Reno...a shit hole, whold on, pardner
You're right, Reno is dying a slow death, but it didn't have to be that way.
I went to school at UNR in the early seventies and at that time it was a happenning place. There as the New China Club where you were the only Caucausian in the joint, yet the place was so smoky that you really couldn't tell.
Then there was Harold Club, owned by Pappy Smith, who liked to get behind the twenty one table and deals and then yell out, "Double all the winning bets." Harold's Club had billboards all over the world that pictured a scrufty mining cariacture in a covered wagon with a sign depicting how many miles to Harolds Club. "Harolds Club or Bust."
And can we forget the Mapes, owned by Charlie Mapes, and his game room with hunting rophies he collected all around the world. Charlie was an original, and a top notch poker palyer, not the carbon copy-knucklehead with the reversed baseball cap advertising some on line, poker something or other.
You might have caught the scene with Elliott Gould and James Caan playing poker at the Mapes in California Split; and later on saw the Mapes implode much to the chagrin of the locals.
Wanna go back even further. There was the Riverside Hotel, owned by Jessie Beck, that catered to all the serviceman returning from the war.
The Riverside flanked the icy waters of the Truckee River and they say many a wedding ring was tossed into its frigid waters from hotel guests awaiting their final divorce.
Then there was Bill Harrah, who pioneered gambling in Northern Nevada and four star ratings with his hotel enterprises. He also housed one of the foremost collection of automobiles in Harrahs' Automobile Museum in nearby Sparks, Nevada.
Ive got more stories, lots of them, before Corporate profits and greed ripped the heart and soul out of the town. Indian casinos began to divert much of the automobile traffic. Once glitzy entertainment went dark and comps were based on what you lost, not who you were. That Surf and Turf Special for $9.99 was now reduced to $1.50 for a hot dog and a Heineken at the stockyards of the casinos, the Cal Neva.
But the death knell came to Reno, when unlike Vegas, the local casinos went their disparate ways and tried to market the city on their own, unlike Vegas, who promoted Vegas and the experience. Slowly Vegas began to pull away with many new casinos, a racetrack for the NASCAR fans, and mega media events.
Reno is now that rinsed out blonde sitting in the shadows of your favorite watering hole- still there right about closing time, remembering what she used to be.
But a shithole?
Not by a long shot..
