“Turn off your TV. Leave your house. Know your neighbors. Greet people. Look up when you’re walking. Sit on your stoop. Plant flowers…”
—”How to Build Community”
I didn’t start this week’s Fray foray feeling at all inspirational. I was ranting, speaking in exclamation points.
“That’s just the problem with this place!” I complained. “Nobody plans ahead! Look at the Bowling Stadium. Look at that convention center. Now the flowers are dead?!”
RN&R General Manager John Murphy broke the news to me Tuesday. He’d been downtown for a rehearsal of an art tour hosted by Sierra Arts. He’d walked past many planters and baskets adorned with some of the 10,000 flowers bought for downtown and planted at Reno Days on June 1.
It took less than a dozen days of neglect for the flowers to fade. When John walked by the planters along First and Sierra streets—and along the fenced-off site of the former Mapes—the marigolds were brittle and nearly dead.
“I can’t believe I wrote nice stuff about the happy, happy flowers!” I blared.
“They would have been happy, happy flowers if someone would have watered them,” he said. “They dropped the ball.”
Call us evil advocacy journalists if you want, but we at the RN&R would like to see downtown make a comeback. We think it can happen. Events like the RN&R’s Rollin’ on the River are thriving—as the thick crowd for Michelle Shocked last Friday night proved.
So I’m into flowers. The boss is into seeing the elevators cleaned at the Parking Gallery on First and Sierra. The elevators might provide scenic views of Reno’s arts and culture district—if they weren’t filthy. John’s been on the city’s case for months about this. He’ll rant on command. “And the shafts are still dirty!”
I was still seething over the thought of dry petunias crisping in the sun. So I grabbed my camera and headed across downtown to record the neglect of the innocent buds. But alas, to my consternation and delight, the flowers were making a comeback. Sure, some petunias lacked blossoms and a few marigolds had lost the battle. But the dirt was damp, and straw was packed over the soil in some areas. Most of the plants had enough green to call them alive.
I walked to Dreamers, the coffee shop on the ground floor of the Riverside Artists Lofts, and ordered a blended chai. The place was teeming with folks eating soup, drinking lattes, using the computers, hanging out, living.
In other news, we received an e-mail from John Anderson, a motorcycle marshal at the Tour de Nez bike race held last weekend. He says he’s curious about a comment in the Reno Gazette-Journal’s account of the race. The RG-J reported that the race made bicyclists “fans of the trench” because seven riders fell down when hitting train tracks during the race’s second lap.
“The thing is that the bike race course did not cross the railroad tracks,” Anderson says. “The closest the race came to the tracks was First Street, about three blocks away.”