'Nother Nervous Night in NorNev

The weather is making us very nervous here in Downtown Reno. A rainstorm blew through the region last night and has continued through the day causing the already high Truckee River to bulge within it's banks. Although the latest word for Reno is that flooding is unlikely, the city of Sparks may be at risk of further damage after the flooding of New Year's Eve.

This may only be the beginning, however. Tonight the temperatures are supposed to plummet and the winds will pick up as the precipitation turns to snow. Tomorrow's commute promises to be icy and difficult. But the real wallop may not get here until Thursday/Friday. That's when the big system is supposed to hit, a winter storm the likes of which Reno and the Tahoe area hasn't seen in over a year. After a break on Wednesday we're supposed to take a hit comparable to the already-legendary storm of last January that dumped feet of snow on the region (over 12 feet in parts of the mountains) and paralyzed the region for days.

The good news is, the weather in Cabo San Lucas was sunny and 82 degrees. The ambient water temperature in the Sea of Cortez was 71. Technically this is really only good news for the good people of Baja Sur and for Melissa and I, who will be flying there on Wednesday.

Down From The Mountain

Just a quick post. I'm back from Squaw Valley. The ski weekend came off great--to my surprise no one was killed or even hurt very badly. The one lingering effect of the trip for me will be a rather ridiculous looking sunburn covering my neck and my face up to about two-thirds of the way up my forehead, where it ends in a straight line thanks to my ski cap.

As for the snowboarding on Saturday, it couldn't have been better. Conditions were Springlike with sunny skies and temperatures in the 40's. Better pictures will probably be coming soon, but here's a quick one that I snapped from the top of the Summit Six Chair at Alpine Meadows, just before the day's first run:

Sorry for the slightly low-quality picture; it's from a camera phone. From left to right, that's club members Hannah (who's pink snow pants totally rule!), Scott, Mike, Jen and on the far right Eric, who you may not be able to see because he's wearing camouflage. Lake Tahoe is visible in the background.

I know I promised embarrassing pictures. Don't worry, they're coming. Scott has some very good pictures of your humble author playing Trivial Pursuit while wearing a life-sized plush moose head that were taken on Friday night, and he'll be getting them to me soon. I know what you're thinking: A moose head? Trust me, it was par for the course for the weekend. I don't know who the actual owner of the condo that we rented was, but as you can see, whoever they are they have a serious moose fetish.

These pictures are just a quick sample, the sheer number of moose (meese?) scattered about the condo defies description. This didn't sit well with me because of the fact that the moose, while a noble and beautiful animal, is not native to the Sierra Nevada. Yes, I'm just the sort of person who is bothered by things like that.

Perhaps you're wondering what would inspire a normally mild-mannered person to don a giant stuffed moose head for the better part of a Friday evening? There's no simple answer to that question. But it might have had something to do with the refrigerator full of ready-made jell-o shots.

Busy Days Ahead

Just to give anyone who cares the heads-up, I'm going to be very busy in the coming two weeks and I may not be posting as much as I normally do. I've got some great stuff lined up and frankly if I actually have enough time to think "I should be posting on the blog" then I will be a little disappointed in myself.

Tonight I and 16 of my closest friends from the Reno chapter of the 20-30 Club are heading up to Squaw Valley to spend the weekend. I haven't been on a snowboard in a month (damn job is always getting in the way) so I'm especially psyched. Here's a nice shot from Squaw's website:


Of course, we'll actually be riding at nearby Alpine Meadows, where lift tickets are about $20 cheaper. Hey, we're not made of money you know.

And how's this for contrast? I'll be back at work for a couple of days, and then on Wednesday Melissa and I will be heading down to L.A. for a quick visit with my sister Katy and then flying south for a vacation in Los Cabos at the southern tip of Baja:

So the bottom line is that while I'll try to sneak something in here or there where I can, I probably won't be posting much for the next week couple of weeks. The good news is, I promise lots of good stories and hopefully a few embarrassing photos when it's all done.

Sierr-o-Sphere Additions

There are a couple of additions to the Northern Nevada Blog links section. The first is Tim's Blog. Somehow it took me a long time to stumble upon Tim despite the fact that he's been blogging here in Reno since the summer of 2003. He's a very funny guy and I love his "About Me" photo. The other new addition is Reno Underground Travel. Okay, this isn't really a blog so much as a site advertising Reno (despite their claim to being a "brutally honest, independent guide" I haven't found any reviews or critiques that aren't along the lines of the Homer Simpson "nine thumbs up" variety) but they do keep up with local news and most importantly they're a pretty good clearing house of information on the local area.

I Just Can't Resist

I know, I know. Looking at some else's family photos is about as exciting as watching grass grow. And not that fancy store-bought grass either. I'm talking your low-end vacant lot grass. Still, I just can't help myself. Here's a picture of my Dad's recent visit to Boston to see my brother Daniel and his girlfriend Rebecca:


How about my kid brother having a total fox for a girlfriend? Daniel, you know she's too good for you.

Save the Spirit

The Sierra Spirit is going to run out of funding on June 30, when the Federal grant that created it expires. It's future is in doubt, and I for one would hate to see it go.

For those of you who don't know--which is everyone who doesn't live in Reno and probably most of you who do--the Sierra Spirit is a free bus service run by the city on a continuous loop from the campus of UNR, through downtown, up to Liberty just short of California Avenue (it almost makes it to the Chocolate Bar but not quite) and back again.

The Sierra Spirit is one of those great, civic-minded projects that probably sounded fantastic in theory but which, in the end, not a lot of people use and which the public may not really care to pay for. It would be too bad if the service dies out, though, because it really does have it's uses.

If you've spent any time at all in downtown Reno you've almost certainly seen the bright yellow busses that run the loop. They come by designated stops every ten minutes and are absolutely free to ride. If where you are and where you are going happen to be on the route then it's a great deal. I live downtown and would gladly take the bus to Wolfpack games out at Lawlor if, well, if I went to more Wolfpack games. Alternatively, if you are a UNR student or live in the campus area, then it's a great way to get to, say, Wingfield Park, downtown bars or the Art Museum without having to drive.

In the interests of full disclosure I must confess that I can only recall actually using the service twice, once to get to a UNR football game and once to get to the Little Waldorf (don't ask). Much like AmTrak, it's a service that I don't often use but that I do like knowing is there. Of course, the RGJ article clearly points out that there are people who depend on the Spirit for legitimate transportation, and apparently UNR appreciates the service since it is offering to kick in $50,000 of the approximately one million dollars a year that continuing the current routes would require.

The problem will become from what source the city comes up with the rest of the money for the service. The primary idea being floated right now seems to be to obtain about a third of the necessary funds from the creation of a new special assessment district, which would basically mean that property owners within the area served by the route would pay about a third of the cost to maintain it. This seems unlikely to me, as a lot of property owners downtown are still sore about having to pay for the Train Trench and other assessments. Anyway, 70 percent of property owners in the affected area would have to agree to it and then the city counsel would need to approve it. When's the last time you heard of 70 percent of any group of people agree to be taxed more than they currently are?

There may be other alternatives, but I don't know how optimistic I am that the Spirit is long for this world. The heavens aren't going to fall or anything, but I would hate to see it go. It's one of those things that I really like about living where I do, a piece of the scenery that you get used to and, unfortunately, come to take for granted after a while.

Murray Barr

Here's a link to a fantastic article from the New Yorker that I found thanks to Myrna the Minx about the real cost of ignoring the problem of chronic homelessness. Murray Barr, featured in the article, was a man who for years leading up to his death last year was a fixture on the local scene, a homeless man who was...well, maybe I should just quote the article:

On the streets of downtown Reno, where he lived, he could buy a two-hundred-and-fifty-millilitre bottle of cheap vodka for a dollar-fifty. If he was flush, he could go for the seven-hundred-and-fifty-millilitre bottle, and if he was broke he could always do what many of the other homeless people of Reno did, which is to walk through the casinos and finish off the half-empty glasses of liquor left at the gaming tables.

"If he was on a runner, we could pick him up several times a day." Patrick O'Bryan, who is a bicycle cop in downtown Reno, said. "And he's gone on some amazing runners. He would get picked up, get detoxed, then get back out a couple of hours later and start up again. A lot of the guys on the streets who've been drinking, they get so angry. They are so incredibly abrasive, so violent, so abusive. Murray was such a character and had such a great sense of humor that we somehow got past that. Even when he was abusive, we'd say, "Murray, you know you love us," and he'd say, 'I know' and go back to swearing at us."

"I've been a police officer for fifteen years," O'Bryan's partner, Steve Johns, said. "I picked up Murray my whole career. Literally."

The point of the article is that while Murray was clearly the sort of person who didn't do so well on his own, he was actually a fairly functional person when he was under strict supervision. Rather than providing this, what the system does with people like him is arrest him when he commits a petty crime or just starts bothering people, or bring him to the emergency room when he is sick or injured, but ultimately to ignore him until his situation reaches some kind of crisis point.

Now providing people like Murray with a place to live and someone to basically keep an eye on him on a daily basis to make sure that he isn't abusing substances or getting into trouble is politically impossible. Such a proposal would be lambasted as the throwing away of public resources on a bum. But regardless of what you may feel about people like Murray, the fact of the matter is that it may very well be cheaper to do this than to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in emergency services and public resources over the years to ignore people like him.

A lot of people walk around downtown Reno and grumble angrily to themselves about aggressive panhandlers or homeless people who seem to make public intoxication a way of life. It's easy to get mad at these people and blame them for their own situations, but that doesn't help anything and neither does dealing with them only when they present police or medical emergencies. Where I work we euphamisitically call guys like Murray "frequent flyers." We see them on an almost daily basis, so I know firsthand that there is a small but highly visible portion of the population that for whatever reason (mental health issues, addiction, physical injury, whatever) just isn't capable of functioning in day-to-day society on their own. The article calls them the chronically homeless, and it makes an excellent point: no matter how you may feel about the notion of extending public resources to make sure people like Murray are permanantly off the streets and living ordered lives (i.e. giving them a permanant place to live and the services they need to deal with whatever their problems are), the bottom line is that we are already subsidising their lifestyles by ignoring them until we simply can't ignore them anymore, and then going back to ignoring them once whatever crisis is past. Perhaps we should think about dealing with this issue in a way that actually solves the problem.

Whole World's Come Undone

Click here and push play for more proof, as if more proof were needed, of the greatness of the internets.

Vandalism

Yesterday the RGJ ran this article about a growing vandalism problem in the Reno area, a problem which sometimes goes under the making-it-sound-way-cooler-than-it-really-is label of "tagging." I find this activity particularly aggrivating because it's common in my neighborhood and frankly it makes the place look really trashy. Near as I can tell, it consists of waiting until no one is looking, then spray-painting a set of initials or some other sort of marking on other people's property.

Tagging is different from gang-related graffiti; gang graffiti is mostly about marking turf and in this town seems to be primarily a phenomenon that exists in the Latino community. Tagging, to the surprise of many people, is something that is done mostly by white guys. Quite a few of these guys running around at night spray-painting initials on other people's property have regular jobs, kids, and although most are young or young-ish they are often older than you might expect--I saw one in court the other day who was older than me, and I'm 32.

I'm somewhat mystified as to what these guys are getting out of this. They claim that what they are doing is art, but that is clearly just a silly rationalization--sorry, but there's nothing artistic about repeatedly spray-painting the same set of initials dozens and dozens of times, even if it is occasionally done in a hard-to-reach place (these yabbos seem to think this earns them more points).

So what is this all about? Is it pure ego-gratification? Have these guys just never outgrown the whole adolescent "angry and not sure why" phase of life? Is this is just pointless rebellion, a highly visible but ultimately insignificant way of sticking it to The Man? Does it make otherwise-uninteresting lives somehow feel more daring, dangerous or meaningful, the same sort of urge for petty thrills that spurs young girls to shoplift things that they have money to pay for and don't even need? I don't really know what motivates them, but I do know two things: 1. Spray-painting initials on things is not very difficult or impressive, and 2. This pointless criminal activity has resulted in over half-a-million dollars worth of damage in the last year in the Reno area.

Far East Corner

In the middle of running around town today I noticed that a little boutique called The Far East Corner has opened up in one of the five retail spaces which have been empty for years on the first floor of Arlington Towers. Here's a shot from just inside the door:

I was intrigued and happy to see someone putting this space, empty so long, to some good use. After wandering around for a few minutes I came upon what looked like an ornate entertainment center. Despite my fiddling with the cabinet doors I was finding it impossible to understand how to open the large center compartment wherein it appeared that a large-screen TV would fit nicely. I assumed I was wrestling with a decent-looking but cheap piece of furniture of the mass-produced sort, something you might find at Cost Plus or maybe Pier 1.

"Is this an entertainment center?" I asked the owner.

"No, it's a kitchen cabinet. That's why it has so many open-air compartments." She replied.

I was slightly confused. It was a nice-looking piece of furniture; who would want or need to put it in a kitchen where someone's just going to spill Coke on it?

"They used to like to store things this way." she added, "This piece is 160 years old."

And suddenly I couldn't have felt like a bigger hick. As it turned out I was fidgeting with a 160-year-old gorgeous piece of hand-crafted artistry created halfway around the world some time just before the American Civil War, and here I was trying to figure out how the heck you're supposed to stick a TV in it.

I hope this little boutique succeeds, and more than that I hope it's the start of a trend. It's a small piece of the gentrification that has been lurching forward in fits and starts in downtown Reno these last couple of years. Revitalization is proceeding at an agonizingly slow pace but it is proceeding nonetheless. Right now it seems strange that this little store exists in a difficult-to-see corner of Arlington Tower in a neighborhood which at first glance definitely does not appear to be the sort of place one comes to find unique, rare, expensive furniture. My hope is that a year or two down the road it will not seem strange at all. No matter what one may think of expensive Chinese antiques, from where I sit it's classy, not to mention a hell of a lot better than empty space.

M & M in Vail

My sister Maureen and her husband Michael just got back from Vail and sent me some pictures:
Maureen says she's getting good at Blue runs, which is pretty impressive for someone who lives in Atlanta. Hopefully they had a good time and didn't think too much about how much better it would have been if they'd come to Tahoe instead ;-)

The Kids Are Alright: American Knuckle-Draggers Dominate

Note for the uninitiated: "Knuckle-Dragger" is an epithet long used by effete skiers to mock and deride snowboarders.

Well chew on this: So far at the Torino Olympics American snowboarders have been unstoppable, winning 5 of the 9 medals won by Americans at these games, including 3 gold medals. The latest gold has gone to Seth Wescott in Boardercross. Boardercross is new to the Olympics--think demolition derby on snowboards.

This stands in stark contrast to the performance of the skiers and pretty much the rest of America's team, which has mostly provided one disappointment after another (I'm looking at you, Bode). The once-outlaw sport of snowboarding, which the ski industry tried to wish out of existence for years--and which ski publications still declare "dead" on practically an annual basis--has ironically become America's greatest point of pride in the world of winter sports.

I Wish We Knew How To Quit Them

Brokeback Mountain parodies are officially not clever anymore. I realize that I must accept my fair share the blame for this satirical scourge because I published a post a few days ago about how funny I thought Brokeback To The Future was. At that time, the pasting together of clips from the Back To The Future movies with the now ubiquitous Brokeback acoustic guitar theme in such a way as to suggest a May-December relationship between Marty McFly and Doc Brown actually seemed original. But that was before cut-and-paste Brokeback trailer parodies reached a saturation point not seen since the dark days of The Blair Witch Project parodies.

After Brokeback To The Future, there was Top Gun II: Brokeback Squadron. Same exact idea only not as funny because the latent homosexuality in the original Top Gun is just as obvious as it is in every Reagan-Era action movie. Then there was Brokeback Mountain Dew, a surreal mish-mash of Mountain Dew commercials, that signature plunky guitar, and hip-hop. Not funny, just weird.

And now it's Star Wars: The Empire Brokeback. As you can probably guess, this one cuts up the C-3PO and R2-D2 bits from Star Wars. Not only has the concept quickly become unorigional and unfunny, but this one misses the whole point--everyone already knows C-3PO and R2-D2 are lovers. It's like someone doing a Brokeback Mountain parody about the Village People.

I am forced to call for a complete moratorium on Brokeback parodies. Whoever is making these faux trailers, please move on to something slightly more original, like perhaps making Stephen King movies look like lighhearted comedies.

Dick

So Cheney went on to--surprise, surprise--Fox News this afternoon with Brit Hume to 'splain this whole shooting-a-78-year-old-guy-in-the-face thing. Jack Cafferty (love that crotchety old fart) said this was like Bonnie interviewing Clyde. Brit was already on record as saying this whole thing is "much ado about not really much." I guess it's just too bad Cheney's own mother wasn't available to conduct the interview.

All sarcasm aside, I don't really think there's anything sinister going on here. I tend to believe that this really was just a stupid hunting accident, a case of Dick being careless with a gun and almost killing someone. And while not going public with this for over 20 hours does look suspicious, I don't think there's any real evidence that booze was a factor (although I hate to tell you how many cases like that I've dealt with in my career--trust me, you don't want to know how many stupid drunken idiots are walking or more often driving around with loaded guns, blasting away at anything that makes a noise and having the nerve to call themselves "hunters") But this episode is really pretty typical; in the usual Bush Administration style, they've helped turn a garden-variety mess into an epic disaster by circling the wagons, hiding whatever can be hidden for as long as possible, pretending stupid mistakes are "strong leadership", and then, when criticism becomes too loud to ignore, running to an adoring propaganda machine in order to paint themselves as victims of partisan attacks rather than victims of their own incompetence.

Hopefully Harry Whittington, the lawyer shot by Cheney, will make a quick recovery.

Turns Out It's Still Winter

The valley floors woke up this morning to a couple of inches of powdery snow. Nothing like what pounded the northeast a few days ago, but it brings into stark focus the fact that the last couple of weeks of cloudless skies and 60 degree temperatures is an abberation for February.

Happy Valentine's Day

Props to Housekeeper (who by coincidence seemed to get the exact same result I did) for this:

Your Candy Heart Says "Cutie Pie"

You always seem to have a hot date, even though you never try to meet anyone. A total charmer, you have a natural appeal that keeps you in high demand. Your ideal Valentine's Day date: multiple dates with multiple people Your flirting style: 100% natural What turns you off: serious relationship talks Why you're hot: you're totally addicting

What Does Your Candy Heart Say?

It's mostly true (the Internets are pretty much never wrong), especially the part about always seeming to have a hot date. I get to see my true love pretty much every day, and that's always a hot date.

Happy Valentine's Day Melissa!

Roughing It

An update on the previous post: Henry James Monk (whom you will learn more about if you click on the link below) has been kind enough to provide a link to the Chapter from Mark Twain's seminal work Roughing It in which Mr. Twain recounts traveling through some of the areas that Melissa and I passed through this past weekend and are so fond of. Because it's difficult to cut-and-paste from Blogspot's comment sections, I decided I'd post a link here. Please read Mr. Twain's account--not only is Twain the greatest pure storyteller this nation has ever produced, but it's a fascinating bit of Nevada/California history from one of the English language's most entertaining writers.

The Foothills

Sorry for the lack of updates for the last couple of days. Contrary to what you may have heard, I was not shot by Dick Cheney on Saturday.

This has been an interesting weekend. Yesterday Melissa wanted to go to The Limited, partly to use a gift certificate she got for Christmas and partly to pick up some things for a vacation we've been planning for early March (more on that in the weeks to come). Unfortunately, in Reno going to The Limited means driving over the hill to Sacramento. So yesterday morning that's what we did.

As it happened we accomplished most of what she wanted to get done by about 3 p.m. yesterday, and so she asked if there was anything I felt like doing while we were west of the mountains. On a whim I suggested that we drive back home by heading up highway 50, an indirect but beautiful route that takes you south of Lake Tahoe and up through Carson City. I suggested that on the way we could stop in Placerville, one of a string of picture-perfect Gold Rush era towns that are scattered throughout the western foothills of the Sierra. Melissa agreed, as the weather was unseasonably mild even for California and she wanted to walk around Placerville's Old Hangtown, which is what Placerville's historic downtown used to be called.

Now I'm a real Northern Nevada booster, which anyone who's read more than a few posts on this blog knows. But I have to admit that the Sierra Foothills of California are a pretty amazing place. While most people dream of living in a tropical paradise, I dream of living in a place like the Foothills, with it's mild year-round temperatures, rolling hills and valleys, mountain streams and small towns strung together by narrow, winding roads running through dry forests. And of course it doesn't hurt that the primeval woods and granite peaks of the High Sierra are practically a stone's throw away. In the Foothills, everywhere you look you see vineyards and orchards and grazing livestock and people who's only fear in in the world seems to be that someone will wake them from this dream of a life. If this isn't what heaven looks like, I have qualms about going there.

So we were walking down Placerville's Main Street yesterday evening when we noticed signs for something called A Chocolate Affair, which was a food and wine-tasting charity auction that would be taking place in Placerville that night, put on by the local Soroptimits. Tempting as it was, we had planned to be back in Reno that night, and Reno was almost three hours away, so we figured we would have to miss out.

But since we were in the heart of Foothills Wine Country, we figured we would use what time we had to stop in at a local wine shop and find a bottle of the region's signature Zinfandel or Voignier. As one is wont to do on a beautiful evening in wine country we poured a couple of glasses and struck up a conversation with the proprietor, and then with a well-dressed couple sitting at a table nearby, also enjoying a glass of wine. As it turned out, they were headed to the Chocolate Affair that evening, and they told us it was a wonderful event and that we should stop by if we had the chance. We told them we would think about it. In speaking with the man, who introduced himself as Pierre, I mentioned how it is we happened to find ourselves in Placerville that evening, and how much I liked this idyllic little town.

"That's great to hear", he said, "because I'm the Mayor."

Well that settled it. There's no way I was going to turn down an official invitation from the mayor. So even though we had only the clothes on our backs we checked in to the Cary House Hotel. The Cary House is a posh old hotel, built in 1857, and in it's day has hosted the likes of Mark Twain and Horace Greely, who made a speech from the hotel's balcony during his Presidential campaign. And, the staff proudly informed us, it is home to the second-oldest functioning elevator west of the Mississippi.

We then headed over to A Chocolate Affair, which included impossible amounts of free samples of locally produced food, wine and, of course, chocolate (and when I say "we" I mean "me"; Melissa displayed admirable willpower). Mayor Rivas was there, as was El Dorado District Attorney Gary Lacy, whom we also got to meet. Eventually we had our fill, and made our way back to the Cary House.

This morning we woke up to perfect weather. Conditions in the Foothills are Springlike right now, despite the fact that it is the middle of February. We drove about nine miles north of Placerville to Coloma, where John Sutter owned a mill where gold was discovered in 1848, kicking off the California Gold Rush. We wandered around the restored 1850's era frontier settlement next to the American River, and then inevitably made our way to Gold Hill and Venezio wineries. The whole thing was so perfect, we couldn't help but wonder aloud "well, what if we just didn't go back? What if we were to stay here?" It's totally unrealistic of course, but it's a nice fantasy.

In the end we forced ourself into the car (about 24 hours later than we'd planned) and made the long drive up Highway 50 through South Lake Tahoe, Carson City and finally up to Reno. But overall it was a fantastic impromptu pre-Valentine's Day getaway. I think Melissa is coming to love the Foothills as much as I do. Something tells me we'll be back before long.

I Don't Think The Ancient Greeks Were Much Into Speed Skating

So apparently the Olympics are here again, along with their hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of TV coverage. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it seems to me like the Salt Lake Olympics just finished up, even though it was four years ago.

I've always felt kind of conflicted about the Winter Olympics. On one hand, I myself am an avid snowboarder and I dabble in other winter sports, so it's nice to see some world-wide attention paid to sports that I like. Plus, the Winter Olympics are the only time the majority of Americans care about hockey, just like the Summer Games are the only time we care about track and field.

On the other hand, I can't deny that like the sports that they showcase, there's something very elitist about the Winter Olympics. Last time around I remember Jon Stewart calling the Winter games "the preppie kid's Olympics", and he's essentially right. Unlike the Summer version, the Winter Olympics are pretty much a collection of quirky cult sports that are mostly pursued by well-to-do white people from a handful of wealthy countries in North America and Europe. Trust me, little boys in Bangladesh or Brazil or Morocco are not growing up dreaming of winning a gold medal in the luge.

So leave comments: Are the Winter Olympics inspiring or arrogant?

Changes

A Reno landmark (of sorts) came down for good today. The hideously ugly four-story sign for the old Riverboat Casino no longer disfigures Sierra Street. I meant to get a picture at lunch of the sign coming down but I was a little late. Here's all I could get:

The Riverboat opened in 1988 but only made it about 10 years. Like a lot of enterprises that open their doors in downtown Reno, the Riverboat felt the need to announce it's presence in the most obscenely gaudy way possible--hence the four-story sign shaped like a steamboat paddle-wheel. Then, when things don't work out the business closes down but the bigger-than-life eyesore remains. The hotel portion of the old casino is still in business today but like the majority of downtown Reno hotels it has effectively become low-income housing. Today, almost eight years after the casino shut it's doors, the sign came down to make way for a planned Long's Drug, which will serve the population that is expected to move into downtown's numerous condo projects in the coming years.

Speaking of those projects, people are at last starting to trickle in to Riverwalk Tower, AKA the old Comstock. We may be six months past the originally scheduled opening date, but better late than never I suppose. Interestingly, the RGJ article linked above describes the satisfaction of residents moving in to the old Comstock, but in practically the same breath it notes that the same problems we've seen with developers backing out of condo projects in Vegas now appear to be popping up here in Reno. The Developer who had plans to convert the Cal-Neva Casino's Nevada Tower into condos has backed out of the project, and the Chambolle project which was to go in just across the river from the Palladio now appears to be in doubt because of extremely high construction costs.

I don't expect these to be the last downtown condo projects that fall through, nor do I necessarily think this is a bad thing (except perhaps for the Cal-Neva, which will continue to hold the title of Reno's scuzziest major casino). All of the talk about converting every single square inch of downtown into condos was starting to seem a little ridiculous. Perhaps a few of the more fanciful speculators will now start to be weeded out and those projects that are truly in-demand can proceed.

And since we're talking about development, one bit of news makes me very happy: Gar Woods, the locally-beloved Tahoe Restaurant, says it will be opening a downtown location about two blocks from the Fortress of Solitude.

UPDATE: Kudos to Scott Schrantz of AroundCarson.com for sending me this link to a picture of what the Riverboat's sign used to look like. I agree with Scott; it won't be missed.

Thank God - One More Precious Starbucks

I noticed last night that the new Starbucks (or "ARBUCKS" as the illuminated sign had it--odd that a store that just opened already has a busted sign) is up and running at the corner of Fifth and Nevada. My neighborhood already has a couple of descent, locally-owned coffee shops and there's a Starbucks less than five minutes away, but thankfully now the people of Reno have one more faux-Italian coffee bar at which to buy overpriced, bad coffee or drop off their home-made bombs.

For the benefit of the NSA and my Mom, I'd like to say that the previous sentence was a joke. You know, like that Ann Coulter joke about assassinating a Supreme Court Justice.

Don't Blame the Zebras

I'm about 1000 miles from Seattle, but I can hear the shouts of "we was robbed" from here.

Look, I was pulling for Seattle and 'Bama's Shaun Alexander, and I was disappointed that they lost. But please, Seattle fans, keep your dignity and don't blame the officials.

Yes, Seattle was victimized by several VERY questionable calls; one touchdown was called back on a very ticky-tack offensive pass interference call, another Seattle drive was snuffed out when a first-and-goal at the one was called back on a phantom holding call that was followed by an interception, and Pittsburgh's first touchdown, scored on a Roethlisberger 3rd down scramble, may or may not have broken the plane of the end-zone. But those things will happen. Officials are human and will always blow a few calls.

Besides, it wasn't just the refs who caused Seattle to end the first half (a half that they statistically dominated, by the way) with only three points. It wasn't the refs who caused dropped passes and catches out-of-bounds. It wasn't the refs who allowed Pittsburgh to score on the longest TD play in Superbowl history and then again on a trick play that everyone at the Superbowl party I was at saw coming. And most importantly, it certainly wasn't the refs who caused the Seahawk offense to go completely braindead in the clock-management department at both the end of the first half and the end of the game.

So how were the commercials? Not so great, really. If I had to pick the best of the bunch I'd just fall back on my old standby and go with the careerbuilder.com monkeys. Monkeys dancing to "Cum on feel the Noise"? That's gold. And the chimp in the suit lighting a cigar with a flaming dollar bill? Awesome. It's an ancient rule of comedy, but it still holds true: Monkeys = funny.

I Always Knew Doc Brown Was Up To Something

Click here to see Chocolate Cake City's upcoming sequel to Brokeback Mountain (It's on Salon.com, so you might have to sit through an ad to watch it--sorry). Good Stuff! It's astounding what a little creative editing and mood music can make you believe. Think about that next time you get wrapped up in a Realty--I'm sorry, I mean "Reality"--TV show.

I know nothing about Chocolate Cake City except that they're out of Emerson College in Boston, and that more of this sort of thing might bring them into close competition with my current favorite sketch comedy troupe, L.A.'s Ministry of Unknown Science. MOUS's Detective Elephant Man still cracks me up. "I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!"

Just Too Hot

As if receding glaciers and the loss of vital arctic habitat weren't bad enough, now we have this:

You probably can't tell, but the picture above shows the condition of Reno's outdoor municipal ice rink today at about noon. Normally at this time of day I could look out my office window to see the rink filled with patrons, but not today. Tired of opening the rink every day only to have to close off entire melted sections of it and force patrons to skate in a giant puddle, the city has apparently decided that it can't deny the obvious anymore. This season has just been far too mild for ice skating downtown. Temperatures have routinely climbed into the upper 50's all winter long and the sunshine has been virtually constant. Not exactly ideal conditions for an outdoor, unshaded ice rink.

Someday...

One of my co-workers was in Costa Rica last week. When she got back she gave us all coffee samples made from shade-grown, organic beans from a small farm (I would call it a "plantation" because that just sounds better for coffee, but since their website says "farm" I'll go with that) called Cafe Cristina. The beans are grown on about 60 acres by a family that brags that their methods are the model of sustainability. Becca, my co-worker, tells me that the owners are American engineers who worked on the Panama Canal then moved to Costa Rica after buying a small farm in that beautiful country.

God, isn't that the ultimate dream? Okay, I know it's not for everyone, but to find a wild, beautiful corner of the world and turn it into your own working, living thing of beauty, to live by the seasons, to work out doors, to be a part of the world that surrounds and sustains us instead of being walled off from it in climate controlled, flourescent-lit holding pens, to build something meaningful, maybe even trans-generational--that's my idea of heaven.

Ever the practical one who keeps my feet on the ground when somebody needs to, Melissa has a very short answer when I tell her about how much I'd like to have a place like that someday. She looks at me with undying patience and says "Neither one of us drinks coffee."

Okay, she has a point there. And of course, it will be years before we could ever afford anything like this anyway. But in the end it's not the coffee beans, or the grapes or the bison or any of the niche products I'm always pratling on about producing someday. I'm not looking for another job; as jobs go I've already got a pretty good one. What I'm looking for is a life.

I'm partial to staying here in Northern Nevada, but it's not a requirement. Maybe it will be some open acerage in some obscure mountain valley where I can raise bison or some other alternative livestock (but not llamas--yech, too yuppie). Maybe it will be an orchard in my old stomping ground in the Pacific Northwest. Melissa, who loves wine as much as I do, likes the idea of a small vineyard somewhere near her hometown of St. Louis, in Missouri's little-known but ancient (by American standards) wine country. Or perhaps better opportunities lie to the south, outside the borders of this country. In the end, the product is essentially just a detail. It's the life that matters.

When I hear about Cafe Cristina, the world seems a little brighter. A little voice inside my head whispers "See? It isn't just a hopeless daydream! It's possible. It's possible, damn it! Maybe someday I'll find a way."

Best of the Sierr-o-sphere

Although my blog-gutter on the left is getting rather crowded, I've decided to add a new link section for Northern Nevada bloggers. There's some really good work being done by a lot of people in the Reno-Carson-Tahoe area, and it's time they get their props on this site. This list is a start, and more will be added as time goes by. If you care about what's going on in Northern Nevada, these are sites you should be reading:

Aliens in Reno

Around Carson

David Bobzien

Desert Beacon

mrjerz.org

Reno and its Discontents

Reno Realty Blog

Welcome to the Monkeyhouse

It's Groundhog Day!

Since it will surely be on basic cable tonight (no tie-in is too obvious for the geniuses at TBS or USA) do yourself a favor and catch Groundhog Day. This highly under-appreciated 1993 Bill Murray comedy scores a very impressive 94% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomato-meter because it bears a strong surface resemblance to a disposable lighthearted comedy, but at its heart it is a movie that merits paying attention to. Everyone knows the film's gimmick: a TV weatherman sent to cover the Groundhog Day celebrations in Puxatawney, Pennsylvania somehow keeps waking up to find that he is repeating the same day--the eponymous Groundhog Day--over and over. That's the gimmick, but the movie is about so much more than that.

Murray is at his cynical, understated best as his character Phil Connors, a witty but self-centered jerk, moves through stages of bewilderment, arrogant hedonism, suicidal despair, and finally acceptance and a deep happiness that can only come with real wisdom. But the reason this movie is a classic and not just a good movie is that it defies attempts to turn it into a simple allegory or a sweet morality tale. I never cease to be moved at the sequence wherein we watch Phil's repeated attempts to save an unnamed homeless man who inexplicably dies on this fateful Groundhog Day. Phil feeds him, takes him to the hospital, even desperately tries performing CPR himself, but nothing works. Every day the poor man dies and there's nothing Phil or anyone else can do about it. As the nurse says to Phil, it's just his time. The message here is not a simple one, but I think that before Phil can grow and learn to love someone else he has to accept not only his own limitations but the limitations of the world around him. The movie is full of little moments like that. If you've never sat down to watch it, give it a shot.

Rat Bastard

To whomever it was that knocked the driver's side mirror off of Melissa's car in the Target parking lot off of South Virginia and snuck off without leaving a note:

You are a Rat Bastard. There is a special circle of Hell reserved for people like you. When Karma serves you up a big sh*t sandwich, I hope Karma remembers to spit in it first.

It doesn't matter, though. Melissa triumphed today. She took the GMAT and scored much higher than what she needed for the MBA program at UNR. The sky is the limit for my girl. Which is more than I can say for hit-and-run rat bastards trolling Target parking lots.