Development is a bad thing
or perhaps I just hate change
I’m writing to you from the great lobotomized trapezoid of Nevada, state of neon and silver, nuclear test sites and motorcycle gangs, wild horses and alien cults, brothels and turquoise mines, sagebrush and psychosis. They closed the cafe where they used to sell knives at the counter. In its place, I believe, is a biscuit shop.
Reno, what can I say. Every time I come back it seems the empty lots have grown bigger and the massage parlors more numerous. The art situation here… mixed. Every year the museum does some exhibit on the loathsome backwash of Burning Man: swill, detritus, refuse, all repulsive in its New Age geometry. The fucking Space Whale that our mayor NFTed after no one bought it (despite the city throwing in two fruit pies and a framed photo of Skrillex). Oh Reno!
The local scene showed promising glimmers when I left in 2017, full of talented young artists and photographers and musicians, but everyone I know has been lured by the more vibrant lights of Portland or San Francisco, or is currently planning to move away, chased out by rising rents. We’re paying Manhattan prices to live in Reno, a friend of mine told me.
What has happened to my dear dirty hometown? Out of state corporate developers who have demolished swaths of historic downtown, eliminated affordable housing, and somehow believe they can conjure a “fountain district” out of the desert sands? The Tesla Gigafactory, which has transformed into a horrorshow of drug smuggling and corporate malfeasance? The proposed (and BLM-approved) lithium mine on sacred land?
I believe, despite it all, that the city will resist becoming another casualty of late stage American capitalism, that Reno is special, that the gumption in this mountain town will be its salvation. Is it optimism I feel, or denial?
What else do I have to say to you? I love being in my parents’ house, with the records and bathtub and hexagons of cheese vacuum-sealed in single-use plastic. I am surprised at how little I miss Chicago. From afar, (my) life in the midwest seems like a swarm of anxieties encased in a cage of concrete and overcast sky. In Nevada, at least, the skies are blue.