacria

Justice Delayed

T

I

hate the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

If the purpose of this essay is to vociferously complain about something this essay has no hope of changing in the slightest measure, I can think of nothing more hopeless than the highest court of this land.

You see, first you have to love something to truly hate it. I first became politically aware during the Watergate hearings, not just because my fifth and sixth grade teacher was too lazy to teach, and we watched three hours of Senate hearings almost every afternoon, but because simultaneously I was reading the Hunter S. Thompson classic, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72. The president and Congress were plainly beneath contempt, as illustrated in long, droning tones during that sweltering spring of 1973.

And above all that—when our teacher saw fit to explain how these “hearings” glorified our democracy, and how the checks and balances of our system of government were our very salvation from the sins of our fathers because it made our government better than its parts—stood the Supreme Court.

Mrs. Gilbert could stand there, in her lay teacher but true Catholic sincerity and express her whole-hearted foundational belief that, if asked to, the Court would see through the deceptions of men. The Court was above politics, the manifestation of objectivity and fairness—of God—upon this planet.

raffic obstacles. 100-degreeplus temperatures. Elections.

Extraneous apostrophe’s. If you thought you had something to complain about, you should hang around our office for a minute.

For a lark, we decided to let our hair down, pull out the stops and let loose with our most vitriolic hate. Believe us, it’s good to vent sometimes.

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And while I didn’t believe anything my teachers told me, I believed that. I had to. Can you imagine what the alternative was in the mind of an 11-year-old boy? Add to the fear of anarchy and the possibility that I did not live in the greatest country on the planet, there were so many examples of proof for my misplaced faith: Brown vs. the Board of Education, New York Times v. Sullivan, Loving v. Virginia. Of course, in the indoctrinative and propagandistic atmosphere of junior high, things like Dred Scott were never mentioned.

I hate that the Court chooses money over human dignity, discrimination over equality, expediency over truth.

But now, almost since that dulcet spring, I’ve watched the Court stand as a beacon of cowardice and ideology. The “truth” that meant so much to that boy has been devoured and defecated

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“ BRING ON THE H8” continued from page 13 by a Court that is no longer about people but entrenching in law the things that no longer allow this country to be of, by and for the people, but of, by and for the government.

And since the government is owned by corporations, we see the dignity and rights of human individuals given to corporations.

I hate that corporations are people and that money is speech and if I don’t have the money that a corporation has, I don’t have the voice, either. I can shake my fist while 50,000 of my closest friends rage along, but together, we are still just a whispering wail in the desert.

And I hate it. I hate that the Court had a moment to reaffirm that the U.S. is about people making the choices that allow themselves to pursue happiness, but instead it chose to be washed like ambergris on the tides of future history. I hate that the Court chose money over human dignity, discrimination over equality, expediency over truth.

But most of all, I hate that the Supreme Court of the United States took another swatch of my belief in American exceptionalism away from me, and that’s a quilt that’s worn thin.

—D. Brian Burghart

My clothing, my choice

I

don’t like when people tell me what to do. I have an especially hard time with anyone telling me that I can’t wear something. Dress codes—and just the notion that someone else can dictate the clothing I wear—have been my sworn enemy for as long as I can remember. Maybe this stems from the fact that neither of my parents ever really told me that I couldn’t wear something, or maybe it stems from bitterness about never being able to wear shorts to school before getting to college. Either way, this topic always gets me ranting.

I was especially against the dress code in my high school. I’ve been 5 foot 9 since about my freshman year of high school, so any possible dress code violation was more noticeable on my body. I watched as shorter girls got away with dress code violations regularly, and I got in trouble any time I was slightly out of dress code. The same way that today I can wear a dress that hits the same point on my legs as on a shorter girl, but it will look much shorter on me than my shorter counterpart.

There is very little in most males’ closets that dress code would FORBID— MAYBE BRo tanks.

I went to high school in Southern Nevada with most summer temperatures upwards of 110 degrees, and I was never able to wear shorts—unless they were those longer, ugly, Bermuda shorts that I despised. So when I hear my mother complaining about my youngest sister struggling with dress code as I did at her age, it really makes me angry.

Why can anyone else tell us what we can wear? I understand the intention is to keep students from dressing ridiculously, but that’s not what it does in practice. It stops girls like me from wearing shorts or tank tops, even when it’s hot out. It tells kids that their bodies need to be completely hidden or they’re doing something very wrong. It breeds people like me who just wanted to dress in a ridiculous manner in order to piss off the dress code gods at my high school. And in 14 | RN&R |

JULY 3, 2014

the end, it perpetuates a culture that sexualizes us, mostly girls, from a very young age.

That inequality also irks me. There is very little in most males’ closets that dress code would forbid—maybe bro tanks. It’s aimed at girls because society sexualizes women, and that’s not right.

I have a cousin who grew up in a small town on the East Coast and her schools never had dress codes. I envied her like crazy.

And guess what? Students didn’t show up in pasties and undergarments. They wore tank tops and shorts sometimes. The horror.

I still struggle with dress codes to this day. I’m not in any settings that really require a specific dress code of any kind, but it’s been an ongoing problem with boyfriends and some friends through the years. I have a real problem with someone telling me I can’t wear that out because it’s apparently too revealing. I don’t understand the logic behind this. So if I’m wearing something that shows a little more skin than you’re comfortable with, what does that matter? The way people act it’s as though I’m trying to seduce each and every person who comes near me.

Ridiculous. What a person wears has absolutely no bearing on how a person conducts himself or herself, and I don’t believe anyone to tell me—or anyone else—that it does.

Days of whine and dozes

S

ince it seems like I’m always ranting about something, when the opportunity came to complain about the topic of my choice, I couldn’t think of a goddamn thing that I needed to rant about, which unto itself annoyed me.

But then this morning, I woke up and knew immediately what I needed to whine about: sleep. And the lack thereof.

I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with sleep. That’s partly because my natural bodily rhythms tend toward nocturnal. Left to my own devices, I like to go to sleep around 2 or 3 a.m., or later, and sleep til 10 or 11 a.m. I say “natural” because my parents tell me I was like that even as a baby. But that rhythm tends to be at odds with the modern world, which is populated by birdbrains who like to rise early and eat worms.

I’m still pissed that I had to get up so goddamn early all during school, despite all those studies floating around that claim that most teenagers don’t get enough sleep, and that they need to sleep in later. The schools make the kids get up at some ungodly hour, disrupting our dreams, just so the fucking jocks have enough time to practice playing with their balls in the afternoon. I know I would have been a better student—and I was still pretty good—if I’d been able to get more sleep. I probably also would have been a better student if I’d done less drugs, but fuck that.

My problem is often that when I’m awake, I don’t want to go to sleep, and then, once I’m deeply immersed in beautiful, magical dreamland, I want to stay there. And woe to all those who would dare to fuck with my sleep. I love my

dog, but I don’t know what was so goddamn important that the little bitch had to start barking up a storm at 5:30 a.m. this morning.

I hate having morning obligations, like school or work or going to the dentist or anything at all really. That’s partly because I feel like anyone who sees me before noon isn’t getting a representational sample of who I am.

I’m not really just a monosyllabic, unwashed brute. Yeah, sure, I guess monosyllabic brutality is part of my personality, but come back and talk to me around dinner time, and I’m a virtuoso conversationalist.

So, in order to present a close approximation of a normal human being before noon, I’ve had to develop an addiction to a stimulant that inspires the groggy, bleary-eyed Morning Brad to at least partially resemble charming Evening Brad. I’m of course talking about caffeine.

Until I’ve had a couple of cups of coffee, I can’t carry on a normal conversation. I love the taste of coffee and love the stimulated feeling of caffeine, which inspires me to focus and work hard. But it also gives me stomach problems, like acid reflux. And then, if

—Sage Leehey

I know I would have been a better student—And I was still pretty good—if I’d been able to get more sleep.

City of ConCrete slabs I don’t drink coffee in the morning, I get a headache in the afternoon.

That’s what you goddamn Morning People have done to me: forced me to become a drug addict just so I can function in your stupid sun-worshiping, worm-eating world, with all its bullshit paperwork and small talk. And that’s the real problem, not just that it’s hard for me to find the time to get the sleep I need, but that I don’t get to choose when I get to sleep. That’s been dictated to me by you chipper-ass early risers.

But don’t worry. Us nocturnal folks are way more fun at parties than y’all bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, shiny, happy people who hop out of bed every morning excited to be part of the world. You fucking Morning People might own the shitty part of the day where we all have to do things we don’t want to do, but we have the night.

—Brad Bynum

T

here was a beautiful park on Virginia Street between Mill and Court streets until 1963. In front of the State Building, which contained the county library, an auditorium, and the Nevada Historical Society, were tall trees, walking paths, drinking fountains, old men playing chess, the whole urban refuge thing.

Then officialdom decided to tear it all out.

Reno women’s organizations organized to try to stop it, but officialdom had long since defined tearing things down as Progress, and the casinos wanted nothing on downtown Virginia Street to draw people away from gambling, so both the State Building and Powning Park were destroyed.

The property had been turned over to the city on the condition that it always be used for a park, but soon it held a gold colored geodesic dome in place of the State Building and a slab of concrete in place of the park. The site remains that way today, right in the center of the city, sterile and uninviting.

For a half-century, Reno has been drifting from real parks to artificial parks. Walter Van Tilburg Clark wrote in 1945 that there was no place in the city where a person could stand and not see leaves. That’s no longer true.

In the 1950s, the city used to brag that there was more park acreage in Reno than in any other city. It probably wasn’t true, but it gave a sense of where their heads were at—not a place they are today.

The notion that Reno should look like the Pacific Northwest has always been crazy. Miles of residential lawns are a waste of water in a desert state, and fortunately more homeowners are turning to water-efficient landscaping. But there should be common arboreal sites that provide relief for all from desert country— parks, the university, museums.

surrounding it, not just landscaping on the river side where the river walk is. The Nevada Museum of Art should be a burst of lush green in the city, trees, lawn, not just shrubs.

For that matter, paint the building green. Who wants a monolithic Palace of Black Arts?

When the Mapes Hotel came down, nearly all Reno residents wanted a park, a real park, with trees and picnic benches and so on. It was an opportunity to make up for the destruction of Powning Park. The city got another concrete slab.

The original parkland around Belle Isle— Barbara Bennett Park, Wingfield Park—is more or less intact. Locals have fought off official efforts to lard on features like an aquarium and an amphitheater that would compromise the calm and serenity of the scene, and have been only partly successful, but it has remained mostly a real park. Unfortunately, it has been expanded to include another concrete slab that is actually named Brick Park. Any city should be ashamed of that name—and city officials seem to know it, given that they have taken to calling it West Street Plaza. But they’re not so aware of it that they are inclined to turn Brick Park and other concrete slabs into parks, or to begin changing the city’s atavistic parks policies.

Some city of trembling leaves. We owe Clark an apology.

For a halF-century, reno has been driFting From real parks to artiFicial parks.

The entire University of Nevada, Reno should look like the campus quad—tall trees, broad lawns, flowering plants. But slowly over the decades, the shift has been on to more spartan landscaping. When the first student union was built, it had a lawn and no trees. The new student union is the same. Walks have been widened, shrinking the size of lawns, concrete and bricks becoming the rule of the day. There should be dozens of trees lining the walks in front of the lineup of new structures on north campus—the library, student union, and education college. Concrete and asphalt slabs are everywhere.

The Harrah’s auto museum should have been designed with park space entirely

—dennis myers

42 MPG HWY.

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Why are Reno residents’ used wares so great?

This

winter, some friends gave me my first ski outfit, which they had found for $1.50 per pound at a local thrift store. The pants alone retail for around $300, and create a fake little girly waist.

Yes, please. I soon found accompanying boots—brand new—at the big “Doctors’ Wives” rummage sale in March.

hing Exchange.

Kendra Crosby at Junkee Clot

d n a h d n o c Se

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As I type this, I’m engulfed in a leather sofa from Recycled Furniture on Virginia Street ($800, sold new), and my feet are propped on a solid, Crate & Barrel-ish coffee table from Reno Craigslist ($40).

Our area rug hails from Belgium, and set me back a mere $20 at the Salvation Army store on Valley Road. It’s deep red, and so plush that our cat writhes around on it with her belly in the air.

Even our mint green, midcenturymodern end table was around $30 at Junkee Clothing Exchange, which excited me so much that my head started pounding, and I had to get ibuprofen at a gas station. So I guess that makes it $32.

True story.

This isn’t normal. Not for me.

I’m from Austin, Texas, where used items can sell at retail prices, depending on a store’s hipness factor and/or the obscurity of the death metal playing on the stereo. Or they’re reasonably priced and feature authentic, coordinating pit stains. Or they’re good quality and cheap, but someone else bought them an hour ago.

So why are secondhand wares so decent here in Reno? What—or who—gives?

I started asking around.

Discreetly wealthy residents are probably a factor, figures Lulu’s Chic Boutique owner Tammy Borde. In a town like this, she says, “You don’t even know who you’re sitting next to. I’ll be sitting next to someone, and think he’s Joe Shmoe”—she pauses for impact, chuckling—“and he’s not Joe Shmoe. He’s Fancy Joe. And he puts his pants on like I do.”

Borde’s store is in Midtown, and it sports a mix of new and vintage clothes, Hollywood relics, and a wall of children’s garb that benefits charity. The décor is expertly balanced, and mostly Parisian-themed. The whole place looks expensive, to be honest, but it’s not.

“We’re an artist community,” Borde says.

“We know how to reuse. We take something new, and then we take out a vintage belt, or take out a vintage necklace …”

story and photos by georgia FisHer

And boom.

“We’re very talented people.”

Talented, sure. But wealthy? That’s even tougher to quantify.

The latest census figures, which are two years old, put Reno’s median household income at around $48,000, or a little less than the national median.

Then there’s the aging populace, or lack hereof. If we forget the recession for a minute and work on the assumption that age brings financial stability, downsized homes for empty-nesters, philanthropy, and, forgive me, eventual estate sales, then it stands to reason that a large retiree population could up the quality of your basic thrift couch. Just a theory.

Reno has proportionately fewer seniors than the rest of the country, though. So who’s behind the scenes? A young, artsy, secretly wealthy gambler who sells some of his vintage belongings, maybe, then brings the rest to Goodwill in a fit of guilt?

“Well, with gambling, most likely they’re pawning stuff,” says David Johnston, a manager at Goodwill on South Virginia Street.

Good point.

Reno “is a melting pot,” he adds, and donors are of all stripes: “Older people, younger people, and people who are moving and can’t take anything, so they’ll drop whole truckloads off.”

Goodwill also sells many items in original packaging. Johnston’s guess is they were returned to regular retailers who couldn’t restock them. If a product doesn’t sell at a nonprofit like his, it often goes to clearance outlets, and finally to recycling programs.

Some discards also go to third-world countries, explains Savers production manager Flower Hartung, whose Kietzke Lane store benefits Big Brothers Big Sisters and Friends of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

That doesn’t explain all the thrifty fashion sense, though.

“I don’t think this town actually looks for brand names,” Hartung says. “It’s just trendy.

There’s a lot of Western [influence], and a lot of different styles.”

Honing the eye

In the Savers housewares section, two sharply dressed women admire a black-and-white chair.

It’s $5.99, “and not wobbly or anything,” says Jennifer Bullock, who’ll use it in her guest room.

A minute later, Bullock sees a reed basket.

It’s also $5.99.

“Now, this is a really well-made basket,” she begins, sounding like someone from Antiques Roadshow, “and I would say it’s probably an imported basket from, well—” “—Pakistan?” offers her friend Susie Hillard, a clothing and jewelry designer.

“Or Thailand,” Bullock guesses, studying its tidy motif. “This one has a particularly fine weave,” she adds, “so at some point, someone

Clockwise from

left, Kendra Cr osby, Emily Lin Kim Bickford froop, and Eli Kimito at Junkee.

will realize that it’s really a quality imported basket, versus the rest that are not.”

She waves a hand at other contenders on the shelf, which do look pretty bland.

“You have to have an eye for things.”

Jessica Schneider, for one, has got the eye.

An influential proponent of Midtown, she’s the founder of Junkee, which opened in 2006. Sippee’s, a sister boutique for kids, came along last December.

Junkee can suck you in with its ambiance alone. The music is good.

The décor is good, too, and bizarre; think taxidermy, sideshow art, lush fabrics and killer chandeliers. And the goods, well, they’re especially good.

You’ll find everything here, from gently worn Playa gear to refurbished desks and $7 pinup posters.

Employee Virginia Esty is a little miffed when anyone thinks Junkee’s wares are donated, they’re bought to sell, like the stuff at Lulu’s or any other true boutique.

As for quality, “you can also find amazing things in, say, Seattle,” she says, or San Francisco. “The difference is we don’t have Seattle prices.”

Competition from consignment shops hasn’t been an issue, for the record, and Esty has found the whole business to be recession-proof.

“We’re a funky junk store,” she adds with a grin, “and we don’t think we’re that cool.”

As for consignment places, well, they may shed light on the whole quality-of-goods mystery here in Reno. Like Borde, Labels Consignment Boutique owner Blythe OPINION

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Anderson mentions Reno’s nebulous affluence.

“There are a lot of really wealthy people in Reno,” she says. “They travel all over the world, they shop all over the world, and they change their wardrobes every season.”

Her 21-year-old store also draws tourists who’ll snap up Chanel, Escada and other hotshot labels that’re otherwise tough to find locally. Once those customers fly home, many sell their own clothes to Anderson through the mail.

At Veritas Empowerment Boutique on West Moana Lane, women sell items and also take workshops to improve their finances, health, and résumés, among other things.

Participants include cancer survivors, single moms, divorcees, and recent widows.

“They’re going to have a different life,” says proprietress Verita Black Prothro. “So they’re consigning their clothes.”

A different life—or a modest one—is also the mantra of my friend Ben Moseley, who buys all manner of used cookware, clothes, and construction supplies.

Imagine buying something brand new, “then having it, then throwing it away and driving a D9 Cat over it in a landfill somewhere, then covering it with a bunch of dirt,” he says. “OK, that didn’t help anyone in the long run. That was a really, really, really bad use of materials. … You’ve got to start paying attention to how you live, and not let somebody else dictate that you need a new Ronco tomato squeezer to make your life way better.” Ω

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Photo/Allison Young

Misery loves

Lead Chad Sweet and the cast of Company, the current production at Goodluck Macbeth Theatre.

Company There’s an old chestnut about marriage: Man is incomplete until he finds a wife. Then he by is finished. It’s an eye-roller for sure, but Jessica Santina it nicely expresses the premise of Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical, Company, playing this month at Reno’s Goodluck Macbeth Theatre Company.

More than a string of clichés about the miseries of marriage, Sondheim’s story captures marriage’s nuances: how you can find it joyful, companionable, passionate and lonely—how you can be what he calls “Sorry/Grateful” to be married. goodluck Macbeth The story takes place in New York and theatre Company, centers on Bobby (Chad Sweet), whose 713 s. Virginia st., 35th birthday party brings all his friends presents Company on together as the show opens. Bobby is a July 3, 5, 10, 11, 12, 17, contentedly commitment-phobic bachelor.

18, 19, 25, 26 at 7:30 p.m.; and July 6, 13, 20 And now that he’s 35, his married friends at 3 p.m. $13. tickets are more anxious than ever to see him available at never married. But why would he, when their Ender, 119 thoma st., lives all seem sort of lousy? or online at www. goodluckmacbeth.org.

First there’s Harry (Ian Sorensen) and For more information, Sarah (Amanda McHenry), who invite call 322-3716.

Bobby over for dinner, and then suck him

5

MY WILD AFFAIR

into their addiction tug-of-war. He’s an on-the-wagon alcoholic who desperately wants a drink, and Sarah’s anxious to see Bobby devour the brownies she’s trying not to binge eat. Then there’s Peter (Adam Semas) and Susan (Anna Golbov), a couple whose happiness seems to reach new romantic heights as they gush about their impending divorce. Meanwhile, David (Greg Klino) thinks he’s too hip for his square wife, Jenny (Amy Gianos).

Paul (Brad Fitch) and Amy (Alexa Bernal) have lived together for years, but on their wedding day, Amy panics and threatens to bail out. Finally, there’s Joanne (Cami Thompson), a cynical drunk married to her third husband, Larry (Scott House), despite the fact that she seems to loathe the whole institution.

They all love Bobby—need him, really, to make themselves feel superior, or to remind themselves of the good old singleton days. They need to live through him vicariously, even as they continue to fix him up with girls to feel as if they’re doing him a favor.

And he seems to have an unnatural attachment to always being their third, their company. The problem is, as he grows increasingly disenchanted with the women he’s been seeing, the less appealing his bachelor life is to him, and the more his friends’ bizarre relationships seem enviable, revealing his own loneliness.

It’s what makes Company an accessible musical, because who among us hasn’t found ourselves on one side or the other of this scenario? The story may be 44 years old, but there’s nothing at all dated about the tug of war between singles and marrieds, that sense that the grass is always

SEX IN THE WILD

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greener, no matter which side of the fence you’re on.

The cast for this show is really impeccable, and their voices strong across the board, though most notably strong are Thompson, Golbov and Fitch. Cami Thompson is an absolute knock-out as acerbic, bawdy Joanne, stealing the show when she belts out “Ladies Who Lunch.”

Bernal flawlessly delivers “(Not) Getting Married,” managing the frenetic patter of a panicked bride without a single flub. Sorenson and McHenry have played a couple on the GLM stage before, and their chemistry really sells them as a bickering married couple.

Of course, the show doesn’t work without a strong actor to play Bobby, and Chad Sweet does a really fine job. His Bobby is funny, charming and still vulnerable.

In Company, marriage seems to be a lot like New York. It’s full of crazy people.

It can be thrilling and alluring, but also filthy and exhausting. Yet, it can’t be that terrible, can it? Not when there’s still so much traffic. Ω

10 PM

STORIES THAT CURIOUS MINDS CRAVE. THIS SUMMER STARTING JULY 16 Watch on KNPB Channel 5.1 • knpb.org • watch.knpb.org

#onknpb OPINION

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Mouth watering Super Taqueria 9333 Double R Blvd., 853-8555 Felix and Rebecca Jimenez are living their dream with this 65-seat eatery offering hearty plates and a family friendly by Dave Preston environment. Rebecca has been a cook for over 20 years and worked at places like the Peppermill, but these are her recipes and for the past year, her family has been serving up breakfast ($4.49-$5.99), lunch and dinner ($4.49-$10) six days a week.

Photo/Allison Young

At Super Taqueria, Rebeca Rosales prepares the chile relleno plate, with beans, rice, salad and warm tortillas.

super taqueria is open Monday through saturday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

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Taquerias tend to be fast food style places with limited ambiance, but often with great food. The menu includes burritos and soft tacos with a choice of half a dozen meats. Dinners include platters with meats like carne asada (thin grilled steak), various shrimp dishes, chicken and pescado frito (fried cod) for fish tacos. Soups include pozole, menudo ($6.99) and birria ($9.99), a Mexican stew with meat and chilies, giving a nice spicy lift, on weekends.

Originally, the term “taqueria” was used to refer to street vendors, although the term has come to be used more generally to refer to any sort of establishment which serves authentic, homemade Mexican food, and that’s the case at this casa de comida.

First up was a duritos con cueritos ($3.99), a type of appetizer. It was a spicy fried pork rind that was light and crispy. Atop it was shredded cabbage, house-made pico de gallo—also called salsa fresca, is a fresh, uncooked salad made from chopped tomato, white onion, and jalapeños—tossed with sour cream with sliced avocado as a crown. Great summer dish with

flavors galore. The fresh veggies are accented by the pepper, the sour cream pulls everything together and the toasty pork skin adds a savory flavor and crispy texture.

There are burritos, and then there are California burritos ($6.49). It’s basically meat and potatoes stuffed into a flour tortilla. The beast-of-athing involves carne asada, French fries, a bunch of Tex Mex cheese, salsa fresca, beans and, of course, sour cream. The Cali burrito is a San Diego phenomenon thanks to gringos with a beach culture, because when you’re starving after three hours in the ocean, which would you rather have: some meaty stew with corn tortillas, or a handheld half-pound of beef and potatoes that you can pour hot sauce all over? The California burrito has a special place in the San Diego subgroup of Mexican food culture just like the fish taco does. Maybe it’s not South-of-the-border-authentic, but it’s delicious and makes sense in flip flopwearin’ San Diego, but Reno? Felix says it’s not on the menu but asked for every day, and they’ll make them as long as people ask for them.

I will always go for a chile relleno ($6.99), and I’m a snob when it comes to those tasty pods with queso. Made with a pasillia chile, or chilaca, it is a mild to medium-hot, rich-flavored, typically 6 to 8 inches long and 1 to 1 and one-half inches in diameter. It turns from dark green to dark brown when mature.

This was lightly breaded and fried and was filled with queso fresco (a creamy, soft, and mild un-aged white cheese). It was covered in a mild, savory green sauce made with tomatillos (green tomatoes) that brought all the flavors to my palate: earthy chile, creamy, light acid from the cheese, savory, hearty, and a hint of green tomato after-taste.

The combination plates ($4.49$9.99) come with rice and beans.

They offer shrimp and octopus cocktail ($10), fish tacos, and burgers and hot sandwiches ($5-$7.50). There are bottled beers ($3) covering all the major Mexican cerveza and four domestic brews. They also offer a full catering service.

This place is a scratch kitchen. All items are prepared daily with fresh ingredients serving up artful Mexicanwith-a-twist fare. This simple eatery has mouth-watering flavors, colorful fixings and zesty aromas orchestrating a muy bueno eating experience. Ω

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Clunker Transformers: Age of Extinction Director Michael Bay seems to be taunting his haters at this point, employing all of those things that sicken his detractors, and cranking everything up to despicably disgusting levels.

It’s as if, with this movie, the director is saying, “I’m Michael Bay, and now I’m going to get away with cinematic murder! You will buy the toys. You will swill Bud Light out of by those wacky blue aluminum things. You will Bob Grimm shell out for the IMAX. You will leer along with me at this girl’s ass in slow motion. I … bgrimm@ newsreview.c om AM … MICHAEL …BAY!” For starters, this damned movie is nearly three hours long. I’m an advocate of long movies when those movies are at least decent.

This thing has no right for a single tick past the 90-minute mark. Had Bay just knocked it off with his slo-mo shots, he probably could’ve shaved a half hour. Had he gotten rid

1

Is this another one of those movies where Mark Wahlberg runs from the wind?

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2 Fair

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of every inane line characters mutter in this donkey shit, he could’ve brought the whole thing in at 30 minutes.

Replacing Shia LaBeouf, who was too busy pinching ass and pouring drinks on patrons at a Battle Creek, Michigan, high school production of Fiddler on the Roof to participate, is Mark Wahlberg. He plays Cade Yeager, a crazy robot inventor living on a farm with his smoking hot daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz).

In between stints trying to make clunky robots—there’s actually a sequence where Wahlberg lovingly tries to show a newborn robot how to paint—Cade is busy trying to stop his daughter from ever having sex. He also threatens real estate agents justifiably showing his soon-to-be-foreclosed property by chasing them with a baseball bat. He, simply put, is the worst father on a movie

Very Good

5 excellent

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screen in years.

The action picks up four years after the annihilation of Chicago in the last Transformers movie, which, apparently, has been completely restored because Bay includes shots of some cranes picking up beams and stuff. The Autobots are on the run because CIA agent Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) has decided they’re the enemy because they’re aliens. Michael Bay is getting political.

Yeager buys a beat-up truck hiding out in an abandoned movie theater, and soon discovers it’s Optimus Prime. He nurses the robot thing back to health with the help of buddy Lucas (T.J. Miller), much to the chagrin of Tessa, who trolls about pouting in impossibly tight denim shorts and high heels. She’s upset, and she’s going to look damned good being upset.

A black ops government team commanded

by Attinger eventually winds up on Yeager’s lawn, and one of the only reasons to watch this movie is killed off. The focus, if you can call it that, then goes to Stanley Tucci as Joshua, a Steve Jobs-like tech mogul, and his army of Autobot clones.

The real Autobots will eventually face off against the fake Autobots, and we’ll see ads for Chevy cars, beer, China, denim-ass porn and Texas along the incredibly long way.

During the film’s running time, I celebrated five birthdays, took an online computer course in psychology that I failed because the professor was such a jerk, and managed to construct a scale replica of the Brooklyn Bridge using toothpicks and Dots. And that was just during the first third!

The Transformers themselves look cool, especially when they transform (although Bay, even with his mega budget and super long running time, cuts corners and skips some transformations by showing an Autobot in one shot, and then their vehicle in the next).

There’s a sequence where some characters have to walk on a high wire between an alien ship and a skyscraper that’s pretty good.

That’s about all of the nice stuff I can say.

Bay says that this is the first in a new trilogy. If you should choose to see part one, make sure all of your bills are paid, the dogs are fed, and you’ve winter-proofed your house before you sit down, because you aren’t getting out of that theater for a very long time. Ω

4

22 Jump Street

5

Edge of Tomorrow

Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, an unlikely duo if there ever was one, basically repeat the same steps of their very funny 21 Jump Street, and they do it in a way that keeps things fresh while knowingly recycling the same plot. And by knowingly, I mean this film acknowledges what it is, a run-of-the-mill sequel, for its entire running time. It’s a self-mocking technique that works well thanks to its stars and the deft comic direction of returning directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who are on a roll, having also directed this year’s The Lego Movie. This one picks up where the first film left off, with Captain Dickson (Ice Cube in serious comic overdrive) assigning Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) to college.

In college, they will do exactly what they did undercover in the first movie: Infiltrate the dealers, find the supplier. They get the laughs the same way, through Hill’s selfdeprecating, rat-a-tat delivery, and Tatum’s dumb lug shtick. It worked well the first time, and it works well again.

In the future, Earth is fighting a crazed, vicious alien force that’s shredding our armies with little effort. Tom Cruise plays Cage, an armed forces officer who serves more as a public relations man than anybody who belongs on a battlefield.

After a publicity tour, he sits down with a hard-nosed general (a cold Brendan Gleeson) and finds out that he is going into battle.

Cage is justifiably terrified, and his first taste of battle doesn’t go well, and he’s killed in especially gruesome fashion. For reasons I won’t give away, he instantly wakes up after his death, transported back to a moment shortly after his meeting with the general, and before the battle that will take his life.

Cage is in a seriously messed up situation.

He starts repeating the same day, and dying every time. He does his best to change that outcome, but he always winds up meeting a grisly death and waking up in the same place.

He eventually comes into contact with Rita (Emily Blunt), the military’s poster girl for the perfect soldier. By repeating days with Rita, Cage starts to build himself up as a soldier, discover secrets about the enemy, and increasing life longevity chances for himself and mankind. The film’s handling of this situation is thrilling and even funny, thanks to Cruise’s strong performance and nice direction by Doug Liman (Swingers, The Bourne Identity). It will easily stand as one of 2014’s best.

2

Jersey Boys

Director Clint Eastwood continues his creative slump with this drab adaptation of the Broadway musical which further proves something that Eastwood established 45 years ago with his appearance in Paint Your Wagon: Dirty Harry has no business being around a movie musical! The film tells the story of Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young, who performed the role on Broadway) and The Four Seasons, and how they went from being small time hoods in New Jersey to big time rock stars. Much of the focus of the film falls on Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) an early leader of the band and majorly bad influence on Frankie. Over the course of time, DeVito gets himself deep into debt, to the point that he has to be bailed out by a friend in the mob, represented here as Gyp DeCarlo and played by Christopher Walken in a thankless role. As they did in the musical, each member of the Four Seasons breaks the fourth wall to address the audience, like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. It’s a gimmick that feels forced the way Eastwood stages it.

Every time somebody faced the camera and started gabbing in this movie, I found myself getting annoyed. Young gives it a good go belting out the hits with something akin to Valli’s signature falsetto, and it’s admirable that Eastwood and his performers opted to have the music performed live on set rather than lip-synching. I don’t know if it was the theater I was in, but something happened in the final mix that flattens the overall musical presentation. The songs, although competently performed, lack a certain spark. They just feel like pale copies of the originals.

2

Maleficent

4

They Came Together

4

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Angelina Jolie plays the title character, the infamous horned villain from Sleeping Beauty. There’s a little bit of revisionist history here, with Maleficent portrayed as more of a fallen angel rather than a straight up baddie. The whole thing almost works because Jolie is damned good in this film, especially when the script allows for her to bellow curses and just act devilish. It gets a little sleepy at times when it deals with, well, Sleeping Beauty (Elle Fanning), the young woman who stands to have a very bad 16th birthday thanks to a Maleficent curse. Jolie has a creepy getup that I thought would bother me, but I kind of liked looking at it after a while. It’s the world surrounding her that I found a bit pedestrian. Director Robert Stromberg worked as a production designer on films like Alice in Wonderland, Avatar and Oz the Great and Powerful. I didn’t like any of those movies and, in the end, I don’t really like this one. At this point in watching Stromberg’s work, I’m just not taken by his weird visual worlds. They put me off for some reason, and have a choppy pop-up book feel to them. On the plus side, it is better than Alice and Oz, and perhaps even Avatar. On the negative side, it’s still not all that good.

David Wain and Michael Showalter, two of the funniest men on the planet and long-time collaborators, have put together a great goof on romantic comedies with the perfect vehicle for Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler. Wain directs from a script co-written with Showalter, and it turns out to be a nice companion piece to their brilliant summer camp parody Wet Hot American Summer, a film I will confidently call one of the 10 funniest movies ever made. Wet Hot also starred Rudd and Poehler, performers right at home with the Wain-Showalter brand of bizarre, random, rapid-fire humor. The film takes pokes at drippy rom-coms, most notably the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan barfer You’ve Got Mail, while also being a legitimate, authentic romantic comedy. Wain and Showalter use the age-old romantic comedy framing device of two couples talking and reminiscing about relationships over dinner and wine. Joel (Rudd) and Molly (Poehler) reveal that their meeting was a “corny romantic comedy kind of story” and, indeed, it is. Joel and Molly are two recently dumped individuals living in Manhattan and toiling away on opposite sides of the candy trade spectrum. Molly owns a little candy shop called Upper Sweet Side.

Joel works for an evil corporate candy company opening across the street, a faceless corporation determined to put Molly out of business. They commence one of those romcom unlikely relationships, and many offbeat laughs follow. Rudd and Poehler are perfect for this kind of material, and Wain remains a comedy maestro. (Available for rent on iTunes, Amazon.com and Video On Demand during a limited theatrical run.)

Director Bryan Singer returns to the X-Men franchise with this ingenious chapter that includes both the main X-Men casts, time travel and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine holding everything together. The movie starts in the future, where robotic monsters called the Sentinels are giving the Mutants a truly hard time in a post-apocalyptic world.

All hope seems to be lost until Charles Xavier/ Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and his crew figure out a way to time travel. The hope is to cease the production of the Sentinels, which were created by Dr. Bolivar Trask (the always excellent Peter Dinklage) and take Raven/ Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) off a dangerous destructive path. Jackman’s Logan makes the trip the 1970s, where he wears a cool leather coat and still has bone claws. The action is terrific, especially in a sequence where Peter/ Quicksilver (Evan Peters) foils a gun attack, and another where young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) uses an entire baseball stadium for nefarious purposes. The cast’s true standout would be James McAvoy as young Charles, still messed up after the events of X-Men: First Class. He adds a truly dramatic dimension to the proceedings. Having Singer back proves to be a good thing. The franchise surely suits his talents.

Splendor in the bluegrass Strange on the Range Bluegrass act Strange on the Range were gearing up to play their first festival show at the Strawberry Music by Kent Irwin Festival, when thousands of acres of forest burned in what was later called the Rim Fire.

“It would’ve been a nice feather in our cap,” says bassist Bob McNamara.

Photo/Kent IrwIn

Strange on the Range hope to create something bigger than the individual elements that compose them.

Their aim is building community.

Before long, Strange on the Range were offered a weekly gig at St. James Infirmary, which later relocated to Brasserie St. James.

Becoming a house band not only honed their craft, but also built a foundation for a stronger folk music community in Reno.

Acts such as Josiah Knight, Bryan Jones, Mason Frey, and countless others have collaborated with Strange on the Range during their weekly gig. Since its inception, the community has become even more tight-knit, with many of Reno’s favorite folk musicians gathering together to break bread at McKean’s own house for “Taco Mondays.”

“The St. James gig really allows us to work in front of an audience every week,” says McNamara. “We get to find out what works, and what doesn’t.”

Strange on the Range’s members have used this time in their lives to develop themselves in ways outside of music. Griffin spends his time crafting his own mandolins, many of which he plays onstage. McKean works as a lawyer, and McNamara applies his musical knowledge to work as a recording engineer.

“I don’t know if I could do music exclusively,” says McKean.

“Being a musician is harder than being a lawyer.”

Full-time jobs don’t distract, but often pay off for the band.

McNamara was originally brought on board with Strange on the Range to record their first full-length album. The songs were recorded live, with a few vocal and mandolin overdubs. Though the band was excited by the raw, earnest feel of the tracks, something was still missing. It came up that Bob was a bassist, so they had him lay down bass on a track. They liked the way it sounded, so they put him on another, then another.

“We did it all backwards,” laughs McKean.

“We don’t do anything normal,” adds McNamara. “That’s why we’re Strange on the Range.” Ω

But the missed opportunity, which would’ve demoralized a greener band with dreams of stardom, only made Strange on the Range shrug. The musicians, veterans of touring bands, have recently taken to building roots rather than spreading themselves thin.

“With us, it’s about music first,” says guitarist and vocalist Bill McKean. “Ego is brushed aside.”

McKean and mandolinist Zeke Griffin previously played in the jam-grass-oriented project Moonlight Hoodoo. The band played festivals and toured Europe, before evolving into Strange on the Range. The music then became more direct and focused, a departure from the extensive soloing and improvisation of jam-grass.

“We learned how not to bore people,” says Griffin.

Griffin started out playing country bars behind chicken wire, gaining an appreciation for working with an audience. McKean’s background is in ’90s alternative rock, and McNamara has played stand-up bass with rockabilly acts, such as the Swiveltones. Banjo player Scott Gavin’s claim to fame is a track called “Banjo Fantasy.” Something of a bluegrass dance craze, the song is used in national conventions for a folk dance called “clogging.”

Zeke Griffin, Scott Gavin, Bob McNamara and Bill McKean of Strange on the Range, a bluegrass band that doesn't like to do things the usual way.

For more information, visit www.facebook. com/pages/Strangeon-the-range/ 136905253045271.

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THURSDAY 7/3 3RD STREET

FRIDAY 7/4

SATURDAY 7/5

SUNDAY 7/6

125 W. Third St., (775) 323-5005

Blues jam w/Blue Haven, 9:30pm, no cover

5 STAR SALOON

Karaoke, 10pm, no cover

DJ Boogi, 10pm, no cover before 10pm, $5 after

DJ Boogi, 10pm, no cover before 10pm, $5 after

Too Much B-Day Party & Cancer Sign Celebration, 9pm, $6-$9

Six Mile Station, Man Downstream, Cry Pardon, 9pm, no cover

Witchburn, Wild Throne, Ape Machine, Weight of the Tide, 8pm, $7

132 West St., (775) 329-2878

THE ALLEY

906 Victorian Ave., Sparks; (775) 358-8891

DG Kicks, 9pm, Tu, no cover Open Mic w/Steve Elegant, 7pm, Tu, Karaoke, 10pm, Tu, W, no cover Man With A Mission, 7pm, $10

BAR-M-BAR

CARGO AT WHITNEY PEAK HOTEL

MarchFourth Marching Band, Diego’s Umbrella, 9pm, $18-$23

CEOL IRISH PUB

Keith Shannon of the Blarney Band, Joe Bly of Ciana, 9pm, no cover

255 N. Virginia St., (775) 398-5400

July 4, 9 p.m.

El Cortez Lounge 235 W. Second St. 324-4255

538 S. Virginia St., (775) 329-5558

CHAPEL TAVERN

1099 S. Virginia St., (775) 324-2244

Sonic Mass w/DJ Tigerbunny, 7pm, no cover

Good Friday with rotating DJs, 10pm, no cover

COMMA COFFEE

312 S. Carson St., Carson City; (775) 883-2662

Comedy

COTTONWOOD RESTAURANT

10142 Rue Hilltop, Truckee; (530) 587-5711

3rd Street, 125 W. Third St., 323-5005: Comedy Night & Improv w/Patrick Shillito, W, 9pm, no cover Catch a Rising Star, Silver Legacy, 407 N. Virginia St., 329-4777: James Goff, Th, Su, 7:30pm, $15.95; F, 7:30pm, 10pm, $15.95; Sa, 7:30pm, 10pm, $17.95; RC Smith, Tu-W, 7:30pm, $15.95 The Improv at Harveys Cabaret, Harveys Lake Tahoe, Stateline, (800) 553-1022: Adam Ray, Marc Price, Th, Th-F, Su, 9pm, $25; Sa, 8pm, 10pm, $30, Rocky LaPorte, Ron Morey, W, 9pm, $25 Reno-Tahoe Comedy at Pioneer Underground, 100 S. Virginia St., 686-6600: Dan Kimm’s Hypnot!c, Sa, 8pm, $10, $15

Julie Courtney & Doug Nichols, 6pm, no cover

DAVIDSON’S DISTILLERY

Pyle of Zen, 6pm, no cover J2, 9:30pm, no cover

275 E. Fourth St., (775) 324-1917

Karaoke with Lisa Lisa, 9pm, no cover

Fourth of July Freedom F*CK Off Karaoke with Miranda Panda, w/NOBUNNY, Elephant Rifle, others, 9pm, $10 9pm, no cover

FUEGO

-

Live flamenco guitar music, 5:30pm, no cover

4395 W. Fourth St., (775) 747-8848

The Writer’s Block Open Mic, 6:30pm, no cover

Reno Music Project Open Mic, 6:30pm, no cover

GREAT BASIN BREWING CO.

Live music, 6pm, no cover

Jason King, 6pm, no cover

170 S. Virginia St., (775) 322-1800

THE GOLDEN ROSE CAFE

846 Victorian Ave., Sparks; (775) 355-7711

HELLFIRE SALOON

9825 S. Virginia St., (775) 622-8878

THE HOLLAND PROJECT

Karaoke w/Nitesong Productions, 9pm, Tu, Open Mic/Ladies Night, 8:30pm, W, no cover Karaoke with Lisa Lisa, 9pm, no cover

Karaoke w/Lisa Lisa, 9pm, M, W, karaoke w/Miss Sophie, 9pm, Tu, no cover

Karaoke w/Andrew, 9pm, no cover DJ and karaoke, 9pm, no cover

Bass Heavy, 9pm, W, $TBA

Open mic, 7pm, no cover Goin Country, 8pm, W, no cover Yelsa, XD 7, Warsong, City Wolves, 7:30pm, M, $TBA Your Friend, 8pm, Tu, $TBA

Recycle this paper

140 Vesta St., (775) 742-1858

CW and Mr. Spoons, noon, M, no cover Mile High Jazz Band, 8pm, Tu, $5

Westwind, 8pm, no cover

8545 N. Lake Blvd., Kings Beach; (530) 546-0300 1100 E. Plumb Ln., (775) 828-7665

Traditional Irish Tune Session, 7pm, Tu, Plug & Play, 8pm, W, no cover

Wildflower Comedy Power Hour Open Mic, 8:30pm, Tu, no cover

THE GRID BAR & GRILL

HARRY’S SPORTS BAR & GRILL

Post show s online by registering at www.newsr eview.com /reno. Dea dline is the Friday befo re publication .

The Majestix, 9:30pm, no cover

EL CORTEZ LOUNGE

235 W. Second St., (775) 324-4255

AMB, Pray, Shifty, 8pm Tu, $15 Monday Night Open Mic, 8pm, M, no cover

816 Highway 40 West, Verdi; (775) 351-3206

NOBUNNY

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 7/7-7/9

Rumble, Melanie & The Miscreants, 9:30pm, no cover

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THURSDAY 7/3

FRIDAY 7/4

SATURDAY 7/5

SUNDAY 7/6

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 7/7-7/9

JAVA JUNGLE

Outspoken: Open Mic Night, 7pm, M, no cover

246 W. First St., (775) 329-4484

JAZZ, A LOUISIANA KITCHEN

Erika Paul, 6pm, no cover

1180 Scheels Dr., Sparks; (775) 657-8659

First Take featuring Rick Metz, 6pm, no cover

Bill Davis, 6pm, no cover

2) Thee Orbiters, 6:30pm, $5

1) Phora, Type Two, K.I.D., Young Corrupted Image, Guilty One, 7pm, $20

JUB JUB’S THIRST PARLOR 71 S. Wells Ave., (775) 384-1652 1) Showroom 2) Bar Room

KNITTING FACTORY CONCERT HOUSE

Avenue Q, 8pm, $25-$160

211 N. Virginia St., (775) 323-5648

MOODY’S BISTRO BAR & BEATS 10007 Bridge St., Truckee; (530) 587-8688

David Luning Band, 8:30pm, no cover

OLD CORNER BAR

12 North B St., Virginia City; (775) 847-4900

PADDY & IRENE’S IRISH PUB

Acoustic Wonderland, 8pm, no cover

POLO LOUNGE

DJ Steve Starr, 8pm, no cover

906-A Victorian Ave., Sparks; (775) 358-5484 1559 S. Virginia St., (775) 322-8864

1) Blazin Mics!, 10pm M, no cover 2) Black Pussy, Mothership, Krosphyer, Ostracized, 7pm, M, $5

Avenue Q, 2pm, 8pm, $25-$160

David Luning Band, 8:30pm, no cover

David Luning Band, 8:30pm, no cover

The Localz, 6pm, no cover

Fillmore Zone, 7pm, no cover

Gemini, 9pm, no cover

Gemini, 9pm, no cover

Avenue Q, 8pm, Tu, W, $25-$160

MarchFourth Marching Band July 5, 9 p.m.

Cargo 255 N. Virginia St. 398-5400

Richie & Lee, W, 8pm, no cover

RED DOG SALOON

Open Mic Night, 7pm, W, no cover

76 N. C St., Virginia City; (775) 847-7474

RUBEN’S CANTINA

Karaoke, 8pm, no cover

1483 E. Fourth St., (775) 622-9424

Hip Hop Open Mic, 10pm W, no cover

RYAN’S SALOON

Man With A Mission

Live jazz, 7:30pm W, no cover

924 S. Wells Ave., (775) 323-4142

SE7EN TEAHOUSE/BAR

Bluegrass/Americana Open Performance Jam, 7pm, no cover

148 West St., (775) 284-3363

SIDELINES BAR & NIGHTCLUB

Tuesday Jam and Open Mic w/Davis Nothere, 8:30pm, Tu, no cover

51st State, 10pm, no cover

1237 Baring Blvd., Sparks; (775) 355-1030

ST. JAMES INFIRMARY

Dance party, 9pm, no cover

445 California Ave., (775) 657-8484

Tuesday Night Trivia, 8pm, Tu, no cover

STUDIO ON 4TH

Ritual (industrial, EDM, ’80s, post punk), 9pm, $3 before 10pm, $5 after

VASSAR LOUNGE

Karaoke w/Rock N’J Entertainment, 8pm, no cover

432 E. Fourth St., (775) 410-5993 1545 Vassar St., (775) 348-7197

WILD RIVER GRILLE

Milton Merlos, 6:30pm, no cover

17 S. Virginia St., (775) 284-7455

Colin Ross, 6:30pm, no cover

July 6, 7 p.m.

The Alley 906 Victorian Ave. Sparks 358-8891

Koolwater Karaoke, 7pm, W, no cover Erika Paul Carlson, 2pm, Carolyn Dolan, 6:30pm, no cover

Colin Ross, 6:30pm, no cover

Tyler Stafford, 6:30pm, M, Wanders On, 6:30pm, Tu, Verbal Knit, 6:30pm, W, no cover

Thursday’s 8pm Pub Quiz Night RENO’S LONGEST RUNNING TRIVIA, ONLY AT CEOL. Weekly Happy Hour!

3pm - 7pm Daily $3 Premium Pints & Bottled Beers $3 Well Drinks & Irish Coffees 538 S. Virginia St. @ California Ave. ceolirishpub.com

THESE DON’T MIX

Think Free

Think you know your limits?

Think again.

If you drink, don’t drive.

PerIod.

OPINION

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GREEN

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FEATURE STORY

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ARTS&CULTURE

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IN ROTATION

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ART OF THE STATE

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FOODFINDS

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THIS WEEK

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MISCELLANY

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JULY 3, 2014

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RN&R

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25

THURSDAY 7/3

FRIDAY 7/4

SATURDAY 7/5

SUNDAY 7/6

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY 7/7-7/9

2) Steppen Stonz, 10pm, no cover

2) Steppen Stonz, 10pm, no cover

2) Steppen Stonz, 8pm, no cover

2) Two Way Street, 8pm, M, Tu, W, no cover

2) The Big Easy: Tribute to New Orleans Music, 11pm, no cover

1) Zepparella, 10pm, $15-$18

1) Dance Inferno, 7pm, $25.95-$39.95 2) Cash Presley, 10:30pm, no cover 3) Live piano, jazz, 4:30pm, no cover

1) Dance Inferno, 7pm, $25.95-$39.95 2) Cash Presley, 10:30pm, no cover 3) Live piano, jazz, 4:30pm, no cover 4) Jamie Rollins, 10pm, no cover

1) Dance Inferno, 7pm, 9:30pm, 1) Dance Inferno, 7pm, $25.95-$39.95 $25.95-$39.95 2) Cash Presley, 10:30pm, 2) Cash Presley, 10:30pm, no cover no cover 3) Live piano, jazz, 4:30pm, 3) Live piano, jazz, 4:30pm, no cover no cover 4) Jamie Rollins, 10pm, no cover

1) Masters of Magic, 8pm, $10-$20 2) Salsa Night w/DJ XM Fredie, 9pm, no cover 3) Honky Tonk Thursday w/Jaime G, 10:30pm, no cover

1) Masters of Magic, 8pm, $10-$20 1) Boz Scaggs, 9pm, $25-$65 2) DJ Rick Gee, 10pm, no cover 3) County Social Saturdays w/DJ Jamie 3) Boots and Daisy Dukes w/DJ Jamie G, G, 10pm, no cover 10pm, no cover

ATLANTIS CASINO RESORT SPA 3800 S. Virginia St., (775) 825-4700 1) Grand Ballroom Stage 2) Cabaret

CRYSTAL BAY CLUB

14 Hwy. 28, Crystal Bay; (775) 833-6333 1) Crown Room 2) Red Room

ELDORADO RESORT CASINO

Jurassic 5

345 N. Virginia St., (775) 786-5700 1) Showroom 2) Brew Brothers 3) Roxy’s Bar & Lounge 4) Stadium Bar

July 7, 8 p.m.

Grand Sierra Resort 2500 E. Second St. 789-2000

GRAND SIERRA RESORT

2500 E. Second St., (775) 789-2000 1) Grand Theater 2) WET Ultra Lounge 3) Sports Book 4) Cantina 5) The Beach

HARRAH’S LAKE TAHOE HARRAH’S RENO

Elbow Room Bar, 2002 Victorian Ave., Sparks, 359-3526: Th, 7pm, no cover Hangar Bar, 10603 Stead Blvd., Stead, 677-7088: Karaoke Kat, Sa, 9pm, no cover Murphy’s Law Irish Pub, 180 W. Peckham Lane, Ste. 1070, 823-9977: Steve Starr Karaoke, F, 9pm, no cover Ponderosa Saloon, 106 South C St., Virginia City, 847-7210: Steel Rockin’ Karaoke, F, 7:30pm, no cover Spiro’s Sports Bar & Grille, 1475 E. Prater Way, Ste. 103, Sparks, 356-6000: F-Sa, 9pm, no cover West Second Street Bar, 118 W. Second St., 384-7976: Daily, 8pm, no cover

219 N. Center St., (775) 788-2900 1) Sammy’s Showroom 2) The Zone 3) Sapphire Lounge 4) Plaza 5) Convention Center

JOHN ASCUAGA’S NUGGET

1100 Nugget Ave., Sparks; (775) 356-3300 1) Celebrity Showroom 2) Rose Ballroom 3) Gilley’s 55 Hwy. 50, Stateline; (800) 648-3353 1) Theatre 2) Opal 3) Blu 4) Outdoor Event Center 5) Onsen Spa 2707 S. Virginia St., (775) 826-2121 1) Tuscany Ballroom 2) Terrace Lounge 3) Edge 345 N. Arlington Ave., (775) 348-2200 1) 3rd Street Lounge 2) Poolside

407 N. Virginia St., (775) 325-7401 1) Grand Exposition Hall 2) Rum Bullions Island Bar 3) Aura Ultra Lounge 4) Silver Baron Lounge

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RN&R

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JULY 3, 2014

1) Kellie Pickler, 8pm, $24-$65 2) Hellbound Glory, 9pm, no cover

SANDS REGENCY CASINO HOTEL SILVER LEGACY

26

3) DJ/dancing, 5pm, no cover American Made Band, 7pm, no cover

MONTBLEU RESORT

PEPPERMILL RESORT SPA CASINO

1) Masters of Magic, 8pm, $10-$20

1) Jurassic 5, 8pm, M, $29.50-$30, Masters of Magic, 8pm, Tu, W, $10-$20

1) Abbacadabra—The Ultimate ABBA Concert, 7:30pm, $29.70

15 Hwy. 50, Stateline; (775) 588-6611 1) South Shore Room 2) Peek Nightclub

Karaoke

1) Dance Inferno, 7pm Tu, W, $25.95-$39.95 2) Live Band Karaoke, 10pm, M, DJ Chris English, 10pm, Tu, Left of Centre, 10:30pm, W, no cover 3) Live piano, 4:30pm, W, no cover

2) Bonzai Thursdays w/DJ Trivia, 8pm, no cover 3) University of Aura, 9pm, no cover

1) Broadway Showstoppers, 8pm, $33.40-$42.40 2) DJ I, 10pm, no cover 3) Pink Champagne, 8pm, no cover 4) Two Steps Down, noon, no cover The Spazmatics, 5pm, no cover

1) Broadway Showstoppers, 8pm, $33.40-$42.40 2) DJ I, 10pm, no cover 3) Pink Champagne, 8pm, no cover 4) Two Steps Down, noon, no cover The Spazmatics, 5pm, no cover

1) Broadway Showstoppers, 8pm, $33.40-$42.40

1) Broadway Showstoppers, 8pm, M, W, $33.40-$42.40

3) DJ/dancing, 5pm 11pm, no cover American Made Band, 7pm, no cover

3) DJ/dancing, 5pm, 11pm, no cover American Made Band, 7pm, no cover

3) DJ/dancing, 5pm, no cover

3) DJ/dancing, 5pm M, Tu, W, no cover

2) DJ Louie Giovanni, DJ JB, DJ Elements, DJ A-One, 10pm, $TBA

2) DJ Chris English, DJ David Aaron, 10pm, no cover charge for women before midnight 3) The Male Room, 8pm, $23

5) DJ Skribble, DJ David Aaron, 10pm, $5 for locals

2) Hellbound Glory, 8pm, no cover 3) Salsa dancing with BB of Salsa Reno, 7:30pm, $10 after 8pm 3) DJ Chris English, DJ ((Fredie)), 10pm, $20

2) Keyser Soze, 8pm, no cover 3) DJ Spider, 10pm, $20

2) Helena & the Bear, 6pm, no cover

1) George Pickard, 7pm, no cover 2) Audioboxx, 6pm, no cover

1) George Pickard, 7pm, no cover

3) Fashion Friday, 9pm, no cover

3) Seduction Saturdays, 9pm, $5

2) Helena & the Bear, 6pm, M, Tu, W, no cover

2) Moses Malone, 6pm, W, no cover

2) Recovery Sundays, 10pm, no cover 3) Industry Night, 9pm, no cover

2) Gong Show Karaoke, 8pm, Tu, Country-Rock Bingo w/Jeff Gregg, 9pm, W, no cover

For a complete listing of this week’s events, visit newsreview.com/reno

CELEBRATE

our nation’s 238th birthday with barbecues, picnics, parades and, of course, fireworks at your choice of spots this Friday. Here’s a brief list of Fourth of July activities going on in the Reno-Tahoe region. You can start off the holiday with Reno Celebrates America, the largest Independence Day-themed daytime event in the Reno-Sparks area. The RN&R presents the family-friendly gathering and Artown event, which features watermelonand pie-eating contests, a salute to veterans, a patriotic performance by the Reno Municipal Band, a short pyrotechnic show and music by Jakki Ford & Band, Reno Jazz Band and Jake’s Garage. This event also kicks off RN&R’s Rollin’ on the River concert series. The free festivities begins at 2 p.m. at Wingfield Park, First Street and Arlington Avenue in downtown Reno. Call 324-4440 x 3515 or visit www.newsreview.com/reno.

John Ascuaga’s Nugget will present its 15th annual Star Spangled Sparks. The July 4th celebration features music and entertainment, food vendors, a kids’ activity area, and the largest pyrotechnic show in the Truckee Meadows. The fun begins at 2 p.m. in front of the Nugget, 1100 Nugget Ave., and along Victorian Avenue in downtown Sparks with the fireworks show starting about 9:30 p.m., depending on wind conditions. Call John Ascuaga’s Nugget at 356-3300 or visit www.janugget.com.

Virginia City will hold its annual Fourth of July Parade starting at noon at the historic Fourth Ward School on the south end of town and proceeding north down C Street.

Other events include the Shoot Out on the Hill starting at 1 p.m. across from the Fourth Ward School, the Comstock Cowboys’ Second Amendment Concert at 6 p.m. and again at 7:45 p.m. at the Delta parking lot next to the Bucket of Blood Saloon and a fireworks show starting at dusk at Miners Park. The events are free except for Shoot Out on

Biggest Little City Wing Fest

Sleeping Beauty

Silver Legacy Resort Casino hosts the 13th annual chicken wing competition this Fourth of July weekend. Restaurants and bars will compete to see who has the best sauce and chicken wings with the judges and the public decides who to crown this year’s champ. There will also be wing-eating competitions and live music. Gates are open from noon until 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, July 4-5, and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday, July 6, in front of the Silver Legacy, 407 N. Virginia St. Admission is free.

Call 325-7401 or visit www.silverlegacyreno.com.

Reno Little Theater presents this original, locally written, comic version of the classic fairy tale, told slightly “off the wall” with contemporary references. The free show begins at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., Friday-Sunday, July 4-6, at the RLT Theater, 147 E. Pueblo St. Call 813-8900 or visit www.renolittletheater.org.

OPINION

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ARTS&CULTURE

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ART OF THE STATE

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the Hill which is $35 for tickets. Call 847-7500 or visit www.visitvirginiacitynv.com.

The north shore of Lake Tahoe will present four days of Fourth of July events during its Red, White & Tahoe Blue celebration, which starts on Thursday, July 3. Highlights include a parade, concerts, veterans tribute, Rubber Ducky Races, an ice cream social and a fireworks display over the lake. Most events are free. The fireworks show begins at 9:30 p.m. on July 4 at Incline Beach in Incline Village. Call 298-1010 or visit www.redwhitetahoeblue.org. The south shore will offer Lights Over the Lake Fireworks starting at 9:45 p.m. on July 4. Some of the best viewing spots include Nevada Beach, Timber Cove Marina, Bijou Community Park, Lakeview Commons/El Dorado Beach and Tallac Historic Site. Visit http://tahoesouth.com.

—Kelley Lang

Biggest Little Music Festival: Redux This Artown event features performances by Moondog Matinee, Beatles Flashback, Slide Mountain Band, Kung Fu Sophie, Rock Shop, Electric Catfish the Band, Mason Frey, Nicole Oh, The Note-Ables, among others. There will be a bounce house, face painters and a bubble station. The festival begins at 2 p.m. on Saturday, July 5, at Wingfield Park, First Street and Arlington Avenue in downtown Reno. Admission is free but a $5 donation is suggested. Call 324-5521 or visit http://note-ables.org/events/biggest-little-music-festival. |

THIS WEEK

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MISCELLANY

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JULY 3, 2014

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RN&R

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27

Think Free

Destitution wedding A friend asked me to be a groomsman in his wedding. It’s being held hours away, and the only hotel is pricey. With tux rental, attending will cost me over $500. I’ll also have to miss work. (I’m a waiter.) Is it OK to decline a wedding invitation because it’s too expensive to attend?

Some couples may only have friends who are big investment bankers who light their cigars with $20 bills. But in this economy, at least a handful of a couple’s pals will probably RSVP with something like, “Dude, I really wanna be there, but I can’t find another waiter to cover my shift.” Also, people in their 20s and 30s, prime time for marrying, can be invited to several weddings in a single summer. Costs for hotels, flights, clothes and gifts can add up, and that’s really not fair. (Being there on even your most special friend’s special day shouldn’t mean you have to take the bus for a year.)

It’s up to the couple getting married to throw the sort of wedding their friends and relatives can afford to attend—or at least not get miffy that some invitees won’t be flush enough to come. That said, being fiscally inclusive seems the warm, hospitable thing to do, like making sure your vegetarian friends have something to eat—instead of just harrumphing, Marie Antoinettestyle, “Let them eat steak!”

28 | RN&R |

JULY 3, 2014

The truth is, it’s possible to throw even a fancier wedding without bleeding the invitees. “Black tie optional” allows groomsmen and others to wear a suit instead of renting a tux. And instead of basically telling bridesmaids “Go give Vera Wang $200,” you request something like, “Please wear fall colors.” Regarding location, a ceremony at a nearby lake pavilion or in Granny’s garden will be no less moving than one at the Maui Four Seasons.

Before you decline this invitation, consider your priorities. Even if your friends didn’t think to make attending their wedding affordable, they might resent you for not going into debt to come. In my mind, these aren’t real friends and they’re confusing a wedding with a telethon, but you may have reasons for wanting to keep them in your life.

As for how to decline, you could just be honest.

Times are tough all around. (When I buy clothing, it is “previously enjoyed” and arrives crammed into a recycled envelope by the eBay seller.) If you do go, you might consider starting a new wedding tradition: Other people throw rice; you sweep it up afterward—so you can have something to eat for the next month. Ω

Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave., No. 280, Santa Monica,CA 90405, or email AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com).

we’ve moved!

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We offer flexible full & part-time scheduling, benefits, top pay and more. Equal Opportunity and E-Verify Employer.

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OPINION

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july 3, 2014

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IT’S TIME TO

VOTE

by rob brezsny

for your favorite people, businesses and things in the RN&R’s Best of Northern Nevada reader survey! As the region’s most credible and most thorough survey of its kind, we once again have lots of categories! Look through these and come up with some ideas on who you’ll vote for, then go online to www.newsreview.com/reno and click on the “Best of Northern Nevada” icon to vote!

Culture

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Best 4th of July fireworks Best animal shelter Best art gallery Best mural Best charity race or walk Best church Best day trip Best dog park Best drag queen Best independent art gallery Best kept secret Best local band Best local band album Best dance instructor Best local dance company Best local theater company Best monthly event Best neighborhood Best non-casino thing to do downtown Best place to meet gay singles Best place to meet straight singles Best place to people watch Best radio station Best talk show host Best scandal Best reason to live in Reno Most environmentally conscious company Best local farm Best non-profit group Best green event Best green store Best special event in downtown Reno Best special event in downtown Sparks

Food & drink Best cooking school Best hot dog Best frozen yogurt Best French fries Best smoothie Best chicken wings Best salad Best salad bar Best Mexican Best Italian Best Indian Best Basque Best Japanese Best Greek Best Thai Best Chinese Best Salvadoran Best sandwich shop Best French restaurant Best Vietnamese Best sushi Best vegetarian Best burger Best doughnuts/pastries Best bagel Best bakery Best fresh bread Best coffee Best coffee roaster Best seafood Best steak Best pizza parlor Best breakfast Best business lunch Best greasy spoon Best Reno restaurant Best Carson restaurant Best Truckee restaurant Best Sparks restaurant Best Tahoe restaurant Most romantic restaurant Best new restaurant Best fine dining Best wine list Best wine bar Best cheap eats Best dessert Best martini Best Margarita Best solo dining Best outdoor dining Best late-night dining Best food truck Best ambience Best restaurant view

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Casinos & GamblinG Best casino Best casino hotel Best casino restaurant Best casino bar Best casino arcade games Best female casino bartender Best male casino bartender Best casino buffet Best casino comedy club Best casino game dealer Best casino dance club Best casino promotion Best casino show Best casino band Most eco-friendly casino Best sportsbook Best poker room Best place to cash your check Best customer service Best casino wedding planning Best casino to hear quiet music Best casino spa Best casino security Best casino-hotel for romantic getaway Best casino color scheme Best casino carpet

Best place to get pierced Best shoe selection Best boutique clothing store Best hotel for a romantic getaway Best bank Best credit union Best mortgage company Best grocery store Best specialty ice cream store Best pet store Best pet supply store Best pet boarding Best skateboard store Best wireless phone service coverage Best brothel Best motorcycle dealer, shop Best new car dealership Best used car dealership Best place for photo prints Best photography supply store Best Pilates studio Best Pilates instructor Best yoga studio Best yoga instructor Best outdoor outfitter Best optical shop Best hospital Best doggy daycare Best athletic shoe selection Best business Facebook page Best independent bookstore Best independent CD music store Best independent coffee shop Best independent computer store Best independent grocery store Best independent used bookstore Best local non-casino business Best new business Best newspaper Best outdoor gear selection Best place for music lessons Best place to buy playa garb Best print shop Best public relations agency Best publication (that’s not us) Best selection of local art Best spectator sport Best sunglasses selection Best wedding event planner Best wedding reception site Best workout wear selection Best independent hardware store Best veterinarian Best Pawnbroker

Best beer selection Best bowling alley Best club DJ Best comedy club Best concert venue Best dance club Best dive bar Best gay hangout Best happy hour Best karaoke Best microbrewery Best neighborhood bar Best open-mic night Best place for a first date Best place for live music Best place to buy sexy underwear Best place to cure your hangover Best place to have sex in public Best place to hear loud music Best place to hear quiet music Best place to see a concert Best place to watch Monday Night Football Best place to watch movies Best sports bar Best strip club Best trivia night Most romantic bar

JULY 3, 2014

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Your urge

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Best golf course Best local hot springs Best mountain biking Best outdoor beer garden Best picnic spot Best place to ride a personal watercraft Best place to swim Best ski resort Best skiing Best snowboarding Best spot to hike Best spot to run around naked Best spot to smooch under the stars

to merge is heating up. Your curiosity about combinations is intensifying. I think it’s time to conduct jaunty experiments in mixing and blending. Here’s what I propose: Let your imagination run half-wild. Be unpredictable as you play around with medleys and hodgepodges and sweet unions. But don’t be attached to the outcomes. Some of your research may lead to permanent arrangements, and some won’t. Either result is fine.

Your task is to enjoy the amusing bustle, and learn all you can from it.

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GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The American

painter Ivan Albright (1897-1983) was a meticulous creator. He spent as much time as necessary to get every detail right. An entire day might go by as he worked to perfect 1 square inch of a painting, and some of his pieces took years to finish. When the task at hand demanded intricate precision, he used a brush composed of a single hair. That’s the kind of attention to minutia I recommend for you—not forever, but for the next few weeks. Be careful and conscientious as you build the foundation that will allow you maximum freedom of movement later this year.

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outdoors

CANCER (June 21-July 22): The “Venus

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Personalities

Best athletic coach Best attorney Best barista Best thrift store Best bartender, female Best local place to work Best bartender, male Best landscaping company Best beard Best house cleaning service Best chiropractor Best video game store Best club doorman/bouncer Best gadget store Best cocktail server Best wine shop Best college instructor Best cheap liquor store innovations Best creative writer Best women’s clothing boutique Best local innovation: activism Best men’s clothing store Best local innovation: collaboration Best dentist Best children’s clothing boutique Best local innovation: living space Best elementary school teacher Best gynecologist Best place to buy a firearm Best local innovation: service Best high school teacher Best place to shoot firearms Best local innovation: technology Best interior designer Best jewelry store Best local innovation: working Best local actor/actress Best mall space Best local athlete Best tanning salon Most innovative local artist Best local columnist Best frame shop Most innovative local casino Best local comedian Best spa Most innovative local cocktails Best local filmmaker Best dry cleaners Most innovative local company Best local musician Best bookstore Most innovative local menu Best local politician Best place to get an auto smogged Most innovative local music Best local radio DJ or DJ team Best place to buy a musical Most innovative local nonprofit instrument Best local rapper Most innovative local promotion Best gym Best local songwriter Most innovative local startup Best place to buy CDs Best local TV news business Best specialty foods store Best local TV news anchor Most innovative local teacher Best adult-themed store Best local TV news hairstyle Best computer store Best massage therapist kids & Family Best place to buy vintage clothes Best arcade games Best middle school teacher Best used clothing store Best charter school Best minister/spiritual advisor Best antique store Best family outing Best muralist Best bicycle shop Best local library Best music teacher Best flower shop Best park Best naturopathic practioner Best beauty salon Best place to introduce kids Best pet groomer to nature Best hair stylist Best photographer Best place to picnic with kids Best aesthetician Best plastic surgeon Best place to take the kids Best nail technician Best police officer Best things to do on a Friday night Best politician Best barber Best toy store Best barber shop Best principal Best weekend activity Best garden nursery Best public figure to fantasize Best weeknight activity about Best car wash Most kid-friendly restaurant Best public relations professional Best home furnishings store Best real estate agent Best apartment complex Best social networker niGhtliFe Best place to get a car repaired Best visual artist Best tattoo parlor Best all-ages spot Best volunteer Best tattoo artist Best bar

Goods & serviCes

money into in it on a consistent basis. Would you like to feel good and have a lot of physical energy? Eat healthy food, sleep as much as you need to and exercise regularly. Do you want people to see the best in you and give you the benefit of the doubt? See the best in them and give them the benefit of the doubt. Would you love to accomplish your most important goal? Decide what you want more than anything else and focus on it with relaxed intensity. Yes, Aries, life really is that simple—or at least it is right now. If you want to attain interesting success, be a master of the obvious.

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VOTING ENDS JULY 25 aT 4aM Best restaurant worth the long wait Best chef Best server Best tequila selection Best vodka selection Best whiskey/bourbon/Scotch selection Best Bloody Mary Best local beer Best barbecue restaurant Best catering company Best appetizers Best soups Best place to eat when drunk Best juice Best fondue Best produce

(March 21-April 19): Would you like 13ARIES 13Then deposit your savings account to grow?

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de Milo” is a famous Greek statue that’s more than 2,100 years old. Bigger than lifesize, it depicts the goddess of love, beauty and pleasure. Its current home is the Louvre Museum in Paris, but for hundreds of years it was lost—buried underground on the Greek island of Milos. In 1820, a farmer found it while he was out digging on his land. I foresee a comparable discovery by you in the coming weeks, Cancerian. You will uncover a source of beauty, love or pleasure—or perhaps all three—that has been missing or forgotten for a long time.

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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): According to an an-

cient Greek myth, Sisyphus keeps pushing a boulder up a steep hill only to lose control of it just before he reaches the top, watching in dismay as it tumbles to the bottom. After each failure, he lumbers back down to where he started and makes another effort to roll it up again—only to fail again. The myth says he continues his futile attempts for all eternity. I’m happy to report, Leo, that there is an important difference between your story and that of Sisyphus. Whereas you have tried and tried and tried again to complete a certain uphill task, you will not be forever frustrated. In fact, I believe a breakthrough will come soon, and success will finally be yours. Will it be due to your gutsy determination or your neurotic compulsion or both?

It doesn’t matter.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Many of

America’s Founding Fathers believed slavery was immoral, but they owned slaves themselves and ordained the institution of slavery in the U.S. Constitution. They didn’t invent hypocrisy, of course, but theirs was an especially tragic version. In comparison, the hypocrisy that you express is mild. Nevertheless, working to minimize it is a worthy task. And here’s the good news: You are now in a position to become the zodiac’s leader in minimizing your hypocrisy. Of all the signs, you can come closest to walking your talk and practicing what you preach. So do it!

Aim to be a master of translating your ideals into practical action.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In the last two

decades, seven Academy Award winners have given thanks to God while accepting their Oscars. By contrast, 30 winners have expressed their gratitude to film studio

executive Harvey Weinstein. Who would you 13as essential to your success, acknowledge Libra? What generous souls, loving animals, departed helpers and spiritual beings have contributed to your ability to thrive? Now is an excellent time to make a big deal out of expressing your appreciation. For mysterious reasons, doing so will enhance your luck and increase your chances for future success.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): You have

permission to compose an all-purpose excuse note for yourself. If you’d like, you may also forge my signature on it so you can tell everyone that your astrologer sanctified it. This document will be ironclad and inviolable. It will serve as a poetic license that abolishes your guilt and remorse. It will authorize you to slough off senseless duties, evade deadening requirements, escape small-minded influences, and expunge numbing habits. Even better, your extra-strength excuse note will free you to seek out adventures you have been denying yourself for no good reason.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

In the Inuktitut 13 language spoken in northern Canada, the term iminngernaveersaartunngortussaavunga means “I should try not to become an alcoholic.” I encourage you to have fun saying that a lot in the coming days. Why? Now is an excellent time to be playful and lighthearted as you wage war against any addictive tendencies you might have. Whether it’s booze or gambling or abusive relationships or anything else that tempts you to act like an obsessive selfsaboteur, you have more power than usual to break its hold on you—especially if you don’t take yourself too seriously.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

Percival Lowell (1855-1916) was an influential astronomer who launched the exploration that led to the discovery of Pluto. He also made some big mistakes. Here’s one: Gazing at Venus through his telescope, he swore he saw spokes emanating from a central hub on the planet’s surface. But we now know that Venus is shrouded with such thick cloud cover that13 no surface features are visible.

So what did Lowell see? Due to an anomaly in his apparatus, the telescope projected shadows from inside his eyes onto the image of Venus. The “spokes” were actually the blood vessels in his retinas. Let this example serve as a cautionary tale for you in the coming weeks, Capricorn. Don’t confuse what’s within you with what’s outside you. If you can clearly discern the difference, your closest relationships will experience healing breakthroughs.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):

“I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.” So said British writer G.K. Chesterton. Now I’m passing his advice on to you just in time for the purge-and-purify phase of your astrological cycle. In the coming weeks, you will generate good fortune for yourself whenever you wash your own brain and absolve your own heart and flush the shame out of your healthy sexual feelings. As you proceed with this work, it may expedite matters if you make a conscious choice to undergo a trial by fire.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “I awake in a

land where the lovers have seized power,” writes Danish poet Morten Sondergaard in his fanciful poem “The Lovers.” “They have introduced laws decreeing that ... orgasms need never come to an end. Roses function as currency. ... [T]he words ‘you’ and ‘I’ are now synonymous.” A world like the one he describes is a fantasy, of course. It’s impossible. But I predict that in the coming weeks you could create conditions that have resemblances to that utopia. So be audacious in your quest for amorous bliss and convivial romance. Dare to put love at the top of your priority list. And be inventive!

Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s expanded weekly audio horoscopes and daily text message horoscopes. The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at (877) 873-4888 or (900) 950-7700.

by D. Brian Burghart Photo/D. Brian Burghart

One of a kind Tim Healion Laughing Planet is the hot new addition to Reno’s growing food culture, but in some ways, that’s sort of surprising. For one, authentic Renoites seem to prefer one-of-a-kind, only-in-Reno sorts of endeavors.

Not to be indelicate, but there are a lot of people making healthful meat, smoothies and vegetarian dishes these days. That’s where the unique top man, Tim Healion, enters the picture. For more information, check out laughingplanetcafe.com.

What in the world made you decide to come out of retirement and go back into the restaurant business?

It was either that or run for mayor. Bottom line. It’s super fun. I joke about it a couple ways—either it was a brilliant opportunity or it was an offer I couldn’t afford to lose.

I got to work with an old pal who’d kind of taken some models that I’ve done in the past and evolved them to the next level. It’s kind of an evolution of what I’ve done in the past, and I’ve got somebody else writing the checks, so this is great.

But, it’s a franchise, right?

Actually the business model, technically in the business sense, is not a franchise; it’s a company-owned deal. There’s 12 of them in the whole world, and they’re all companyowned. So I don’t have a franchise. It’s a guy who used to work for me for a few

Definitely.

OPINION

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GREEN

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It was a lot of work for me, but for some people, it was their thing. We get a ton of those people, so that’s a big kick in the pants, that’s one thing that some people don’t have. The other things is the food.

The whole thing is killer, man. It’s super nutritious, at an unbelievable price. I hate to use the word “cheap,” because cheap is kind of associated with Walmart, but it’s fricken not expensive. And you’re getting an unbelievably good food. Not just nutritious, but it tastes good. It’s a good package. And it’s fast. You go in there, and by the time you order, you’re getting your stuff in eight minutes.

years at Deux Gros Nez, back in the late ’80s, early ’90s, owns the company, and he’s been begging me to work for him the past six or seven years, and I’m finally doing it.

It appears to me that you’re just packed all the time. Does anyone ever get to sit still in that joint?

Hell no, man, it’s game on. It’s game on all the time. The people, when I’m interviewing and hiring people, I let them know it’s not a come-hang-out-and-have-fun-and-look-cool job. It’s work your ass off. It’s physical.

We’re going hard all the time. It’s fun.

What else should people know about the restaurant?

There’s a few things. I hate to pat myself on the back, but I did some stuff in this town that people really, really liked. And when I shut it down, some people were really

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stadiums around the globe. If you can’t instantly hear the “Dum—dum-dumda-dum-dum” beat in your mind’s ear (admittedly, it doesn’t translate all that well into the printed word), don’t worry. You know it when you hear it.

Instantly. If you’re a geezer like me, you may not know the tune or where it came from. It’s a track called “Seven Nation Army,” the first song on the White Stripes 2003 album Elephant, and it is still, to this day, the most successful single in the band’s history.

• This Jersey Boys flick fills an important gap in rock history. While it’s fashionable to dismiss 1963 as a dud year in American pop with nothing really super nifty going on, Jersey Boys reminds that that simply wasn’t the case. In ’63, you had three primal all timal musical forces emerging and peaking—Phil Spector, the Beach Boys the Four Seasons. By mid-’63, these Jersey dudes, led by the extraordinary larynx of Frankie Valli, had scorched American top 40 charts with three number one smashes in a row—“Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like a Man.” To

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It’s one of those places that’s easy for anybody in any lifestyle to walk in the door and not feel uncomfortable, which is kind of a cool thing. There’s no pretense at that place. That was one of the things that was cool about Deux Gros Nez back in the day, too. You’d have casino owners sitting next to dudes with mohawks or tattooed guys sitting next to soccer moms and family. I think it’s pretty cool that way. Ω

What’s the secret to that?

We’ve had just a boatload of great new restaurants open in the last few years, but I think you’re kind of a phenom.

View from space Once again, to gain some accurate perspective about Life on Earth, it’s helpful to assume the role of a spaceman zooming in from another galaxy. If you were that spaceman, I’m guessing that by now you couldn’t help but notice—Earth is Planet Football, as in, this whole effing rock is positively cuckoo for the game. Whether it’s the American version, played with helmets and linebackers, or the Everybody Else version, played on pitches with no hands allowed, this zany Third Stone From the Sun is absolutely gonzo for either fútbol or football.

That said, you won’t hear any whining from me about what a lame game soccer is. I have to objectively report that I got thoroughly and genuinely sucked into the Mugger in Manaus— that is, the game between us and the Portuguese. It really was a fascinating and gripping contest, made all the more so by the fact that the game finished the way it did.

• It’s now obvious that the White Stripes have completely conquered the planet with That Song, now heard in

bummed. So there’s a little bit of “What’s Tim Healion doing nowadays?” There’s people who come in and go, “Oh man, I miss Deux Gros Nez,” and I go along with it, but when they walk away, I don’t know who that person was. It’s kind of funny, man, but there’s a lot of the old Deux fan club, there’s even people who heard of Deux Gros Nez who never made it there. It’s somewhat of a legendary joint.

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ART OF THE STATE

say they were on a roll is to lazily state the obvious.

Between Spector, Brian Wilson and Valli, American pop was doing pretty damn good. And then ... those moptops and stones appeared and busted up the joint but good!

• As for Iraq ... well, gee, look at all the concern for the problems now being exposed in this horribly destabilized region. It’s funny how many of those who are greatly concerned about the destabilized Iraq are the same people who couldn’t wait to storm in and destabilize the living shit out of the place. Of course, the Neo-cons managed to convince themselves—and us—that the only thing our tanks had to fear in Baghdad were too many rose petals gunking up the treads. You think all this Shiite would be hitting the fan if Saddam was still in charge? I don’t know the answer.

Nobody does. But it’s an interesting question. Ω |

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