Reno, NV: From Casinos to Whole Foods
I’ve been traveling to Reno, Nevada almost my entire life. A lot of my family settled there in the early 1990s including my grandmother, my aunt and a few of my cousins. In 2016, I moved to the high desert city to attend college and start a new chapter of my life. I ended up only lasting a year and a half.
Experiencing the city from when I was little to now, Reno was always overwhelmingly white, with hardly any minorities to speak of. Streets were and are still lined with tattoo parlors, adult shops, dive bars and of course, seedy casinos that smelled like stale cigarettes. This is the Reno I know.
About 10 years ago, the city experienced certain changes that may be considered “gentrification.” A Whole Foods popped up, along with a bunch of hipster bars and restaurants in a little segment called “Midtown”. One of these places is called “Death and Taxes” and features a bearded fellow dressed in 1890’s attire serving and mixing you old fashioned drinks from yesteryears. The clientele has a certain resemblance to the bartender.
My aunt, an escrow officer, is always telling the family that Reno is the happening place where businesses and people are flocking to on a daily basis. Five years ago the city offered cheap, affordable real estate which appeals to younger people who cannot afford cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco. A concern is pushing out these classic dive bars that have culture and ties connected to the city. Also, the more people who move to the city, the more and more expensive real estate will cost. Recently, Tesla bought land right outside of Reno, adding to the equation of driving up land cost. Sadly, one of my favorite burger places recently closed in Reno due to the pandemic and driving costs. It was the diner in the Little Nugget Casino which served the infamous “Awful Awful burger.”
I would like to know if Reno has experienced anything in the past, especially with the casino boom, displacing the rural Basque population that used to heavily dominate the area.
I get my news from social media (back when I used it) and the Los Angeles Times. Living in Reno, most people I knew got it from these sources as well, except for city’s local paper, the Reno Gazette-Journal. What this community could do in order to be better represented would be to have profiles on business owners who’ve been in Reno before this slow, painful gentrification process started taking place 10 years ago. It would show what Reno was before and where the roots are engrained.
Related Article: https://www.rgj.com/story/life/2018/01/03/wary-redevelopment-and-4-other-reno-trends-watch-out-2018/936701001/