Spitting Image and Austin Pratt Release 1st 775 Album with Sticker Guy’s Slovenly Recordings

After Spitting Image members went their separate ways for a while, vocalist and lyricist Austin Pratt for the Reno punk band said they all returned to the Biggest Little City.  The geographical reunion and new maturity led to new creativity.

“I went to graduate school and some of us went to Chicago and Florida. And so we came back to Reno all at the same time, sort of coincidentally in 2019 and just started right up again,” Pratt said who since also became a painting instructor and then Curator of University Galleries at UNR.

Now Spitting Image will issue their debut album Full Sun on February 3rd, which will have a vinyl release with Slovenly Recordings. That’s a record label run by Pete Menchetti, known locally as “Sticker Guy” the name of his foundational company.

Slovenly Recording has been around 20 years and Sticker Guy 30. The predecessor to Slovenly was 702 Records, also started by Menchetti, which released three dozen records, some by Reno punk bands like The Atomiks.  Full Sun will be the first Reno record for Slovenly, reviving the Reno punk connection. 

“It’s definitely in the realm of hardcore punk, post punk, sort of psych art sort of stuff,” Pratt said of Spitting Image. “There's a lot musical lineage in there, you know, thinking back to sort of eighties SST records (an independent record label out of Long Beach, California), Dischord Records (out of Washington, D.C.), sort of stuff like that. The kind of Pacific Northwest and Washington D.C. sort of eighties and nineties music stuff. So there's that. We are kind of all over the place. It’s a lot of crowd rock influence and hardcore influence.”

Slovenly’s role will be “to promote, produce, distribute, sell, and just help them out however we can, get on tour, get the records into stores, get the records around the world, as many countries as we can, and to as many ears as we can, and to help the band out,” Menchetti said.

For the local music scene to keep thriving, Pratt would also like to see a medium size, 500 capacity type venue, succeed in Reno, which he believes is missing, while giving props to the Holland Project for attracting younger fans.  

Menchetti who also runs the Reno festival Debach-A-Reno and the traveling festival We’re Loud also would like to see more options for live musical events and festivals. 

“I don't really like some of the casino spaces,” he said. “I think some of them are just too clean, you know, we need a little bit of grittiness, because this is DIY yeah, we're we're looking around.”

Pratt said gentrification and rising prices has made it difficult for artists. 

“It's extremely expensive and unaffordable for many people,” he said.  “There is a kind of white washing and gentrifying and kind of this like tech slickness that is happening in Reno. Some of [Reno’s] charm, and presence and character in the past I think is kind of getting paved over in some ways.”

Menchetti has felt rising prices for his Sticker Guy business, making custom vinyl stickers, die cuts, window decals, and roll labels. His rent on his Freeport Blvd headquarters went up by 19% in September. 

“We're in Sparks, you know, so it's pretty ridiculous,” Menchetti. 

He started Sticker Guy when he was 19, and uses that company to help musicians get exposure. “I wouldn't be able to do it without the sticker company. I mean the record label unfortunately loses money every year. Sticker Guy is the financier of the record label and also of the festivals that we're doing around the world.”

He sees the importance of giving back locally and staying rooted.

“Like back in the nineties, a lot of my friends were moving to cities that were already cool,” Menchetti said. “And you know, I was always fighting them on that. Like, why don't you stay here and make Reno cool? You know? You know Portland and Seattle are really not that different from Reno in the grand scheme of things.”

For Pratt, his work at UNR and his other artistic outlet as a painter helps him keep going. 

“It’s nice to have different outlets,” he said as our interview wrapped up. “You know, painting is so solitary and isolated and being in a band as a collaborative project, but it's also a performative project and it's also get to be verbal and I want to say literary or lyrical.”

“Start small. Don't try to grow too fast,” Menchetti said for his own closing thoughts and keys to long standing success as a Reno business person and alternative music driver.  “Things that grow really fast, fall really fast in my experience. Just do what you do and do it yourself and just keep at it.”

Our Town Reno reporting January 2023

New Made in Reno Film Rotten Apple Explores Mental Illness

Stephen George, a 34-year-old Ph.D. student in Chemistry at the University of Nevada, Reno and aspiring filmmaker, has recently made a locally produced film expected to be released in late January or early February, about “mental illness, obsession, and mania.”

George was inspired to make a film involving mental illness after his own experiences with hypochondria and after listening to a podcast on false pregnancy, a condition where someone believes they are pregnant when they are not. Soon he began writing the movie with his friend Zoë Spanbroek, and they frequently exchanged scripts. 

George worked with a tight “shoestring” $3,000 budget (the trailer is from a YouTube channel called Complicated Shoes Productions) and used local talent from the Reno Artists Guild.

This includes Ragen Locricchio (in photo below) who stars as Diana, the woman who falls into mania and delusion after watching an old tube TV, and Greg Palmer whose duties ranged from recording sound to serving as assistant director on occasion. 

George attributes his ability to make a film with such a small budget to the generosity of locals who frequently allowed him to film at locations for free, including UNR which provides free film equipment rentals and allowed him to shoot scenes in the medical school and church on campus. 

“I probably took on more than I can handle,” said George in a joking manner about his soon-to-be-released film with an estimated run time of 40 minutes. Rotten Apple will be George’s third film and will be shown locally before being pitched to streaming platforms for further distribution. George purposely left the setting ambiguous to create mystery within the film, but suspects Reno locals will recognize some locations. 

“What I really like about the Reno [film] scene is that people want to do stuff,” the director told Our Town Reno. “They want to create stuff.”

“It’s cathartic,” George said of making a film about mental illness. “You get your thoughts out, you get your ideas out. You're sharing it with people, and maybe someone sees it and they go ‘I can relate to this.’”

George does warn that the sensitive topics featured in the film might make some people uncomfortable.

Reporting by Ariel Smith for Our Town Reno with photos provided by Stephen George

Honey Plant: The Origin Story of Reno’s Faithful Funk Duo

Honey Plant started with two musicians, Matthew Nist and Robin Lowe, in separate bands splitting rent for a studio space in Southern California. They joined forces to get the most bang for their buck and they weren’t necessarily expecting a band to form, and certainly couldn’t anticipate the friendship that would result in turn. Now, with both of them based in Reno and expanding the band with other musicians, more performances, and more passion than ever, it’s clear that funk is here to stay in the Biggest Little City.

Funk: how to describe such a genre? Music that is gravitationally groovy? Rhythms that incite a bodacious boogie? Alliterations aside, Nist sums up the genre with one word: fun.

Honey Plant drummer Matthew Nist with said strong margarita in hand. Photo By Vanessa Ribeiro.

Since establishing themselves in Reno, they have performed over 35 live shows at various local music venues including Cypress Music Hall, The Holland Project, and Matador Lounge. 

“Reno has really shown up and shown out with their intimacy,” Lowe said. “Everyone that I’m meeting here, I feel like I can develop a real relationship with and it’s not just based on transaction.” 

Honey Plant vocalist and bass extraordinaire Robin Lowe. Photo by Vanessa Ribeiro.

As Nist and Lowe found their bearings in Reno- a city with a thriving rock and punk scene- the opportunities to hone the sound of Honey Plant arose with the introduction of Noah Jeffery, a Reno local with saxophone skills, who had only flirted with the funk genre before. That didn’t stop him from coming in with a bang, performing with the duo for the first time in September of 2022.

The band has plans to add more members and work towards the eventual goal of touring the West Coast- and who knows, maybe the world one day.

Honey Plant can be found @honey_plantmusic on Instagram

Reporting for Our Town Reno by Vanessa Ribeiro 

Cold Stone, How a Local Creamery Owner Finds Success

Chris Reynolds has owned and operated numerous Cold Stones in Reno since February 2003, but the one in the former Shoppers Square, now the Reno Public Market, has been his most successful.  He hopes the new space will bring in new customers without losing the regulars.

After a lengthy construction process and tough adjustments during the pandemic, he finally moved into the shiny new location across from the Sprouts supermarket, a few hundred feet from his previous location. 

The new location has more space for employees and an area for families to enjoy their ice cream on site, something Reynolds prefers to their previous location which primarily did grab-and-go orders. 

The ice cream and waffle cones are made in-house using restaurant-grade waffle irons and an industrial ice cream churner. The process to make ice cream and waffle cones often takes all morning and an employee is dedicated to each task. Multiple batches must be made to avoid running out during the post-dinner rush. 

“Who wouldn’t want to go home smelling like a waffle cone?”said Reynolds, tongue in cheek.

In the back room a community board is filled with doodles, drawings, and flyers promoting an employee's radio shows. 

Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, Reynolds appreciated how it forced him to lean into his entrepreneurial spirit while he came up with plans to rearrange the store and created new ordering methods, including a specialized phone order system and the use of delivery apps, that minimized contact between workers and customers. 

“Pizza shops and ice cream shops really flourished,” said Reynolds who suspected an increase in their sales was partly due to parents trying to calm down their cooped up kids during lockdowns. 

Reno’s ice cream habit stuck, and the last two years have been some of the busiest this Cold Stone has experienced.

Staffing was a struggle for Reynolds until just recently when people became more comfortable working in close proximity with one another again, and he looks forward to the world settling back into more normal times.

On the morning of Our Town Reno’s visit Reynolds was seen setting up chairs in the dining area and running across the parking lot to Sprouts to buy an armful of bananas to get employees through the day. 

Reporting by Ariel Smith for Our Town Reno

Recycled Records, Spinning and Sticking Around in Reno since 1978

In a continuously evolving Reno, there is one constant, Recycled Records. The store has been open since 1978 and survived a couple of locations, from Wells Avenue to Virginia Street to another spot on Virginia Street. It has been at its current location in the heart of Midtown since 2012 where it has fared well with the vinyl record resurgence of the 2010s and increased foot traffic. 

During December special bins of festive music are placed on the counter near the register

Kyle Howell and Eric Jacobson bought the store from its long-time owner Paul Doege in October 2019. The store's atmosphere and design didn’t change and neither did the magnitude of offerings.

“They really don’t exist anymore. We’re one of a kind,” said Howell of used music stores. “We got all kinds of stuff you can’t even find anywhere else, especially in Reno.”

On top of the large stacks of CDs odd knick-knacks and even more CDs can be found. Pictured here are two figure-drawing dolls in a tender embrace. 

At the front of the store, there are speakers and other equipment, posters, and a dollar wall where less popular or somewhat damaged items are lovingly c̶r̶o̶s̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ frequently on top of the artist's face. A little further in, CDs are sorted and stacked six feet high featuring genres like country & western, soul, and rock. Priced affordably at two for $12 listeners can find albums no longer in print or that are hard to find in other music stores. 

The back of the store is where the real treasures lie. Vinyl records cover the walls and every inch of shelf space. 

The main attraction is unsurprisingly their vinyl collection which features thousands of used and new records.

Recently Howell has noticed an increase in sales of cassette tapes. Visitors young and old experience days passed as they flip through wooden crates in search of musical gold. Their clientele, he says, is surprisingly diverse. 

On the day of Our Town Reno’s interview, a young teen came in and showed their friends a Dolly Parton CD. A man in his late 20s flipped carefully through the “fresh meat” section. And an older man examined a record near the cassettes. 

Reno’s one-stop shop for eclectic music is here to stay with Howell telling those interested in the store: “It doesn’t suck”

Photos and Report by Ariel Smith for Our Town Reno

Alyce Bryant Introduces Reno to Chair Yoga at the Buddhist Center

Alyce Bryant, a local yoga instructor, combats yoga’s intimidating reputation with a chair and an informal atmosphere. 

At the Reno Buddhist Center in Midtown Reno, you’ll find a large brick building with a welcoming white archway leading to a set of double doors. Inside a gray carpeted hallway leads to a large assembly room half dedicated to chairs and tables, half empty, and with a large and ornate altar at the front with Buddhist iconography. 

On Tuesdays from 10:30-11:45 a.m., you’ll also find Alyce Bryant, 33, teaching a “chair yoga” class. Chair yoga is as simple as the name suggests. Participants complete a variety of simple stretches such as cat and cow poses that involve gently arching the spine. These poses are modified to be done while sitting and in a few standing poses the chair is used to provide balance. 

 “Chair yoga allows for inclusivity, accessibility and most of all connection back to self,” said Bryant to Our Town Reno during a recent Tuesday morning session. These cozy and non-intimidating classes are funded through a donation-based system at the Reno Buddhist Center. Attendees have access to yoga blocks, mats, and blankets used to make the chair more comfortable to sit in, and to adjust poses to each individual skill level. 

“I’ve been doing [yoga] for 20 years. I started at 13 to help my scoliosis,” Bryant said of her own journey. Bryant has been teaching yoga for two years both online and in-person.

Creating a fun, informal atmosphere is an important part of Bryant’s class as she walks participants through stretches, breathing exercises, meditation, and positive self-talk.  The class is a boon to flexibility, concentration, strength and mood, while reducing stress and joint strain.

Our Town Reno reporting by Ariel Smith

Talking Biggest Little Mushrooms with Walker Sauls

GO: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what originally piqued your interest and fascination with mushrooms before your business was even established?

WS: So I’m a Reno native, born and raised. I went to UNR and got my bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science. Right after graduating, I moved up to Oregon to kind of get out of my hometown and experience more of the world, I guess. I was just up there serving tables, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my degree and my life. I noticed that there were mushrooms growing all around me, and I kind of got fascinated by them.

GO: What is it about mushrooms in particular that fascinates you?

WS: Honestly, I think it’s the fact that they have medicinal properties that can help people with their physical and mental health. When I started researching them more, I learned that they can actually be very beneficial for the environment. I’ve always loved just going out hiking in nature and experiencing the outdoors, and I found that I could go out and do all that stuff I love doing anyways, while finding and looking for these different kinds of mushrooms. It kind of turned into like an adult Easter egg hunt, you could say.

GO: Can you expand more on the medicinal properties of mushrooms and the different health benefits they can provide to people?

WS: So there are several species that have wide-ranging medicinal benefits. Several of these species are more popular and you’ll see them more widely dispersed. One of them is Lion’s Mane, which can help with memory and the nervous system, sort of like a brain support mushroom. Cordyceps is another very popular one, which helps with things like energy, stamina, and oxygenating the blood. Reishi is a very ancient mushroom that’s been used in traditional Chinese medicine for a very long time. It helps with immune support, anti-inflammation, allergies, sleep – it’s a very wide-ranging one. Turkey Tail is another really cool one, and it’s one of the first that I learned how to forage in Oregon. It’s actually an approved cancer treatment all by itself in Japan, and is being studied right now in the United States for the same thing. It has this polysaccharide that’s known to be very effective at killing cancer cells. And the last one I’ll mention is Chaga, also a kind of ancient traditional medicine. It can be great for hair, skin, nails, gut health, anti-inflammation things like that. There’s also a lot of support and studies happening around psilocybin mushrooms, which are actives that aren’t exactly legal yet in Nevada but are gaining a lot of support. It seems like states are starting to legalize them; they are now allowed for therapeutic use in both Oregon and Colorado. That also fascinated me for their potential benefits for people’s mental health. We’ll see where things go, but I’m definitely a supporter of being able to get that kind of medicine out to people who need it.

GO: How did you go from foraging mushrooms in Oregon to starting up a commercial mushroom-growing business in Reno?

WS: After living in Oregon for about four years just studying, learning and foraging for mushrooms as a hobby, I moved back down here [to Reno] and I kind of had a fresh start. I learned that you could grow mushrooms very sustainably and realized I could kind of merge my interest in mushrooms with my passion for environmental stewardship, which is what I went to school for. So I decided to start experimenting with growing mushrooms in the high desert … that was around two and a half years ago, right at the start of COVID, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I did some experimental grows for about six months, and figured out a good system that worked for me. I got my LLC and my first commercial client about two years ago, and I was off to the races.

GO: For people that don’t know the intricacies, could you give a basic 101 explanation of how you go about growing and harvesting your mushrooms?

WS: I will do my best to keep it as simple as possible! So you basically start out with a spore. Two spores will germinate and kind of mate and grow together, creating what is known as a network of mycelium which is like the body of the mushroom. If it was like an iceberg, it would be the part that’s underneath the water. Mycelium will metabolize the food that’s in the soil or dead tree for example, breaking down nutrients and absorbing them. When the conditions are right and it’s absorbed enough nutrients, it will form a mushroom. The way I do it requires me to take cultures of mycelium and inoculate sterilized grains with that mycelium, which takes about two weeks to colonize fully. Then I take those colonized grains and inoculate them into the mushroom food, what you’d call the substrate. It takes around another two weeks to inoculate, and depending on the species, it can take more [time]. Once that’s fully colonized, I put the fruiting block into my grow rooms and introduce it to the right conditions – more airflow, higher humidity, temperature change – which initiates the mushrooms to start forming. Once they start growing, it only takes about a week for them to go from babies to fully mature mushrooms. That’s when I harvest them. They’re ready to go off as soon as possible to my customers since they only really have a 3-5 day shelf life.

GO: How do you transform the freshly harvested mushrooms into other products that you sell at Biggest Little Mushrooms?

WS: So what you can do with fresh mushrooms is dry them out, and turn them into a powder. You can sell them in powder form which is probably not as tasty or gourmet, but you can still get a lot of the nutrients and benefits that way. I’ve also made mushroom jerky before, which is a dehydrated mushroom that’s marinated and has a longer shelf life. You can also ferment mushrooms, which I have experimented with, but that’s not something I sell right now. What I have been selling a lot of recently are medicinal mushroom tinctures. I take the five species I mentioned earlier – dry mushrooms of those kinds – and I will do a dual extraction using alcohol and water to extract the medicinal components out of them and then bottle them up in tincture form and sell them as a medicinal supplement to people.

GO: You mentioned previously that you grow your mushrooms in as sustainable a way as possible. What do you do differently to make those sustainable changes in the growing process?

WS: So mushrooms inherently grow on sort of like agricultural waste streams, places people otherwise wouldn’t use. I’ve used wood shavings, soybeans, and spent coffee grounds to grow mushrooms, I try to grow them on things that would otherwise go to waste. Some other things I do is using fully compostable packaging and going as low on single-use plastics as possible. It does cost a little more, but in my opinion, it’s worth it to have that lower footprint. I also won’t really temperature control my grow room, so it’s very natural in terms of temperature in there. I’ll grow different species in different seasons. So in the wintertime, I’ll grow mushrooms that thrive more in colder weather, and in the summertime, I’ll grow more warm-weather species. That’s a way I can cut back on the environmental impact. I have a lot of future plans to go more sustainable and would love to eventually get solar panels and power most of my farm on solar energy. [The grow room] doesn’t really require too much lighting, so I just use LED strips in my rooms which don’t use too much power. They’re mushrooms. They like dark, moist environments. So it’s pretty chill.

GO: How do mushrooms benefit the environment out in the wild?

WS: There are a lot of benefits, I can probably only speak to a few. The world of mycology is a very understudied science and there are so many amazing benefits that people are still discovering. But yeah, basically they are decomposers. They take things that are dead or dying and will eat them, break them down, and turn them into organic matter that can then be reabsorbed by the environment. They really help to create a healthy soil web, and mycelium also acts like fodder or food for other microbes in the soil. Another very interesting thing that mushrooms do that has been discovered recently is what people like to call the “World Wide Web.” Scientists have discovered that mycelial networks will connect entire forests and ecosystems. If you’re, say, out in the forest in Tahoe and looking around the surrounding trees, they’re actually connecting underground through a network of mycelium similar to a neural network you could see in somebody’s brain. They’ve found that these trees are actually able to transfer nutrients, and communicate in a way that isn’t quite understood. Mother trees can take care of their direct offspring, or if a tree is struggling, the surrounding trees can help that specific tree, like they have some sort of knowledge. Scientists haven’t really figured out how this kind of communication happens, the whole idea of how mycelium works is very unknown and very fascinating.

GO: Are there a lot of wild mushrooms in the Reno and Tahoe region specifically?

WS: Yeah, there are for sure. There are dozens of different gourmet and medicinal active species in Reno and Tahoe. Tahoe definitely has more mycology going on, but you can definitely still find mycelium networks in deserts. If you’re talking about mushroom activity up near Lake Tahoe and on the western slope of the Sierra, there are some pretty cool gourmet species. I’ve gone out foraging there for Morels, which grow after a big fire comes through. They make relationships with tree roots and are called mycorrhizal fungi. From what I understand, once their host tree burns down in a forest, they will make as many mushrooms as possible so they can spread their genetics to a new area and make a ton of spores. So you’ll go out to these crazy landscapes that have just been burnt. There’s ash everywhere, you’re getting soot on your face. And then all of a sudden you’ll just see these Morels, and it’s pretty cool.

GO: How do you go about foraging for mushrooms in the wild? How can you figure out if the mushrooms you find are safe to eat or even touch?

WS: There’s a really cool website that is a great resource for anybody trying to do this, and it’s how I first got into identifying mushrooms. It’s called Shroom Tree; you can post pictures on there. You definitely want to get the right kind of picture, a top picture and a bottom picture of the gills underneath. There’s guidance on the site. But you post your pictures and there are trusted identifiers on there – professional mycologists. You only want to listen to them, don’t listen to anybody else that answers your post. The trusted identifiers are vetted by the website. 

GO: Are there particular signs or environmental markers you look out for when foraging> Or do you wander around until you spot a cluster of mushrooms?

WS: You know, it’s a little bit of both. There’s part of it where you’re just going out there and trying to follow your intuition, but it’s also to do with matching that with knowing the environment that they grow in. Around here, they like fir and cedar trees. So you’ll be looking for a certain kind of tree or a certain slope of the mountain. North-facing slopes retain more water, for example, so might possibly have more mushrooms, especially later in the season. A lot of the time they’ll come out after a rainstorm, so if you go out a few days after a storm you’ll have a better chance. Again, in my experience, it’s more like the mushrooms find you, and it’s at times you least expect it. You’ll be looking all day and all of a sudden you’ll almost step on one unexpectedly.

GO: Are there any rules or regulations currently in place surrounding wild mushroom foraging?

\WS: There are rules, and you’ll have to look them up for the different counties and areas. I have gotten commercial foraging licenses. If you want to harvest more than a gallon of Morels, or something like that, you have to get a license. There are different rules for different mushrooms. I know there are some species that are more ‘prized’ and it would be frowned upon if you did take them. There’s a sort of rule of thumb that I’ve talked to other people about; you don’t want to take the baby mushrooms. My thought on it is if they haven’t had a chance to spread their spores and genetics and you should give them a chance to do their thing. There’s going to be more next year. It’s just a good rule of thumb in my opinion.

GO: Where do you source the spores to grow your mushrooms, and do you have the ability to grow species that aren’t native to this area and climate?

WS: I source my strains from commercial companies or friends that also run mushroom farms. This is because these strains have been tried and tested to perform well for commercial viability. Not every strain in the wild is going to form big clusters of mushrooms that are going to yield high. That’s what you need when you’re running a business; you need consistency if you’re looking to make money. I do everything indoors, you can’t really grow mushrooms outdoors in Nevada. Not commercially. You might be able to grow a couple of species in a shady spot in your yard, but what I do is recreate rainforest conditions inside. Humidity is a big factor in Nevada. I have indoor rooms which have humidity pumping into them, and it’s all regulated. And then they need to be super clean and sterile since you’re pretty much creating an environment for any little microbe to thrive in. You want to make sure the mushroom mycelium in happy and the only thing in there, which might be my least favorite part of the job.

GO: Have you had any batches that got contaminated and ruined?

WS: Most definitely. I think I would be a mushroom star if I didn’t. I mean, if anybody’s looking to get into mycology, expect some failures but don't look at it as a failure. Look at it as an opportunity to grow and know that it does get easier.

GO: Do you run Biggest Little Mushrooms solo as a full-time venture?

WS: After the first six months or so, I turned it into a full-time thing. I have grown it to where I’m now supplying seven different restaurants, the Great Basin Food Co-op, and Riverside Farmer’s Market which is a fantastic farmers market. I can’t recommend it enough. Everybody that I work with is great, and it’s sort of turned into this beast that I can’t control. I’m growing and selling between 100-150lbs of mushrooms a week which is crazy. It’s quite a bit of labor, cleaning and organizing all the back-end stuff. I just hired somebody about three months ago and it’s been great so far. It’s been a slow growth of the business over the past two years, it’s been a lot of work which I think you can expect when starting a business. It’s like a grind for at least a few years.

GO: What does the future look like for Biggest Little Mushrooms?

WS: You know, I see a lot of potential for expansion in this industry and a lot of people picking up on mushrooms for how cool they are, on this wave that I think is well-backed and founded. I do have plans to expand, but I’m not sure if that entails growing a ton more mushrooms necessarily. There are lots more interesting routes to explore in mycology, and I really am fascinated by making high-quality medicine and supplements. I’ve been doing a lot of research, and they have a longer shelf life so that business model makes a little more sense on my end. I’m definitely not planning on going anywhere. I love being able to supply very healthy superfoods to the community, and I would love to become more efficient and be able to grow more in the same space and continue to dial in my processes. Beyond that, I have a couple of ideas in the works. I’ve had a lot of interest from people wanting to experiment with this kind of stuff, and I want to be able to empower people to do these kinds of things on their own. 

GO: Finally, what is your favorite mushroom recipe to whip up in the kitchen?

WS: Oh man. Yeah, I’d say I definitely have a favorite recipe. It’s one I just did with my family over Thanksgiving. Lion’s Mane crab cakes. Lion’s Mane has sort of a crab texture and flavor to it, and there’s a really great recipe on foragerchef.com. You’re replacing the crab for Lion’s Mane pretty much, and it’s so good. Mushrooms are very high in protein. The oyster mushrooms I sell, if you don’t account for water content they’re around 30% protein which is super high. If you haven’t tried the oyster mushroom tacos at Estella Tacos & Mezcal, you should. They buy from me, and I know I’m a little bit biased but seriously, these tacos are the bomb.

You can catch Walker and his mushrooms at the Riverside Farmer’s Market every Saturday from 9-12, rain or shine. Make sure to follow @biggestlittlemushrooms on Instagram to stay up to date with Walker’s upcoming events and harvests.

Our Town Reno reporting by Gaia Osborne

Monica and Fernando, Trying to Reopen La Gente, a Chicano Community Store

La Gente is a Chicano themed clothes and memorabilia store located on Prater on the rebound. Media often focus on new businesses or thriving ones, but less on those trying to be able to operate after initial challenges.

This shop was open only for a short time early this year before the couple who run it say it was forced to close.

It was heartbreaking for owners Monica and Fernando who are retired from other jobs and had poured all of their savings into their new business.

They say the shutdown was due to a licensing issue. This was because the side of the street where the fashion store is located, specifically the building they are in, had never sold clothes but rather food.

“The funny thing is I can go across the street and sell there, but I don’t want to, I put all my work here,” said Fernando.

The couple hopes to reopen as soon as the licensing issue is resolved. “We’re working closely with [officials] and they’re working with us,” said Monica.

Monica and Fernando have been on the rebound for themselves before. They were actually divorced for many years and then got back together.

They are also survivors of gang violence in California, including one time when they were relaxing in front of their house and were shot at while Monica was pregnant. “Here in Reno no one bothers you,” said Fernando of preferring it here. “Back home they would pull you over for no reason just simply because you were dressed a certain way or you were driving a lowrider.”

The store is covered in all sorts of Chicano cultural memorabilia such as Teen Angel magazines and others that dedicated themselves to publishing the Chicano culture in the late ‘90s to the early 2000s.

Fernando has collected many himself but most were passed down from his family. These magazines have poetry, photos, and letters that readers submitted. “There wasn’t really a way for people to communicate or share these things back then, that’s why they sent them to the magazines,” said Monica. 

What most stands out however are the murals that cover the outside and inside of the store. These murals are drawings by Monica’s father. He was a famous Chicano artist across California who drew inspiration from his wife and other aspects of Hispanic culture.

“I have some of the original photos of my mom posing for these drawings,” said Monica. “Everyone in the ’90s had some of the posters with these drawings on them. You could get them at the gas stations and he was so well known,” said Fernando.

Monica has asked her family for some of the drawings in order to copy them and place them on products such as candles. “If we had to leave this store for any reason we’re taking the murals with us. We’d paint over them, they’re ours” said Monica. 

The store itself is like visiting a museum. Everything on the walls, even some of the merchandise, has a rich and interesting history. One could spend hours learning about each item and its history. Fernando has two beautiful paintings on handkerchiefs painted by inmates. Those handkerchiefs have symbols that are representative of the Hispanic community such as the Mexican eagle. 

Even some of the merchandise is unique and hard to come by. Fernando pointed out that La Gente sells Teen Angle t-shirts. “They only have one vendor per state,” said Fernando in reference to the brand Pocho. “They decided to name it that in irony of what Pocho means,” said Monica. Pocho is a derogatory term to refer to a Hispanic American. Monica and Fernando feel very honored that the company has chosen their store to be the one in Nevada to sell this merchandise. 

Fernando decided to name the store La Gente for the community. “This is their space, their store, it’s for the gente,” said Fernando. He represents the Chicano community in every aspect of his business including putting photos and t-shirts from local lowriders clubs on the store walls. Fernando says the Chicano community has been extremely supportive of the business and loves to visit and hang out like family. “They protect this place,” said Fernando. Monica and Fernando have many plans for the store, including turning the shop into a place for the community to be able to hang out. 
“We used to have an art gallery in the shop,” said Fernando. Monica wants to add a little library inside the store eventually and has other ideas to engage customers to stay a little while longer. The store has chairs and a table or two that certainly invite the shopper to sit down for a while and just hang out in the store.

No one is excluded. Monica and Fernando told of a time when they let a homeless man inside the shop to hang out. “I remember someone was walking by and they told me, that’s what separates you from everyone else,” said Fernando. They don’t turn anyone away because they know how that feels, they have been through it all including homelessness. 

For now, however, Monica and Fernando can’t sell anything in their store or they could get in trouble with the City of Reno. “We have boxes of merchandise just sitting there,” said Fernando. However, they both know and have faith that the community will make up for the time lost when they reopen. Fernando and Monica are hoping the store will be open early next year and back in full swing throughout 2023. 

Our Town Reno reporting by Nancy Vazquez

Churros Hueso's, a Jalisco Style Family Affair

Churros Huesos is a family business that started more than 20 years ago. It carries the last name Huesos which also belongs to Jose and Agustin’s father. “I learned how to make churros helping my dad in Mexico when I was 15 or 16 years old,” says Jose.

“[My father] was the one who initiated this in Mexico making churros for many years at the fairs,” Agustin remembers. The style and flavors come from the Jalisco area, and now their truck thrives in northern Nevada.

What really sets them apart from others who sell churros, they say, are their custom-made, tradition based recipes. They have menu items such as Churro Macho which are bits of churros and plantain banana spread with sour cream. Other items include a mix of vanilla ice cream with churros and other delicious toppings. 

“The way we make our churros is very different. You don’t really see it around here, or around these areas. The people have even said, this is like in my pueblo. That’s a big difference, there may be other churreros but these are very different,” says Agustin. 

The biggest joy for them is interacting with their customers. “ I love to see people happy when I serve the churros. Especially the kids when they have happy faces,” says Jose.

The brothers say they enjoy hearing feedback from the customers even if it’s negative because they learn from it. Overall, the local support, especially from the entire Hispanic community, has been gratifying. “I think for the Hispanic community this is like a pride for them to know that they can and have churros as they tasted as kids in their pueblos,” says Agustin.

For the future, the brothers hope to expand their business and grow as people. “We hope to keep learning from our business and to take care of it,” says Agustin.

Our Town Reno reporting by Nancy Vazquez

Cafe con Papi, Bringing Culture by the Cup for Some, and Rekindling Memories For Others

Cafe Con Papi on East Sixth Street opened this year with little initial fanfare in an unassuming small building. Inside colorful, evocative murals start to give a different sense of a special place.

The story of its owner, Jose Delgado, who previously worked as a mixologist in Miami, is full of intricate coffee-linked layers, leading to a quick success story in Reno.

Regular clientele now comes in looking for delicious lattes, including favorites Café Con Agave, Café Con Leche and Café Con Platano. Word of mouth quickly spread about the quality and uniqueness of these offerings, while the five star Yelp reviews kept coming.

As indicated in comments, there are no quality shortcuts at this coffee place. Delgado sources his beans from Latin America, having travelled to different parts of the continent, to get familiarized with coffee and the entirety of its process.

“I got to see how my fellow Latinos processed and appreciated how a single seed from the ground up was not only a lifestyle, but a culture shock to me,” Delgado told Our Town Reno during a recent interview. 

He’s constantly working to create unique new drinks using traditional Hispanic flavors. For him the reward is when customers try something new or get exposed to a culture they might not be familiar with.

For the Hispanic community the biggest reward is being able to help his customers relive a memory. “When you get comments like I haven't had cafe de olla since I was a child, it breaks me down in tears, stuff like that really impacts you,” Delgado said. 

His family has been some of his biggest supporters, in particular his father. Delgado named the shop based on inspiration from his dad. “It all comes down to familiarity and having that cup of coffee with my dad every morning,” he said. “I still remember how he would always say get a business mijo, be your own boss.”

The shop's menu also has a few drinks named after family members, some of which are to honor their memory or to give back to his family for always being there. Other names are just tributes to Hispanic culture like one of his drinks Luna.  Delgado hired one of his long time friends, Abel Perez, a muralist and tattoo artist, to paint his parents portrait on the walls of the shop along with other beautiful pieces. “I wanted to capture the feel of how people tend to work in the field.”

In the future Delgado hopes to open more Cafe con Papis across Nevada. “I get a lot of people from out of town, based on my reviews and just hearing people’s comments, the way they experience the coffee, they keep telling me to venture out into Sparks or they wished they had a spot like this in Vegas,” he said.

Delgado wants to encourage more people to come down to his coffee shop and try something new and is so grateful for those who have supported him this far. 

“Cafe Con Papi is a home for all walks of life but also a tribute to our Latin ancestors and coffee farmers who continue on working in the fields day and night providing quality coffee for the world,” he said.

Our Town Reno reporting by Nancy Vazquez

New Generation of Boarders Learn with We Board Together

On a sunny Saturday morning, the Mira Loma skatepark, officially called Rattlesnake Mountain Skatepark, bustled with skaters of all ages and abilities. Music played through speakers, Capri Suns were flowing, and smiles could be seen all around. 

The day marked the first time We Board Together, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that was founded by Ryan Fleming last year, hosted one of their free skateboard clinics at Mira Loma. The clinics will resume October 15th at North Valleys.

Ryan, although now residing in the Portola area of California, previously lived in Reno and will always consider it as home. “No matter where I move, if anyone asks me where home is, I’ll always say Reno,” he said.

Ryan in photo above with a friend has been skateboarding his entire life, and started We Board Together as a way to share his love of skateboarding with others, and in a few months, hopefully snowboarding as well. Over the past year, Ryan has been hosting free skateboard clinics in Portola, and is now sharing the riding love with the Reno community. Four clinics have already taken place at North Valleys Skate Park, and October 1st was the first clinic held at Mira Loma.

Ryan works as a full-time garden designer, dedicating the free time he has on weekends to make the drive to Reno for the clinics. He posts upcoming clinics as events on the We Board Together Facebook page and brings with him spare skateboards, helmets, knee and elbow pads, and drinks. Although the participants mostly consist of younger children, Ryan stresses that the clinics are extremely inclusive and anyone is welcome. “Sometimes parents will bring their kids, and because they’re here anyway will decide to give it ago. It’s awesome, we definitely encourage anyone who wants to give it a try to come along. There’s no limits on skateboarding.” 

“There’s a lot of negative stigma attached to skateboarding, when really none of it’s true,” Michelle, a volunteer at the clinic said. “There’s a huge supportive community within skateboarding, especially here in Reno. That’s why we love coming here.”

A parent of one of the participants explains that “these clinics are really great because my daughter can meet other kids, make friends, and have someone to progress with. They get to push each other and it’s really nice to see.”

It was clear there was some real camaraderie on show, with everyone hyping each other up and supporting one another. Even though Ryan hosts these clinics for free and doesn’t ask for payment of any kind, the participants actively want to give back. At the end of the skate session, a young lady came up to Ryan and handed him some cash to cover the drinks he provided; a delightful gesture.

Not only was October 1st the first clinic held at Mira Loma, it was also the first time Ryan hosted “Skate Art in the Park”. He brought with him dozens of pieces of old and broken skateboards that he had cut and sanded.

The boards had been collected by Ryan over time, with some being donations from friends and local skateboarders. Along with these blank wooden canvases, Ryan brought tubs of paint and brushes for participants to create their own artwork; a way to relax and get creative after skating for the last few hours in the sun. “I have been painting my decks for years, my walls are full of mine and my grandfather’s artwork. So doing SkateArt in the Park is something I have wanted to add to the events since last year. The time has finally come,” Ryan said.

He has even bigger goals for We Board Together in the coming months, with snowboarding also on his agenda. “There’s a reason I called it We Board Together not We Skate Together,” Ryan says. “I didn’t want to limit myself to just skateboarding.”

Ryan hosted a pilot snowboard clinic at an abandoned ski area last year, which registered a lot of interest. He aims to partner up with some local ski resorts and rental shops to make it happen. “That’s why we made the decision to register We Board Together as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in California. When it comes down to snowboarding, more funding and industry relationships will be needed, so it will make things easier in the future,” Ryan said.

Snowboarding and skiing are known for being more ‘elitist’ sports, with one of the main barriers to participation being the sheer financial cost of even getting started with the sport. There are gear expenses; a snowboard, bindings, boots, goggles, helmet (not to mention all the new waterproof/insulated outerwear necessary to be out in the snow). Season pass lift tickets to ski resorts can be extremely pricey. In Tahoe, a season pass for one person costs roughly $500-600, and a single day pass around the $100 mark. Travel expenses, ski instructor hire and lessons… it all adds up very quickly, often putting people off or simply blocking them from participating completely.

By hopefully working alongside a local resort to get cheaper lift tickets and partnering up with a rental shop to secure a discount or borrow demo gear, Ryan wants to make snowboarding more accessible to people that want to give it a try, but maybe haven’t had the opportunity before.

Our Town Reno reporting and photos by Gaia Osborne

Locally Made, Reno Based Movie Carp-e Diem Premieres

Earlier this month, at the Summit Century theater, Carp-E Diem premiered on the big screen. What stood out in this movie was that the film had roots in Reno, behind the scenes, with “99% of the crew from Reno” according to those who made it, Andrew Arguello and Mj Palo (see details about them in above caption) and on the screen. The scenery was that of our town’s beautiful desert. Many aspects were recognizable such as Reno PD cars, local shops, and neighborhoods. 

On-screen playing the part of Agent Cooper is Jasmeet Baduwalia. He was able to kick start his career in Reno after acceptance into the Take 2 Performers Studio on Smithridge Dr. Also in the film is Gregory Klino playing the part of officer Dewey. Klino, who also has a writing credit on this film, is a local Reno producer and teacher for the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival.

The film runs 100 minutes and is about a drifter couple Natasha (who is very pregnant) and Vern (who is not the father of the baby). They go from place to place killing people to stay in their homes while pawning their valuables. The couple ends up killing Martha and Bob only to discover they were drug dealers for the Mexican cartel. Natasha and Vern then pretend to be them and make a profit from what they found left behind. Taking it to another level, Pedro the son of the cartel leader Mika goes to live with them. The entire film is pretty much about them getting themselves into more and more trouble.

By the end of the film, the viewer is left with a lot of questions including: What is the backstory of the father of Natasha’s child? Why was Natasha running from him? Why and where did Vern come into the picture?

The main actors are convincing though. Vern is very charismatic and even in dark times a light-hearted character. He is a classic example of the bad guy character the audience falls for and roots for. One of the villains in the story Mrs. Hendrix is brilliant as a seemingly ordinary middle-aged woman who is actually an unhinged hit woman. 

The cinematography is complex and amazing. The costume designers also did a good job. For example Vern with his Hawaiian shirts and Pedro with his flamboyant outfits.  The movie seems to be in the crime comedy genre, but the jokes can be violent, sexual, or stereotypical. 

The biggest issue for me with the film was using the Mexican characters to play stereotypical drug lord roles. Hispanics playing the roles of drug lords, gang members, and criminals is so overdone, so why continue this trend locally? The community is tired of this representation. This causes negative stereotypes and makes it harder for Hispanic actors to land roles outside of playing criminals. This is not what the culture is about and it was greatly misrepresented. Pedro is the gay, dumb son of a drug lord. Mika is a tatted Narco with an accent.

Carp-e Diem can also be seen as a stereotype of Reno. There is more to this vibrant and diverse art city than what was portrayed on film.  However, overall, this is a big leap for filmmakers and actors in Reno. The directors and producers hope to make more films in the future and grow from this experience. Such endeavors can help bring Reno a market for more cinematic productions and give our local talent a much needed spotlight. 

Our Town Reno reporting and review by Nancy Vazquez

Discovering the Many Little Free Libraries in the Biggest Little City

It’s a bright and cheerful Tuesday morning. I am taking my husky for a walk (or rather she is taking me for a walk) around my neighborhood as I do every single day.

Today, I choose to take a different route and walk around a part of the neighborhood I haven’t been through before.

As I wander past row after row of almost identical looking houses, one in particular stands out to me. It has a small white box perched on its front lawn, painted with brightly-colored birds and flowers. At first, I think it’s simply a beautifully decorated mailbox, but upon closer inspection, I realize it is filled with books. Books that are free for the taking. It’s yet another community library in Reno, operating on a take one leave one basis. 

A quick Google search reveals that this registered Little Free Library is one of 50 in the local area, and one of over 100,000 around the globe. They are springing up everywhere. On street corners and front lawns. Schools, parks, hospitals, and community centers.

Little Free Library is a non-profit organization based in Minnesota. Its mission is clear: to be a catalyst for building community, inspiring readers, and expanding book access for all, through a global network of volunteer-led Little Free Libraries. They believe that all people are empowered when the opportunity to discover a personally relevant book is not limited by time, space, or privilege. 

Essentially anybody can open a Little Free Library. Their website gives you the option to buy a pre-made kit for your own book-sharing box. You buy it, they ship it. All you need to do is assemble and decorate it, and finally place the registered library on your front lawn. Or there is the option to build your own from scratch, giving you the creative freedom to make it as large, ornate, and whacky as you wish.

But apart from being fun and novelty little houses for books, why do these Little Free Libraries even matter? And, specifically, why do they matter in our community? 

Little Free Libraries’ website stresses that the United States is currently facing a growing literacy crisis. Today, in the U.S., more than 30 million adults cannot read or write above a third-grade level. Repeated studies have shown that books in the hands of children have a highly meaningful impact on improving literacy – the more books available in or near the home, the more likely a child will learn and enjoy reading. However, two-thirds of children living in poverty have no books to call their own. 

According to a 2020 article published by Sierra Nevada Ally, Nevada is facing its own literacy crisis. Approximately two-thirds of Nevada’s school-age children score below a basic level of reading proficiency, and Nevada is rated in the bottom half of states in reading achievement for grades 4 and 8 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This achievement gap exists within all subgroups of students, but it particularly affects disadvantaged students; those from low-income households and neighborhoods. Little Free Libraries could potentially help solve the literacy crisis in Nevada, by playing a key role in providing 24/7 access to books in areas of Reno where books are scarce.

It seems that Reno locals have really jumped on this new movement, and book-sharing boxes can be found all over town. Local bookstore Grassroots Books has been a great supporter of the Little Free Libraries in town, hosting fill-a-bag book sales where LFL owners can restock their boxes inexpensively. 

Little Free Libraries have various programs through which they grant no-cost book-sharing boxes already filled with books to underserved, urban, suburban, rural, and Indigenous communities. Their website (www.littlefreelibrary.org) has plenty of information on such programs, as well as information on how to build and set-up your own library. They also have a very useful interactive map which details the locations of all the Little Free Libraries in your area, including street addresses and photos of the boxes. 

Our Town Reno reporting by Gaia Osborne

A Fresh "Poppin'" Mural on Keystone Ave.

Before they went back to their studies, summer was productive for a group of Reno highs school artists who refreshed the Keystone Bridge overpass base with the “poppin’ colors of a 70s psychedelic design,” as described by painter and Hug High student Ivana with a smile.

The bright and bold mural, designed by noted local muralist Hannah Eddy (@HannahEddy on Instagram) with the input of the students, replaces a flaking and faded turquoise water drop mural that had been there several years at the corner of Keystone and Riverside by the McKinley Art Center.

The teens involved in the painting were invited, and paid for their assistance, through the Nevada Art Museum and Community in Schools, along with the City of Reno. They worked closely with Eddy on developing and then creating the bright graphic design.

John, a student at enCompass Academy, pointed out the spitting snake he had suggested.  The painting continues around a corner to a long wall filled with mountains, brightly colored birds, a frog, balloons for the balloon festival, and stylized desert plants. 

“We all just put in ideas of what we felt describe Reno,” said Freya, a junior at enCompass.  Emily, a Hug High junior, pointed out that the group of 12 students who helped paint the walls, did not really know each other before beginning to work together last February.

Each of the teens felt that working on the mural gave them a connection to Reno and a sense of pride. It also increased their artistic abilities and they said that working with Eddy, who has designed murals around the country, was both inspiring and fun. 

The result is bright and very public art to add to both the urban Truckee River corridor and the city as a whole.

Our Town Reno reporting by Dina Wood

Steve Boyer, A Wine Specialist Bringing Mobile Oysters to Reno

Steve Boyer, a leading wine entrepreneur on the Reno scene, who showed resilience as a local businessman during the pandemic, is now bringing oysters to a wine bar and brewery near you, including his own, Archive at West Street Market.

What pairs the best? “Champagne always, always sparkling wine,” he told Our Town Reno during a recent interview, before opening Archive on a weekday.  “I think a lot of people focus on white wines with oysters or beer with oysters. There's some amazing beer and oyster pairings, but there's also some beautiful, fresh, vibrant reds that'll work well with oysters. It honestly probably depends more on the weather than on the oyster. Although there are definite pairings we will be featuring with each oyster.”

Most conversations with Boyer, who has more than a quarter century experience in the wine and service industry, turn into mouth watering propositions. Oysters have long been only available inside casinos in northern Nevada, but Boyer is coming up with the concept of a mobile oyster trailer called the Mini Pearl Oyster Company.  

“We’re going to go around, serve freshly shucked oysters and a couple of other fresh seafood alternatives. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I think it'll be something that Reno hasn't seen. It will be a way to get access to fresh oysters without having to go sit down at a fancy restaurant,” he said. 

The name for this new oyster venture comes from Minnie Pearl, the American comedian whose real name was Sarah Cannon.  She  appeared at the Nashville country music stage the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years.

“My wife [Amy, the co-owner of Archive and a wine distributor] and I met in Nashville, Tennessee, home of Minnie Pearl. She was a tremendous asset to her community, as well as a tremendous comedian, for her time. And we thought it represented making [oysters] more approachable. It just sounds like a lot of fun. And then of course, oysters and pearls, they're a natural combination. So I think, I think it'll be a lot of fun to, to see how people react to it.”

Archive can be found through one of the West Street facing doors of the West Street Market in downtown Reno.

For Boyer, it will be the latest in a series of entrepreneurial ventures, some of which failed, including when he first moved to the region and opened a restaurant in what was then Squaw Valley in 2007 just as the Great Recession hit.  He was out of that business after two years. Boyer opened Archive (“a repository of great things that represent place”) just six months before the pandemic started.

“We were were building a lot of momentum, right before the pandemic,” he remembers. “We closed down a little bit for, for just a short period of time. And then we opened up [again]. we do have a retail license here, so we can sell bottles and cases to go. So we tried to pivot to some retail sales, but our location downtown made that a little bit more difficult. Honestly, people were just scared to get out and about for a long time.”

He said the plan was never to prioritize sales though but the experience and interacting with guests. “We firmly believe that great wine is a conversation, not a product. For what we do, it's important for us to be able to really interact, and explain what we have and find out what it is people are looking for. And so that made it really difficult, but, you know, we're resilient. We got some support from the community and then honestly it was just buckling down and making our minds up that we were gonna keep going, even if we weren't making money.”

Boyer says the pandemic reinforced the importance of supporting small local businesses. 

“I think we are feeling that love a little bit now, which is great,” he said.  That support is also giving him new confidence, despite the many current challenges of inflation, supply chain strangleholds and climate change to name a few. 

“A lot of that depends on how we treat it, whether we treat it with respect, and treat Reno with respect,” Boyer said of now succeeding with the oyster venture, at least in terms of what he can control.  “I think it also depends on how much work we put into it. And then there's always a lot of luck involved [with] timing.”

Outside of work, Boyer is an avid snowboarder who during the winter volunteers at Sky Tavern, where both his boys have been going since they were four.   He advises other entrepreneurs to keep a healthy balance. 

“It’s easy to get so caught up in the day to day grind,” he said. “And, you know, one of the commitments that I made to my wife and that we made to each other when we opened Archive was that this wouldn't become so important to us that we would sacrifice our family, or sacrifice ourselves and the things that we love to do. We moved to Reno to raise a family and we moved to Reno to be outside and to enjoy what Reno has to offer. I think it's really important to maintain that sanity and that balance. It's okay to sacrifice a little bit of growth financially to be able to grow in other ways. And I think that's a balance that's hard for entrepreneurs to do, but I think you have to find a way to do it.”

Our Town Reno reporting, Summer of 2022

Beth, A Riverwalk Chalk Artist with Positive Messages

Reno is proud of its commitment to public art, including the many beautiful murals on buildings, mainly in gentrifying parts of town.

If you cross the street from the Riverwalk and look down at your feet you can often find more public art in a series of lively little images, often with bugs and cheerful flowers as the subject.

Using the medium of chalk, artist and life coach Beth Hefley makes vignettes in a style she calls “woodland fairy”. For the last four years every two weeks she sets out to decorate the sidewalk along the river.

She grew up in Florida, where she and her brothers discovered their artistic talents. One brother chose realism photography, another is now a Reno tattoo artist and Beth felt drawn to chalks. After leaving school she wanted a change and moved to Reno, which now feels like home.

Beth’s art is for the public in a very free and open way. “I really just want to make people happy and smile,’’ she says, looking up from a nearly finished little red mushroom. "There's so much pain in the world. If I can create something to make someone happy, why not?”

After living in Reno through many changes for the city socially and economically she says: “I have to adapt to them, right?”

Beth picks another color to add. “I try to go to heavily trafficked areas so I can get as many smiles as possible,” she says.

Our Town Reno photos and reporting by Dina Wood

VoluntYou Brings NASA Astro Camp and Much More for Local Youths

The Silver State’s first NASA Astro camp took place at the University of Nevada, Reno’s Robotics Innevation Center’s K-12 Robotics Center last week, spearheaded by VoluntYou, a locally created platform bringing volunteers, NGOs, and schools together.

The summer camp, sponsored by and borrowing curriculum from the titular NASA, focused on the Artemis program to explore the moon. Some activities included designing stabilizing fins for rockets, a heat shield or a crew module for astronauts.

“All of this material is aligned with next-generation science standards and ties back to common core topics,” Julianna Schneider, the Founder and CEO at VoluntYou, said. “All of that information is provided as part of the curriculum and each step that we go through ties to that. All the skills that we teach will become useful to the kids at some point in their development, and we tend to try and tie what they learned here to what they’ve learned at school.”

VoluntYou works to help community members fulfill their ideas while matching volunteers with opportunities. Other projects outside of the NASA Astro camp include working with the Reno Burrito Project, administrative and recording duties of providing COVID-19 vaccines in Italy and working with a group to facilitate donations to the citizens of Ukraine. In the case of the NASA Astro camp, that’s working with a young robotics team to help organize the red tape behind a summer camp.

“We aim to be flexible in the way that we do things while maintaining high quality standards, and I think they’re a really great example of how we will help people who may not have a 501c3 or financial backing of that sort to be able to reach into the community,” Schneider said.  “We will ensure that all the things that are featured on VoluntYou are of a certain level and a high quality standard.”

Every camp receives a similar, standardized curriculum across the country, but this NASA Astro camp was the first for the state of Nevada. Schneider said other organizations will integrate the NASA Astro Camp into summer camps that have been established or other similar opportunities.

 “Museums that run day-long or week-long camps for kids sometimes will embed NASA as after camp activities in their programming,” Schneider said.  “It is variable in that sense of how you might see and manifest itself, but the curriculum is standardized and that's how it can actually tie to school standards.”

VoluntYou, started in Reno, aims to become an international organization. It has over 20 so-called Ambassadors from Ukraine to Italy and Cambodia. Schneider, an Albanian native herself, said that these Ambassadors help communities around the world turn the ideas they have into tangible action.

“Our ambassador team helps local communities build capability to hold community service events,” Schneider said. “They tend to be very involved in things like national honor society and 501 c3s. They use that knowledge along with the knowledge gained through being part of volunteering to advise groups that are looking to become community service organizations. That enables organizations that might have not been able to really get off the ground to do that through the help of our ambassadors and then the full suite of the platform that we provide.”

A U.S Presidential Scholar and aspiring AI researcher Schneider herself already has an impressive resume, with the Davidson Academy where she won multiple awards propelling her to starting her college studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall.

Our Town Reno reporting by Jesse Stone

Remi Jourdan, A Reno-Based Innovator “All Ears” for Local Musical Talent

Since first arriving in Reno he calls “Reno de Janeiro,” Frenchman Remi Jourdan has owned a live music nightclub on Fourth Street, started a digital startup to help independent musicians from his home near downtown Reno, and coordinated multiple concerts and festivals across local venues.

Up next, he’s managing the musical portion of the Sept 8-11 Reno Tahoe International Art Show, in its first edition, with stages at the Reno Sparks Convention Center, a special night at Cargo and a gala at the Nevada Museum of Art. 

“My role is exclusively booking talent, showcasing all the amazing talent we have in our area. There's going to be about 80 musicians and 17 performances in three locations,” he said. 

Styles will range from jazz to blues, funk and pop, many of them coming from local musicians, who will all be paid to perform.  

“I think that we tend to not think too much about our local community, as far as art and music. We tend to bring people [from] out of town.  Post COVID, artists have been really struggling, not been performing. So the idea is … to support the local music scene,” he said.  With rising rents and other inflation, many independent venues are also having a hard time putting on shows. 

His digital music platform Tunetrax also has many Reno artists listed, and is a global endeavor he started from the Biggest Little City. 

“It’s a self generated platform, so artists can sign up, it's free to sign up to the platform. The idea is for artists to create a profile, and [get] electronic press kits. They can publish the music, promote the music, to their fans, or music professionals to get booked. It's a very useful tool for artists to be competitive in [the] online community,” he said.  He calls it an alternative to MySpace which before it disappeared club owners and booking agents used extensively to find and schedule musicians.  

Once they make the jump to in person attendance, Jourdan urges fans to support their favorite musicians even more when they can.  “You know, remember to support artists, you know, a little extra, you know, buying a CD, tee-shirts, whatever, because remember those guys didn't have any income for a very, very long time for the last two years. So, you know, it goes a long way,” he said. 

Jourdan has had experience managing bars and clubs in Los Angeles and Paris, including the famed Moulin Rouge, which has been open since the late 19th century.  In Reno, he was one of the co-founders of the Off Beat Arts and Music Festival which started in 2015.  He first arrived in the Biggest Little City in 2007 after purchasing the Club Underground at 555 E 4th street, just as the Great Recession was hitting Nevada particularly hard. 

Despite many challenges to keep that club open for as long as he did, Jourdan has fond memories of his Reno beginnings.  “We had two stages, two bars and two different different rooms, one bigger room and one smaller room. I booked about 4,135 bands in five years. So that's about 80 bands a month, paying them, which was important to me as well, again, going back to supporting the local community … so giving opportunities [for] more exposure. I did a lot of all ages show as well, back in the day. I lost a lot of money doing that, but I had a lot of fun doing it. And you know what, today, when I walk in around the river and I see kids waving at me and saying, ‘Hey, how you doing, man? And like, you know, I have a hard time to remember them and, you know, they come to me and say, ‘you know, I remember I was 16, 17 when I first played your venue.’ That's pretty cool.” 

Jourdan said back then metal shows and hip hop were the dominant genres, but that now the Reno style of music has broadened to appeal to all sorts of musical tastes. 

Going forward, he’d also like to organize a music festival for the unhoused community, which would include paid for food trucks, haircuts and an outdoor stage. Jourdan would also like to reach back to his French roots and bring to Reno the “Fete de la Musique” which started in 1982, and now takes place in over 1,000 cities across the world on June 21st and into the night.  The Biggest Little City has yet to have one.  There’s paid events but also free outdoor musical events at all hours, in bars, restaurants, parking lots, coffee shops, parks, everywhere.

“That's something that would be fantastic to bring to Reno and let everybody be able to get involved, you know, and it’s free to get involved. Everybody can be involved during that initiative. So again, if anyone wants to get, involved [with these ideas], and help out and make that a reality, I'm all ears.” 

Our Town Reno reporting, August 2022

Reno's Crystal Powell Seeks to Become a Cover Girl

Throughout the summer, new mom Crystal Powell sought out help on Facebook trying to get votes for the Maxim Cover Girl Competition. She often posted photos of herself and her daughter, or updates about her challenging life to encourage people to vote for her. She proceeded onward at first but then finished third in the latest voting group she was in.

Undeterred, she’s now setting her sights on another competition to become Ms. Stars and Stripes. “Calling All Country Girls,” is that competition’s headline: “We’re searching for ONE woman who represents a “country” way of life to be crowned Ms. Stars & Stripes in 2022! This country queen will be featured in STAR Magazine, take home $25,000, and be the belle of the ball at all the hottest events of the year!”

Part of what Powell is doing is trying to get Reno more on the fashion and modeling map.

“There is a fashion industry in Reno,” Powell said.  “It’s very small and people do know each other, but I feel more than other cities that I've gotten work in, it's very intimate and they're willing to accept any kind of model, no matter what age, no matter what body type. I really appreciate that about the modeling industry here.”

Powell won awards for the above documentary, Life’s Just Hard, she made during her time at the Reynolds School of Journalism at UNR.

During the week, Powell is a media production specialist with the Washoe County sheriff’s office. Two years ago, she was contacted by a marketing agency to do some modeling work for a product advertisement on Instagram. From there, Powell has spent the last few years dabbling in part-time modeling work in addition to her full-time job.

Doing all this while being a new mom is not easy, but Powell says she also wants to set an example for her daughter.

“I want her to realize the sky is the limit,” Powell said. “You can do anything you want to do in this world, especially with the way it's changing. Talking about modeling, certain barriers to entry in the industry are disappearing. Ten years ago, you couldn't do certain things if you didn't look a certain way, if you didn't have a certain background or the right connections. And that is not the case anymore, especially with social media.”

If she ever wins one of these magazine prizes, Powell said she would use the money to move her family into a safer part of town. Where she lives now, she says, she has encountered issues with cars being broken into and gunshots into the night. Powell wants to stay in Northern Nevada, though. 

“My daughter's dad is a firefighter and we love the Reno area,” she said. “I've lived in a handful of other large cities across the US since college. And I've always come back here because it really is the biggest little city in the world.”

Reporting by Jesse Stone for Our Town Reno

Garlic Braiding, Part of Desert Farming Initiative's Bimonthly Communal Events

Ahead of Reno Garlic Fest on July 30th, the Desert Farming Initiative, the agricultural program established in 2013 at the University of Nevada, Reno, recently held a Garlic Harvest and Braiding Workshop with Reno Food Systems and Katy Chandler of Be The Change Project.

The workshop was one of their community connection events which occur every other Saturday. Fifteen attendees showed up, interested in bettering their skills in growing garlic in the Reno area.

Chandler, who grows garlic on her urban homestead, instructed participants on how to identify suitable “soft neck” garlic for braiding and how to weave it correctly. Braiding garlic is a traditional way to store garlic both functionally and decoratively.

It took most attendees a handful of tries to make a suitable braid. Attendees were given the choice of leaving their braids with DFI or taking these home for a suggested donation of $15, to fund student wages in the fall. Garlic is one of DFI’s main “cash crops” or revenue sources. 

"Locally grown food, regionally grown food, is an important solution to a lot of the challenges we’re going to be facing going forward," said Jill Moe, DFI's Director for the past four years.

DFI sources funding from grants, donations, and farming revenue, such as the sale of their organic plant starts and produce. “I think DFI has so much potential as a public resource to provide education… I feel like we provide a great platform for that now but going forward I only envision us doing more,” Moe said.

Photos and Reporting by Ariel Smith for Our Town Reno