Reno: What a Depressing Place

Reno: What a Depressing Place

I would not ordinarily ever go to Reno. I don't gamble. But we have some good friends, left over from the 1982 campaign to stop the California handgun freeze initiative, who live outside of Reno, so we stopped in for a couple of days.

1. We stayed at the Sands Regency, which wasn't the Hilton, but it wasn't bad. The only real disappointment was that I had asked for two beds (to keep the snoring machine away from my wife), and for some reason they gave us a king bed instead. I've stayed in nicer places, but I've stayed in much worse, far more often.

2. The only way to get to the rooms is to go through the casino--which is a sensory overload chamber. Lots of lights, lots of noises, all designed, my wife thinks, to prevent you from thinking carefully and realizing that it all exists to suck money out of you. At 7:00 AM this morning, I walked through the casino on the way to the car, and I realized that there were people eating breakfast sandwiches while playing slot machines, with the most desperately miserable look that a person can have when supposedly having fun. I at first wondered why anyone would be hitting the slots that early--but my friend who lives there says that no, they are up late.

I have more fun solving programming problems at work than these people seemed to be having gambling. Not everyone who gambles has a gambling problem--but these people didn't look happy. Hell may turn out not to be a lake of fire, but something perilously similar to a casino--a place where you can't leave, or feel that you can't leave--and with an eternity of misery.

3. It is even more true of Las Vegas, but Reno at night with all the blinking lights is somewhat alluring--like an overpainted, underdressed working girl--but in the daylight you can see that either of these towns is like the prostitute Winston visits in 1984--aged, miserable, and not something that anyone would find attractive in the light of day. It looks like a lot of people who live there, and work there, are struggling to get by, perhaps because so many of the jobs are in the "hospitality" business--which really means unskilled jobs where you can be replaced with another unskilled worker on a moment's notice. We saw a billboard outside of Reno on I-80 that made the claim that Elko has the highest paying jobs in Nevada. I don't know if this is true, but if it is, it probably because Elko has a lot of jobs that aren't tied to tourism or gambling. [UPDATE: Here's the agency that put up the billboard--apparently gold mining has a lot to do with the high paying jobs in Elko.]

4. On the plus side, the National Automobile Museum (formerly the Harrah's collection of cars) is there. I'll be blogging about that separately.